Here is another of the weekly posts with 3 thoughts about guitar, music, and life. As it was my son Archie’s 5th birthday yesterday, this week’s post is a special one based around 3 useful things I have learnt from him, including how to inspire others, how to develop musical skills, and more.
There are some key guitar learning steps and sometimes people learn them the hard way. Back in 2008, I was in a band and one evening the other guitarist rocks up to practise.
He excitedly said to us, “Guys you will never believe what I just bought. I got this awesome guitar for 30 quid on eBay.”
He then pulls out this pretty looking, sparkling Les Paul replica.
With a bit of nervousness and excitement, I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
At this point, I had no idea that the next 60 minutes was going to be some of the most bizarre I was about to experience as a guitarist.
After a few moments, the door opened, and what I saw surprised me.
Out from behind the door came this guy with long greasy hair, tight jeans, and a big gut – looking like he had just woken up.
The blast of stale cigarette smoke hit me in the face as I stepped through the door.
“This is going to be fun” – I thought.
This was my first lesson with a so-called guitar tutor who was supposed to be the “best in town”.
Love him or loathe him (personally I love him), Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones knows a thing or two about guitar playing.
After all, he’s older than a conker tree and has over 3000 guitars (which is 2992 more than me!). Here are some tips from “Keef”, (courtesy of an interview with Alan di Perna) that are very apt…
Welcome to a new Q and A. For this one, we have Andy Crowley from Andyguitar.co.uk.
Due to his laid back teaching style, his genuine focus on helping beginners improve and high quality tutorials, he is someone I respect highly. Most popular online tutors, especially those on YouTube say they teach beginners, but often their lessons are too difficult for actual beginners.
There are three key factors that will define how happy, successful and efficient you are at learning to play the guitar, especially if you don’t have a teacher and therefore you effectively teach yourself guitar.
In this post, you will learn what they are, how important they are to your success and why only you can control these factors.
Grohl at The Concert for Valor in Washington, D.C., 2014 by DoD News Features, licensed under (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Most guitarists who want to learn how to play guitar and sing often prioritise the guitar part over the vocal part but this is a common mistake that will hold you back.
The reason why? Because it takes much longer that way. Spending too long perfecting the guitar part before adding singing can work against you.
Singing and playing the guitar is tough and does take a little time, but you can shorten that time by doing things in the correct order which I’ll show you.
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