Excellent Ways To Improve Your Guitar Playing

What grooves you? Why do you want to improve?

Regardless of your intentions - whether to get started playing, learn a few licks of your favorite tunes, or want to expand your repertoire to include blues, funk, or rock and roll music, on your way to recording yourself, there are resources out there that can help you.

Holiday Shipping Sale; Get it there by Christmas for Less!

Here are a few ideas that may help you better understand your guitar playing and some solutions you can consider.

Guitar videos
You can purchase guitar playing videos, either for home or computer watching, that include hand position, strumming technique, rhythm and timing, and finger exercises that take through various type of songs. Essentially these become a mirror for you in learning to play as you mimic what you're watching on screen and then reproduce this on your own. With commitment and determination, this can be a good one to go - especially for the visual learner who likes to learn primarily on their own.

Save Up to 95% in the Price Cuts Section of the MusiciansFriend.com Outlet Store

Guitar lessons
You can find a community of guitar instructors in your surrounding area who are either private tutors or work through a community college. You'll want to consider their expertise, the type of students they work best with, their flexibility with your schedule, success stories, and of course their fees, in considering working with them. In pursing guitar lessons, you can either do one on one or group - both have their plusses and minuses but either can work for you.

Pearl Snare Drum of the Month at MusiciansFriend.com

Playing partners
Find someone in your local community who plays. You can do this through asking the local community college, posting online to a resource like craigslist, or asking the guitar shop. The idea is to develop a friendship with someone who is a bit better than you who wants the accountability of practicing weekly. What you can provide is the commitment to meet up with them weekly and practice. In return, you can learn from their techniques or methods what works. Of course, you always need to be aware of learning bad habits in situations like these, which is why it's important to have a foundation in guitar technique before starting.

Guitar theory
Related to guitar technique is developing a basis in guitar theory. Chord patterns, minor and major chord progressions, note scales, and overlap with piano and percussion instruments can all give you a basic structure upon which to layer in the knowledge and technique you gain in your guitar playing.

The Musician's Place To Shop!

Playing guitar can be a wonderful expression of one's musical and creative talent. And with a commitment to constant improvement, it can provide a lifetime of enjoyment for yourself, friends, and family.
Anna Yelman

Master Blues Guitar with Playing Through the Blues

Many guitar players tend to get tired of playing the same thing over and over again and want to learn something new like playing the blues guitar. There are many sources available online through which you can learn to play the blues lead guitar but most of them are crap and don't provide the results expected. Having said that, a lot of people have found the online guitar course "Playing Through the Blues" really effective since it provides a comprehensive knowledge about everything that one requires to master the blues.

Holiday Shipping Sale; Get it there by Christmas for Less!

It is designed by Griff Hamlin who is a very experienced guitar tutor. An important issue to note is that this training program will not benefit the complete beginners a great deal because the lessons have been structured in a way assuming that you are aware of the basic principles of playing the guitar.

Save Up to 95% in the Price Cuts Section of the MusiciansFriend.com Outlet Store

"Playing Through the Blues" guitar learning program includes a main e-book that contains useful lessons to provide you with a complete knowledge of different licks, scales and solos. You will also get the Rhythm and Chords e-book that contains vital lessons on blues chords and rhythm guitar techniques. The lessons in the e-books are accompanied by more than 180 minutes of videos in which the producer Griff Hamlin will be explaining everything inside out. It also consists of audio files that cover all the examples in the lessons.

Pearl Snare Drum of the Month at MusiciansFriend.com

You will also receive several Bonus materials along with the main package. One is "the masters section" where students will be able to learn various essential tips on how to play blues from some of the blues experts. You will also be provided with 10 useful jam tracks to enhance your ability to play blues. Also the members area will be updated with new lessons and examples on a continuous basis and you are able to enjoy them without having to pay anything extra.

The Musician's Place To Shop!

"Playing Through the Blues" guitar learning course together with all of its main components and bonuses can be purchased at a fairy good price of $47. You would probably pay the same amount to a good professional teacher for just one blues lesson. Just imagine how much you would have spent at the time you feel that you have learnt a lot and are pretty good at it. Why waste money on them when you can have the same lessons through this course, taught by an expert in a comprehensive manner at a price as low as $47.

Over 53,000 Products Ship Free Every Day at MusiciansFriend.com!

The author Griff Hamlin also provides you with a 56 day-100% money back guarantee if you are not happy with the guitar training program.

Find a Huge Selection of DJ Gear at MusiciansFriend.com!

"Playing Through the Blues" is an extremely useful guide ideal for anyone interested in mastering playing the blues. The well structured and easy to understand lessons will enable you to follow them at ease and will help you to become a proper blues lead guitarist by the end of the course.
Micheal Phillips

How To Record A Bass Guitar

Bass guitar recording and mixing is highly understated. A good bass guitar track can make or break your song, as its the backbone to your song. So here are some tips that I (CJ Jacobson) have learned over the years.

Holiday Shipping Sale; Get it there by Christmas for Less!

