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Create New Guitar Licks By Changing The Rhythm Of The Old Ones

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Tommaso Zillio

 

Do you always us the same few phrases and tricks in your playing? And despite your efforts to learn new things, your music seems to be the same? Here is why you might be unable to use in real life what you learned in your practice.

The problem that most people have when they try to apply their “exercises” in actual songs is that they simply try to play the exercise on the song as they learned it. And they quickly discover that the exercises does not “feel” right, does not “groove” with the song. What is happening here? This: they learned the exercise, but they have not mastered the possible rhythm variations of the exercise.

Rhythm is what I call an “invisible area” of musicianship: it’s something that everybody thinks should be “natural” and able to “feel”. As a result, most people either do not practice their rhythm, or they don’t practice it enough, or in the right way. Fact is, with just a little effort you would be able to be so much more flexible in your rhythm skills that you would be able to “adapt” most licks to most song, on the spot.

What can be done about it? Well, the very first thing is to learn how to manipulate rhythm by displacing the accents in a phrase (whoa, that was a mouthful). This allows you to do two important things:

•     It makes “old” like sound “new” because now their rhythm is different, and

•     It helps you “fitting” the exercises you know into songs that may have a different rhythm.

Now, I could explain how to do that forever, but I think that the best way to learn it is by a direct and simple example, so you can HEAR what I am doing. If you play the video below I will show you a very simple example and some suggestions on how to apply this to everything you do. It’s so simple and you will use it so often that you will wonder how could you live without it. :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG78AbLUSlo

After watching the video, it is your turn to take your licks and change their rhythm as shown in the video. this system will work beautifully also (and especially) with the licks that you think you play “too much”. If there is a lick that you don’t want to play because you have played it too many times, this procedure will make it fresh and new.

You don’t need to know thousands of licks: you need to know just a few of them and then master all their variations: this way you will sound with a coherent style and it will be much easier for you to improvise and write your solos.

Enjoy!

About the Author

A professional guitarist, teacher, and composer, Tommaso Zillio enjoys particularly writing about music theory and its application to guitar playing

How To Develop Faster Guitar Speed – Pt. 5: Why Conventional Speed Building Advice Fails

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By Tom Hess

Most guitar players commit huge errors that keep them from becoming faster. These errors often include the following:

1.As they try to train for higher speeds, a lot of guitarist spend a big percentage of their practice time on ‘slow’ practice (usually after being advised to do so by a guitar teacher). They believe that by practicing slow all the time (and being able to do it perfectly) they will increase their max speed. It’s no wonder that guitar teachers who teach this approach to their students never end up with guitar students who play fast.

2.Some guitarists only want to play fast because they feel impatient while practicing slowly. This leads them to ‘try to play as fast as possible’ every chance they get. They believe that working on increasing their top speed every day will eventually help them play faster.

99% of the time, these two approaches will NOT build serious speed. This is because both methods suffer from significant problems that are never addressed (by almost all guitar teachers). Additionally, spending too much practice time playing exclusively fast/slow causes big problems in your technique (even if you are unaware of it). To effectively build speed on guitar, you have to fully know ‘when’ and ‘how’ to use BOTH practicing styles together to make up for the shortcomings of the opposite approach.

Now you will learn why you will not increase your guitar speed by always playing ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ and which approaches you should be taking instead:

Why You Won’t Become A Faster Guitarist By Always Practicing At Slow Speeds

Reason 1:You Take On Poor Playing Habits That Keep Your From Becoming A Faster Player

When you are only practicing guitar slowly, you are prone to forming bad habits by using extended, inefficient movements that are entirely different than the movements used while playing quickly. When you have more time between each note, it is hard to notice inefficiency in the movements of your hands (because you can still play the notes right since you are playing so slowly). Then whenever you play at faster speeds, you try to implement the same inefficient movements into your playing and everything falls apart.

Here are two very common examples of this that I see while helping my newer students become better players:

  • They try to pick each ‘individual’ string within a sweep picking arpeggio pattern instead of using a single sweeping motion to move across all strings simultaneously
  • They play 3 note per string scale patterns with continuous alternate picking technique. This involves excessive and unnecessary picking motion, leading to slower playing and general sloppiness. Watch this video about learning how toplay guitar fast and learn more about this issue so you can fix it.

Reason 2:You Don’t Understand What Is Keeping You From Playing Faster

In order for slow guitar practice to make you a faster player, you need to understand the problems (inefficient movements, lack of two hand coordination, etc.) that are currently getting in the way of you becoming faster. Until you pinpoint these things, your time spent practicing slowly will just be a waste of time. You’ll merely be guessing about what you should be working on – making extremely slow progress at best. In order for you to truly KNOW what to fix, you need to spend some time playing at higher speeds and observing when/why any mistakes happen. Only after you’ve done this should you begin practicing ‘slow’.

Trying to practice slowly without knowing exactly what you should be fixing is like running across a balance beam with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back while trying to maintain your balance. Open your eyes and untie your hands by learning what you need to work on to build speed BEFORE practicing slowly.

Learn more about this process by reading the fourth installment in this article series about developing guitar speed.

Reason 3:You Can’t Mentally Process Notes At Faster Speeds By Playing Slow All Of The Time

To play guitar at the highest possible speed, you have to posses the ability to comprehend notes at the same tempo (or faster) that you are playing on. If you never practice at fast speeds, you will never improve your ability to mentally comprehend the notes in a way that is necessary to play cleanly at higher tempos. This will result in sloppy playing at higher speeds and a lack of ability to follow the tempo in faster music.

To keep this problem from affecting your playing, you must train yourself mentally to process the notes at faster speeds. Train yourself to do this by studying the information in this free guitar speed training mini course.

Why ‘Always’ Playing At Your Highest Speed (With Less Than Perfect Precision) Will Damage Your Ability To Play Fast

Now you understand why practicing guitar slowly all the time will not help you become a faster player. However, it’s just as ineffective to exclusively play at fast speeds (when you haven’t fully mastered what you are playing yet). Here’s why:

Reason 1:You Increase The Chances Of Wrist/Arm Injury

A major drawback to playing fast with mistakes is the injuries that can occur from poor, under-developed playing technique. Poor playing technique comes from not learning how to play efficiently/correctly at slower speeds so that you don’t use excessive force or movement at higher speeds. This is serious: I’ve seen many guitarists hurt themselves from continuous playing at high speeds – resulting in many months of recovery time away from guitar.

To avoid this, stay alert of ‘where’ and ‘how much’ tension is being used in your body as you play faster (you can only notice this during fast guitar practice). Once you spot unnecessary tension being used in your body, start playing again at a slow speed while only using as much tension as you need to sound the notes. Once you’ve done this, increase the speed again while using optimal tension.

Notice: If you begin feeling pain while you are playing, STOP! Take a break for the day and come back to playing another day when you can play without any discomfort.

Reason 2:Your Guitar Playing Becomes Sloppy

By exclusively playing fast, you will not be able to mentally process notes just like exclusively playing slow will keep you from being able to process notes at faster speeds. This applies specifically when you are playing at faster speeds for a long time while making numerous errors. This causes you to ‘tune out’ the mistakes you are making and accept them as a normal part of your playing. In other words, you train yourself to become a sloppy player! I frequently see this happen when new guitar students approach me for help. The first step I take to help them build their playing speed is pointing out the errors in their playing that occur at fast speeds. Next I train them to become aware of these errors so they can fix them on their own. This is a big reason why a lot of my students quickly go on to become really good guitar players.

