All About Guitars

Archive for February, 2010

If you want to learn to play Flamenco guitar you will find that the basic left hand techniques are the same as the ones you would use in other guitar styles. The right hand techniques for Flamenco playing are more challenging, especially if you have not done any finger style playing before.

Your right hand technique need not be particularly advanced to allow you to add the Flamenco sound to your playing but you should always aim for a clean sound. You will find many amateur, and some professional Flamenco guitar players that you might find on YouTube or on Flamenco records from the nineteen sixties do not pay a hell of a lot of attention to clean notes. There is a school of thought that rough technique is okay if the passion is in the playing. This might apply to guys who have been playing Flamenco all their lives, but if you are fluffing notes it means you haven’t practiced enough.

Let’s think for a minute about where you are going to find Flamenco guitar lessons. The answer is YouTube or similar video sites. The Flamenco guitar videos available on the internet will vary in quality of playing but most of the lessons that focus on specific techniques are generally quite useful to beginner Flamenco guitar players.

The techniques you will be learning are Picardo which is the picking style Flamenco players use to play scale passages, Tremolo which allows the guitar player to play solos made up of long notes while playing bass accompaniment at the same time and Rasqueado which covers the aggressive and expressive strumming techniques which help give Flamenco guitar playing its unique sound.

Some of the professional guitarists you should be listening to are Paco De Lucia, Vicente Amigo, Sabicas, Diego Del Gastor, Serranito and Paco Pena. The lessons available are often given by guitarists whose names don’t sound very Spanish but if you can get a technique that you like from some guy named Hung Li O’reilly what’s the harm? One Flamenco guitar teacher you will find giving good advice and material in the form of video Flamenco guitar lessons is Sal Bonavita.

Back in the nineteen sixties and seventies there were a few guitarists giving “Flamenco” concerts all over the world to big audiences. Their publicity announced that their greatness but they were regarded as nowhere near the class of the guitarists I mentioned above, and have nothing to offer the Flamenco student. So if you come across videos featuring Carlos Montoya, Manitas De Plata and Juan Serrano, don’t waste too much time on them. I don’t want to badmouth artists who have given many people pleasure through their concerts and records but sometimes newbies waste time trying to learn material that will not benefit them in any way.

If you are looking for instruction books on Flamenco guitar, you should look for Toques Flamencos by Paco Pena. In spite of what I wrote above, if you find one of the guitar tutors by Juan Serrano they will at least give you a good grounding in the basics.

Ricky Sharples
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/learn-to-play-flamenco-guitar-743084.html

If you’ve been playing the guitar for awhile and can’t seem to get anymore speed on your licks, don’t worry because this happens to almost every guitarist. Some guitarists just have more time than others to hash out these skills while you’re left there wishing you could play faster.

As much as it might seem very difficult playing fast guitar, you can do it too by practicing hard and smart. Here are some very important tips to get your fingers moving faster the next time you’re scaling the guitar neck.

1. Strengthen your forearms. A lot of the muscles that power your guitar-playing comes from your fingers, but the rest comes from your forearms. Do a few exercises or start lifting to really get those muscles shaped for faster riffs.

2. Do other finger-intensive exercises. Playing fast guitar might be in your mind when the instrument is in your hand, but there are plenty of other things that can improve your finger movement throughout the day. Take up some other skills that involve intensive finger movement like typing or playing the piano in order to keep your fingers working hard.

3. Practice online typing tests. Sure you can test your speed on the guitar with a metronome, but have you ever thought about taking it to the internet? Hype up your typing skills and start using typing tests to measure the speed of your fingers because god knows how often we’re all on the computer these days!

4. Try to keep from cracking your knuckles. Cracking your knuckles can lead to medical problems in your hands and wrists once you get into your twilight years. Try to stop it if you want your hands to stay flexible and healthy for optimum playing speed.

5. Practice electric parts on the acoustic guitar. Maybe you have a couple riffs that you’re playing somewhat fast on the guitar. Transfer them over to the acoustic and try your hand. Your muscles will learn to adapt to the harsher conditions of the acoustic while the speed of playing on the electric guitar will slowly begin to increase.

6. Set reasonable speed goals. You can’t expect to reach goals that sound absolutely crazy and that’s most of the reason guitarists give up on themselves. Set goals that are challenging, but possible to ensure you stay on track with your skills.

It’s a hard business to start playing faster guitar riffs, but it can be accomplished by dedicating yourself to every practice and being consistent with your strategies. Put these 6 tips to the test and see if you can start increasing your guitar speed.

Kyle Hoffman
http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/playing-fast-guitar-learn-important-tips-to-amp-up-your-playing-speed-1239741.html

When shopping for electric guitars, you may see that they come in all types of materials and the prices range from very low to outrageously high. You may wonder why this is when they seem to be almost alike in appearance and even sound. There are many things that go into a great guitar, and these are things you may not be able to pick up on until you have been playing for a while. When starting out with this instrument, there is no harm in buying cheap electric guitar, but you should know that after a while you may find that they simply won’t do.

