If you’ve been playing guitar for any amount of time, you’ve likely had a run-in with barre chords. For many players, they’re a frustrating roadblock—you press down hard, your hand cramps up, and the ...
This week I was teaching an adult student how to play the following arrangement of Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door:
This arrangement is by Chris Murrin of the YouTube channel Six String Fingerpicking. He...
You sit down with your guitar. You’re ready to play.
But then you pause.
“What should I work on today?”
It’s a common struggle of guitar learners: not knowing what to practice.
You want to make mus...
As someone who teaches guitar, it might sound strange for me to say this, but guitar lessons aren’t for everyone. At least, not right away. If you’re thinking about signing up for lessons, it’s import...
Life gets busy. Work, family, errands... Sometimes it feels impossible to carve out time for guitar practice. But here’s the truth: you don’t need hours a day to get better. Even 10 focused minutes ca...
When you play guitar, you encounter both major and minor chords, and you notice they have very different feelings. One feels bright and happy, the other darker and sadder. But what makes a chord major...
Time signatures seem so confusing.
But they're simpler than most people think.
There are 5 different ways people think about time signatures.
I discuss them in this video.
Sometimes you put down the guitar with a feeling of defeat.
You’re disappointed that you did not play as well as you hoped.
How could you finish each practice session with a feeling that you won?
1...
You’re excited to play a difficult piece of music.
You try it.
It takes hours to learn even one measure.
You become frustrated.
When this happens, the best approach is often to find a different pi...
My student was playing a melody on the B and E strings.
He discovered he could play the same pattern of frets on the D and G strings, resulting in the same melody in a different key.
I pointed o...
You see fractions and groups of dots on a page.
They seem so complicated.
What do they really mean?
Instead of starting with notation and fractions, let’s think about the concepts they represent.
...
Is there an easy button for mastering the guitar?
Yes!
A magic trick.
A cheat code.
What is it?
Slow Practice!
“If it's that simple, why doesn’t everyone do it?”
Because most people believe fou...