To make sure you don’t become a sloppy player, focus your practice time on creating a balance between playing slowly with perfect accuracy and playing fast to master the skills that only faster practicing can build. Learn many strategies for this by checking out part one of this guitar speed development article series and part 2 to learn an effective guitar speed training method.

Now you know the main issues that occur while practicing with conventional guitar speed building approaches, check out this video to see how you can implement the advice in this article to become a faster overall player while improving your sweep picking:

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/DAxjY8UeTaI” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Watch the second half of this video about how to play sweep picking arpeggios.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is an online electric guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitarist. He trains guitar players from around the world how to reach their musical goals in his correspondence guitar lessons online. Visit his website tomhess.net to receive many free guitar playing resources, mini courses, guitar practice eBooks, and to read more articles about guitar playing.

The Best Method For Becoming A Successful Guitar Teacher

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 By Tom Hess

Climbing Mt. Everest and achieving massive success as a guitar teacher are two very similar achievements… How is this so?

Read these three critical similarities:

1. Only a select few people ever successfully accomplish these goals.

2. Anyone who was ever able to make it to the top of Everest was extensively trained by someone who already had experience climbing to the summit of the mountain. Similarly, guitar teachers who worked closely with expert trainers were able to achieve massive success. Alternatively, ZERO climbers have ever made it to the summit of Everest with no training at all and zero guitar teachers have ever become highly successful without the training of an expert.

3. Getting to the summit of Everest is truly a live-changing experience that will leave you feeling a sense of accomplishment that few can even fathom. Similarly, developing the leading guitar teaching business in your community will give you a huge sense of satisfaction in terms of personal accomplishment and freedom that most people can’t relate to.

How Does This Relate To You As A Guitar Teacher?

Starting right now, I’d like you to imagine that reaching your goals as a guitar teacher as climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. On the summit of the mountain is a glowing chest. Once opened, this will give you the power to attain any goals you have for your guitar teaching business, like: earning $100,000+ per year, producing incredible musicians through your teaching and gaining tons of freedom to use your time for achieving great things in your music career.

Now, think of this: If all you had to do to get these things was simply get to the peak of the mountain and open the chest… would you climb the mountain? If you would, then you have to do anything you can to assure that you reach the top of the mountain as quickly as possible.

Of course, no one would attempt to climb to the top of Mt. Everest without the guidance of an experienced trainer and expect to succeed (or survive). Likewise, trying to develop a successful guitar teaching business with zero training will lead you down the exact same path of failure.

Why Do Guitar Teachers Fail When They Try To Figure Everything Out By Themselves?

Becoming the most successful guitar teacher around takes a lot more than just music teaching skills. All guitar teachers who have achieved massive success do so by working on becoming ‘excellent’ in these seven areas:

  • Getting contacted by countless people every month of the year who are looking for guitar lessons
  • Helping potential students understand why they MUST take lessons with you (and only you) if they want to become great players
  • Getting ‘former’ students to start taking lessons again
  • Gaining time for yourself and your students through effective execution of day to day guitar teaching tasks
  • Getting much bigger and better RESULTS for your students than anyone else by expanding your guitar teaching effectiveness
  • Retaining guitar students for years at a time because your teaching consistently gets big results for them
  • Building your guitar teaching business using referrals and word of mouth marketing

All of these aspects of your guitar teaching business require acquiring a unique set of skills in order to become successful, much like climbing Everest requires many new skills to be developed before one can make it to the summit. That said, most guitar teachers try to build their businesses on their own and set themselves up to fail for these reasons:

1. They begin teaching guitar with zero awareness of the above 7 areas.

2. They don’t understand ‘what’ they must do to grow in these areas or ‘how’ to do it.

I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m merely letting you know ‘how it really is’. As someone who trains guitar teachers to become successful, I know all of the challenges that any guitar teacher could face.

The truth is, it’s fairly easy to learn the steps for becoming highly successful in the 7 areas mentioned above (anyone can do it). Additionally, all the challenges that guitar teachers come up against can be overcome with proper coaching, training and mentoring.

If you are unhappy with where you are at in your guitar teaching business, understand that it’s not because you lack the potential to succeed or have fallen victim to outside circumstances. You’re just at the bottom of Mt. Everest, looking for ways to climb to the top with no knowledge of what steps to take to get there. The only thing you need to do is locate an excellent trainer who will take your hand and guide you along on every step of the way until you have made it to the summit… where you can open the chest and collect the treasure that lies within it.

To begin your ascent of the mountain, learn the best approach for teaching guitar from an expert.

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional electric guitar teacher and composer. He also mentors guitar teachers from around the world in his guitar teacher training program. Visit tomhess.net to get free guitar teaching tipsand read more guitar teacher articles.

By Tom Hess

Climbing Mt. Everest and achieving massive success as a guitar teacher are two very similar achievements… How is this so?

Read these three critical similarities:

1. Only a select few people ever successfully accomplish these goals.

2. Anyone who was ever able to make it to the top of Everest was extensively trained by someone who already had experience climbing to the summit of the mountain. Similarly, guitar teachers who worked closely with expert trainers were able to achieve massive success. Alternatively, ZERO climbers have ever made it to the summit of Everest with no training at all and zero guitar teachers have ever become highly successful without the training of an expert.

3. Getting to the summit of Everest is truly a live-changing experience that will leave you feeling a sense of accomplishment that few can even fathom. Similarly, developing the leading guitar teaching business in your community will give you a huge sense of satisfaction in terms of personal accomplishment and freedom that most people can’t relate to.

How Does This Relate To You As A Guitar Teacher?

Starting right now, I’d like you to imagine that reaching your goals as a guitar teacher as climbing to the top of Mt. Everest. On the summit of the mountain is a glowing chest. Once opened, this will give you the power to attain any goals you have for your guitar teaching business, like: earning $100,000+ per year, producing incredible musicians through your teaching and gaining tons of freedom to use your time for achieving great things in your music career.

Now, think of this: If all you had to do to get these things was simply get to the peak of the mountain and open the chest… would you climb the mountain? If you would, then you have to do anything you can to assure that you reach the top of the mountain as quickly as possible.

Of course, no one would attempt to climb to the top of Mt. Everest without the guidance of an experienced trainer and expect to succeed (or survive). Likewise, trying to develop a successful guitar teaching business with zero training will lead you down the exact same path of failure.

Why Do Guitar Teachers Fail When They Try To Figure Everything Out By Themselves?

Becoming the most successful guitar teacher around takes a lot more than just music teaching skills. All guitar teachers who have achieved massive success do so by working on becoming ‘excellent’ in these seven areas:

  • Getting contacted by countless people every month of the year who are looking for guitar lessons
  • Helping potential students understand why they MUST take lessons with you (and only you) if they want to become great players
  • Getting ‘former’ students to start taking lessons again
  • Gaining time for yourself and your students through effective execution of day to day guitar teaching tasks
  • Getting much bigger and better RESULTS for your students than anyone else by expanding your guitar teaching effectiveness
  • Retaining guitar students for years at a time because your teaching consistently gets big results for them
  • Building your guitar teaching business using referrals and word of mouth marketing

All of these aspects of your guitar teaching business require acquiring a unique set of skills in order to become successful, much like climbing Everest requires many new skills to be developed before one can make it to the summit. That said, most guitar teachers try to build their businesses on their own and set themselves up to fail for these reasons:

1. They begin teaching guitar with zero awareness of the above 7 areas.

2. They don’t understand ‘what’ they must do to grow in these areas or ‘how’ to do it.

I’m not trying to discourage you, I’m merely letting you know ‘how it really is’. As someone who trains guitar teachers to become successful, I know all of the challenges that any guitar teacher could face.

