The role of the left hand thumb is one of the most important and least talked about elements of guitar technique. What is the left hand thumb’s job? Well let’s start with what it is not supposed to do (brace yourself):

1. It is not a flag. If you look over at your left hand while playing and it is waving around saying hello to the world, it is in the wrong place. I don’t care if Eric Clapton does it, it’s wrong. He is primarily an electric guitar player which has a smaller neck anyhow. Hey don’t kill the messenger here, I’m not making this stuff up. It’s tradition.

2. It is not a finger. Okay, well, yes it is. But, don’t use it like you use your left hand fingers. It should not push a string down onto the fretboard that is not its job. When I see people play a “D” chord and hold down the F# in the bass I get sick. As my Italian teacher says “Brutto, brutto.” (more…)

Perhaps the most common thing I hear in guitar lessons (other than “I’m so busy I didn’t have time to practice”) is “Hey, this sounded great at home!” And I remember feeling the same way when I was learning. Now, it would be easy to dismiss this as mere nervousness, but after many years of teaching I think there is more to it than that. I think it is a lack of preparation. Not necessarily that the student didn’t practice, but they didn’t practice the right thing. A quick story…I once had a student who used to practice while driving down the freeway. You read that right. While he was sitting in traffic, he would do right hand exercises. Now, that to me seems like it would actually do more harm than good. Here is why. Our muscles learn through repetition, and if you repeat something wrong then you while have a really hard time changing it later on. So first off you must practice with a great amount of concentration (that means NOT in front of the TV). And secondly you must practice correctly. But there is even more to it than that. You must train your brain. Read on… (more…)

This tip is a follow-up to my post on metronomes. In that post I mentioned a free metronome for Windows users. Well Mac users now you don’t have to feel left out (provided you have system 10.4 or higher). Its a metronome for your dashboard, find it atwww.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/music, and just like the Windows metronome, it’s free.

It’s not how many years you have been playing, it’s how many hours. In other words if you have played the guitar for six decades, but only practiced 10 hours in the last two of those, you probably haven’t made a lot of improvement. That is why I recommend keeping a practice log. It helps organize your practice time and get more accomplished. If you miss a day of practice you know it will forever be recorded on the log. Yes, I’m talking about guilt. What a wonderful motivator. It still works I kept a log from the time I was 13 to about 20. They sit on my shelf in an oversize blue folder that I get out to make my students feel bad for not practicing (Uh, I mean to encourage them). Ten minutes of focused practice is more valueable than 3 hours sitting in front of the TV with your guitar in hand. That type of practice does more harm than good. It’s not like the baseball glove you lugged around the house as a kid to feel comfortable with. Whenever you are playing your guitar you are learning. Our muscles learn through repetition, so whatever you repeat you learn. So when you practice sit in a quiet place (as quiet is possible) and focus on improving your playing. Set yourself some goals at the beginning of the week, make a schedule of how you are going to accomplish them, and then go for it. It really works, come on in and I’ll show you the blue folder sometime.

Check out Ricardo Iznaola’s book for more great practicing advice, and remember you are what you practice!