For this blog a few ideas how you can approach your fingerstyle technique for the guitar.

When people start out with the guitar, most of them will find playing with fingers easier. The plectrum is an alien piece of plastic in your fingers, and it needs time and practise to start to feel natural; fingers, on the other hand, feel natural as they are part of your body. You will need to learn how to use them to get the most out of them but for most people playing with fingers feel natural.

When you work on your own without a teacher or any form of support from outside, look into the various approaches of fingerstye playing: There is the classical approach with the rest-and freestroke, then there is folk style fingerpicking.
For beginners I would strongly recommend to get used to one form of fingerstye playing before moving on to the next approach. Get comfortable with the style you choose and make sure you can use it at all times.
Experienced players may want to look at a particular fingerstyle and develop their own style out of the various, conventional techniques.

When you look at developing your own fingerstyle technique you can look at what your playing needs and use your fingers in a way which will help you to get your playing to a higher level. Try various hybrid forms of picking which use thumb and fingers in a creative way. Make sure you develop your fingers well enough to get a full tone out of your strings.

Keep at it and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

 

For this article a few tips what you can do to improve your guitarplaying in the style of Chicago blues. The term Chicago blues stands for electric blues in the style of Buddy Guy, Freddie King and a host of other guitar players including the guitar players who were influenced by these guitarists such as Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor.

            Listening:

Anyone who wants to get into a certain style of playing should listen a lot of music which is based on that particular style of guitar playing. Within the Chicago style there is a lot of variation, one thing the style does have in common is it does use a lot of guitar improvisation such as guitar solos. Possibly one of the reasons why many guitarists were drawn to this style in the first place? Listen to the big names first such as Albert, Freddie and BB King, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and listen then to more obscure names. Get a feel for how they play and what kind of approach they use for their bands to get the sounds they want.

          Pentatonic Scales:

Learn one pentatonic scale in one key. See if you can learn all five positions, three if five is too much. Stick to this one key. Learn to understand how the scale works, and how you can transpose the scale into any other key. Listen to the songs you like and find out how the scale fits in. Do not listen only to the guitar!!! Listen to the chords of the keyboards and the horns. See if you can hear how the song works, this will help you with understanding the song and how its sounds works against the guitar.

        Theme and Playing:

Take one song you like. Look for songs with a strong theme such as “The Hide Away” the songs contains several themes which vary in rhythm. Try to play one of them. If you cannot get all the notes try to get them as close as you can,. Once you can play one theme, try making variations on the theme by improvising with the notes and the rhythm. Once you can play this in one position move around to other positions you know and do the same.

Once you get used to this kind of playing why not set up your own theme and vary them in a similar way. Listen to a lot of blues to see where the variations come from and what you can do for yourself to make it sound like that.
Also listen to some Rock songs you like and try to see the connection between the blues and some more moderns styles of Rock.

        Acoustic Blues:

Once you get a feel for the electric sounds of the Chicago style, why not check out some older forms of acoustic blues such as Robert Johnson. Again, try to see how this style influenced more modern styles of guitar playing.

Have fun and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

For this article a few highlights about your guitar tone.

Most beginners may wonder what is up with guitar tone. “Does a guitar’s tone not depend on the instrument and how well you play”? they may wonder. Well to an extend that is true but there is a lot you can do yourself to get a better tone.
The problem with the guitar is, you give anyone, who has never played, a guitar and get them to play one note or a simple, open string chord and they will get a sound. This is not the case when you think of a violin or a trumpet. With both those instruments you need to work on your technique to produce a sound. The guitar, on the other hand, seem to be this instrument which will give you a sound straight away. Get an experienced guitar player to play the same note or chord compared to any beginner, and both people will produce the same sound. Difference is the experienced guitar player will produce a better sound.

The tone of the guitar depend on your fingers, how you finger your chords and the kind of equipment you use such as guitar, plectrum, amplifier and any kind of effects in between amp and guitar. Let us have a closer look at some of those elements I mentioned before:

                  Fingers:

 The touch of your fingers will interact with the strings of your guitar: When you dig in harder on the strings, the strings will produce a fuller and louder sound. When you dig in too hard the strings will break up their sound and the tone is no longer any good. It is a fine line between the sound breaking up and producing a good sound. Playing as strong as you can is a good starting point. Again, this is something most beginners will get into at a later stage.

