Here’s part 2 of your alternate picking lesson.

Today we are going to be looking at the musical alphabet, otherwise known as the chromatic scale.  The chromatic scale contains all of the notes you will find on your guitar.  The musical alphabet is similar to our english ABC alphabet but it doesn’t go past G, in fact after G we start again at A.

Alternate picking really is the bedrock of plectrum guitar playing.

system

efficiently and in time.

Hi all,

In the online lessons here you will see a lot of charts and diagrams.
Essentially, each one is a picture that tells you where to put your fingers on the fretboard.

Below are a selection of drum beats in mp3 format for you to download to use in your practice. They increase in speed in increments of 10bpm (beats per minute) so you can start slow and work your way up.

There are some of us in the guitar playing community who just enjoy a strum every now and again (who doesn’t?) and then others who like to put a more formal structure around their playing – neither of which are really better than the other.

I do however, think that there is one detail that everyone should pay a little mind to, and that is… timing!!

So, what is timing?

(definition from google)
The choice, judgment, or control of when something should be done

So, the important words in there are choice and judgement and control.

I know this sounds weird, but it’s true –
“if you practice at half-speed, you’ll learn twice as quickly”

Now of course, no-one’s measuring precisely but surely you would think that practising at a slower pace would take up more of your precious time and in an effort to get it all in you will have to cut corners…

Well the first approach is to prioritise.
It is much more useful having the ability to play a few things well, instead of having about ten things you haven’t quite finished or can play ‘sort of’.

Having been a guitar tutor for over 18 years I have taught many different people of all ages and abilities, from budding professionals, all the way down to absolute beginners; a good portion of whom are children.

The great thing about teaching kids is that they arrive with bags of energy and absolute enthusiasm; the tricky thing, is guiding that enthusiasm and turning it into good practice without having to overuse the word ‘discipline’!

Of course, this means that by repeating something you can commit it to long term memory, which is useful when we want to remember lyrics or melodies.  Sometimes though, when performing technique for example, ‘brain memory’ just isn’t fast enough and is prone to forgetfulness so we need to employ something I call ‘finger memory’.

You would think that learning to play the guitar has never been easier, what with the internet and Youtube videos.  Music shops have shelves groaning under the weight of ‘how to’ books and DVDs of poodle-haired rock stars from the 80’s promising to reveal THE secret to learning to play the guitar, with little or no effort – like Joey from Friends, “you won’t even need a guitar!”??