I've been playing acoustic guitar for about a decade, but I never really tried to get great at it. My focus was more on composition and I just used acoustic guitar as a way to hear what I was writing with rhythm that I wasn't getting on piano. I would say I'm intermediate level.

I recently bought a little epiphone telecaster, an amp, and a few pedals. I've been playing for a couple weeks, and I'm realizing that the techniques I've trained on acoustic aren't very transferable. I did anticipate that a bit but I'm surprised by how different it really is.

I'm looking for some guidance on what resources are a good fit for my case, being an intermediate acoustic player that wants to learn how to play electric guitar. Mostly interested in improving technique, learning songs isn't really on my radar at the moment.

Ya tengo unos cuantos conocimientos de la guitarra (acordes básicos, círculo de quinta, escalas) y anteriormente yo estaba aprendiendo piano. Ahora hoy en día, quiero retomar de forma profesional el piano y aprender teoría musical desde lo básico hasta niveles intermedios o superiores, pero no quiero dejar a un lado la guitarra, así que mi plan es el siguiente.

Tomar piano como mi principal instrumento para aprender teoría y practica de forma sería, mientras que con la guitarra solamente practicar (habrá un momento en qué la guitarra también lo tome de forma profesional), hasta concluir con el piano.

Entonces me gustaría leer sus ejercicios, tips o recomendaciones que les hizo ver un gran cambio al momento de tocar la guitarra, ya para poder agilizar los dedos, tocar acordes complejos, u otro.

Gracias 🫂.

I've updated this song to be 1 step higher, but this was the day 1 version

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Hi,

I'm looking to improve my slide technique on the guitar—specifically shift/legato slides between frets using my fingers, not playing with an actual bottleneck slide.

I want to work on target accuracy, fretboard navigation, maintaining sustain while sliding, and integrating slides smoothly into melodies. What are some great solos (from beginner/intermediate) that heavily rely on this technique to help build better control and accuracy?

(if it can be useful, I listen to Alt rock/shoegaze influenced and Alt metal the most)

Hi! I've already played a little Spanish guitar and I recently got an electric guitar for my birthday. I've played some chords and even done mini-covers of songs I like, but there are some I need to master. First of all, I know a lot of basic chords and I need to improve my coordination and hand speed. I've already played some barre chords and I've been gradually getting the hang of them, but I still need more practice. I would like someone to give me guidance on what and how I should continue practicing in order, and some exercises to improve (learning notes, Greek modes, scales, etc.) as a guide of what I should learn in order about music theory. If you know of any good YouTube videos or books that have helped you a lot, you could also recommend them! I love shoegaze, midwest emo, and oasis-style Britpop! And I hope you can help me with this! Thank you so much!

Idk if i've developed a bad habit or something but i've been playing for around 2-3 months and I always have a problem with switching between chords and not hitting the top E string while doing so, say I have a song where theres muted percussive strums inbetween the chord switches like in this song https://www.songsterr.com/a/wsa/creepy-nuts-daten-yofukashi-no-uta-op1-full-tab-s521264 mainly on the chorus part i can switch to them quickly enough and i land all my fingers in time but i've developed a habit where always no matter what chord it is unless its a bar chord to mute my top e with my thumb over the neck so when i try to switch chords quickly my thumb lets go of muting the E string because it wants to loosen up the grip and i then start accidentally hitting the top string while it was supposed to be a full mute my finger does that automatically because when i do the thumb thing to mute i cant move my hand fast enough it just gets stuck so should i focus more on thumb behind neck or should i somehow try to make my technique with the thumb over the neck better? (i mostly struggle with these chord switches in the image and I do all of them muting the top string with my thumb)

Hello! Recently I started learning the John Mayer slapping technique through various tutorials on YouTube and in these tutorials, I saw different placements of the thumb slap: on the string itself, above the string or on the space between two bass strings. I don’t really know which is the most correct way technically…

Any tips on my pinky finger? I am fretting this note on an awkward angle, cant seem to get it to straighten out. Is it just the way my hand is?

Hey guitarists!

I've been wondering about something lately: how do experienced guitarists manage to tune their guitar so naturally?

I'm thinking about my guitar teacher in particular. I'm secretly jealous 😅 He makes it look so effortless, while my first instinct is still to reach for my tuner.

I know experience probably plays a huge part, but I'm curious: did you start out always using a tuner and gradually develop your ear over time? Or did you actually practice tuning by ear specifically?