What I mentioned about fingers also applies to the plectrum: The plectrum acts in a similar way as your fingers, the difference is that the plectrum acts like a piece of plastic in between your fingers and the strings: It produces a brighter tone which also makes the strings sound louder as well.

When you are starting out with the guitar it makes sense to try to get on with both plectrum and fingers since you are new to playing the guitar. 
If you are used to playing with a plectrum you may want to try playing with your fingers since it produces a different tone: It is more mellow compared to playing with a plectrum. Once you get used to playing with your fingers try to get your finger technique up to the same level as you plectrum technique. Once you can do this you can let the music decide which technique is best suited for what you want to play.

             
               Equipment:

Once your plectrum-and finger technique are in place have a look at your guitar: When you are using and electric one, look at your pick ups: Are they weak and microphonic or do they produce a thick, full tone? Changing your pick ups on your electric can give you a different tone at the flick of a switch.

Looking at the kind of amp you use, does it have a preamp, or is it a single channel amp? Try playing with your fingers when you use a bit of distortion. Listen to your tone, see how different it can sound compared to when you use a plectrum.
Amps with a preamp will give you the ability to dial in a bit of extra volume which can give you a bit of distortion to your sound. Sometimes a tiny bit of distortion may just be what you like. A distortion- or overdrive pedal can also act like a preamp on your amplifier.

Use any distortion or overdrive pedals? Try to pick one which work best with your amp and guitar. If you have several overdrives, try them to see which one works best for what you want. You will find that over time your taste may change. It makes sense to have a few different overdrive pedals since all of them will give you a different flavour. 

Tone at the end of the day is a personal thing, there is something like good and bad tone, but in between those two there is a lot of variation and most of it will depend on your vision, experience, musical taste and style.

Keep on working on your tone and hope to catch again soon,
Eddie  

Most of this riff is played on the high A string apart from one note, which is played on the E string:

           Em                                    C                 Bm
          
           /           /            /             /             /     /          play this part twice before moving on to next two bars
    A    7—7—10—7—-5—-        3—-5—-3—2—-

    E   ————————–         ——————–

    C   ————————–          ——————- 

    G  —————————-        ———————

           G                                   A
           /               /                   /             /
   A  ————————      –0-0–0-0–0-0–0-0—-

   E  —3-3–3-3–3-3–3-3–     ————————–

   C  ————————–    —————————

  G  ————————–     —————————

Chordshapes:

         Em   Bm   G      C      A

   A  —-2—-2—-2—-3—-0—

   E   —3—-2—-3—–0—-0–

   C  —4—–2—-2—–0—-1—

   G —4—–4—–0—–0—-2—

Play the riff with a friend, one of you doing the single notes for the riff while the other plays the chords with the suggested rythm as indicated by the slashes.

Enjoy and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

Here are three chords for those of you who are new to the Ukulele. You can play these chords strumstyle of pickstyle. Strumming the strings means you play all the strings in one go, picking the strings means you pick one string at a time.

Here are the shapes for the three chords :

            C          F             G7

 A ——3——–0———-2———–

 E ——0——–1———-1———–

 C ——0——–0———-2———–

 G ——0——–2———-0———–

 Strum each chords once with your thumb before you move on to the next chord. 
 Another way to play these chords is to pick each string once instead of playing all the strings at the same time. This style is called pick-style.
Try it and see what is sounds like, try to play  the chords as smooth as possible.

Enjoy an hope to catch you soon again,
Eddie 

For this article some insight into your daily practise for the guitar. Those of you who use improvisation may find it particularly useful.

Practising the guitar daily makes sense as it keeps you on top of your game. Making music and playing the guitar is a skill and playing daily will keep you in touch with these skills.
Most of you who have been playing for a while will know what to work on, just look at your playing and find something you are not that good at and look at how to make it better.
For those of you who do not know what to work on here is a short list with areas anyone should look at:

     Visualisation of Fretboard:

With this term I mean seeing where your triads are on the fretboard, see your chords (major and minor), break them down over sets of three strings as triads are made out of three notes. Once you can see them you will start to see more. Learn all the inversions as well, again break them down over sets of three strings. Once you can do that you will realise where some of those well-known barrechord shapes come from.

