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All in Guitar
Many guitar player spend countless hours perfecting their tone at home and then when they get in a band setting their tone seems weak or their guitar is hard to hear when the band is playing. This is the hard reality of guitar tone. A great solo guitar tone is not always a great band guitar tone. It’s really all about tonal balance and interaction with the other instruments in the band. Here are some general tips to help you improve your “band” tone.
You should try to memorize songs you like. Memorizing is just a matter of playing the same thing over and over (repetition) until you can remember it. It is a great skill to develop, and every musician should have numerous songs they can play without the aid of written music.
This Paul McCartney written song flies up and down the guitar neck like a bird, making it a fingerstyle classic perfect for solo performing. Paul McCartney has said it was inspired by J.S. Bach's Bourrée in E minor, a well known lute piece that he and George Harrison tried to learn as teenagers.
People often have very rigid views of what “good” music is. While there is nothing wrong with only liking one style of music, you should try listening to styles of music you aren’t familiar with. Listen to the guitar players in other styles of music. You may not care for that particular style of music, but you should be able to appreciate good guitar playing.
It seems to me that there are five main components (or things) that guitar players use when soloing or improvising on guitar. I’m talking about how guitar players think about or react to music while playing to create solos. The five components are
A chord progression is the order in which chords are played. It is common and useful to refer to chords in a progressions by numbers instead of chord names. Using the key of C as our example, we can use a Key Chords formula to find the chord numbers for the key of C.
In the Barre Chords 1 and 2 lessons you learned about Major barre chords. Now that you understand barre chords and the diagram I use to display them, it is time to look at Minor barre chords. You will be learning two chord shapes based on the open E minor chord and the open A minor chord shapes. The Em shape barre chord has its root on the 6th string and the Am shape barre chord has its root note on the 5th string.
This 1964 classic Motown hit was The Temptations’ first #1 single. It was written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White. The instantly recognizable signature ascending guitar riff is simply a C major Pentatonic scale followed by an F major Pentatonic Scale. But scales rarely sound this good. It is also a clever way to outline chord changes without actually playing chords.
In Barre Chords 1 you learned what barre chords are, how they work, and how to play them. In Barre Chords 2 you willlearn how to play a second major barre chord shape. I also provide a handy chart for looking up major barre chords.
A Barre Chord is a chord where one finger holds down more than one string of a chord. The most common type of barre chord has the first finger holding down (or barring across) all six strings. Since you are holding down all of the strings, the barre chord shape is moveable, enabling you to play 12 chords of the same type (major, minor, 7th, etc.) by simply moving one chord shape up and down the fretboard.
Record your playing regularly. It doesn’t matter what you use to record, just make recordings. Computers today are powerful enough to be virtual recording studios, so get an audio interface and get started. Or use a tablet or a phone. Recording can help you remember ideas. Many times in my life I had a great song idea and didn’t record it. Then the next day I couldn’t remember it. Recording the ideas prevents them from getting forgotten.
Neil Young is one of the few artists who has successfully jumped from solo acoustic singer-songwriter to grunge rocker to country bandleader and had hits in each style. This song is one of his popular acoustic hits. And while it is an acoustic song with country flavorings, it also has a cool driving acoustic guitar part with riffs in the intro that feels more rock than country.
The original "gut strings" used for classical guitars were made from the small intestines of sheep. The three treble strings were made from sheep intestine, referred to as plain gut, while the three bass strings were made of a silk thread core wound with gut. The production material changed to nylon due to World War II, when all available gut and was used in the production of surgical thread for wounded soldiers.
Many new guitar players spend most of their time practicing while seated. However, you will rarely play live sitting down — unless you are doing an acoustic guitar set on a stool, or playing classical guitar. It is a good idea to start spending time practicing the guitar while standing. Buy a strap if you don’t have one and adjust it until the guitar is in a comfortable position (not too high or low) similar to where it would be sitting down.
The song was written in 1963 by popular latin jazz musician Tito Puente, but when Santana covered it replacing the flute and horn parts with overdriven rock guitar it became a huge hit for the young latin rock group. The rhythmic Am7 to D9 chords and latin percussion provide the perfect bed for the single note rock guitar of Carlos Santana playing the melody.
Nothing will improve your guitar playing quite like playing with other musicians. Whether it’s a guitar teacher, a friend who also plays guitar, starting a band with friends, being part of a jam session, playing at church, playing at school, or anything that involves playing with other real live musicians, it is good for you. You will invariably pick up ideas, riffs, chords, techniques, or just experience that will improve your playing and make you a better musician.
"Chopping" the treble strings of a chord on beats 2 and 4 is a staple of Motown and 60's R&B music. This song also adds a simple guitar riff in the chorus. It is good practice to play songs where you don’t play the 1 beat. (Reggae is another example of music where the guitar often doesn’t play the 1 beat.)
You should get into the habit of playing every day. If you play every day, you will improve faster. Becoming a good guitar player is a mix of desire and spending time actually playing. Repetition is the key to learning anything.
This is the song that put the "power" into power chords. It was also the first 45 (vinyl single) I ever bought when I was 12. It had the album version of Smoke On The Water on one side and the radio edit of Smoke On The Water on the other. I remember thinking "What a rip-off." Ha ha.
Open chords are chords that have at least one open string. Many guitar players begin by learning open chords. Then they progress to power chords, barre chords and other moveable chord shapes. While there are no hard rules, a lot of popular music (rock, country, pop, folk, etc.) is created using mainly Major and Minor chords with other types of chords (7, m7, maj7, sus4, etc.) being used less often. Blues music typically uses a lot of 7th chords and even some 9th chords.