The truth is, it’s fairly easy to learn the steps for becoming highly successful in the 7 areas mentioned above (anyone can do it). Additionally, all the challenges that guitar teachers come up against can be overcome with proper coaching, training and mentoring.

If you are unhappy with where you are at in your guitar teaching business, understand that it’s not because you lack the potential to succeed or have fallen victim to outside circumstances. You’re just at the bottom of Mt. Everest, looking for ways to climb to the top with no knowledge of what steps to take to get there. The only thing you need to do is locate an excellent trainer who will take your hand and guide you along on every step of the way until you have made it to the summit… where you can open the chest and collect the treasure that lies within it.

To begin your ascent of the mountain, learn the best approach for teaching guitar from an expert.

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional electric guitar teacher and composer. He also mentors guitar teachers from around the world in his guitar teacher training program. Visit tomhess.net to get free guitar teaching tipsand read more guitar teacher articles.

Become an online guitar teacher and reach a world wide audience www.internet-guitar-lessons.com – become a guitar teacher.

How To Eliminate Guitar Playing Mistakes In Your Practice Sessions

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by Tom Hess

No matter what your skill level is as a guitar player, you want to ‘get it right’ just like anyone else whenever you are practicing. When you practice guitar properly, you will gain better command over the instrument and be able to express yourself more freely. This will increase your excitement at first, but as you improve and seek to take your playing to the next level (whether it be performing live or recording an album) this excitement often transforms into ‘fear’. You become afraid of making mistakes. This opens the door for a lot of big problems…

It’s weird how so many guitarists become much better players than they were previously, yet become fearful of making mistakes instead of inspired to keep getting better. These are the worst fears guitar players have and they affect all guitarists. They keep intermediate players from taking action to become advanced players and sabotage the future careers of guitar players who are highly talented.

As a real world example of this, one of the students in my music career mentoring program recently had the chance to become a member in a band and tour throughout Europe. He had been dreaming of doing this ever since he was a kid, but almost didn’t take the opportunity because he thought he would be ‘good enough’. After I talked with him about this, I helped him understand why he was feeling these fears and coached him to practice guitar much more effectively than ever before. Only a short while afterwards he overcame his fears and toured with the band – having the time of his life in the process.

So how was he able to overcome his fears and succeed? And how can YOU do the same so that you get better and become a great musician?

The reason why guitar players become insecure about their playing as they advance is because they practice with the mindset of ‘playing things right’, vs. to ‘never play them wrong’. Here is how these two mindsets differ and what it means for your guitar playing:

Practicing Guitar To ‘Play It Right’ - this is the step everyone must take when they begin learning to play something for the firs time. Your first task is to play the notes correctly, gain confidence in yourself and play whatever you are trying to play. A lot of guitarists stall at this point (after making mistakes) and assume that their playing will just get better on its own. This is NOT how it works! Mastery will ONLY happen after you’ve begun a higher level of practice, such as:

Practicing Guitar To ‘Never Play It Wrong’ – Once you’ve learned to play something on its own in the privacy of your own room, you need to practice it ‘for the real world’. There are three main ‘real world’ situations you must practice for: playing on stage, recording music and integrating all your musical skills together. After you can ‘play it right’, you must answer this question: “what is the scenario in which I will use this item in my guitar playing?” This will tell you precisely how to practice in order to fully master the material and ‘never play it wrong’.

Here are some examples of how to practice guitar in this way:

Practice Integrating Your Musical Skills

Even if you aren’t going to be playing live or recording anytime soon, you still need to work on using your skills with other techniques as well as in ‘musical’ situations (such as guitar solos, songs, etc.). To do this, you need to stop practicing skills in isolation and start combining them together with other techniques. For instance, after you learn a new scale sequence, you should be practicing it together with other techniques, fast and slow, and with a variety of different rhythms. You also need to learn the best way to apply these sequences into a musical context. Study these ideas in this video about the best way to practice guitar.

Depending on your unique goals with each item in your guitar practice routine, you will have to practice it in each situation above or perhaps just one or two.

Practicing Guitar For Recording In A Studio Situation:

Many guitar players are afraid of making mistakes, so they avoid recording themselves. As a result, they never improve their skills in this area. Once you think you’ve mastered the ability to play something right, you go to record it and suddenly can’t stop making mistakes. Hey, we’ve all been there :)

To get better in recording situations, you must do these two things: First, get into the habit of frequently recording yourself playing guitar (on audio and video). Try to play as perfectly as you can using as few takes as possible. By taking this simple action, you will quickly build confidence and start playing more accurately in any recording situation. Second, learn all of the unique subtleties of your guitar playing that require practice in order to make a high quality recording. To understand these things in great detail, study this free guitarist recording guide.

Practice Guitar For Playing Great On Stage:

To become a great live guitarist, you must be familiar with the scenarios that occur most often while playing on stage and prepare for them in your guitar practice time. Common examples include: standing up and moving around while playing, playing without being able to see your instrument, playing with distractions, staying in control of your playing without worrying about making mistakes in front of others, playing guitar in different types of weather and playing with equipment you aren’t accustomed to. Of course, this does not cover everything – simply use these ideas to make your own list to work on while practicing.

When you take anything you can ‘play right’ and try to play it in any of the situations above, you will usually crack under the pressure. It’s great for this to happen during your practice, because then you know precisely what needs to be improved in your playing so that you never get it wrong in the actual situation.

As you practice, repeatedly put yourself in the scenarios above and start building your confidence to make your playing become more reliable.

How To Use This Information To Get Better:

Apply the information above by following these steps:

Step One: Identify your specific musical goals. Learn more by studying this article about how to build musical goals.

Step Two: Understand how every practice item brings you one step closer to reaching the goals from the previous step. Read this article about what to practice on guitar to learn more. If you don’t know the purpose of practicing something, stop wasting your time by practicing it!

Step Three: Effectively organize your guitar practice so you can reach your goals as fast as possible.

Step Four: Always seek the answer to this question: “What is the main objective/scenario in which I will use this practice item or music in my guitar playing?” This will keep your guitar practice in line with your highest goals and help you make the transition from ‘playing it right’ to ‘never playing it wrong’.

When you integrate the ideas in this article into your guitar practice on a regular basis, you will stop being afraid of making mistakes and start practicing with confidence and excitement as you begin realizing your ultimate musical goals.

Learn how to effectively organize your guitar practice so you can reach your musical goals much faster.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitar player. He teaches guitar players from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. Visit his website tomhess.net to get freeguitar playing resources. Then use his practice generator to organize your guitar practice.

How To Play Killer Guitar Solos Part Two: Bending Technique Application

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By Tom Hess

The biggest mistake you can make for your musical creativity when trying to improve the sound of your guitar solos is to use the same approaches every time. Most guitar players exclusively use these approaches:

Approach 1:They add notes onto the existing ideas in the solo.

Approach 2:They replace old notes or licks in the solo with totally new ones.

You can experience ‘some’ success while using these approaches in isolation… However, to massively improve the quality of your guitar solos, you must also do this:

Approach 3:Dissect your guitar solo lick by lick and enhance it by changing HOW every note is played. Truth is, by simply changing the way the notes in a lick are played (without actually changing the notes themselves) you can easily end up with a much higher quality guitar solo. On the other hand, if you never invest time into improving the way you play the notes, you will only be able to add new notes to the solo that are just as ‘average’ sounding as the ones you began with.

