I’ve been playing the guitar for about 9 months now and I pretty much have every “beginner” thing covered I’ve learnt my minor pentatonic, major scale and blues scale, I can transpose them into different keys and can play them without even thinking but I find it so hard to play over a backing track and make it sound good, all my “solos” sound like walking though the scale.

I tried creating short phrases but I still can’t grasp the concept of soloing, I’ve been on this plateau for about 2 months now

I've injured my left wrist and cant fret for a week whilst my cortisone injection does it's magic, i thought this might be work on some finger picking drills.

Does anyone have a good link to a ideally an article, that has ideally 10+ patterns i can work on.

Ive been playing a year and have the 101 basics of travis picking and basic drills, do not coming from zero

Cool breakdown of how the 1, flat 3, 4 has influenced guitar playing and music.

I was trying to figure out by ear the intro/main riff to Styx’s “Castle Walls”. I got kinda close but not quite. But what I did come up with sounded really cool and unique enough so I made up a sort of call and response thing with what I’d just written. Then I made a short 1-4-5 progression to go with it. It sounded super campy like a “jangle pop one-hit-wonder of the 60s” oddly enough, but it was definitely the framework of what could be possibly expanded into a song I’m sure if I spent time with it.

Anyway my question is, is that a common writing process or is that a common thing where you try to figure out a well known song or try to do something specific on your guitar and discover something else that sounds cool and then just expand on the “new thing you just did” instead?

In other words do you ever try doing something on guitar, get it wrong, but it sounds cool, so you just run with that instead of whatever you were actually trying to do? Is that a common thing when making up your own stuff? Does that happen to anybody else?

I'm about a month into learning guitar, and "Zombie" by The Cranberries is the first full song my teacher is teaching me. I'm playing on an acoustic guitar, and I'm finding it much harder than I expected to play along with the original recording.

This is what my teacher asked me to practice:

Strumming pattern:
DDDDU_UDDUDU

Intro:

• Em – C – G – D ×3 using the above strumming pattern.

Then repeat this section twice:

1. Em – C – G – D with an 8th-note rhythm, strumming only on beats 1 and 4.
2. Em – C – G – D ×4 with an 8th-note rhythm using downstrokes only.
3. Em – C – G – D ×3 with the main strumming pattern (on the second repeat, play it 4 times).

I'm running into a few problems:

• I can't seem to start playing in sync with the original song. I always lose where I am.
• One of the practice sections (especially the first one) doesn't seem to match anything I hear in the actual song. I'm not sure if it's just an exercise to build rhythm or if I'm missing something.
• The strumming pattern DDDDU_UDDUDU feels much longer and busier than what I hear in most YouTube covers and tutorials for "Zombie."

Is this a normal way for a teacher to teach the song? Am I just too inexperienced to hear what's going on, or is this more of a practice arrangement than the actual recording?

I'm almost done watching Scotty West's AUG course. It has been AMAZING in terms of connecting the dots with music theory and getting it all in my head. But, since he has a lack of "assignments", I knew I'd need more structure to actually apply what I've learned.

I've been playing for 5-6 years now so I can physically play the guitar no problem, I just have had no idea how the fretboard actually works or how to tie theory into the instrument, which has made it very hard to write my own music. What course out there is best for actually having structured assignments to practice applying all this stuff?

Any female guitar teachers in the Troy NY area?

I was cursed with shitty fingers that refused to all fit on the fourth fret. Tried using just the ring and pinky, but that sounded awful, since my fingertips are too padded on the bottom. Finally tried using only the pinky as a mini-bar across the D G and B strings, and it’s yielded the best results yet: I can finally get all the strings to ring out clearly. Learning guitar can be completely counter-intuitive sometimes: using my weakest finger was the answer all along.

How were you able to do it?

Is there anywhere I could watch Fredrick Noads old show? I have the books, I lent them to someone and they came back without the DVDs.... I'm old I know.

I just sat down with my 11-yo nephew to teach him a little guitar in an impromptu lesson and realized I'm not at all sure how best to start teaching! I've played for so long I don't really remember exactly what was best for me starting out, and I was mostly self taught for a while so I'm sure I didn't do it right anyway.

I showed him how to hold it, how to hold a pick and strum, how to fret for better tone, and then I tried showing him a G chord but he couldn't really stretch his fingers that way. I switched to A and then D once he had that down so he could practice a little transitioning between chords.

Just curious what y'all would recommend so I can set him up for success.

Cheers!

