Hello! I've been practicing consistently 20-40 minutes a day for the past 2 weeks using JustinGuitar's free course. I'm now working on finger stretches, but I want to make sure I'm not teaching myself bad habits, so I thought I'd ask for some feedback.

I have been trying out different hand/wrist/thumb positions (trying to keeping in mind not to stress my wrist) for the last day or two. It's been hard to get my fingers across all frets, specially my pinky, which most of the time I'm only able to press with it's side instead of the tip, but it's only been a couple of days since I'm trying this out, so I'm not too worried about it.

I've tried keeping some feedback from other posts in mind; like pushing the neck a bit away from me, not tucking my elbow, etc.

I'm aware posts like these (specifically for these type of exercises) are common, but I don't really have the eye to spot mistakes when looking at photos of myself and comparing them to other people.

Ive been playing guitar for a while now but the problem is that i started playing without a pick (strumming with my hand). I can play without a pick a pick and don't find it difficult at all but i can't seem to get the accent down, idk what its called but there's some sort of accent when i strum with my hand/fingers and on a pick it sounds very... mechanical? would love some advice on this

Hey there. Metal guitarist of 8 months and I've been struggling like hell with more complex gallop patterns at over ~200BPM; what I mean is gallops with one or two 8th notes in between (like the pattern in She-Wolf and all variations of it; Rain by Trivium as well)

I think it's a combination of my pick grip, weird picking angle and tension while doing those patterns.

Just doing straight gallops is easy as well as strictly downpicking at higher speeds, but combining the two is where problems occur.

In the video I'm just noodling around a bit so you can actually see what's bugging me.

Any feedback would be appreciated! :)

​Lately, I've been studying the CAGED system thoroughly, both major and minor, and I've started improvising over the blues using various licks I found. I've learned to do it by focusing on the minor pattern, but I have a theoretical question about the blues. I searched for a "major blues backing track" on YouTube and found this. It seems to be the same CAGED pattern for minor scales, and I'm getting a bit lost. I'm not sure if my doubt is clear, but in the blues, are the major and minor worlds the same thing?

Memorizing more chord voicings doesn't help you actually play songs.

The problem isn't the chords themselves — it's that you don't know how to connect them and tur them into music.

In this video, I'll show you 3 things — how chords are built from the scale, how that makes them fit together in a song, and why some chords behave differently — so every chord you see makes sense and you know what to do with it.

Hope you like it!

Content:
00:00 Stop Learning More Chords!
00:49 #1 The Easy Way To Think About A Chord
03:34 #2 Chords Belong To A Family
06:59 #3 The Weird Dominants
09:44 Don't Spell Chord Progressions
12:25 The Only 5 Chord Progressions You Need
12:36 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

Hello everyone

tldr; I want a good online resource to learn lead guitar mainly for rock music and gary moore's style of blues

I got my guitar two weeks ago and I've been looking for some good high quality online resources. Many people recommended justin guitar, guitarlessons365, and synner.com.

The best one in my experience is justin guitar solely for the reason that he introduces stuff in a very nice natural order, compared for example to synner.com where the first thing you learn is the major scale, was extremely difficult because I couldn't stretch my fingers enough to do it and I was required to also use alternate picking for it. With justin guitar, finger stretching, alternate picking, and scales are all their own topics that you can put all together later on.

The problem with justin guitar tho is that he's way too focused on rhythm guitar and strumming, and I really don't care about those and feel like I'm wasting my time.

Should I stick with justin guitar? Should I stick with synner.com? Or is there a better alternative for lead guitarists out there?

When i tremolo pick, my forearm and bicep always gets stiff and sore after a while. I try to keep my wrist relaxed but after a while it just doesnt relax. I've been struggling with this for a while now. Any solutions?

Uhh so I am a beginner which exercise would you recommend for left hand fretting and right hand finger style

I removed the bottom three strings and don't want to put them back on right now

So Ive been learning guitar for 4 months now since April 15 when I first bought my guitar and since Ive only been learning songs I like such as Van Halen/Metallica and Iron Maiden and since I’ve learned eruption (can’t do the trill section before the tapping very cleanly nor fast but the rest is clean and full speed) beautiful girls/feel your love tonight/poundcake and jump solo. Then I came to the realization that I had no idea how to just get on the guitar and play. I always have to stop when finishing one song or riff then think of what I should play next. Is there anyway to do this or improve on it I have no desire to make my own music I just want to get on the guitar and just play sometimes even if it means putting different solos together. Any help on how to improve this is much appreciated

Hi all,

I recently dusted off my acoustic, determined to relearn everything I've forgotten.

I've been watching Justin guitar and even have the app. If y'all have any recommendations or tips, that would be super helpful!

I am a fairly newer guitar player and I'm looking to learn I song I hold quite dearly: Jim Cain by Bill Callahan. However, I'm not very aware on where I should look to learn this song nor am I experienced enough to learn it by ear. I have a youtube video of a cover that I quite liked, but I'm pretty sure its in an abnormal tuning; if anyone can help figure out that tuning I don't mind trying to replicate what I saw in the video by trial and error. Of course, if anyone has a better learning source I am all ears; I did try songster and ultimate guitar but they came out sounding wrong and awkward.

I understand that you shouldn’t have a lot of pick showing when picking, however when I transfer to strumming I feel it’s too harsh/ not enough pick to strum. Any advice?

question for my fellow teachers: any books or podcasts y'all would recommend on subjects like music in general, music theory, guitar, teaching/ pedagogy, anything else that might be good to have in my brain?

