Little and Often- The road to a great practice.

Over the past couple of months I have begun taking singing lessons, and all is going very well. My vocal ability is progressing at great speeds and my overall musical knowledge has grown.
When it comes to discussing practising my singing at home their is always this one quote that my teacher comes out with, 'little and often'. But what does he mean by this? What he means is that singing is a physical exercise, and like every physical exercise you have to take rests, and if you just go for it all in one go your muscles will just get tired, your singing will loose quality and your muscles will begin to ache. So if you spread your exercises out you will be able to have a much more production session.


Now, I am sure at this point you are all very confused, this is a guitar blog and I am talking about singing. But this will all make sense to you very soon, because you see, guitar is a physical exercise to, just like singing.


If you just play for hours on end every day, just going from one technique to the other, your muscles just get tired, your playing looses quality and your muscles begin to ache, especially if you like to play lots of fast stuff. I know this very well from experience. But after applying this advice from my singing teacher to my guitar playing my practices and work outs have become a lot better. You see, taken regular short breaks gives your muscles a chance to relax between each exercise, meaning it can work for much longer through out the day.


Here is how I apply this rule:
-Stretches
-Warm up
- finger strength exercises
- Practice improvising
- Picking/ Speed picking exercises.


This will take up at least an hour to an hour and a half of constant playing, so after this I take a rest for about 10 minutes.


- Sweep picking (2 string)
- Sweep picking (3 string)
- Sweep picking (5 string)
- Sweep picking (switching amount of strings)
- Scales
- Improvising in the scale I am working on
-Arpeggios and chords


Then its time for a small 5 minute rest.


- Rhythm guitar exercises
- A variety of riffs and song sections
- Tapping
- Legato
- More tapping.
- Other (any extra thing I want to work on, or time for writing)


This will usually take up about 5 hours through out the day. I will also often take one of the rests as a longer one, often over an hour, where I will eat and watch TV. I will also swap techniques around, spend more time on a technique I see weaker or give a technique a day off all together sometimes, depending on how im feeling each day, or how much free time I have.


Practising like this will be much more productive for you, it will be miles better at improving your stamina and will help you to avoid any injuries you can get from playing the guitar.


I also always take at least one day a week where I avoid intense practice, I might still play, but I will play less, and no fast stuff. This is a great chance to give your muscles a longer rest, Which is also very important, like with any physical activity. You can use this day as a day off from guitar, or you can spend it learning some theory or a new song.




So take this advice, but arrange the routine to suit what you want t play, how you spend this time is completely up to you, just play what you like to play and have fun.

Common Scales in Today's Music

Here are a few scales which are very common in today's music. Some of them will be more common in rock and metal, but all are great scales to have in your musical arsenal.


The best scale to start off with is the major scale as many of the scales you will come across are spin-off's of the major scale and the fingering shapes are very similar, so after learning the major scale the other scales will become a lot easier to understand and master. This scale is found in every type of music, whether it rock, pop, metal or classical, it will be there somewhere.


Another one that is ppuler and easy for beginners is the minor pentatonic. This is very simple and very common in all types of music, and is also very easy to use. This is used by a lot of blues and rock players players,  like Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix and Zakk Wylde.


The harmonic minor is brilliant for writing those really emotion sounding melodies and solos and is a key part of Yngwie Malmsteen and Jason Beckers sound. It is also common in lots of types of metal. This definitely one of the most popular scales around.


The diminished scale has a really sinister and edgy vibe and is great used in small amounts in heavy metal music. It is also very easy to find all over the neck.


These scales can be found all over the net in both tab and video lesson format.


Great scale knowledge can be the difference between a good guitarist and a great guitarist.

To learn scales or not to learn scales

For many learning guitarists scales are the scariest thing in the world. They will continually put them off for weeks and months hoping they will go away. Many people will gain the philosophy that if they get to know the guitar well enough then scales wont be needed, or if they learn enough solos by other people they will automatically know what to do when soloing themselves. But the truth is that it is virtually impossible, and learning scales would be a lot quicker.


I am aiming this post mainly at lead guitarists, but I personally feel rhythm guitars should learn some scales to.