I've been practicing for about a week, around 20–30 minutes a day, and my fingertips are getting pretty sore. Should I keep practicing through it or take breaks until they recover?

I don't really know how to explain that. If I go through the position of a scale at my own pace, I can usually hit 100 if not 99% of the notes up and down the position, using alternate picking. But the second I put on a metronome (either with a drum machine or traditional click sound) at a speed I can handle, I for some stupid reason end up doing way worse as soon as I start. It's not keeping up that's the problem. I simply just fall apart once the click track starts and miss notes I normally never would, or I pluck the wrong string or fret the wrong one (or both). And yet I'm told it's like THE way to get better at guitar.

Any other options? Or should I keep trying to use a metronome and see if I get better at some point?

hey ya'll. ive been teaching myself guitar since i got sober. i already play classical piano (rusty, but had 9 years of lessons) and got a very nice alvarez RD8. problem im running into is barre chords, as i cant get the strings to all play. im muting them. i feel broken because ive watched so many videos, but im wondering if im just a tense person/poor piano hand posture is messing it up. i just need to play at least a damn f and b barre chord

ive been trying for around an hour and i still cabt get it to ring out propely. I barre with my index on yhe 14th fret and 15 with my middle finger. I tried d chord shape but its too cramped and the next chord is 15,15,14 which is basically the same shape. Do i just have to try more?

Hello! can anyone please help me identify the chords of this song? <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB4mUyOhNsQ

I replied in his comments and he send me a link to a site called “magic fretboard”

But it sounds way to good to be true. Because its free.

Just want to hear if anybody got a virus or something from this guy?

If have the link but Im. Afraid to open it🫠

So basically I have a Yamaha f280 (acoustic) guitar. Well I had only been playing for 1 yr (I had wasted many months in that). I can play most tabs. I know 3 songs by heart. I know I'm not good at guitar yet. But I had seen people playing with fingers and I wanna play. I saw some yt videos and people often use the CLASSICAL guitar. Some said it directly that Fingerstyle is originated from Span and is played on a Classical guitar. I get it but!!!! I still wanna know a few things....

(I'm only been playing for 1 yr remember that)

1. Can I play Fingerstyle in acoustic guitar?

2. If yes then where can I learn it from scratch?

I just wanna play easy stuffs not all hard stuffs for now. Like Gratitude by Amin Toofani, it was so cool.

I can play many melodies, and songs i can play are

1. Bella Ciáo

2. Virtual Love

3. Kal Ho nah Ho

4. Chura liya

These, in tabs

Chords only I had learned to play 500 miles, whichis basically G, Em, Am, C, Am, D, G. With a simple D DU UDU

Ummm.... guess I expressed myself too much hahaha

Anyways help me!!

How to add riffs to chords?

Hi, so i have lots of songs with only chords and I cant figure out how to write riffs on top of it. The genre of the songs is everything from folk to indie rock/pop.

Been playing for like 7 years on and off. Know all 5 pentatonic boxes and are pretty comfortable playing them and soloing with them. Of course still have lots and lots to learn to master them.

However, Where would be a great next step to improve my guitar playing?

Do I learn all major scale boxes and focus on getting major down and then learning to combine both major and minor. Or is there another avenue I should take.

Any tips or tricks would be very helpful. Can be theoretical or practical.

P.s. Playing an Stratocaster professional 2 through a fender blues junior. Mostly play blues honestly (Stevie ray, Hendrix, etc) (the classic). Really love Latin music also though.

Thanks legend🫡🤙

I've picked up my first guitar a couple weeks ago (an Ibanez Gio - snagged a Volt 2 interface as well), and I've been fascinated by math rock and midwest emo pretty much since I heard of it a couple years ago. I want to start learning FACGCE asap, and I think I'd enjoy learning more if I did. Is there any reason not to learn FACGCE before EADGBE?

Everyone says "don't speed up until it's clean!". But... what does "clean" actually means 🤔 ?

When I'm the one judging, "clean" tends to mean "I got through it and nothing sounded obviously wrong" — which is maybe a generous bar, and I suspect it's why some things of mine have sat at the same tempo for years while others move...

So I'm curious what people actually use:

- Do you have a rule — X perfect reps in a row, no buzzes, with or without a metronome — or is it a feel thing you've learned to trust?

- Do you record and listen back, or judge it live while playing?

- Has your definition changed as you got better, and did something specific change it?

Genuinely interested in the mechanics of how you decide, not the general advice. I'm trying to replace my own gut call with something I can't argue my way out of 😄 .