Watch the video below to see how I enhanced one of my student’s solos using this idea. By making just a few small changes to the way he played the notes in the licks of his solo, we were able to make the overall solo sound A LOT better:

Here is how YOU are going to learn how to do this… Pick a solo that you want to improve and use the techniques below to slightly alter the licks that make up that solo. There are three options to choose from while doing this:

Option 1: If you have written your own guitar solos, use it.

Option 2: If you know how to play the guitar solo(s) of your favorite band/guitarist, choose one of them.

Option 3: If none of the above options apply for you, think of several guitar licks (in the same key) that you can play consecutively. This will allow you to play through the exercise even if you don’t know how to play an entire solo yet.

Here are a few ideas for some licks you can use in the key of C major/A minor:

Lick 1- Hear It

 

 Lick 2- Hear It

 

 Lick 3- Hear It

Previously, I explained in an article the different ways you can learn how to improve any guitar lick with various lead guitar techniques. You will now learn how to use bends in highly creative and unique ways to play better solos than you’ve ever played before. Note: Yes, bends are not an extremely complicated technique, but there is A LOT more to the nuances of bending strings than most guitarists realize. If you struggle to make your guitar solos sound awesome, then you haven’t yet mastered the creative bending variations I will have you practice below. So DO the exercise and watch it improve your lead guitar skills:

Guitar Soloing Technique #1: Using Bends To Add Depth To Your Licks

Step 1: Select any guitar lick within your guitar solo.

Step 2: Look for ways to connect the notes in this lick together using bends. In general, the beginning and ending notes are the easiest ones to enhance with bends. Note: Remember to keep your bends in tune at all times.

Step 3 (optional): After bending up to the desired note, increase the intensity and aggression of the lick by using wide vibrato. The following is an example of how steps 2 and 3 would sound like together:

Example– This small guitar lick uses bends and vibrato on the third note and the last note. You will hear two variations: one with vibrato on the third note and one without it: Hear It

(See how this is used in the context of an actual solo by watching the video above.)

Step 4: Play the new variation of your lick several times.

Step 5: Go back and repeat steps two through four by bending up to a different note in the lick. Observe the difference in sound between the variations you made. Go through this same process for every note in the phrase.

Step 6: Once you’ve done this for every note, decide which variation of the lick you like the best and use it in the place of the original lick.

Step 7: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #2 (and #3) below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #2: Using Bends Of Varying Speeds

Guitar players will often use bends in the following manner: First, they will strike the note, then they will instantly bend up to the desired pitch. Here’s how it sounds: Hear It

Your guitar solos will sound much more creative when you use bends at varying speeds rather than always ‘immediately’ bending to the target note. Here is how to do this:

Step 1: Take a single lick within your guitar solo and select a couple of notes within it (that are a half step apart).

Step 2: Strike the string and ‘slowly’ begin bending the string from the original note to the higher one. This will move the lower note up in pitch just a little bit (this will make it feel out of tune for the moment).

Step 3: As you get closer to hitting the target note of your bend (after you began the bend slowly), ‘immediately’ speed up the bend to reach the target pitch. Then you can either return the string to the original pitch or follow the next step:

Step 4 (optional): Apply wide and aggressive vibrato to the note before you continue finishing the rest of the lick.

Example– Using a bend with a slow beginning and quick ending: Hear It

(Check out the video above to see exactly how this is used in the context of a solo.)

Step 5: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #3 below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #3: Using A Pre-Bend

A pre-bend occurs when you bend the string without actually picking it, then strike the string in order to sound the ‘release’ of the bend. Here is an example: Hear It

Choose any note within your guitar lick and enhance it using a pre-bend. Begin by bending the string up (without picking it) by either a half or whole step, THEN picking it and finally releasing it. Experiment with different notes in the lick to see which one sounds best when played with a pre-bend.

Example: Hear It Observe the slow pre-bend on the first note of this guitar lick (it’s a variation of Lick 1 shown at the beginning of the article)

Keep going through this process for the rest of your solo in order to build tons of innovative variations for each individual lick. Then determine which licks you like best and record the new (slightly changed) solo. Once you’ve done this, observe the creative difference between the original lick you began with and the newer version… you’ll be totally surprised by how much better the new one sounds than the original!

String bends are just a single tool you can use to enhance your guitar solos/licks. The main idea of this exercise is to demonstrate how many great ideas you can squeeze out of a single technique. You can also apply the same approaches in this article using other techniques, such as slides, vibrato, string muting, sweep picking, etc (as well as other types of string bending).

The simple techniques above can be used to make any of your guitar solos sound MASSIVELY better! That said, there are a lot of alternate concepts you must learn about being more creative and playing innovative guitar solos. Get started right now learning how to improve your lead guitar playing.

 

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

Four Main Things That Guitar Players Are Most Afraid Of

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By Tom Hess

Contrary to popular belief, lacking ‘natural talent’ is NOT the main reason why so many guitarists fail to become great players. The real reason why so many guitar players fall short of their musical goals is they are being ‘controlled’ by their own fears. In order to improve your guitar playing, you must overcome the same fears that hold so many other players back. To do this, you need to understand why these fears exist and what to do to keep them from sabotaging your musical progress.

The following are the most frequent fears possessed by most guitarists and what you must do to overcome them and reach your musical goals:

Fear Of Not Being ‘Young Enough’ To Become A Great Guitarist

Many guitar players come to me each year with concerns that they are too old to become good guitar players. In many cases, these students falsely think that they can’t become great because their favorite guitarists become awesome players at a young age. This causes the student to not even attempt to do the things that would make him/her into a much better player.

This is what I tell them (and YOU):

Guitar players do not fail to achieve greatness because they are ‘too old’. The concept of age is just a mental construct. You only fail to become a great player if you do not dedicate yourself to doing whatever it takes to get there. Rather than allowing ‘age’ to be your excuse for failure, focus on developing the skills you need to reach your goals, find out the best methods for practicing them and make ‘practicing guitar’ a high priority in your life. When you continually practice what is needed to reach your musical goals (in a correct manner), you WILL achieve them – no matter how old you are. Find out more about this process by checking out this article about choosing good guitar playing exercises.

I’ve worked with many guitar students who thought they were too old to make real progress on guitar, and every time, those who believed what I wrote above achieved their goals in a fraction of the time compared to those who did not trust in what I said above.

Fear Of Failing

Tons of guitarists believe from the very beginning that they aren’t good enough to set and achieve ambitious musical goals. When you fear that you can’t learn to play guitar exactly as you want, here’s what will happen:

*You stop pursuing musical goals that you really want and set lower, more ‘achievable’ goals that you think are more realistic.

*You start practicing things that you are already more comfortable with for the majority of your time, instead of working on materials that will force you to become a great player.

*Because you only set ‘realistic’ (small) musical goals, you will never become the great guitar player you COULD become. You’ll form a habit of giving up whenever something becomes difficult because you think you just ‘don’t have what it takes’.

The worst part is, you’ll end up creating a self-fulfilling prophecy because you spend so much time focusing on ‘failure’ rather than the things you actually want to achieve. To make sure you do not become overwhelmed with a fear of failure, do the following:

*Only focus your mind on the things you desire the most in your guitar playing (and look ahead to the day when your goal is finally achieved). No matter what, you will always face challenges when you try to achieve great things…but all obstacles can be overcome. If you’ve been working hard to learn something for a long time and you are having no success, it’s not because you lack talent – you just have to use an alternate approach. Change your approach to get different results.