Next to seeing your chords there are scales: Break your scales down in octaves, and visualise them against your chords, this will help you formulating arpeggios on the fretboard.
Once you start to see chords and scales why not look at whole chordprogressions since you be playing solos over them? Work out the most common chordshapes for regular chordprogressions, it will help you to find the right notes when you need to play over these chords.

Visualise target notes for your solos: You can use particular notes to highlight a chord in your solo, find this note in various places and be able to weave around this note with other notes.

     Not Know What To Practise?

If you are not sure what to do make sure you can fall back on a practise routine. Whatever you do, all helps. It is a good habit to reinforce what you can do. Whatever you play, make sure you can do it well and that your playing is consistent.

     Equipment:

If you have various guitars, make sure you play them all regularly. Get them all set up properly so all of them will be a favourite.
When it comes to amps, same as with your guitars, make sure they all work properly and get to know what sounds they can make and find out what you like about them.

Effects: Again as with your amps, get to know what they do and be able to control your effects for the sounds you like.

    Inspiration:

We all need inspiration and to keep you inspired you can read about other guitar players, read about what they do and how they do it, what kind of equipment they use and what their vision is when it comes to playing the guitar, songwriting and improvising.

For next blog: Pedals which sound good with Marshall JCM 900 SL-X
Hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

For this article the tab for “Sweet Child of Mine”, it is Slash’s most melodic intro up to date, even though the idea appeared out of a fingering excercise.

The original is in the key of E and the strings of guitar are detuned one half step. I have written out the tab. for the key of Eb, no need to detune, you can jam along with the original and all will sound fine.
The intro is made out of two parts and only the notes of the first part of each bar changes, the rest of the notes of the intro idea stay the same all the way throughout. If you are a beginner and find it hard to play the whole idea in one go I suggest you try playing only last part first, once you have it under your fingers then move on to the first part. Once you have mastered first part put both parts together and play them as one idea.
Above each bar are the chords which are there to accompany the idea, they are also the chords for the verse of the song.

  

     Db                                          x2         B                              x2          Gb                                       x2

  E———————–14———13—–   ——————–14—-13—-    ————————-14—-13—–

  B ——-14——————16——–14-  —–14—————16—-14-   ——-14——————16—–14–

  G ———–13–11———————–  ———–13–11—————   –11———13–11——————–

  D –11————————————   -13——————————   —————————————–

  A —————————————–   ———————————-   —————————————–

  E —————————————–   ———————————–   —————————————–

      Db                                          x2

  E ———————-14——–13—-

  B ——14——————16——-14-

  G ———–13—11——————–           Repeat Whole Intro Several Times

  D -11————————————

  A —————————————–

  E —————————————–

What I like about this particular fingering is that for the first bar you can see a powerchord of Db, there is a logic in the fingering and this helps you to remember where to put your fingers. The first note is a Db and if you play the first 3 notes of the intro as a chord you will get a Db powerchord. The logic ends there and there is a lot of movement in the fingering, something which makes playing less comfortable.
Have a look at the next fingering which is all in position, much easier. Make sure you use your pink for the very first note. Big stretches and all the notes jump strings, yes, good one to get smooth with your string skipping. Check it out:

       Db                                    x2           B                                  x2       Gb                                     x2

  E  ————————14—–13—    ————————14——13—  ———————-14——13——

  B  ——-14—————–16——14-  ———-14————–16——14  ——-14—————-16—–14–

  G ————-13————————  —————13——————-  ————13————————

  D ——————16——————-  –13—————16————-   –16————16——————-

   A–16————————————  ———————————–    —————————————

       Db                                       x2

   E  ————————14—–13—-

   B ——-14——————16——14

   G ———–13————————–

    D —————-16——————–

    A–16———————————–

    E —————————————

When you carefully check the new fingering you will notice that the last part remains the same, also the second bar has not changed at all! It is mainly the first bar, the third and last bar which receive a different fingering.
Try both fingerings to see which one you like best.
Whenever you work out solos, riffs or intros look beyound the notes to see what is going on, which makes it also easier to play eventually.

The album “Appetite for Destruction” does contain many, many good riffs and intros, again I feel Slash has not being able to improve on his compositional ideas, his playing, on the other hand, has improved. Check out his latest soloalbum “World on Fire” and you will notice how smooth his solos and speed are on that recording.

