Klaus Crow, Author at GUITARHABITS

How To Practice Guitar for Extremely Busy People

How to Practice Guitar For Extremely Busy People-1

For a lot of people playing and practicing guitar is a luxury that they almost can’t afford timewise. The busy schedule of work, school, parenting, homework and errands get in the way big time. It can all be too overwhelming.

Still, we don’t want to forget ourselves and our passions. You know, you only live once and what is a life without music and guitar playing? I mean guitar playing enriches our souls and enhances our lives. It’s one of the essentials of our existence.

Yet it can be on the edge of extinction if you’re not careful and don’t take matters into your own hands. So if you feel like you’re losing control over your schedule and struggle to keep all the plates spinning in your life, but don’t want to give up practicing and improving, then here are the keys to keep rocking the place:Continue Reading

5 Robert Johnson Style Blues Turnarounds

By Klaus Crow 11 Comments

5 robert johnson style blues turnarounds 4 Robert Johnson died at the age of 27 and today known as the Master of the Delta Blues (one of the earliest styles of blues music). His music has been a great influence on guitar players like Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and many others. In other words, Johnson’s music is the real deal!

His blues chops and turnarounds are a really nice asset to your blues vocabulary. Memorize these 5 Robert Johnson style blues turnarounds so you can take them out of your back pocket and put them into use whenever you need to play a 12 bar blues.

Practice them, get ‘m under your fingers and experiment with different turnarounds at the end of each 12 bar blues section.

Enjoy the lesson!Continue Reading

5 Essential Ways to Use a Capo on Guitar and How

By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

5 Essential Ways to Use a Capo on Guitar and How Once in a while you will bump into a great song. With excitement and anticipation you run to your guitar to learn the song, but then you discover the chords of the song are too hard and too difficult for you to play. Especially for the beginner guitar player this can be a thorn in the side.

Flat and sharp chords are often nasty chords that you would like to avoid in the beginning. But even intermediate and advanced guitar players like to chill now and then and skip those damn bar chords. Another reason they sometimes prefer open easy chords is because of the sound and the shape of the chords that is more suited for a particular arrangement.

The capo will really come in handy in a lot of situations. It’s a beautiful tool that will open a lot of doors and ways to get creative with guitar playing.

Here are the five most common and essential ways guitar players like to use a capo and how to do it:Continue Reading

How to Play and Apply Add9 Chords

By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

To make chords, chord progressions and songs more colorful guitar players use chord embellishments.

Chords like sus2, sus4, maj6, maj7 and add9 can all be used to spice up your playing and create more interesting sounds.

The add9 chord is a big favorite in pop and acoustic rock music.

Chord Analysis

The add9 chord is simply a major triad with an added ninth (9).
The major triad consists of the root (1), the major third (3) and the perfect fifth (5).
So the add9 chord formula = 1 3 5 9

Let’s take Cadd9 chord as an example.
We look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C and we take the root (1st), 3rd, 5th and 9th note of that scale and you get the notes: C-E-G-D. So Cadd9 = C E G D

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