I run a little program with my students where I keep track of their practicing. One student walked in today, head hanging low, and announced she had practiced but 15 minutes. I decided it was time for action. We reviewed her amount of practice over the past 6 months or so and determined that she was in need of some inspiration. First I picked out a few YouTubes, then I launched into a discussion of why art was important to man and it was needed as part of a healthy life. To often it is crowded out in our hectic lifestyles. And so I thought I would share the same on the blog. Take a minute to practice, to create something beautiful and the rest of your life will be the better for it. Oh and make sure to watch this YouTube.

GuitarGames.net is a collection of online games and webapps that range from walking guitars that teach key signatures to fish that help students learn music notation to an online practice schedule complete with metronome. Their latest release, Super Scale Trainer, is a serious webapp aimed at teaching music theory on the guitar. “Our goal is to develop a lineup of games and apps that meets students at every age and ability level,” states GuitarGames.net founder William Wilson. “The Super Scale Trainer is aimed at a fairly serious music student, it includes over 6000 possible scales and arpeggios. And yet even the first year student could stand to learn a basic C Scale.”
GuitarGames.net designed Super Scale Trainer to be played along with the guitar, making it unique among webapps. “Many of our games are basically simply flash cards with fancy graphics,” says Wilson. “With this release we see a shift towards a computerized coach if you will; a program that will have guitarists playing along with their computer in order to learn how to improvise and play faster.”
William Wilson started GuitarGames.net in 2006 in order to revitalize guitar instruction. Its goal was to take the necessary repetition of learning the guitar and make it into a game. “How do you make the fundamentals of learning guitar fun?” asks guitar instructor Peter Pupping owner of GuitarSounds Studios in Encinitas, CA. “As GuitarGames.net first appears, because of the cartoon format, one may say ‘looks fun for kids.’ The truth is all of us have kid in us. So don’t let the light-hearted humor and colorful animations fool you. Behind this light heartedness is an amazing collection of very effective teaching tools.”

I’ve been falling in love with the flamenco guitar again. When it comes to music “fit” for the guitar, nothing works better than flamenco. Any one interested in learning flamenco guitar check out this flamenco guitar site.

Gerhard Graf-Martinez has put together some of the best resources available for flamenco guitar. They are the most clearly laid out and authentic books on flamenco I’ve seen. They rank up there as some of the best materials on guitar of any subject. I can not recommend them highly enough. Also worth checking out are his Flamenco Metronome and Gypsy Guitar books. Awesome, awesome, awesome, and fun too!

I’ve been learning to draw and paint. It’s something I’ve always loved and brings me great joy. The funny thing about it is that I’m not learning to draw so much as I am learning to see. For instance, if you want to draw a convincing face they teach you anatomy. If you want to draw a convincing still life they teach you about value and shading. And it really works.

Now what does this have to do with music? Only this. If you don’t know how to hear as a musician you can’t play like one. For instance when I sit down to play a piece of music that I’ve never seen before, I can hear it in my inner ear. I look at the notes and they produce pitches in my head (and no I’m not hearing voices). This is much like an artist who has a good idea of what they are going to paint even before putting brush to paper. How do I get to this point? Ear Training!

Check out my new game at www.GuitarGames.net it’s called The Melody Game. Start learning to hear and you’ll be surprised what you can play.

Todays lesson is this.

A picture is worth a thousand words. (NB - One justified criticism of the way Tarrega holds the guitar is that his right shoulder is a little to high, a sign of excess tension.)

When it comes to learning guitar there is nothing like a little competition to get things going. And there is no one better to compete with than yourself. Why? Well you are always there to compete with. Try this. Write down the max speed for a song you are working on (Metronome speed that is.) The next day you play the song try to beat your speed. It works great.

I just finished my e-book Learn the Guitar Neck in 10 Easy Lessons! I think it is my best work on the subject to date. The lessons make use of three fretboard landmarks which make learning the note names much easier. Also the way in which music is organized is connected to the way in which the fretboard is set up. I did some serious research into how memory works and the best way to teach large amounts of information, and I think it paid off. Let me know what you think.

Often I get asked the question, “When should I change my strings?” Here are a few indications.

Does the guitar not play in tune?

Try the following: Play the twelfth fret harmonic, and then play the twelfth fret normally. Are the pitches different? If yes, chances are good that you need to change your strings (Either that or your neck is curved).

Do certain strings have nicks or cuts in them? Then change them.

Is your 4th string turning green?

Sounds silly, but I see it all the time! If your strings are changing color, change them!

Is the sound dull or the sustain less? Then change them.

One last tip for classical guitarists, change your bass strings more often than your trebles. This cuts down on expense and the new string tuning blues. The wound bass strings tend to collect dirt faster then the trebles.

One of the problems I see most often among guitar players is playing on the wrong part of the finger. This often leads to other problems such as bumping neighbor strings. The solution is to play on the fingertip about 1/2 cm or so from the fingernail. Also, for some fingers the location is slightly off to the side rather than smack in the middle of the finger. For the first finger on the left hand side the string should come in contact with the finger on the left side of the finger tip (left as you look at your finger, closer to the thumb rather than the middle finger) The second and third fingers tend to be more or less in th middle. And then comes the fourth finger on the left hand (the problem-child). For the fourth finger you should play on the right hand side of the fingertip. This causes the fourth finger to point in back towards the thumb. I drew a picture that probably does a better job of showing this. Click on it to zoom in.

When playing fingerstyle it is important to move the fingers from the knuckles (primarily) rather than the inner joints. Why? Several reasons. It causes the finger to move in towards the hand instead of up and away from the guitar. Moving in towards the hand (a motion similar to that of grabbing a baseball bat) results in better tone. Also the muscles that control the knuckles have greater independence than those that control the inner joints. In other words when you play with your middle finger your index finger is less likely to go with it. So what do the inner joints do? They keep the curvature of the finger consistent. Not rigidly, but more like the shock absorbers on your car allow for a free ride.