Practice Archives - Page 20 of 30

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

6 Cool Guitar Player Apps for iPhone and iPad

By Klaus Crow 11 Comments

Once in a while I check if there are any new good and useful guitar apps available. While there’s a lot of baloney out there, sometimes you’ll find some really nice tools that can help you out with your guitar playing. It makes the life of the guitar player easier, more comfortable and increases the progress.

These guitar apps are really cool. They all have an easy interface design that will make you start practicing within a minute.

Here you go:

Riffr
800,000+ Guitar tabs & Chords. Riffr is daily updated with the latest tabs and chords from various guitar websites. Built in Chord Dictionary. Video lessons and audio playback. Just awesome and it’s free!

GuitarTuna
A ridiculously accurate guitar tuner and easy to use. Works for Guitar, Bass, 12-string guitar, mandolin, ukulele, banjo and other string instruments, and contains most of the alternative tunings too! It also includes ear training practice. Yes it’s free.

iReal Pro
iReal Pro simulates a real-sounding band that can accompany you as you practice, and also lets you collect chord charts from your favorite songs for reference. You can import 1000’s of songs from the forums. Especially if you want to learn to play jazz, this is the bomb. It’s rather expensive for an app, but a must for the jazz student.

Spreadsheets
This isn’t necesarily a guitar app, but I use this app to write down my guitar practice goals. I create my guitar goal lists on the computer in google spreadsheet and when I practice I use my Ipad to check what I need to be practicing, add stuff I need to work on later and keep track of my progress. It’s free.

MTSR
While Garageband can do many things, sometimes I just want to record and export a musical idea. Nothing more nothing less. Multi-Track-Song-Recorder is my savior. It’s an easy to use 4 track recording app. Export your songs via Dropbox, Email, SMS and iTunes File Sharing. Great for musicians. It’s free.

Ear Trainer
Every musician should work on Ear Training (or Aural Training) and Interval Ear Training is a very important element of ear training. You will learn to recognise the relationship between two notes (by distance), when they are played together or apart!

Do you know any cool guitar apps? Please share in the comments.

10 Tips on How to Make Yourself Play Guitar Everyday

By Klaus Crow 25 Comments

Bigstock photo
Most of us would like to play guitar everyday, but the reality is there are so many other things on our todo list we sometimes forget to practice at all.

So I tried a little experiment a few weeks ago. I took a piece of a paper and wrote down the most important scales, songs and exercises I needed to work on.

I placed the notes on the fridge, the toilet and living room walls. It now keeps reminding me of what I need to be practicing even when I’m too busy and get lost in other things.

The fact that I’m constantly reminded, triggers me to pick up my guitar several times a day and just play. That’s what I need.

Along with this effective trick I use some other strategies to make sure there’s nothing in my way. Read and apply them.

Here are 10 tips to get you playing everyday:

And remember The more you practice, the better you get, the more fun it will be!

1 – Unescapable reminders
Place reminders everywhere. Put reminders in your cell phone and your computer calender. Place reminders on the kitchen fridge and the toilet wall. Wherever you spend most of your time you want to put up a reminder that makes you start practicing. Continue Reading

10 Vital Tips to Get Your Chords Sound Clean and Clear

By Klaus Crow 10 Comments

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The biggest challenge for the beginner and sometimes even the intermediate guitar player is to make chords sound clean and clear.

I still remember the frustration struggling with the C and F major chord. Like it would never gonna work.

I kept practicing every day and then all of a sudden there it was. The chord sounded perfectly clear. It felt like it happened out of the blue, but I knew it was the result of lots of practice. It was my first guitar victory.

To get a good sounding chord there are several things you need to pay attention to, observe, apply and check repeatedly.

Good sounding chords is not an overnight thing. It’s also not the hardest thing in the world but it takes time, regular practice and perseverance.

If you implement these 10 tips during practice you will definitely get there. Practicing will be a lot more effective and results are just around the corner.

Here are they keys:

1 – Bend your knuckles
Make sure to bend all your knuckles (1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th). Avoid any straight fingers, they can cause your chords to sound muffled. The only time you can straighten your finger is when you need to bar a chord. (barre chords)

2 – As close to the fret as possible.
Place your fingers as close to the fret as possible. Don’t place your fingers on the fret (metal fret wire), it causes buzzing. Not every chord allows all fingers to be placed right behind the fret (for example: A major chord), but try to place them as close as possible.Continue Reading

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