Perhaps playing guitar for an audience causes fear. Maybe even nausea.

For many years, this was how I felt.

The person who did the most to transform my thinking about performance anxiety was Pepe Ro...

You’re enchanted by the ability of classical guitar to play two voices at once on the same instrument.

But when you start playing a piece with two separate voices, it’s harder than you expected.

How...

When you first encounter dotted rhythms, they can seem so difficult.

A dot adds half the value of the note it follows.

So a dotted eighth note is equal to an eighth note plus a sixteenth note.

But ...

Picture this.

You’re playing a beautiful piece of music, but suddenly you hit a wall.

It’s a chord switch that stops you in your tracks.

You freeze.

Your fingers get confused and end up in the wro...

You want to play without looking at the page.

You think you have the piece memorized.

But then you have a memory slip and lose confidence.

Is it possible to trust your memorization?

These four ste...

Most guitarists dislike note reading.

But what makes it so challenging to read standard notation on guitar?

1. Little Visual Relationship

When looking at staff notation, there’s little visual relat...

You want to play faster.

When you listen to the best guitarists in the world, you’re impressed by how fast they can play.

It seems intimidating.

Can you ever play that fast?

The good news is that ...

One of my students said his dynamics disappeared in performance.

He wasn’t sure why. But I knew.

I used to do the same thing.

I played expressively in practice. But in front of an audience, my play...

When I was in high school, my guitar teacher said, “The metronome is your friend.”

I didn’t believe her.

The metronome was annoying!

When I was in college, majoring in music, my professor told me I...

If you’ve ever struggled to get better at playing the guitar, you’re not alone.

Many guitarists hope they’ll get better.

Often, they stay in a rut.

The consequences?

• Frustration
• Less enjoyment
...

Guitarists don’t sight read well.

Staff notation feels like a foreign language.

It’s so confusing!

What if I told you it didn’t have to be this way?

Actually, it doesn’t.

I used to hate sight rea...

Barre chords! These are frustrating for so many guitarists.

Your left hand gets fatigued. It hurts.

Are you ever going to play barre chords well?

Unfortunately, trying harder can become counterprod...