Learn to play guitar � Disciplined Guitar Practice

Many guitarists start out with the dream of becoming a great guitar player and it’s well within the reach or anyone willing to put in the work to learn their craft but the work is what stops many people. Practice won’t always be exciting and will sometimes be downright boring if you don’t go at it with a plan and some discipline . When you first start to play guitar, it’s easy to practice because you’re basically just sitting around noodling away and getting to know the instrument, you have no real direction or agenda and things are pretty simple. Sooner or later you’re going to see or hear other guitar players that are playing things a little beyond your current ability and you’ll want to ramp your skills up so you play that well.

The good news is that everyone starts basically at zero and builds on their skills from there. How fast you excel or how far you go is entirely up to you but you can rest assured that having disciplined practice will allow you to go further faster.

You’ll want to pick specific times for practice. Pick times when you can concentrate just on the task at hand without anything interrupting you. Have all of your household chores and duties done and out of the way, homework done, dog walked, and everything else that could interrupt and interfere.

Create a practice plan and stick to it until each topic is very well understood and you can play it very fluidly and easily. You can break things up into categories like this for example:

- Warm up - Major Scales - Free jamming - Minor scales - Riffs from songs you like

...and so on.

The idea is that you’ll stick to the plan every day until you‘ve master the topics. Play slowly and cleanly and with a metronome if possible.

Resist the urge to want to play fast too soon. It will come with time, but you’ll be a much better guitarist if you take the time and effort to cleanly pick every note.

So you want to practice regularly and with a plan as well as playing everything you learn very deliberately so as to get it perfect before you move on. Once you’re confident that you’ve got it down, move onto something else to keep challenging yourself.

Learn to play guitar � Developing Your Own guitar playing style

Learning to play guitar is fun and rewarding and all of the hard work pays off when you can confidently rip thorough other people’s songs as if you wrote them yourself, but how do you go about developing your own sound? It seems like to would be pretty boring to just sound like everyone else.

There are two lines of thinking when developing your own sound. The first is that to some degree, you ARE going to sound like everyone else. If you were to take all of your influences, the guitar players you admire and have been learning from, and mix them all together the sound that comes out would be you plus your own flavor.

To take this and develop your own sound from it, you’ve got to be open to new things. You’re going to start out emulating all of the guitarists who’s playing you enjoy and you’ll learn all of their songs and licks. Without realizing it, you automatically be putting your own twist on things which will lead to developing your own style and sound.

As you go through some lead passages, the original guitarist might have used all down strokes with the pick will you might decide to alternate pick and this will create a slightly different sound. Developing your own sound comes from your preferences and the choices you make including picking as mentioned above but also how you hold the pick, how aggressive you pick the strings and even how you hold the pick.

If you take one of the guitar greats and make him play on a totally different guitar and amp setup, it’s still going to sound like him with his signature sound and playing style. While you may not notice it right away, the same will be true for you. If you play anyone else’s gear, it will still sound like you.

To develop your style, listen to players in other genres and decide what you like or think might work for you. A country guitarist can take ideas from a rock guitarist, or jazz, or blues even. As you build your bag of tricks based on what sounds and licks sound good to your ears, you’ll start to hear your own sound come around and it will be made up of all of the preference you’ve had over the years.

Learn to play guitar - Buying an electric guitar amp

Having a great guitar amp might just be more important than having a great guitar. Sure both are important but you can sometimes plug a poor quality guitar into a great amp and have it sound good but a great guitar plugged into a terrible amp still won’t sound that good. There are basically four types of guitar amplifier and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Tube amps – The tube amp has been around the longest and is the amplifier that all others are modeled after. A tube amp uses glass vacuum tubes in its power section and preamplifier section. Because of the tubes, these amps have a warm tone that feels natural and offers a lot of sustain and power. The drawback to tube amps is that the tubes wear out over time and as they wear out, the sound of the amp changes. Tube amps also store a lot of voltage and therefore require a specially trained technician to change the tubes every few years.

Solid state – The solid state guitar amp has the benefit of sounding the same every time it’s switched on as it doesn’t rely on parts that wear out to create its tone. A solid state amp uses transistors in its preamp section rather than tubes. While this does make the amplifier slightly more reliable, the tone is generally grittier and more sterile especially on overdriven or lead tones. Solid date amps almost always cost less than tube amps.

Hybrid – The hybrid amp is a new breed of amplifier that blends a tube preamp section with a solid state power amp section to try to achieve the much desired tube tone. Marshall started this trend with their Valvestate line of amps and Line 6 has partnered with world renowned tube amp manufacturer Bogner to create a modern hybrid amp. A hybrid amp naturally costs a bit more than a solid state amp but are still less expensive than a high quality tube amp.

Modeling amp – These are amplifiers that have a digital processor built in that attempts to replicate the sounds of many different guitar amplifiers, cabinets, rooms and microphone placement. They are very flexible and usually have effects built in as well as a tuner, and a direct line out for recording. Most can be switched via a foot controller so that different sounds can be brought up on the fly. They are versatile amplifiers that can generate many different sounds and are getting closer to sounding like tubes amps all the time, but many are just not there yet.