Enjoy and hope to see you soon again.
Eddie

How do you keep your fingers in shape, especially during those times you may not play that much? Playing daily is the best thing you can do to keep your fingers (and mind) in good shape, but there may be times you will not have much time to play or the things you play are very different from what you used to play.
For this article a handful of tips of things you can do to keep yourself on top of your game.

Let us start off with the most obvious, your fretting hand, here some simple ideas of what you can do to keep all those fingers working independantly.

                        Fretting Hand Ideas:

The aim is to be able to use the fingers of your fretting hand in any way you want. They will be ready for whatever you want them to play. You can work on any set of fingers, the most obvious one is four fingers in a row. You can play any note anywhere on the fretboard and just go up four notes in a row. Once you have completed your four notes, move along with the next set of four notes and carry on until you have covered the whole fretboard.  You can play this idea on one string or play it on several strings. This excercise is not only good for your fingers, it gives your wrist a good work out as well: higher postions will ask for a different wrist position.
Do this excercise for a short time, also good one for warming up.

Next, play single string skipping ideas, good for coordination fingers and hand and wrist. You can design your own ideas, just think that you need to skip strings regularly. String skipping is the one thing which asks a lot of concentration and coordination. Most beginners will find it hard in the beginning as they will stumble over the notes as they move up to the next set of strings.
Instead of making your own stringskipping excercises you can also look at some riffs or solos which use string skipping. The intro of Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” is a great example of some fine string skipping. You will find the tap for it somewhere on this blog.

Because your fretting hand does not only play single strings you can also try some chordshapes: You can go for chordshapes you do not know, get one chordshape and move this shape along up the fretboard. It is a good idea to hear the tonality of the chord change: You move same chordshape along fretboard but the tone of the chord will change according to the fretposition where you play the chord. 

Instead of working with one chord why not take a handful of chords, create a sequence of chords which sound good together. You could create your own chordsequence or take part of a chordsequence from a song you like. Play the chords with various strums and also try to pick the chords, either using fingers or a plectrum. Try to vary the tempo, remember you are not really playing a song just do some work-out for your fingers, so push yourself, try strumming as fast as you can until you have reached your limit and the chords will no longer sound good. This idea is also good feedback to find out where your are with your technique at the moment.

Let us now have a look at some ideas which will improve the technique of your strumming or picking hand
                  
                     Picking Hand:

What I mentioned before about independance of your fingers of fretting hand applies also to your picking hand, especially if you use fingerstyle: Make sure you can use all your main picking fingers. Not many guitar players use their pink during fingerpicking, I will leave it up to you if you want to devote extra time to that one. 

An easy, straightforward picking pattern is to pick the strings one by one in a row, do this with a set of chords, just play your strings from low to high, and play it then backwards. If you are playing this idea using fingers why not try it now with a plectrum. Use same pattern but now using a plectrum.

What I mentioned before about stringskipping applies also to your picking hand: String skipping is a great workout for both fretting-and picking hand, check out some more ideas to get you going.

                 Extra Techniques:

Most of the fretting hand ideas I mentioned before can be played straightforward with down and up picking, but why not use any hammer-ons and pull-offs, again they may need some extra practise to get them smooth in your system.

Bends: Because you do not want to be one of those guitarplayers who will say “Aouch” after each bend, especially those ones in the lower regions of the fretboard, make sure you stay on top of your bends: Bend all over the fretboard, use double and single bends and make sure you can do them on any of your high E, B and G string. Bending on the D string? Depending on your taste, the wound strings do not ring as long as the plain strings and bends sound different, but it will all depend on what you need, bend on the D as well as the tension is higher and will help strenthen your fingers.
If you have never used any string bending do not go over the top as string bending will rip the skin of your fingers if your fingers are not use to it! To keep you fingers used to stringbending, play bends regularly to keep the hard skin of your fingers in tact. 

Most of the above ideas will give you good feedback on the shape of your fingers, make sure you use the right guitar technique, it will make you think about guitar heroes in a different way. There is not magic about playing guitar well: You need to play and play and play and love what you are doing.
Playing at amazing speed? Again no mystery, it is all about coordination of your hands and fingers and musical ideas and some ideas will lend themselve to be played at blazing speed, use it a variety instead of geting hooked up on becoming a speed monster.

Hope to see you soon again,
Eddie