*Determine your exact guitar playing/musical goals, and put together a plan to reach them in as little time as possible. Once you’ve done this, don’t give up until you’ve reached the very end and achieved every last goal. Begin by using the ideas in this column about how to reach guitar playing goals.

It is much easier to overcome your fear of failure when you take lessons with a top tier guitar teacher who understands what it takes to accomplish any musical goal you may have. Over the past 25 years I’ve helped thousands of students achieve very big musical goals (who were afraid of failure at first). I invested ample time into mentoring them in order to raise their self-confidence and get them to truly believe in their own potential. This changed their outlook and helped them go on to become excellent guitarists.

Fear Of Playing Guitar In Front Of Others

It is very hard for many guitarists to move beyond their fear of playing in front of others. One moment you could be able to play something easily alone your room and the next you are struggling to play the exact same thing just because other people are watching. Some of the common symptoms of this fear include uncontrollable shakiness, excess sweating or temporary loss of memory. The worst part is, when you fear playing in front of other people, you avoid it at all costs. As a result, you are unable to gain the benefits and musical growth you get from doing things like playing with other musicians, performing in a band or being part of a show in front of a live audience.

To overcome this fear, you must stop believing in the idea that other people (watching you play) are waiting for you to fail so they can ‘make fun of you’ or criticize you. Fact is, the people watching you play are generally NOT thinking about you at all – they are only thinking about themselves. They are jealous of your musical skills and wish they had the ‘guts’ to play in front of others, like you. No one will really notice your mistakes unless you point them out yourself.

The key is to forget about what others might think and use every time you play for others as an opportunity to improve your performance skills (NOT as a once in a lifetime chance to play something 100% perfect). For instance, if your hands become extremely shaky because you feel nervous, make it your main focus to reduce this problem every time you play for others. Each time you perform, track your results on a piece of paper and measure your improvement. By doing this, you eliminate the concern of what other people are thinking and replace it with a concern for self-improvement. Then, over time you will become more relaxed.

Discover more ways you can improve your live performances by learning how to overcome stage fright.

Fear Of Criticism

A lot of guitar players fear having their guitar playing criticized and will do anything they can to avoid situations where others could judge their skills (causing them to ‘feel bad’ about their playing). They will do this even if it means sabotaging their own progress or missing opportunities to get useful feedback! That’s right: people will sabotage their own potential to become better guitarists because they are afraid of what other people might say!

Here is an example of the harmful effects of this fear: I run various training events for guitarists each year who travel overseas to train with me for the entire day (for several days in a row) to totally transform their guitar technique, soloing ability, phrasing and musical expression. Whenever one of these events takes place, I observe a total transformation in literally every person who attended. At the same time, there are a lot of people who talk themselves out of coming to these events, although they have the time, money and a strong desire to attend and KNOW the event will completely change their playing for the better. I get an overflow of emails from these types of people, who give me excuses for not showing up, and I know their excuses are deeply rooted in fear. Later, most of these people contact me again to reveal that they deeply regret not coming to the event. Since they gave in to their fear about what others would think of their playing, they blocked themselves from a massive opportunity to improve their musical skills. That is why they will continue to struggle to achieve their musical goals and regret their decision to hide behind fear.

Even for guitarists who are very advanced players, this type of fear can hold them back from achieving their musical goals. For example, great players will often delay writing and recording an album (for many years) by chasing ‘perfection’. This is caused by the fear that someone might criticize their music/playing. As a result, they never experience the significant growth one receives from this type of musical activity.

To overcome this fear, do the following:

*Know that the greatest way to become a better musician is putting yourself into situations where you are challenged to grow and improve. This is what the best players do on a consistent basis.

*Understand that perfection is something worth reaching for, but not something you can ever actually ‘reach’. It’s important to make mistakes in order to grow as a musician. Instead of avoiding mistakes, embrace them and utilize them as opportunities for learning how to get better.

*Get a clear understanding of what areas in your playing you need to work on in order to improve. Get a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses by using this guitar skills assessment.

You’ve now learned how to overcome the fears that prevent many guitarists from taking the next step to become better players. Take advantage of this, by applying what you’ve learned here to move closer to your ultimate musical goals. To get more help with developing your musical skills, take this free mini course about pursuing musical goals and become a great guitarist fast.

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician, recording artist and online guitar teacher who teaches guitarists from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. On his website, tomhess.net, you can get additional free tips about guitar playing, guitar playing resources, mini courses and surveys.

Music Career Questions You Should NOT Be Asking

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By Tom Hess

I often receive e-mails from musicians seeking advice on how to make it in the music business. In nearly all cases, musicians are asking all the ‘wrong’ questions that:

1. Are rooted in common music industry myths.

2. At first glance seem to be good questions, but are actually based on assumptions that will take them away from their ultimate music career goals.

3. Completely neglect important steps that the person should take to advance their career (such as the ones I discussed in this article about becoming a highly successful professional musician).

To grow your music career fast, you need to understand which questions you are asking that are leading you down the wrong path and replace those questions with much higher quality ones that will help you reach your greatest musical goals in little time.

The following questions are the worst questions you can ask when trying to succeed in the music industry:

Bad Music Career Question #1: Do I Have To Become A ‘Starving Artist’?

A lot of people believe that making a living as a professional musician means one of two things: Either you ‘make it’ and go on to tour the world and sell millions of albums or you ‘become a starving artist’ and have to play at crappy bars and street corners just to get by. This music business myth makes sabotages people’s careers from the start, either by making them believe they need to get full time jobs unrelated to music and ‘try to do music on the side’, or be afraid of trying to enter the music business.

In reality, there exist tons of ways to earn good money in the music business and there is actually a HUGE ‘middle class’ in the music industry. In fact, it’s EASIER to earn good money with a secure job as a professional musician than it is to become successful in other fields of business. However, before you can make this happen, you need to ask a higher quality question. Rather than worry about how you can ‘avoid’ becoming a starving artist, you need to be thinking “How many different ways do I want to earn good money in the music industry?”

As you work in the music business, you are not forced to live from one paycheck to the next like in a normal day job. Instead, it’s always possible to be earning multiple sources of income at the same time. This makes becoming a professional musician a much more stable career choice since you don’t have to be dependent on just ONE source of income. In addition to the obvious ways that musicians seek to make money in music (selling albums/downloads, playing live shows or recording as a session musician), there is one thing you can do right now that will quickly boost your music related income:

Teach music lessons and build a large student base. This will instantly create various sources of income (having many different students) through working only part time hours every week. This will give you the free time to work on building your music career. Learn how to teach guitar so you can begin teaching music for a living right away.

When you build many sources of musical income as discussed above, it’s very possible (and not as hard as you might think) to annually earn more than $100k in your music career (I know this, because I’ve helped many musicians to do it). To learn more, read this article about how to make money in music.

Bad Music Career Question #2: How Do You Get A Record Deal?

To really know why this is not a good questions to ask, answer this: “What’s in it for someone else to give you a record deal?” If you think the main thing you offer to a record company is good music writing skills… think again. This is simply not enough incentive for a music company to want to work with you. People will not invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into your music career just because you’ve written some nice music. Think about it like this: Let’s say you saved up a couple hundred thousand dollars – Would you go spend it all to bet on a horse at the race track OR would you try to find someone to invest it into who can prove to you that they have the ability help you make a big return? Certainly you would make the prudent choice and work with the person who would help you earn more money. This is the same mindset that record label executives have. Therefore, you need to stop worrying about how you can ‘get signed’ and begin making yourself into the best possible investment a record company could take. Hint: This means doing a lot more than just writing music, playing an instrument or having a Facebook music page.