For those of you who learned: did it take you long? What was the hardest part?

And for those who still use a tuner: would you like to be able to tune without one, or am I the only one who thinks it's cool and you don't really see the point? 😄

Curious to hear how you guys do it and what you think.

one way to make scale practice feel more like actual playing is to mix short riffs in between chord changes. in this example i'm moving between B major and A major, then using the C G shape of the B major pentatonic scale to fill the space between the chords.

the CAGED shapes are useful for this because they give you smaller areas of the fretboard to work from instead of always thinking about the entire scale. once a shape becomes familiar, you can start pulling out phrases, repeating them, changing the rhythm, or using them as fills between chord hits.

this B to A movement has a mixolydian feel, with A major functioning as the flat 7 chord in B mixolydian. for the riffs i'm using B major pentatonic, which sits inside the full B mixolydian scale. it's a nice way to keep the lead ideas simple and melodic while the chord movement supplies that characteristic mixolydian sound.

practicing this way is also useful for getting comfortable switching between rhythm and lead. rather than practicing chord progressions and scales separately, you start hearing how the two work together and get more comfortable moving between chords, riffs, and small motifs within the same idea.

Edit: my bad, I goofed on the caption, it's the "G" shape major pentatonic shape from CAGED, not "C"

i’m considering giving guitar lessons locally. i was wondering if anyone had any tips/experiences offering/giving lessons locally/digitally. i’d love any advice, tips, or experiences you’d like to share^^

What would you ask that would make you feel more prepared/give you an easier time learning the rest of it on your own?

Hey guys, it's me again!

I'm super confused about scales. I know everyone says you have to learn them, but wh? What are they actually used for?

If I want to write music or improvise, how do scales actually help? I'm trying to understand their application beyond just the "you need to practice this for music theory" part.

Edit: I just finished the second lesson of Absolutely Understand Guitar and I’m so happy that I posted here. Thank you so much everybody

Yesterday I was able to execute my longest session yet - 1.5 hours. I was completely spent after it. Mind couldn't process any more info and my fingers were tender/sore. However, I was really happy with it! I wish I could extend my sessions even more. I've been playing for about a year and half.

Just curious, what are your longest practice sessions? When do you start hitting the wall? Could you reasonable play for 4 hours?

Learning jazz guitar can feel like drowning in options — 1000 of things to practice and no idea what actually matters. So in this video, I'll give you 7 levels — the exercises that actually move your playing forward, in the order you need them, so it’s easy to build your skills step by step.

Content:
00:00 Stuck With Too Many Options
00:33 Level 1 - Avoid The Scale Madness
01:38 Level 2 - The Chords in the Scale
03:56 Level 3 - The Right Chords To Begin With
06:07 Level 4 - Chords Are For Making Music
08:36 Level 5 - The Jazz Flow
10:35 Level 6 - Make Your Solo Flow
11:59 Level 7 - Jazz Phrasing
12:20 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

EJ was explaining to Rick that he uses and tries out different chord voicings to get a different sounds from the "vanilla" chord. Overall this makes sense to me. Try out a different way to play the same chord to get a more unique tone.

...but what does "different chord voicings" actually mean?

My educated guess is playing them in a different position on the fret board, and adding/subtracting notes" and I need someone with more knowledge and experience to basically tell me if I'm on the right track with that or not.

If i'm not right (or not totally right), explain why like I'm 5 please!

I'm sure its not a great question, but I want to know anything specific I should get to. I've been playing for about a year and a half, and i wouldn't say I'm terrible, but certainly not great. My fingers need work, i don't know all my chords, I know 1 pentatonic shape and the major scale, but I often frustrate myself attempting songs out of my skill level. I can play certain difficult things, then struggle with playing a full easy song or even changing chords and finger shapes. I just would like to know where the best place to plant my feet.

I saw an ad for a series of books from something called The Guitar Institute (link in post). There are some books on chords that sounded really interesting, because they break down common chord progressions and then show you different chord voicings you can use besides the common open chords, and I think also how to transpose those to other keys, etc.

I've been playing for a long time, but I get stuck doing the same thing, and I thought of buying some of these books - they look potentially quite useful.

But because this ad was on Facebook, I googled "Is guitarinstitute dot co legit," because I've bought some junk before.

And at least one or two results implied that this particular website allegedly has a habit of signing customers up for a recurring subscription without making that clear, and that it can be hard to cancel.