To the novice, the cheap electric guitars may sound just like any of the more expensive ones, but this is never the case. Most people who have been playing for years end up with a certain type that they like, and  all has to do with how the instrument sounds. The difference may not be discernible at first, but most musicians develop an ear for these differences  very quickly. Different sounds go with different types of music, and some use many different ones for different songs. It can be confusing, and  can something you can’t find from cheap electric guitar once you know what you are doing.

There are other things that may mean cheap electric guitars are not going to cut  forever. Some have action that is just too high and too hard to use. This refers to how the strings set against the fret board of the guitar. Some are too hard to play and the strings are too far from the fret to play with any ease. That can be a problem for some. However, there are some players who prefer the cheap electric guitars for this very reason. Everyone has a different style and a unique way of learning, and that might mean the inexpensive is the way they want to go.

Even though there are many cheap electric guitars that are no good, there are plenty that are worth their weight in gold. My husband is a guitar player, and one that he loves more than anything cost him a little  over a hundred dollars. Compared to some of the other guitars that he has, this was a very good deal. He say  is the best sounding and best playing instrument that he has ever owned, and he would never trade  for anything else. He has many, but  remains his favor. Don’t discount the cheap electric guitars. You may just find one of the many great exceptions out there.

Cary Neff

Today’s electric guitar amps are a crucial  piece of a guitarists arsenal. There’s no doubt that everyone loves the sound of an acoustic guitar. But, it’s just hard to beat the driving, energy making vibe of an electric guitar. To get the most out of that electric guitar, you’re definitely going to need a good electric guitar amplifier. There are so many different units to select from, that it can get a little overwhelming. Simply walk into your local music shop and see all the available models.

Do not let the salesperson sucker you with fancy jargon when discussing these amplifiers. The best thing to do is to try them out and figure out which one sounds the greatest to you. What may sound satisfactory to one person may sound totally opposite to you. After all, you will be the one who is going to be paying for it and using it. Another thing, after you’ve discovered the model you like the best, get on the web and do a little cost shopping. If you can find it for a lower price, find out if the salesperson will match the cost. This way, they make the sale and you don’t have to wait.

Electric guitar amplifiers have been around since the 1930’s. Guitars were the first instruments to actually benefit from being amplified. It took a little spell to make it precise, but with the progression of electronics followed more quality built amplifiers. Matched with an electric guitar, this produced a new trend of music. It wasn’t the first time a guitar had been amplified, as acoustic guitars had been miked earlier. But, this was something different.

The early units had a limited ability to control the creation of decent sound quality. These amplifiers were just so basic. They missed having a satisfactory bass sound while providing a pretty solid treble sound. But, over time, the producers started bestowing more control to the amplifiers. Reverb and tremelo effects were two of the original additions. Today’s models provide all kinds of effects to fit your taste.

Electric guitar amps today basically come in four models, and this is decided on their inner make up:

Tube. The oldest type, and commonly the best sounding have glass tubes on the inside.
Solid State. Have transistors instead of glass tubes and sounds good at medium levels.
Digital. Equals the sound of a tube amp and is frequently chosen by masters.
Hybrid. A combination of tube and solid state that doesn’t produce the best sound.

It’s truly going to boil down to you traveling to a music shop and examining the amplifiers yourself. The good thing about that is you’ll get to try out a variety of electric guitar amps, and get to play the top of the line companies like Marshall and Crate.

Jeffrey Veal

By learning about the guitar you can in essence learn electric guitar faster. It is every beginning guitar players wish to discover how to play guitar easily and fast. As a beginner you don’t want it to take years or in fact even months to be ready to play some songs you like playing. So far as you’re concerned the sooner you are able to play one of your favorite songs the better. In fact it encourages you to keep on learning once you can play a favourite song. Click here to learn electric guitar online for free!

There are some key elements you should find out more about the guitar and once you learn those elements and certain systems you can study guitar fast. Some of the elements you must know are the guitar parts.
The Body
The Head
The Strings
once you learn these you will need to know how they used and how they fit in when learning about guitar.
You also have to know that although the electric and acoustic guitars have the same parts they are played somewhat differently. So you shouldn’t get an electrical guitar if you’d like to learn acoustic and that also goes for the other way around.
Another key element for learning how to play guitar fast is learning to play the notes. Playing notes is important for playing solos and song melodies.

The last part i want to mention to help you learn guitar fast is playing chords. Playing several notes at one point on different strings on different frets and strumming those strings on the body play chords.
There are muscle memory techniques that also help in learning how to play guitar fast.

Learn Electric Guitar- The Best Way

Mrs Forex