Here’s an article for you guitar players out there.

Besides writing and playing songs I just love improvising.

When I practice improvising I always first pour myself a cup of green tea, I put on some folk music (e.g. Ray La Montagne, Damien Rice, Stephen Fretwell, Glen Hansard, Sheryl Crow, etc.) on Last.fm or Spotify.com and then I start to improvise over these songs. I get totally caught up in the moment and let my fingers carry me away.

Other times I practice melodic patterns, triads, arpeggios, licks, everything that will spice up my improvisation skills. You can never stop growing. There is always more to learn and explore.

Improvising is one of the most fun and fulfilling aspects of guitar playing, but also something that requires a lot of hard work and dedication. It’s the next step in becoming a better guitar player.

Here are 10 basic essentials that will help you become a better improviser.

Read The Whole Article Here:10 Essentials On Guitar Improvisation | GuitarHabits.com

The ability to improvise is a good skill to have.  Not only does it let you add solos and instrumental breakdowns to your song, but sometimes it’s a good songwriting tool as well.

{postfooter}

I came across an article the other day called Beatles Guitar Chords – A Great Way to Teach Yourself Guitar.  I found it to be a pretty interesting read.  Here’s a little bit of it.

Learning The Beatles guitar chords is an excellent way to teach yourself guitar. Love them or hate them, the music of the The Beatles has endured and stayed relevant for more than 40 years for a very good reason.

Their early sound tipped conventional music of the time on its head and the The Beatles’ style continued to evolve throughout their careers. While known for their faultless vocal harmonies, the musical ideas and techniques that the The Beatles used were filled with color and were the envy of many a rival. This is the reason that their music remains relevant today.

When learning any instrument it can be difficult to stay motivated long enough to improve beyond beginner level. I taught myself guitar as a teenager by listening and playing along with the music I enjoyed. For me, the music of the The Beatles opened up a whole new world of ideas and techniques, and of course The Beatles guitar chords have been reused by musicians ever since. Playing along with The Beatles songs absolutely took my guitar playing ability to a new level and years later I can still discover something new as I play along with some of my favourite albums.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE

It actually made me think back to how I learned how to play guitar.

I’m not disagreeing with the article… playing along with the Beatles would be a great way to learn to play.  I am, though, going to take it a step further and say that playing along with ANY of your favorites would be a great way to learn to play.

When I was first learning the guitar, I was into bands like Green Day (before they got pouty and over-political) Everclear, and Soundgarden.  I learned a lot about playing the guitar by putting a CD player right next to my guitar amp and strumming along to the best of my ability.  It taught me how to switch chords quickly, and it taught me about playing to a rhythm.

But not only that… it made learning fun.  I was trying to get good enough to play songs that I enjoyed playing.

I also used the same idea to learn to play the bass, and a couple years later, even the drums and the piano.  My favorite musicians taught me how to play rock music.

Maybe playing along with your favorite CDs will give you a boost in the right direction.

I play several instruments, but I will always consider myself a “guitar player”.  I’m always on the search for better ways to fill out my sound when I’m playing guitar, and for ways to create sounds that are different from typical three-note chords.

Because of this, I have really grown to love open chords.

I found an article on the web on this topic, and I thought I’d share it with you guys.  It’s called “10 Ways To Play The Most Beautiful Open Chords”.  Here’s an excerpt:

A great way to make your chord progressions and songs sound awesome is to use open chord shapes.I always love to use these chords to add some flavor to my chord progressions. One of my favorite chords is Fsus2.

That chord has got the whole package for me. It’s sounds beautiful, gentle, tight, cool and rough at the same time.

When you move an open chord up the neck the name of the chord changes and the chord gets extended with 1 or 2 notes. This way you can get beautiful sounds.

While you can play barre chords at every fret on the fingerboard, open chords can only be played at certain frets. If you play them at the right frets they sound amazing, if you don’t… well they just sound terrible. So be careful.

The rest of the article goes on to explain how to play different open chord movable shapes.  If you’re a guitar player, you should definitely check it out.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.

In March of 2002 I bought a Behringer V-Amp.  At that point I had never really seriously used any kind of amp modeler before, other than just playing around with them at music stores here and there, and trying out Jim’s on one recording that our band Force That Binds had done.  The night I got it, I planted myself in front of whatever small digital recorder I was using at the time (I think it was the now defunct Boss BR-532) and seeing what kinds of crazy sounds I could come up with.