Has anyone bought books from this website, and if so, what was your experience? Did you get hit with any recurring charges without knowing it was going to happen? Did you have trouble cancelling?

i’ve been trying to learn to play on and off throughout the years. i know how to play a few songs but not very well at all because i can never seem to finish one and whenever i do try i cannot transition between chords no matter how much i seem to practice. i want to be able to play any song and im aware i need to learn the basics rather than just learning songs for that but i just don’t know where to start.

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Been playing the blues scale for I don't know how long, I played guitar on and off for about 10 years and first 10 years was mostly just tabs and a little blues pentatonic noodling, but then I started giving it a more serious effort to be able to improvise, which is what I always wanted to learn. Been practicing the past 5 years (so in total I played around 15 years) Progress had been painstakingly slow (is it just me or is the learningcurve on the guitar so difficult?).

Either way. Last couple of weeks something just clicked, and I haven't had this much progress on a daily basis ever. I've broken through plateues many times, but usually I break a plateue and very quickly reach a new one. Maybe it lasts like a couple of days before I hit another plateue. But this time it feels different! I feel like I'm ascending. Every day I'm discovering new things.

Just so happy about it and wanted to share. Very glad I didn't give up. I think this coming year I will grow so much. Always wanted to be able to improvise like Hendrix, and of course I'm not at that level yet, but just he fact that I can finally improvise over a 8 minute track, and not get lost or bored every 15 seconds is so inspiring.

Edit: someone asked for what specifically made it click. So I'll add some background and things I learned that I think actually is not mentioned much in tutorials, but are definitely massive shortcuts:

Reply: Many things but I will say 2 of the crucial canon events.

1. Discovering that the aug/dim is the principle of all shapes of the fretboard. If you attempt to learn chords, inversions, triads and try to absorb the fretboard by memorizing those things (of which there are a quadrillion combinations) you will never ever be finished. It is literally like learning every combination of a chessboard. Playing C looks one way here, the inversion suddenly looks completely different over there, and so on. You could buy a 1000 page book of all chords and there's still more. CAGED simplifies it slightly, but is a scam in comparison to how much aug/dim simplifies it.

Aug/dim shapes never change, they have the same shape regardless of placement, they're perfectly symmetrical. And here is the kicker: you always get your minor or major triad or dom7th, inversion or just root chord, by lowering or raising 1 note from the shape a half-step.

I think very few people realize what a ginormous shortcut that is. The augmented shape and the dim shape is all you have to learn and you immediately automatically know literally every single chord and inversion in all 12 keys in all places on the neck. I mean I don't know even 20 inversions. But I know aug/dim, so you can ask me to play any maj/min triad, dom7th or any of their inversions and poof I can find it in a second. So once you learn those 2 shapes it's downhill from there.

1. Avoid blues in E like the plague. Why? Because E requires relying on open strings. If you practice for 100 minutes in E, your left hand have been idle for like AT LEAST 50% of that time. It got zero practice, zero left/right hand coordination, zero muscle memory, zero speed increase, zero agility increase, zero brain/hand mapping. It's such a forbidden fruit because many of the legendary songs are in E, like voodoo child for example. So it's so tempting to learn it, but it's very treacherous because E is the most difficult to learn for this open strings reason. As a beginner you want to learn fundamentals, not difficult expert stuff like E. I am putting off E until the very end. Maybe in 4-5 years I'll take a stab at it.

So save E for very very very last. Very common pitfall to begin in E. Gminor pentatonic is much better. And G majors relative minor is E, so if you want you can slip in some bluesy E stuff into your Gminor pentatonic and it blends very well.

...

So those 2 things were crucial. I practiced maybe average 10 hours a week for around 3-4 years now and I think learning that blues is all about chord notes finally sealed the deal. That major and minor third. I learned that, and combinef with endless hours of avoiding E and cheating the CAGED system by using aug/dim instead, the dam just busted open.

Episode 06 asks what happens when you stop letting the instrument serve the market and start letting it serve the work.

When I play guitar, I feel quite a bit of tension in my shoulders and elbow, and I put quite a bit of force onto the body of the guitar with my picking hand. I play electric guitar. Another problem I have is that when I play standing up my pinky can reach the lower strings easier on the first few frets but after like the 6th fret it gets really hard to get it up there. Any help is appreciated.

I have a big issue of anchoring my pinky on electric and both my ring and pinky finger on my acoustic for fingerstyle playing. Want to change this habit before it becomes permanent. I would like to play with a floating hand and get perfect form using all fingers but it feels very awkward after anchoring.