My quick answer is: If you’re a beginner learning to play guitar, sweep picking is one of the last things on your ” to learn ” list Sweeping is not easy and takes a lot of left and right hand co-ordination.

Sweep picking is going to be one of the hardest skills you will attempt to develop as an electric guitarist, and many guitar players still have trouble with it years down the road. There is really no fast route to learning this, despite what all the online guitar tutorials say. The key is practicing slowly, and lots and lots of repetition. You will need to play as slow as possible so that you build up super-accuracy especially in  your fretting hand.

So here are some tips and advise for sweep picking:

• If you can, use both your hands to mute the strings that you’re not picking. If you do not do this, it will no longer be sweep picking but strumming instead as all the notes that you picked will still be ringing.
• On your fretting hand, you need to lift up your finger with a delayed action. What this means is that after you’ve picked the string, you will want to lift the finger up a bit slower than your normal rate. This will immediately mute the note you’ve just played, and on you go with the next string. Do this with every string you pick. If you notice a lot of ” string noise ” or unwanted notes, then this is the area you’ll need to check and correct yourself.
• For my own playing style, I use the tip I just mentioned above, as well as using my right hand to mute the strings I’m not sweeping. So if I’m doing a downward sweep, I’d be using my palm ( picking hand ) to mute the strings above, continually.
• Angle your pick slightly at a 45 degree angle as you sweep, this will help you to get a smoother sweep as your pick slices or glides smoothly from string to string.

I hope this has been helpful to you. You can email me for further help if you wish.

Technorati Tags: guitar tips, sweep picking, string muting

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Guitar Tips For Sweep Picking – Tips For Practicing

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Eventually, I managed to learn how to improvise over simple songs initially. Over time, things just happened and I became fluent with guitar improvisation. It took me about a year before I even begun being competent at it.

Many people have asked me if this was an effective way for a beginner to learn improvisation, and my answer is..

YES!

However, you will need to make certain tweaks to your practice routine in order to speed up the learning process so you don’t take as long as I did.

You will firstly need to learn solos of other songs by heart. That’s how you start. It’s important for 2 reasons:

1. Playing your favorite songs inspires you to play more.

2. It builds up your musical vocabulary – What we guitarists call ” Chops ” or ” licks ”

You will find that when you DO start improvising in the very near future, you will tend to borrow these guitar licks from other songs you have played, and these will make your lead playing sound so much more professional!

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Guitar Improvisation Tips

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I fly quite frequently and take my Les Paul along on my journeys all the time. There are a few things that you need to be aware of:

• If you can, try and ask the airlines if you can take your guitar up on the plane with you. Some flights allow you to do this and all your worries are over.

• If you have to check your guitar into cargo, you will need to buy a hard case specifically made for guitar transportation. These hard cases are available in most good guitar stores and they come in moulded hard plastic or metal. Either one is good but I prefer the plastic cases as they’re much lighter.

• Loosen the guitar strings a little to relieve the pressure on your guitar’s neck. The reason for this is, if the case is dropped hard, the sudden shock plus the FULL tension of the guitar strings could very easily snap the neck.

• I usually bubble wrap the entire neck to help with absorbing shock if the case is dropped. Make sure as well that the guitar  headstock sits way clear of the base of the case. If the head contacts the case’s base, that will most definitely break the guitar neck.

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Guitar Maintenance – Tips For Travel

• Keep your fingers as close to the fretboard as possible whilst hovering above the strings. If you look at some Metal guitar players who shred a lot, you’ll notice that their left hand only do micro movements, and they don’t lift their fingers up very high at all. The less distance you have between the strings and your fingers, the faster you can play – Simple!

• Apply pressure on the guitar strings using only your finger tips when playing lead guitar. This will increase your overall accuracy and also allow you to play faster.

• To be able to fly around the guitar neck and play fast, your hands have to be free to move and NOT be anchored down. Try as much as possible to have only your thumb and fingers in contact with the guitar neck to increase your freedom of movement.

Blues Position

In the past, guitar players used to grasp the neck of the guitar with their entire hand. This caused quite a few physical injuries to people who played for long periods of time. This technique also reduced the maneuverability of the left hand making it hard to play fast.

