All guitarists want to be better guitarists. There are many ways to become a better guitarist and I am going to show you how to be a better guitarist in 10 easy steps. These are 10 practical ways that you can be all that you can be.
10 Tips For Becoming A Better Guitarist
- Find some musician friends and start jamming. Even if you can only play with another guitarist, pianist, triangle-ist, or if you are lucky enough to get a whole band together, start off by just jamming in any key. Choose one in a style and play and try work off each other.
- Swap between playing electric and acoustic Guitar Excellence. If you are mainly an electric guitarist, then playing acoustic will give you the edge in your electric playing. Because the acoustic guitar is physically harder to play you are forced to learn better technique. If you are an acoustic player, playing an electric guitar will give you that much more technical ability and therefore open up your creativity.
- Try out different gauge strings. Don’t just stick to the gauge that your guitar came with, go thinner or thicker. You might find you prefer one to the others and feeling comfortable with your guitar will make you a better guitarist.
- Set up a way to record yourself. Being able to hear a recording of yourself is a great way to identify the weaknesses in your playing, which you should focus on to better your playing. Remember that recordings never lie.
- Learn a new tuning. There are hundreds of different tunings that you can try. They all have their own flavour and sound, this means you will play differently when you play each one. Start off by trying Open G and DADGAD.
- Make sure you have a good amp. Having a good amp means that you can hear your playing clearly, as in number 4 above, hearing your playing clearly means you will hear what is good and what needs work.
- Learn how to listen to melodies and play them on your guitar. Having a good ear is a vital part of becoming a better guitarist and musician. Hear a simple melody line, it can be from a song, TV advert or even a ringtone, and try to play it on your guitar.
- Practice hearing chords and identifying them. Similar to number 7, a good ear generally means a good guitarist. Get a friend to play a chord on guitar or piano and then try and identify it. This will become a valuable skill when learning new songs or writing songs.
- Ask experienced musicians what they did to improve themselves. Ask people who have been through the same thing you are going through, what they struggled with the most and how they got through it. Learning from musicians with experience is one of the best ways to better yourself.
- Play on stage. This is how you get your own experience. Playing on stage is where you learn the ins and outs of being a musician. The sooner you play on stage the sooner you start your journey to becoming a better guitarist, and ultimately a better musician.
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