'In music, a scale is a group of musical notes collected in ascending and descending order, that provides material for or is used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical work including melody and/or harmony.'


Scales will help tell you which notes work in each key, or what notes you can use over each chord, or just help you better understand the fretboard.


When improvising, scales are very useful as they give you a guide line to what notes you can play in each key. So if your improvising over an A minor blues progression, you can improvise over it using the notes from the A minor pentatonic scale and just let the music flow with ease.


Having good scale knowledge will make your note choices much better as you will know exactly what notes go together well, and what notes fit into a certain key.


It will also help you out when learning other peoples work as those long scales runs suddenly change from being a big bunch of numbers on a tab to a harmonic minor run, or C major, or which ever scale the guitarist has used. Suddenly you will understand what the guitarist was doing when creating the solo and you will be able to learn it and master it much quicker.




This is just the tip of the ice berg in terms of what learning scales and having a good scale vocabulary can do for you.


The more knowledge you have, the more freedom you can gain.


Having good technique is one thing, but if you know what notes to play with it, you are in heaven.

I great little tip for making great emotional solos

There are many great guitar players out there, and there are many great guitar solos. Recently I have been listening to a lot of instrumental guitar music, I have sat for hours just listening to tracks by greats like Jason Becker, Yngwie Malmsteen and Jeff Loomis. These are three very influential guitar players, every single piece they play packs in so much raw emotion, their music has the ability to just lift you up and carry you to a whole new world within the music. Its like beauty on a CD.

Whilst listening to this music I also noticed something that really helped me out a lot with my lead player, something that I feel plays a huge part in getting that great emotion and can be a great bit of advice to someone just starting out with playing lead guitar.

Think of your guitar like a lead vocalist.

You see, their is one thing this music reminded me of that I really did not expect, but at the same time did not surprise me to hear, and that is Opera. Opera is a genre of music that is not to everyone's cup of tea, but the one thing it does have that really cannot be denied is intense and raw emotion. Most Opera you hear is sung in Italian, but I do not speak Italian, and don't have a clue what the words are about, but the note choices, phrasing and tone are just so powerful that you just cant not listen and feel it, and guitar can be the same. There are no words of such, but choose the right notes, build a great phrase, make a good melody and you are right on the road to greatness.

This is only one way to look at soloing, and it may not work for every form of music, but give it a go and watch the music grow.

Guitar- Music or Sport?

Every day when you go onto any popular internet guitar forums you will see threads asking how can I pick fast,  or how can I get my speed up really high. If you go onto youtube you will see videos by guitarists claiming to be the faster alternate picker in the world, and you will find improvises by guitarists where they are just relying fully on speed, no phrasing or careful not selection, just full on speed. There is nothing wrong with this, playing fast is fun, its exciting, its mesmerising, it gets the adrenalin pumping and the head banging.


But at what stage does fast guitar playing turn from music into sport?


I feel there has become a very fine line between music and sport on the guitar in recent years as guitarists begin to focus more and more on pure speed. Many young guitarists will set playing fast as their ultimate goal in life, devoting hours and hours to it, and nothing else.


But is this really the best thing to do? Could this be the reason why great guitar players can be so much harder to come by these days?


Now, just to make things clear, I am not dissing fast guitar playing, I myself love fast guitar work, and most of what I love to do is fast. Nor am I saying that fast stuff is not music, because it is, any thing played on the guitar is music. What I'm saying is, should speed really be treated as the number one element when learning the guitar? And how fast is to fast?


I watched a video the other day by someone claiming to be the faster alternate picker in the world, and boy it was fast. I wouldn't have been to surprised if smoke started rising from his fingers. But even though it was pleasing on the eye, when I just listened with out watching the enjoyment seemed to go away, and ok it was only a demonstration of his skill, but I couldn't help think about how much greater that guy could be if he had focused his time on all the elements of the guitar instead of just speed. With the hours he must have spent practising that he could have become the next Steve Vai or Michael Angelo Bagio.


I myself have spent hours and hours just working on playing fast, only to look back and think 'was that really necessary'. It wasn't until after I realised That speed was just a side element to great guitar playing that I gained full understand of the guitar, improvising and composing.