Modern Rock and Metal players prefer to have their thumbs placed on the back of the guitar to give the hand an anchor. This in turn speeds up playing incredibly.

For my own personal style of playing, I mainly stick to the Metal guitar method but when I go for string bends or vibrato’s, I will quickly switch to the Blues position of grasping the entire neck because my fingers are weak. Keeping this grip and my fingers rigid, I am then able to use my wrist only to bend or vibrate the strings.

Click here for more guitar tutorials for beginners.

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Fretting Tips For Your Left Hand

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How To Check A Guitar Necks Straightness

Here’s a question frequently asked by beginners looking to buy a new guitar. ” How do I check the guitar neck for straightness?”

Firstly, you’ll want to play with the guitar to get the feel of the action and check the clearance between the fret and the bottom of the strings. Do this for the 1st and 12th frets. If you don’t get enough clearance, you’ll end up with fret-buzz.

To check for any twisting of the neck, place the guitar face up and have the bottom rest on the floor while you support the guitar by the peg head. You’ll want to look down the neck with it pointing directly at you. Look at the left and right side of the guitar using the low E and high E strings as guidelines.

If there is a twist present, you will notice that the peg head dips in the direction of a twist. It’s best to get a guitar with very minimal twisting.

Next hold the guitar in playing position and look down the side of the neck for straightness & relief. Look at the spacing between the bass string and fret. Is there a dip ( relief ) somewhere in the middle of the neck ( check around the 7th fret )?

You will need a certain amount of relief to avoid fret buzzing. If you have a bow in the neck in the opposite direction, most likely any note you play is going to buzz like crazy. This can be fixed by adjusting the truss rod. If you don’t know how to do this, let me know and I’ll post some quick instructions.

In the meantime, get a sales person at the guitar shop to adjust the guitar neck relief for you before you purchase the guitar.

photo credit: gregoryjameswalsh

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How To Check The Straightness Of A Guitar Neck

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Guitar Tips - Buying A Guitar

Before you can get started with your guitar tutorials, you first need to buy a guitar! Buying your first guitar can be a real dilemma – I can still remember my first guitar, I saved up my salary for months to buy it and I didn’t want buy the wrong guitar or worse, ending up with a lemon.

So here are some quick tips for for buying a guitar:

Decide which style of guitar you would most likely end up playing. Would it be rock? Metal? Jazz or blues guitar? Or maybe you want to be an all rounder? Once you find that out, it’s time to find a guitar that will give you the type of sound you’re looking for. Remember also that effects pedals and amps etc will also modify your tone quite a bit. I will cover more on that in a later post.

Do not make a rushed decision. Talk to people who have an extensive knowledge on guitars, or have been playing for many years. You can even go to online forums and ask, most people in forums who share your same interest are helpful.

As a beginner, look for a package if available. Quite often, manufacturers might bundle up guitar tutorials or courses to go with one of their guitar models. That would be ideal and would save you a lot of money. More often than not, a guitar store will offer you such packages.

In my own experience, every time I’ve purchased a guitar, I’ve been able to bargain with the guitar store and get some sort of discount. Try to get them to drop the price for you a little bit and also include accessories in for free ( like guitar straps, picks, guitar tuners etc ). It’s good to buy an amp or sound equipment at this time too because tying all these up together will just save you tons of cash.

The most important thing for you as a beginner, is to learn to check for the straightness of the guitar neck. If it is straight, then the intonation will be consistent throughout the fretboard. NOTE: if you buy a guitar with a slightly twisted neck, there is absolutely no way you can fix it. You can only fix a bowed neck but not a twisted one.

On a final note, hold the guitar and play some stuff. If you don’t know how to play yet, don’t be embarrassed, just pluck some a few guitar strings and listen to it. Does it sound satisfactory to you? Put your hand on the neck and ask yourself, ” does my hand feel comfortable on the guitar neck?”, ” Is it too wide, or too narrow for my hands ” ?

I hope these quick tips have given you more confidence in going out there and finding yourself your FIRST guitar!
photo credit: psd

Post from: Guitar Tutorials - For Beginners tips, chords, scales and course reviews

Guitar Tips For Buying A Guitar

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