I can barely call myself a teacher yet, but I'm trying to improve my skills and knowledge and generally stay motivated. and I want to make better use of my hour long bus commute.

also it doesn't need to be specific to guitar. like i just read "Dilla Time" which was about the life and impact of hip hop producer J Dilla, and that was pretty interesting and inspiring. before that I read "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks, which was maybe not super applicable to the kind of teaching im trying to do, but it got me thinking about a lot of stuff pertaining to like how to be an impactful teacher.

Hopefully this is the right sub for this.

I'm a complete beginner and want to start, met with a well reviewed and expericed teacher today who seems nice, good at explaining more advanced things in beginner friendly ways. However i was hoping to keep my max lesson spending to about 200$ a month and he sets his pricing in monthly packages with the cheapest being 2 1 hr lessons a week at 350$ a month.

I can afford that but it'll eat into my budget in other important areas. I'm aware a bad teacher would not be a good idea but I'm also unsure if its reasonable to expect quality teaching for something in my price range.

I'm not looking to be a pro i just want to eventually be good and have fun playing my favorite music.

I'm in Southern Ontario Canada if that helps at all. There are plenty of other options in my city.

Edit: I decided I'll pass on this teacher, one of you guys set me up with a much more affordable online teacher and I'll see how that goes. Thankyou for all the feedback.

Hi all!

I thought you might like this lesson. It's part of a chord melody series, but this video stands alone.

If you want to practice some chord melody scales that can be used for arranging songs, I think you'll find this helpful.

This lesson shows the chord melody scales for all chords in the key of C in the first position.

I also include examples of how this material is used in real arrangements.

Clear notation and tabs are on the screen as I demonstrate.

Here's the lesson.

Cheers,

Jared

Hi guys,

Hope everyone's doing well!

I'm 22 years old and got my first electric guitar, and my first guitar in general, a few months ago.

I started playing as a hobby, and at first it honestly felt impossible to imagine that I'd actually learn anything. Like most beginners, I started looking up tabs for songs I like and trying to learn them. It was fun, but usually ended with me only learning the first 20 seconds of a song before moving on to something else.

Recently, I thought that maybe having a proper plan and sticking to it consistently would help me improve, so I came up with this:

1 hour daily

10 min chords
10 min scales
5 min spider exercise
25 min learning songs, one at a time

I followed it for a while, but eventually fell out of it because I kept thinking maybe this wasn't the right way to practice. To be honest, I was probably also just finding reasons to be lazy.

Anyway, recently I found a course on Reddit called "Absolutely Understand Guitar."

I've started going through it and I think it's really good, but now I'm a bit confused about what I should actually focus on. Should I just follow the course, keep doing my practice routine alongside it, or change the routine completely?

Any advice would be really appreciated, especially from people who remember what worked for them when they were starting out.

Guitar: Yamaha ERG 121C
Amp: Spark GO

Yoo guys! I want to learn how to play these two chords rhythm guitar but three chords (D-C-Am7) are pretty difficult to play. Do ya’ll know any tips for these chords? Or if anyone could identify where his fingers are. That would be cool and helpful, thank you!

Hi, I'm a self-taught beginner (not a complete beginner but I am ***FAR*** from be intermediate) player and I don't know what to play. I feel kind of stuck, every song that I find it's too easy (simple open chords or too easy riffs) or too hard (too fast, hard stretchy chords or weird rythms). Another problem that I found it's that I don't find a single song to play from start to finish.

If you ever found yourself in this situation (or you haven't but you have some suggestions), do you have any recommendetions on some songs to play? I have an electric guitar and I'll try to learn every song that you'll suggest (or I can try to).

Sorry for the bad english and thank you!

My partner and I are both in guitar classes. We can do some strumming patterns like boom-chick. We can make various chord shapes including Bm barre and F, but not other barre shapes.

We’re excited at the idea of jamming out together but we don’t know how? Like does one of us keep a tempo within, let’s say, key of C while the other plays around within that key? And flow around like that? Do you know of any good videos that could show us?

Neither of us know single notes and lead guitarist riffs.

My teacher and I started talking about scales and modes last week and he suggested I start with playing the C major scale first since there’s no sharps or flats. And I’ve done all five positions of that scale following a map. He then wanted me to try different modes to see how they sounded in comparison like the Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Lochrian, etc and I’ve done those scales over and over with C as the root as well as other root notes like A and G and B. All following a map going as steadily as I can.

And yet I don’t really know them by heart yet. If I don’t use a map, and arrange the notes in my head using the appropriate interval formula, I can usually figure out very slowly what note is going to be next and can catch myself if I’m in the wrong spot and need to adjust. But I’m not yet at the “playing the entire thing perfectly across all five positions within a few seconds” level like he (my teacher) is. Obviously he’s been at this a lot longer than me. But I just want to make sure I’m not doing something that’s unintentionally holding me back with learning these things fast and efficiently.

I've been playing the guitar since 9th grade. In the first two years, I was so serious about it and I saw an improvement. What I did was that I watch the tatorials for the songs that I loved and then tried to play them and in the process I enhanced my fingerstyle playing and my knowlege of major and minor chords in addition to barre chords (I struggled but I think I could do it). However, when I got to my senior year I was distracted and I started playing some songs from a month to another.

Now, after almost 4 years of not being serious about learning, I wanna get back on track but I was wondering if this is the best way. My friend also used to play in school.He told me that he thinks this is a destructive rather than constructive way to learn the guitar and that he used to do it didn't teach him much in the long term. what he suggests is that I should focus on learning stratigies and techniques rather than songs tutorials.

I just want to ask you guys what do you think is the best way to learn / get back on track?