Obviously it was the more standard sounds that I would find more useful on an every day basis (I still use the V-amp for most of my guitar recording), but what I really wanted to do was check out some of the wilder stuff.

I spent most of the evening trying out the crazy over-phased or over-flanged sounds, and I discovered something kind of cool.

Sometimes the effects that you’re playing with can inspire a song just because of the way they sound.

I ended up creating a very simple instrumental piece just because of what the effects brought into my mind.

The song is called State Of Mind.

The point of this isn’t to show off how “great” the song is, because I know that it’s a very simple and straightforward piece.  The idea that you should take away, however, is that sometimes fooling around with effects that you might never use on a regular basis can lead to song ideas.

Be willing to listen for the inspiration.

Recently I’ve been interested in playing around with guitar sounds.  I linked to a couple YouTube videos about making your guitar sound like a Sitar:  One for ACOUSTIC guitar, and one for ELECTRIC guitar

Today we’ll look at a video that offers an easy way to make your guitar sound like a banjo.

…And as a bonus, he shows how to get a cool Church Bell effect as well!

A couple days ago  I showed you a video on how to make your acoustic guitar sound like a sitar.

Here’s a video about a different technique used to make your ELECTRIC guitar sound like a sitar.

I have a guitar pedal called “The Weapon”, and one of the settings on the pedal (the main reason I bought the pedal, actually) is a Sitar Emulator. It does a fairly good job at making my electric guitar sound pretty close to a sitar.

I found this video, though, of a very simple way to make your electric guitar sound similar to a sitar.

Doing things like this, especially for peo0ple who do NOT know how to play traditional Indian music (being from India, not Native American), is a great way to discover new and interesting sounds on your way to writing creative music.

I haven’t tried out this technique, but I plan on it soon.  Even though I have the sitar pedal, I’ll still give it a shot to see if I can get any interesting differences between the tones.

Check out the video, let me know what you think:

Hey all

This blog has been running in neutral for the past couple weeks, mainly because I wanted to really figure out what kinds of things that I want to talk about here. On one hand, I’ve been trying to inspire creativity in songwriting, but on the other hand, I’ve been trying (probably too hard) to write posts with the idea that 100% of what I write has to appeal to 100% of the musicians reading the blog.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that that just can’t happen. Too many of us have too many different talents and different interests. So instead I’m going to write the posts trying to appeal to as many people as I can, but I’m going to realize if I do write some posts that specialize in a certain aspect of music every now and then, it’s not that big of a deal!

So, today I’m going to talk about guitar playing a bit.

This topic will come the easiest to me, because I’m a guitar player first when it comes to music. I like writing lyrics, I like playing the piano, drums, bass, and whatever else I can get my hands on, but guitar will always be my musical true love.

So for you guitarists out there, I’m going to give you a tip.

Around a year ago or so I found myself feeling that my songwriting, riff writing, and playing in general were getting a big stale. After playing guitar for 13 or so years by that point, I really felt like I was struggling to create songs that were new or inventive in any way.

I actually feel like I got over that hump by looking into alternate tunings and open tunings. I sat down in front of YouTube one day and just started searching for phrases like “alternate guitar tunings” “Open guitar tunings”.

I actually found some really interesting ones!

I thought about posting a YouTube video on that topic, but instead I think it’d be more beneficial for you readers to go search for your own… I don’t think you have to get inspired in the exact same way that I did. Find a creative avenue that interests you when it comes to guitar playing, and explore it on your own.

So instead of posting a specific video for you, I’ll just get you started on some YouTube searches:

Click here for a YouTube search for “Guitar Open Tuning”

Click here for a YouTube search for “Alternate Guitar Tunings”

Or maybe you want to search for a specific tuning, like:

Click here for a YouTube search for “Open G Guitar Lesson”

Click here for a YouTube search for “Open D minor tuning”

Finally, here’s a list of some more alternate guitar tunings you may want to look into

Wikipedia list of guitar tunings

This is definitely a topic I’ll come back to. I don’t want to turn this into a “guitar-only” blog, so I’ll probably limit how many guitar posts I make during the week, but if you enjoy exploring the creative aspects of guitar, please let me know.