Learn Guitar - 3 Deadly Guitar Practice Mistakes and What to Do Instead Learn Guitar - 3 Deadly Guitar Practice Mistakes and What to Do Instead

How do you get better on guitar, just keep practicing right? Wrong! If you want to improve your guitar playing you have to do more than just practice you must know WHAT to practice and HOW to practice.

There a lot of 'old wives' tales and myths floating around about practicing music that basically goes like this "if you lock yourself away for a couple of hours a day you will become an accomplished player!"

The real world version goes more like this "if you lock yourself away for a couple of hours every day without a definite practice strategy and clearly defined goal(s) there's a good chance your guitar playing could be going around and around in circles, you may loose your enthusiasm and motivation and possibility give up guitar and music altogether". It's true and unfortunately it's already happened to thousands of players.

I don't agree 100% with the "practice makes perfect" phrase, rather...

"perfect practice makes perfect!"

Mistake 1: To just keep on practicing - You know the old saying "if you find yourself in a hole the best thing to do is stop digging!" Good advice but something that is not often applied to guitar practice. If you find your guitar playing going nowhere I recommend you stopped doing that and take the time to get
your playing back on track.

Solution: STOP! whatever you are going on guitar and take out a blank piece of paper draw a line down the middle of the page, on the left hand side of the page make a heading "things to work on" then on the right hand side of the page make a heading titled "why".

When you have finished your page should look like this:

Things To Work On | Why

The idea is for you to (a) identify the areas of your guitar playing that need work and (b) have a reason for working on these problems.

Once your brain has something definite to work on your whole body will take on a different attitude to practicing and playing the guitar and you will find yourself moving towards your goals rapidly.

The trick is to write things down on paper so you can look at the problem without the guitar in your hands; otherwise there's a good chance you will send a lot of time working on aspects of your playing that actually don't need work, so essentially a lot of practice time is literally thrown out the window, it's wasted time, once you get a laser beam fix on your targeted 'problem' areas you will soon overcome your guitar playing obstacles.

Mistake 2: practicing too fast - everyone does this but only the best players learn how to control and discipline themselves to overcome this hazard.

Solution: Understand that "speed comes as a by-product of accuracy" not the other way around. It's not an achievement to say that you are a "fast and sloppy player" there's no great skill involved there, in fact anyone could do that... you could give your guitar to the postman and he could run his fingers up
and down the strings as fast as he could but you wouldn't call that a memorable musical experience would you... of course not!

Write that down in BIG letters and carry it with you in your guitar case "Speed is a by-product of accuracy". Learn to practice everything in s-l-o-w motion in the same manner as people practice the martial arts.

Mistake 3: not making the distinction between data and motor skill practice.

Solution: Before you begin a practice session be clear which type of practice session is required to achieve your current musical goals. Basically there's two types of guitar practice:

Data memory training - this is where you are learning something new; these sessions must be kept short 2-5 minutes maximum.

Motor skills training - this is where you are practicing something you already know; practice sessions are typically 20-30mins in duration

It's possible to learn something wrong and practice it until the mistake becomes ingrained and very difficult to re-learn, often the player lacks the sheer determination to overcome the musical 'banana-peel' and the mistake becomes a fatal one.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_P_Hayes

Chord Inversions

When you actually get to look at the succession of chords in a song, it can be pretty intimidating when you see the inversions come up. Chord inversions are something that seems to be really intimidating for most beginner guitar players. And there are a lot of guitar players who just shrug off the learning of chord inversions just because they think that it is difficult to learn and that they will be able to become really successful guitar players without even learning these inversions. What you might not know is that the chord inversions could be something that you really need to learn for you to be able to get the exact chord that would fit the song.

Chord inversions are chords made in the same bass chord. The lowest note of the chord is the tonic. When you execute the chord, you will maintain that lowest chord. Every time you execute a chord in the root or the tonic, this means the chord is an inversion. In the case of a C chord for example, any chord executed with C as the bass is an inversion of the C chord.

Most of the time, chords are played with about three or four notes fingered on the guitar. This means that you might be fingering two or three notes on the bass position. In a C chord for example, you need to finger C, E and G. On a Cmaj7, you have a C, E, G, B.

There are three types of chord inversions. They are respectively and aptly called first, second and third inversions. The first inversion calls for the 3rd of the chord on the bass note. This gives the term for it. The first inversion of the chord requires the 3rd of the chord be the first note after the root. The second inversion, now, has the 5th of the chord on a bass position. The terminology is derived from the idea of the 5th of the chord being the second tone after the tonic or the bass. And as you may have realized by now, the third inversion requires having its 7th as the bass. You get the drift, don't you?

Let's take for example a Cmaj7. The chord is played with a C, E, G and B. On the first inversion, you will be getting an E, G, B and C. Of course that would be too difficult to perform in the exact order. So you would have to rearrange the notes in such a ways that your fingers will be able to accommodate the notes. This process is known as the drop-two voicing. The new arrangement will be E, B, C and G.

When you actually think about it, it's not really that difficult. Here is a list of the steps you need to take in order to create the inversions:

1. Take note of all the notes used in the chord according to the root positions.
2. Take the first note and place it in the last position or at the back of the line of chords.
3. The second note follows suit, taking the last place.
4. Finger the new chord out on the fret board.
5. Repeat the steps this time using the notes from the first inversion.

It's not too difficult after all, isn't it?

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