Here are the actions you should be taking to make yourself into a valuable investment for a record company:

1. Understand what music companies are looking for in musicians before they work together with them.

2. Work every day to build your music career. Record companies want to see that you have a good track record before they will begin working with you. The more things you do as an independent musician, the more likely it is that you will gain the interest of a record company.

3. Get music career coaching from an experienced mentor who has already accomplished big things in the music business and helped others get signed to recording contracts.

Once you begin developing your music career on your own, you will make yourself like a beacon of light and record companies will come searching for YOU!

Bad Music Career Question #3: How Can I Get My Music ‘Heard’ By More People?

The majority of musicians want to get their music heard by as many people as possible, believing that this will help them earn money and become successful pro musicians. However, the quantity of people who listen to your music is not very significant in and of itself. What really matters is the amount of people you are able to turn into a highly dedicated fans who will do anything to support you and your music.

So instead of asking yourself “How can I get more people to listen to my music?” you must ask: “How can I develop a following of dedicated FANATICS?” Only after you have asked (and take action on) this question will it become necessary to get a lot more people to hear your music (because it will then be much more likely that you will be able to turn them into committed followers).

To find out more about making money in your music career and gaining more fans, read this article on how to promote a career in music.

Bad Music Career Question #4: What Is The Best Music City To Move To?

Many musicians think they will be much more likely to succeed in the music industry by moving to a ‘music city’. Then with this belief in mind, they pack up their things and move, believing that opportunities will simply ‘fall into their lap’ once they arrive. Once they have been in their new location for a while and nothing has changed, they blame it on the city and look for a new location to move to (while being completely unaware of the TRUE reasons why they aren’t successful).

Where you live has nothing to do with your chances of becoming successful in the music industry. This is especially relevant today as it is easier than ever for someone to get signed to a record contract, release music from a home studio, schedule major world tours or do work as a session musician no matter where they live. Massively successful musicians do not achieve success because they live in a specific city or location. If that were the case, no one living in ‘non-music’ cities would become successful in the music business. No matter where you live, the principles for becoming a successful pro musician apply exactly the same.

Rather than making the massive (wasted) effort of trying to research and find the best music scene, go through the following process that has been PROVEN to work for musicians:

1. Determine your unique goals as a musician (using this article about how to identify musical goals).

2. Get music career coaching and build an effective strategy for reaching your musical goals.

3. Work each day to get closer to achieving your goals until you reach them.

When you focus on what is most important (using the process above), you will achieve success in your music career much faster.

Now that you’ve learned why many common music career questions actually steer your music career down the wrong path, here is what you need to do to get back onto the right path:

Step 1. Break down your musical goals in as much depth as possible. Use the articles and resources mentioned above to gain clarity on how the music business works.

Step 2. Continually ask yourself high quality questions to achieve much greater results in your music career.

Step 3. Don’t try to become a pro musician alone. Get music career coaching from a trainer who will help you build a highly successful career in music.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is an online guitar teacher, recording artist and music career coach. As a music career coach, he helps musicians from many countries break into the music industry. On his music instruction websiteyou can find out how to become a pro musician and learn how the music industry works.

The Secrets To Playing Incredible Guitar Solos, Part One: How To Creatively Use Vibrato

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by Tom Hess

Guitarists often complain about how their lead guitar licks don’t sound as good as they want. Truth is, there could be countless reasons why this occurs, however there are very precise ways to solve every problem. Here are some of the most frequent problems I notice in most lead guitar solos and licks:

  1. Not using ‘any’ vibrato during your solos (or using out of tune vibrato)
  2. Using very narrow (or no) vibrato to begin your solos – causing them to feel ‘weak’ and uninspiring
  3. Adding vibrato to every note you play in the exact same manner

Before you learn how to use vibrato to enhance your guitar solos and licks, it is important that you SEE and HEAR how this technique can improve your solos. Do this now by checking out the video below:

 

Use the points below to build a solid foundation for great vibrato technique and use it to enhance your solos:

1. Play Vibrato That Is Perfectly In Tune

Nothing will kill the sound of a great guitar solo faster than vibrato that is out of tune. For this reason, it is crucial that you always play your vibrato in tune! To do this, always bend the string up to the exact pitch you are targeting and back down to the original pitch you began on before releasing it. So if you wish to apply vibrato that is a whole step wide, you need to bend the string to match the pitch 2 frets above the starting note before returning it back down to the pitch you started with (and repeating this many times quickly to achieve a vibrato effect).

Hear what out of tune vibrato sounds like compared to perfect vibrato by listening to the examples below:

Example 1 – Perfectly In Tune Vibrato: Hear It

Example 2 – Out Of Tune Vibrato: Hear It

How To Use This Concept To Improve Your Guitar Solos Right Now:

Determine how wide you want your vibrato to be (such as a half step or whole step). Then invest time into applying this vibrato to different notes in different locations all over the fretboard while keeping it in tune. To speed up the mastery process, record yourself playing so you can pinpoint times when you were playing out of tune and understand the changes you need to make to correct this.

2. Use Vibrato In Many Different Ways

You must gain control of two main variables in order to play great vibrato:

1. The way the vibrato sounds (affected by how wide the vibrato is and how fast the pitch fluctuates)

2. The timing of when the vibrato is used after a note is played.

In most cases, guitar players apply ‘narrow’ vibrato to a note ‘immediately’ after they play it (every time). If you use vibrato in this manner every time you play a note, it will quickly become less interesting (achieving the opposite of what you want).

To make your guitar solos sound creative and inspiring, use vibrato in a different way by ‘delaying’ its application for a few moments. This will add additional interest to your playing in the form of musical tension, while also extending the life of the note.

Here is the difference between the conventional approach of instantly applying vibrato vs. delaying it:

Example 1 – Instant Vibrato: Hear It

Example 2 – Delayed Vibrato: Hear It

To make your soloing sound even more unique, after delaying the vibrato, pick the string again (with a lot of power) to emphasize/re-articulate the note. Here is what this sounds like:

Example 3 – Delayed Vibrato + Striking The Note Again: Hear It

Example 4 – Here is a short example of how to combine the three different vibrato types discussed above by using various levels of intensity/speed: Hear It

How To Use This Concept To Improve Your Guitar Solos Right Now:

Pick out one of your favorite guitar licks and look for the notes in that lick that are sustained longer than the others. Next, record yourself playing the lick for 5 minutes straight while applying vibrato to these longer notes as follows: ‘instantly’ applying it as soon as you play a note, ‘delaying’ it for a moment or two after playing the note and ‘delaying’ it + striking the string again. Focus on using as much variety as you can throughout your recording to develop mastery for all 3 vibrato types.

3. Adjust The Depth Of Your Vibrato To Make It Appropriate For Any Musical Context

If you always begin the first note of your guitar solos with narrow vibrato (of a depth that is less than 1/2 step) your playing will sound soft. This sound is ‘sometimes’ appropriate, but sometimes it simply makes your playing sound ‘weak’. To have more expressive options in your soloing, learn to use wide vibrato on the very first note to add a powerful punch to the phrase! To do this, use vibrato that is at least a width of 1/2 step or one whole step (while keeping it in tune). This is not ‘required’ for all solos of course, but you should make sure you are not always beginning your solos with narrow/no vibrato.