I had to realise that your never really going to use alternate picking speeds of 200-300 bpm or more in a solo. Or not very often at least. Musics about what you play, not how fast you play it.


So take a look at some of the great speed players like Michael Angelo Bagio, Jeff Loomis and Paul Gilbert and you will realise its not all about speed, speeds just a small part of what makes there music so great, just one link in a very long, and very brilliant chain.


So in conclusion, don't stop working towards speed, speeds great, just make sure you know what to do with it when you get there.






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Great bend vibrato exercise!!

In my previous post I underlined the importance of a good vibrato in a lead guitar part.


Most guitarists will tell you it can take years to develop a good vibrato, and in terms of getting a vibrato with great feeling and power, this can be true. But before you start developing that you need to get the technique down. The bend vibrato is a technique that takes great finger strength and a strong grip on the neck. Here is an exercise that will help you build up that strength, and get you pulling off some good bend vibratos in as little as two weeks.


When you watch videos of great shredders like Jeff Loomis and Yngwie Malmsteen you will notice that a lot of the time they are doing their vibrato with just one or two fingers, but do all their big bends with three or four fingers. The reason for this is because with this vibrato you have to constantly bend the string back and forward, in a sort of rocking motion, instead of just up and hold. Creating this rocking motion is much easier when you use just one or two fingers, and as you do not have to bend a big distance you do not need the other fingers to add strength to the bend.


How you do this is basically the same as any bending technique. You have to fret the note you want to vibrato and twist your wrist to create the bend, sort of like your turning a door nob. What ever you do, do not bend using your fingers as your wrist muscles are much strong and your fingers will only end up hurting. It helps if you think of your hand as a pivot on the neck.


To get the right grip, place your thumb right over the neck on the bending, and as you bend let your thumb come over the fretboard a little bit, so you really are gripping the neck. This will make the whole process a lot easier and give the vibrato a much better tone and sustain.


Now for the exercise. Put your first finger on the 2nd string at fret twelve and using just that finger alone, bend the note up a whole tone. Then remove your first finger from the fretboard and put your middle finger at fret 13 on the 2nd string, and using just that finger alone, bend the string a whole tone. Then repeat this process with your other two fingers.
Repeat this exercise for a few minute, trying it out in a few different positions on the neck as you go. This is great for building strength in individual fingers and getting each one used to the bending motion.


This exercise helped me out big time, and it can do the same for you. Just work it into your daily practice routine.




Tell me what you think about vibrato, which guitarists have the best vibrato and what tips you have about developing good vibrato by commenting on this post.


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Vibrato: Making your guitar sing (or scream)

Many guitar players do not understand the importance of vibrato. It is a technique that is often neglected, or left till last in a guitar players practice schedule. But I am going to tell you why vibrato is one of the most important techniques you will ever learn on the guitar.


All the time you see guitar players who are doing these really awesome shredding runs in a solo, and its all extremely cool, until they reach that final bent or sustained note of the run and the sound just resembles an angry ally cat, screechy and piercing against the ear drum. This is because they are not using vibrato, or are using a very bad vibrato.


Vibrato is how you make your guitar sing. It is how you give your notes more feeling, soul or impact. A good vibrato can turn an average solo into a great solo.


Vibrato basically means to vibrate the note and can be done in a number of different ways. The simplest is to just vibrato your fingers when fretting the note, this is known as classic vibrato, but this doesn't do much on an electric guitar. The most common vibrato you will come across on electric guitar is a bend vibrato, which is done by bending the note back and forward to create the vibrato sound, this is very common in blues, rock and metal. Other types of vibrato include slide vibrato, which is used heavily by George lynch, and tremolo arm vibrato.


check out these examples:






I admit my vibrato in the first example is a little exaggerated, but you can hear it gives the note a lot more impact and will make it stand out much better against a backing track. But example two is just flat and dull and you get board very quickly.


So, now you have read this I want you to listen to one of your favourite guitar solos. Listen closer to the bends and long sustained notes. You will hear that they are not just still, they have a shaky sound, they have vibrato.


Who really wants to listen to some still, dull, sustained note? Give it some soul, give some venom, give it some vibrato!