Archive for the ‘Classical’ Category

Learning to play classical guitar is an art that should be taken seriously. Classical guitar has a long history and many traditions that need to be respected and upheld when you learn to play classical guitar.

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You are apparently interested in playing the guitar. Or maybe you are educating yourself before you make a time and money commitment for a child. I believe that being able to play a musical instrument can be very satisfying and enriching, provided the choice of instrument is appropriate and provided that it is voluntary. I will focus this article on the choice of instrument.

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I suppose you think that you learn guitar by playing guitar. Well, do you learn to say the right things by talking all the time? Let’s take a look at the art of not playing guitar…

How can you learn to play guitar by not playing? Is it really possible to develop as a guitarist without touching the instrument?

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If you love country music and if you are serious about learning the art of playing guitars, you definitely need to start with an acoustic guitar. An acoustic guitar can be use to genres like bluegrass, jazz, blues, country, and folk. An acoustic guitar can be played without an amplifier. Made of fine wood like spruce, maple and mahogany, the tone of the wood is what defines a guitar and sets it apart. The wood from these trees are more resonant than the others and guitars makers refer to them as “tone woods”. The bracings inside the instruments vary from maker to maker. These bracings determine the quality of the tone. Read the rest of this entry »

Dean calls them warm-ups, but they’re really great technique and speed-builder exercises too.
Note the great tip which tends to get overlooked by many students: always use a metronome!

Try these. Start out slow and build…

 

Would you like to know how to improve your chord changes? Of course you would! Is there some secret formula or magic trick that will make your fingers quicker? No… but there are some “muscle memory” exercises you can do to strengthen them. This will make a big difference in your playing.
Yesterday I gave one of my students a series of simple chord progressions to practice. As he was playing through them I noticed that he could transition easily from the C chord to the Em chord, but he had difficulty moving from Em back to C. That’s because it’s easier for the hand to close than open, and moving from Em to C requires that your stretch and open your hand. The problem he was having also affected his timing so that he was unable to keep a steady 4/4 rhythm.

A specific scale is defined by its intervallic formula. In other words, it is not necessarily the specific notes, but the pattern of intervals that defines a specific scale. And it’s also this same pattern of intervals that gives the scale its characteristic feel or tonality. By altering the intervallic scale formula, we change the type of scale being played. We can change the key of the scale by starting the intervallic formula on a different note.

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Scales are simply collections of notes arranged in a specific order—just as the alphabet is simply a collection of letters arranged in a specific order. We often think of scales as practice devices. The stereotypical image of the beginning piano student is that of the little boy or girl sitting captive and forlorn at the piano bench—plinking away at their scales as their joyful friends play outside in the background. And, in fact scales are practice devices—very useful and effective practice devices. But scales are more—much more than just practice tools as we shall see in this article.

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Beginners can sometimes feel overwhelmed when they start learning classical guitar. The technique, sight reading, interpretation and the whole complexity of the experience can make one feel a bit anxious about what proper steps should be taken to gain visible results. It doesn’t help that classical music as a whole conjures up images of snobbish people that aren’t very interested in letting someone in their private circles.

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In this article we will be tackling the all important subject of speed as it pertains to the guitar. We have all seen incredible guitar players that seemed to defy the laws of physics and play and the speed of light. While it may seem a bit hard to attain, with a little work and understanding we can improve our technique and increase our speed on the guitar. After all, let’s be honest for a second and admit that playing fast on the guitar can sometimes be as fun as putting the pedal to the metal in a race car. The problems arise when our fingers just don’t seem to be moving or coordinating fast enough, or we may play fast but it sounds more like unintelligible mumbles rather than a coherent musical phrase.

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