Check out the audio samples below to hear the difference between narrow, wide and ‘extra wide’ vibrato:

Example 1 – Narrow Vibrato (less than a half step): Hear It

Notice: Using narrow vibrato can certainly sound good when you are doing so in the right context – The mistake you must avoid is ‘only’ using narrow vibrato because you are unable to play wide vibrato that sounds good/stays in tune.

Example 2 – Wide Vibrato (half step): Hear It

Example 3 – Extra Wide Vibrato (whole step): Hear It

Note: Using vibrato wider than 1/2 step isn’t always the best choice over a more narrow vibrato. When you use vibrato in your solos, focus on matching the width and intensity of your vibrato to match the musical context. Being able to play wide vibrato gives you the option to add ‘intensity’ in musical situations that require more tension (this cannot be achieved by using narrow vibrato which is much more subtle). By mastering both narrow and wide vibrato, you will gain the ability to freely express yourself with the technique under any musical circumstance.

How To Use This Concept To Improve Your Guitar Solos Right Now:

Step 1: Think of two to three small guitar licks. For each lick, make the first note ‘longer’ in terms of duration (such as a half note or longer).

Step 2: Use half or whole step vibrato to enhance the first note in each of these licks.

Step 3: Repeat the previous step for several minutes. Practice this for a couple of weeks until you have developed your vibrato technique to a high level. Once you’ve done this, you will be able to effortlessly apply this idea during any guitar solo.

The ideas in this article will help you to quickly improve any normal guitar lick or solo to make it a truly great one. However, there is much more you can do to create killer guitar solos. In part two of this article, you will discover how bends can be used to make your solos sound even more unique and creative!

 

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

Why You Aren’t The Leading Guitar Instructor In Your City

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By Tom Hess

Your opportunity for success as a guitar teacher is greater now than ever before. Why? Most guitar teachers these days would rather accept mediocre results in their teaching and teaching business growth than take the time to truly help their students. On top of that, even the most dedicated guitar teachers are clueless about what can really be achieved in their guitar teaching business. As a result, they are never able to accomplish great things for themselves or their students. However, since you are reading this article, you have a distinct advantage over everyone else in your local guitar teaching community who isn’t taking steps to become a better guitar teacher and further his/her business.

It’s actually a lot easier than you’d expect to become the leading guitar teacher in your local area, fill up your teaching schedule and develop a successful teaching business. To do it, you must first learn the main reasons why so many guitar teachers fail and how you can avoid the mistakes they make in order to achieve a better outcome.

These are the five biggest reasons why guitar teachers will never achieve success in their teaching businesses and the details for how ‘you’ can avoid their mistakes to become the leader for guitar instruction in your city:

Why Guitar Teachers Fail, Reason #1: Not Investing Much Time Into Growing Your Guitar Teaching Business

When you exclusively spend your time on building lesson plans, sorting through administrative tasks/payments, thinking of new materials and other smaller teaching tasks you will not become hugely successful. These things are certainly necessary to work on, however, you must also focus on building your guitar teaching business as a whole in order to become truly successful as a guitar teacher. If you neglect doing this, your guitar teaching business is likely to diminish (meaning you lose more students than you gain) over time. This is one of the main reasons why so many guitar teachers go out of business.

What You Need To Do Instead To Become The #1 Guitar Teacher In Your Area:

Invest time every week to work on building all areas of your guitar teaching business (in addition to working on general guitar teaching tasks). You should actively be working to find new ways to gain new students while retaining them longer, developing an effective referrals system, creating a solid teaching policy and putting together a great marketing strategy. On a piece of paper, write down your specific goals, detailing what you’d like to accomplish in the next several months to a year (or more). Then determine the steps needed to reach these goals and take action on them every week.

For help attracting tons of new students fast, test your approaches using this free assessment on the topic of getting more guitar students.

Use this assessment about how to build a guitar teaching business to become a more successful guitar teacher.

Why Guitar Teachers Fail, Reason #2: Copying Other Guitar Teachers

When you copy what other guitar teachers are doing, you are very unlikely to ever become highly successful. Here is why:

1. The majority of people teaching guitar are not successful. Therefore, when you copy the methods used by these people (either marketing or approaches to teaching students), you will only head down the same path of failure.

2. Copying guitar teachers who seem to be highly successful will not work either. This is because you do not understand the complete strategy behind what they are doing – you only see the individual tactics. Tactics are individual actions that one takes to achieve a result. For example: hanging up ads in a music store, making your website design more professional or sending out flyers in your area. On the other hand, a strategy is the ‘big picture’ thought process that connects everything together and reach specific short, medium and long term goals. A strategy is built into the foundation of a successful guitar teaching business and cannot be understood by simply observing isolated tactics.

3. When you decide to imitate other guitar teachers in your area you essentially remove any ‘unique’ qualities from your lessons. This turns guitar lessons into a kind of commodity, where the ‘cheapest’ lessons are the best. If you follow this mindset and try to undercut everyone else in your area you will (at best) end up with very unmotivated students who are not serious about making progress on guitar. This is because most students know that ‘you get what you pay for’ and associate cheap lessons with low quality lessons.

What You Need To Do Instead To Become The #1 Guitar Teacher In Your Area:

Don’t build your guitar teaching business by merely ‘guessing’ about what might work. Use the approaches that successful guitar teachers use:

  • Get guitar teacher training to learn how to become a successful guitar teacher. This is the most effective method for developing your own unique business strategy while getting better results for your students.
  • Rather than marketing yourself as a guitar teacher who teaches ‘all styles’, select a particular style and become the local guru in that style. This will put your name at the top of anyone’s list whenever they are looking for someone to help them learn that style. Additionally, students who want to learn a specific style are generally more serious than other students who only seek ‘general’ lessons.
  • When determining the price for your lessons, charge AT LEAST a little bit above average. By charging ‘more’, your students will feel much more motivated to practice more frequently and improve because they are paying more for their lessons. Charging more helps keep them accountable to themselves because they don’t want to waste all the money they are spending.

Why Guitar Teachers Fail, Reason #3: Accepting Mediocre Guitar Teaching Skills

The best thing you should do if you want to develop a terrible reputation for being a poor guitar teacher and getting no results for your students is stop trying to improve your teaching skills. Whenever you sense that you are ‘going through the motions’, you know you are in need of improvement.

In all other industries (such as the medical industry as a single example), you would be stripped of your license if it was discovered that you haven’t been properly training to keep your qualifications high, or if you claimed to know how to do help people, but did not. Unfortunately, guitar teachers do not require licensing in the same way and many of them never learned how to teach (or teach simply through trial-and-error).

What You Need To Do Instead To Become The #1 Guitar Teacher In Your Area:

Understand that your guitar students are not paying you for anything other than RESULTS – their musical lives are in your hands. You will either help them become great musicians or hold them back causing them to struggle for many years before getting back on track with their goals. This is why you must always work to become a better teacher so you can give your students the best possible results.

Note: merely being a great guitarist or going to university to study music is NOT the same as actually learning ‘how to TEACH guitar lessons’, so simply having guitar playing skills is not a substitute for consistent training on how to become a successful guitar teacher.

Why Guitar Teachers Fail, Reason #4: Having A Poor Mindset About Earning Money From Teaching Guitar

How can you absolutely guarantee that you won’t earn good money teaching guitar? Answer: Believing that it is ‘wrong’ to want to make a huge profit (6 figures+) through guitar lessons. Another way to be unsuccessful at earning good money is to refuse to market your lessons – relying only on word of mouth. Many guitar teachers either feel it is wrong to make a lot of money teaching others and never take the right steps to promote their teaching businesses. Here is why this is a MASSIVE lose/lose for them and the students in their area:

You’ll struggle to earn enough money to get by since you won’t be taking the necessary actions to grow your business at a bigger level.