Direct Recording:
Bass guitars either have an active pick up or a passive pick up. If your bass has active pick ups, then you can usually plug directly into the input of your sound card/interface. If your bass has passive pick ups (the most common), you need to have some sort of DI box or an external amp simulator, like a bass pod. These DI boxes take the low level signal of your bass and raise it to a line level. If your sound card/interface has mic pre-amps, you can use that as your DI box.
If you record direct, without the use of an external amp simulator, you will need to edit the sound with a bass amp simulator, compression, EQ, and maybe a bass chorus, to make it sound warm, full and alive.

Save Up to 95% in the Price Cuts Section of the MusiciansFriend.com Outlet Store

Mic Recording:
The best and most consistent results come from close mic'ing a bass amp cabinet that is just off center a tad bit. You can and should also add a 2nd mic and set it about 4 feet back. Good mic's to use are the AKG 414 and a senheiser 421.
Compressor Settings:
Compression is needed for bass guitars because each string produces different dynamics and the dynamic range can get pretty big. Compression is used to smooth out that dynamic range so the bass track has that sonic backbone most songs desire.
To tighten up the low-end, set the ratio to 2:1 to 4:1, with an attack between 5ms to 20ms and a release between 120 and 250ms and a threshold between -5 and -10dB. Set the output to make up for the gain that was reduced.

Pearl Snare Drum of the Month at MusiciansFriend.com

Distortion:
Valve amplifiers are known for some of the best bass sounds and these can get expensive for a home studio budget. So adding a Tape simulator or some slight distortion from an amp sim is a great idea. There are also valve DI boxes and using one of those is a great tool for beefing up your bass sound without totally distorting it.
Combining DI and Mic Recording:
This is by far the best way, cause you have the option to use blend both signals into one huge one. The only worry is that the phase may be off between the DI and the mic'ed bass. So you may need to reverse the phase on one of the sound sources.

The Musician's Place To Shop!

Equalization:
The fundamental bass frequencies are between 125 to 400Hz and boosting these can bring out more of the bass lines in the mix.
The harmonics for the bass are from 1.5 to 3kHz. Boosting these frequencies will increase the clarity and pluck.
Boosting between 5 to 7kHz will increase the finger sound.
Cutting between 40 and 50Hz will reduce the boom.
Playing with a pick can add harmonics up to 4kHz and will make the bass sound brighter. Playing with your fingers will produce a more mellow sound
Remember to never boost or cut the same frequencies for the bass guitar and kick drum. If you boost the bass guitar at 100Hz, 250Hz and 3kHz, do not boost the kick drum in those same frequency ranges. If anything, you should cut those same frequency ranges.
Anthony Caldwell

Do I have Talent

The path of learning guitar is full of ups and downs. Everyone has had these down moments, when you’re comparing yourself to all these guitar virtuosos out there, questioning your guitar skills and talent, and hesitating if you should continue playing or if you should give up, because it all seems just like a waste of time Well, let me tell you something: whatever you are learning in life, there will always be people that are better than you. People of different skills and ages, yet better.

WOW Deal Every Wednesday 9am to 1pm PST at MusiciansFriend.com

Let’s take school math as an example. We have the young man in twelfth grade, using logarithms and trigonometric functions with ease. He’s not a math genius, just an average student who paid attention during his math classes throughout the years. Then we have the little boy in first grade. He doesn’t know what logarithms are, nor he knows of the existence of trigonometric functions, yet he’s really good in adding numbers and while his classmates can count to 20, he can count to 1 million – a real math genius. However, when you compare them both, disregarding their age, it turns out that average student is “better” than the genius.

Get up to 75% off during the Spring Cleaning Inventory Clearance at Musician's Friend!

The point is – even talent needs time to be discovered and developed. And even if you find out that you don’t have any talent at all, you can compensate for that with many years of hard work and dedication.

Save Up to 95% in the Price Cuts Section of the MusiciansFriend.com Outlet Store

So basically the math example is absolutely the same when it comes to playing guitar. Of course in real life, we will never compare the twelfth grade student with the boy from first grade, because of their age. However, it’s not the age what makes them different – it’s the years of learning experience. When it comes to guitar playing, we simply forget that every guitar player has a different starting point. Someone may have started playing at the age of 7, another one may have started at 20 and you may have started at the age of 15. If the three of you meet at the age of 21, you won’t have the same playing skills, will you?

Find a Huge Selection of DJ Gear at MusiciansFriend.com!

Don’t question yourself if you have talent or not. It’s true that talent will help you develop faster, but you can never compensate 10 years of hard work with 1 year of playing and lots of talent. Sure, you may be achieving your goals for 10 years, while a talented guitarists achieves the same for 7, but after all music is not a competition. It’s an art. You don’t necessarily need to be lightning fast to make good music or to stand out with some other aspect of your guitar technique. You shouldn’t improve your guitar technique just to brag with it. Instead you should do it in order to be able to express yourself the way you want. Because that’s what music is all about – listening to your heart and expressing your feelings.
Harvey Mosley