Thursday, June 17, 2010

Guitar Music Lessons - 10 Easy Tips To Play Guitar Faster

Guitar music lessons like this one attempt to stress the importance of playing accurately when trying to go faster. See, only a small percentage of guitarists actually reach their speed goals with high precision while the rest can play fast, but rather sloppily at the same time.

Speed should go right along with good accuracy because showing good technique on the instrument is about your right and left hands working together harmoniously and increasing skills at the same progression.

So what should you do first? Play slow. Yep, you need to let off the gas and put on the brake for awhile.

One thing that usually trips up new guitarists is that they get so frustrated with what they hear on the radio because it's fast. But what you need to keep in mind is this is only the final product. You never actually get to view or hear the process that happened to reach those speeds. For all we know they had tons of guitar music lessons and were encouraged to play every single riff at a crawl first!

Let's take a look at 10 fairly easy strategies that you can use to improve your speed and vamp up those technical skills:

1. Buy thicker picks. Stronger, normal-shaped picks are better for solid technique. If you start with thin picks, you'll lose some solidarity in your accuracy and timing.

2. String your guitar with a medium or heavy set of strings. Read the string thicknesses on the package before purchasing them because the strings you want should have the thinnest at .012 and the thickest at .052. Newly purchased purchased guitars usually come with thinner strings, so they'll need to be switched for the purpose of our guitar music lessons.

3. Do slow warm-ups. Your fingers are full of muscles and just like you learned in high school gym class, you need to warm-up before you do the real activities. The purpose of starting slow here is so you can get your fingers used to the different distances and variations between the frets.

4. Play with a metronome. A metronome is the perfect way to measure how you're improving during your guitar music lessons. Start by setting an average tempo and doing your warm-up routine and then as you improve, start to increase the bpm of the metronome slowly. It's best to start around 60 bpm to begin.

5. Adjust the "action" on your guitar to eliminate buzzing. The "action" on your guitar refers to the distance of the strings from the frets. Usually the action setting is different for each player, but we just want to make sure there isn't any buzzing on the strings when fretted during our guitar music lessons.

6. Progress from eighth notes to triplets. If you're hitting a steady stream of notes on your guitar at each bpm, you're probably playing eighth notes. The next step is to put those notes into sets of three and set the metronome to 120 bpm when you're reading to progress.

7. Combine the different eighth note riffs. When you've worked your way up to around 110 on the metronome, start putting the eighth notes and eighth note triplets together. When you start this, set your metronome back down to a lower tempo and work back up again.

8. Stick in some hammer-ons. The hammer-on technique is a nifty skill of playing notes by pressing your fingers onto the frets quickly without picking the strings. Fit these in with your eighth note work in your guitar music lessons.

9. Practice the pull-off technique. The pull-off technique is the opposite of the hammer-on and when you stick these two together, you'll see your speed start to really develop.

10. Slide around. Learn the slide technique so you can create major interest in the riffs that you practice. Even at this stage with the hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, keep everything consistent with your metronome.

All guitarists want to play fast. That's almost a blatant fact, but you this will only happen when your fingers are ready for it. Practice some guitar music lessons of your own with these ten tips in mind and you should see your speed improve consistently with each accurate riff.

For more information, go to this website: Guitar Music Lessons

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