Guitar students in your local area will suffer because your belief system will cause you to build a business that prevents you from growing beyond a certain number of students. There are countless guitar players in your area who truly desire your help but will never get the opportunity to work with you due to your views. With this in mind, it is definitely realistic to want to teach 100+ students once you have the correct systems in place (and you can do so working 15 hours or less per week!). Watch this video about how to grow a guitar teaching business to learn more.

What You Need To Do Instead To Become The #1 Guitar Teacher In Your Area:

Take on the mindset that highly successful guitar teachers have about earning money. These teachers know that:

  • By earning more money, they will gain the ability to re-invest what they make back into their business to benefit their students. When you earn more money as a guitar teacher, you can offer your guitar students many new benefits that you couldn’t before such as recording equipment, great quality rental instruments, bigger learning spaces, etc.
  • To earn more money you need to become the greatest at what you do. The desire to developing a flourishing business needs to be part of the motivation for offering the greatest results to your students. This is why guitar teachers who get the best results for their students invest into a trainer who trains them to become a successful guitar teacher.

Once you fully understand that you have the power to totally transform the musical lives of your students, it becomes you duty to gain as many students as possible so you can help them achieve their musical goals.

Why Guitar Teachers Fail, Reason #5: Having Little Or No Passion For Guitar Teaching

You can have all the guitar teaching skill in the world but it will do you NO good if you don’t have passion for what you are doing. Without passion, teaching guitar for a living becomes the same as working a 9-5 day job (causing you to accept lower standards). Since working a ‘normal job’ does not feel rewarding enough to motivate you to improve, you are unlikely to take action to grow your guitar teaching business and become a better teacher. Result: you will inevitably fail. In addition, your guitar students will quickly pick up on your lack of enthusiasm and mirror it back to you (by not practicing, apply what you teach them, etc.).

On the other hand, the most successful guitar teachers have a very strong passion for teaching guitar. Although they DO teach guitar to make money, they also teach because it is something they truly enjoy doing. When you are passionate about teaching guitar, your students will notice and respond positively.

What You Need To Do Instead To Become The #1 Guitar Teacher In Your Area:

To grow a passion for teaching guitar, you need to identify your greatest ‘reasons’ for wanting to become successful at it. Think about the goals that teaching guitar at the highest level will achieve for you. When you understand your greatest reasons for teaching guitar, you can use your excitement for achieving your goals as a motivator for teaching. This will help you to both enjoy the process of teaching lessons as well as use your motivation to inspire your students. When your students are inspired on a consistent basis, they will naturally achieve much more.

What is the next step to take?

Once you understand the ideas discussed above, it’s time to start implementing what you’ve learned so you can become the leading guitar teacher in your area. By applying the points of this article into your guitar teaching business, you will become more successful than you could have ever imagined – all while helping your students become excellent guitarists and musicians.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player. He helps people from all over the world learn how to teach guitar. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar teacher resources and to read more guitar teaching articles.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/

Use Blues Guitar Double Stops Technique To Play Creative Licks

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By Tom Hess

Every great blues guitar player is able to play with a mean double stop technique (when two notes are played together at once during a solo). In most cases, guitarists use the notes of the blues or minor pentatonic scales. Check out the example below to see some double stop patterns that are frequently used in blues guitar.

Hear It

On their own, these double stop licks sound interesting, however most guitarists are unable to creatively apply them into their playing because:

1. These types of double stops are very common and have been used countless times by blues guitar players. This makes your playing sound very unoriginal if you use them too many times.

2. Most guitar players equate using double stops with using one of the patterns above and never think of new ways to apply to apply them in a blues setting. Soon, you will learn just how many options you have for personal expression while using double stops (it’s a lot more than you think).

3. The unique intensity created by double stops is usually resolved as both notes in the lick are played in unison after the bend is finished. This takes away from the expressive potential of the technique to sound extremely intense and aggressive.

In a moment you will learn the main elements of a highly creative blues guitar double stop. Before reading this, check out the demonstration in the video below in order to get the greatest benefit from this article:

Now that you have checked out the video above, read the information below to learn the specific elements that make double stop licks sound creative and intense:

Intense Blues Guitar Double Stops Element #1: Using various notes of the scale

The most widely used blues double stops licks are played in a way that uses two notes to basically emphasize the same exact note (as shown in the video above). A more interesting way to use double stops is to use different notes in the scale you are playing. Listen to this in the examples below:

Hear It Hear It
Start by picking the note on the G string and bending it. Then play one of the notes on either the B or E string to compelte the double stop. When you add this additional note into the lick, this is what makes it sound so intense and aggressive.

In the first example lick of the two from above, you can allow the B string to ring with the other two notes since it is in the same key. However, while playing a double stop in other keys, you will need to mute the B string using the fingers of your picking hand so that it does not create unwanted noise (making your lick sound sloppy/bad). Learn the best way to do this by reading this column on how to effectivelymute guitar string noise.

Creative Blues Guitar Double Stops Element #2: Extended musical tension

In general, blues double stop licks start with a tense feeling created when two notes a whole step apart sound simultaneously before the lower note is bent to match the pitch of the higher note (relieving the tension). In the video above, I did not follow this general approach – I did the opposite. I first playerd a normal note from the scale. Next, I played a note together with it that clashed and created a lot of musical tension. The tension created by this effect was never completely resolved (until I stopped playing). This is a very creative way to make your blues licks sound extremely intense.

Intense Blues Guitar Double Stops Element #3: Wide Vibrato

Most players think of using vibrato ‘only’ to emphasize single notes in their guitar phrases. By adding vibrato to both notes in your double stops, you will make the lick sound incredibly intense and creative. To hear the difference between these two approaches, listen to the example below. The first part of the audio doesn’t use vibrato, while the second emphasizes both notes using vibrato.

Hear It

Notice: In order to apply balanced vibrato to each of the notes in the double stop lick, you need to have solid vibrato technique and/or use either a floating bridge or whammy bar. Keep your lick in tune and mute any strings that are not being played to prevent it from sounding sloppy. Learn how to keep your blues licks from becoming sloppy while playing with intensity by checking out this article about playing blues guitar.

Advanced Blues Guitar Technique: Using a barre to create more notes

To add an additional layer of depth to your intense double stop lick, use a barre to play more than two notes at once (as seen in the video above). An easy way to play this is to bend the note you are using on the G string and play 2 additional notes on the B and E strings. For instance:

Hear It

You can use your third finger or small finger to barre the two notes on the B and E strings above.

Here are some additional examples of what this sounds like:

Hear It Hear It

In order to apply vibrato to these advanced double stop licks, you will need to use a guitar with a floating bridge by pressing back and forth on the bridge with your picking hand (as seen in the video above). However, if you don’t own a guitar with a floating bridge, that is fine too. You can still implement the concepts discussed in this article to enhance your blues guitar playing.

To quickly get good at using the types of double stop licks in this article, practice them in isolation first before using them in your improvisation or lead guitar phrases. Then while you are soloing, use them to inject tons of intensity into your phrase.

After working on the ideas in this article for a while you will easily be able to apply blues guitar double stops into your phrases. But remember: knowing how to play cool blues guitar licks is just the beginning to becoming a great player. Discover how you can become a much better guitarist in all areas of your playing by studying this free guitar practice guide.

 

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, songwriter and a pro guitarist. He uses the best online guitar lessons to train guitar players to reach their musical goals. Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources, guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/blues-guitar.html