10 Essentials On Guitar Improvisation | GuitarHabits.com Photo by Simone13 AKA John Pastorello 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. 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. Here are 10 basic essentials that will help you become a better improviser. 1 – Pentatonics / blues Learn to play the pentatonic/blues scale all over the neck in all five shapes. 2 – Major Scale Next to the pentatonic scale, the major scale is the most important scale to learn. 3- Melodic patterns Example:
83 Jam Tracks For Guitar Download all the free jam tracks now! A lot of them anyway - 83 of the jam tracks for guitar players are available here on the one page. If you want more information on each track then go to the page that the jam track is from for music theory and other information. Taken from the Blues Guitar Jam Tracks page: 01 Slow Blues In A mp3 wma 02 E Shuffle mp3 wma 03 A Straight mp3 wma 04 Eb Slow Blues (E if you play guitar and tune down 1/2 a step) mp3 wma 05 Ab Shuffle (A if you play gutar and tune down 1/2 a step) mp3 wma 06 G Medium Blues mp3 wma 07 E Fast Shuffle mp3 wma 08 A Medium Blues Shuffle mp3 wma 09 A Medium Blues Shuffle Quick Change mp3 wma 10 Eb Straight Ahead Blues (E if you play guitar and tune down 1/2 a step) mp3 wma 11 B Slow Blues (C if you play guitar and tune down 1/2 a step) mp3 wma 01 F# Chiller Chill Chill mp3 wma 02 E Shake That Thang mp3 wma Taken from the Country Guitar Jam Tracks page: Taken from the Funk Guitar Jam Tracks page:
Learn how To Play Guitar - Justin's Beginners Guitar Course v2 I like to think that my method is the most effective, enjoyable and logically structured method available anywhere. Over a million people have learned to play using this course and it gets great reviews all over the internet, so I'm pretty confident that it works! We'll start at the very beginning and I'll show you all the basic chords, strumming and techniques to get you playing great songs as soon as possible! I would strongly recommend you follow the course from the beginning and give each lesson your best. There's a "? Though learning music theory is not an essential part of learning the guitar, many people enjoy understanding what they are doing and my eBook, Practical Music Theory will be very interesting for those people and will help you understand what you are doing and give you many exercises to help you memorise the information. Click here for a 5 minute "Quick Start Guide" if you itching to get started quick! Good luck my cyber students, hope you really enjoy it! Stage 1 OK.
30+ Insanely Useful Websites for Guitarists The guitar is an instrument that knows no genre and no boundaries--one of the reasons why it's arguably the world's most beloved instrument. Here are over 30 incredibly useful (and often entertaining) websites dedicated to the guitar and its admirers. Must-see sites 1. Guitar Shred Show follows the escapades of Mr. 2. 3. 4. 5. Soloing 6. 100 Greatest Guitar Solos is a ranked list of the greatest guitar solos of all time with included tablature for each. 7. 20 Greatest Guitar Solos Ever resembles the beginning of the above list, but with crispy and delicious YouTube videos for each entry. 8. Inspirational articles 9. 10. 99 Tips to Help You Play Better features 99 pearls of wisdom from guitar wizards like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Jimmi Page. “Your sound is in your hands as much as anything. 11. Free guitar tabs and guitar chords The online guitar tablature community was in turmoil just a few months ago when the legal status of tabs was questioned. 12. 13. 14. 15. 17. Free guitar lessons
Sound Matrix | SEMBEO - StumbleUpon The Sound Matrix was a clever bit of flash that was mailed to me some time back. I later discovered that the file was originally composed by Andre Michelle. As per original instructions “Press SPACE key to clear. Right-Click for Copy & Paste to your blog, happy days, good time, comment if you LIKE!”. Add This to Your Site : Copy This Code <div align="center"><object width="600" height="600" codebase=" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"><param value=" name="movie"><param value="high" name="quality"><embed width="600" height="600" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="
6 Cool Guitar Blues Turn Arounds in the key of E | GuitarHabits.com Photo by Steve Garry A good blues turnaround is the icing on the cake of every blues progression. I always beg, borrow, steal and create my own nice sweet sounding turnarounds to add that extra magic when I’m playing a blues song. It’s one of the things that makes the blues sound so cool. Blues turnarounds are played at the end of a section of a blues progression which then leads to the next section or the end of the song. To get a good impression of how turnarounds are played listen to blues guitar players like B.B King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton and study theirs. Tip: Every time you play the blues try to play a different turnaround, so you don’t end up playing the same turnaround ten years from now. Enjoy these 6 turnarounds to spice up your blues: Have a great one!
Whitaker Blackall - Music and Sound FX for Video Games & Music Theory... Find part two of this article here WARNING: This is a long post. But if you can get through it, you will know a lot of important basics about music theory and production. As some of you know, I’ve been having a blast with my foray into gamedev. While obviously I’d prefer every game developer out there to come to me for music, I think some people want to make their own game soundtracks, and would if they only knew how. Scales, and why you need to understand themChords, and how to form themChord progressions, and how to make themMelodies, and how to write themExtra effects and plugins that fill out your sound I’m going to be using GarageBand in this post, so feel free to follow along. Scales, and why you need to understand them Most beginners really hate scales because they’re boring and don’t seem to do anything. Here is what ‘C’ major looks like in musical notation (up and down): Here is what a one-octave ‘C’ major scale looks like on a piano keyboard (notes in red): Okay I cheated a bit.
10 Ways to Play the Most Beautiful Open Chord Shapes | GuitarHabits.com - StumbleUpon 10 Ways to Play the Most Beautiful Open Chord Shapes Part I 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. While you can play barre chords at any fret on the fingerboard, open chords can only be played at certain frets. Because of all the extended chord names I didn’t bother to name every single one of them. It’s all about incorporating these chords into your songs and chord progressions, putting your creativity to the test, experimenting with all the possibilities, replacing some basic chords for these extraordinary ones, learning to hear what sounds right and what feels good. Have a great time!