Are you playing guitar feeling as though you're not at the top of your game? If you are, then relax, this feeling is extremely common, especially if you practice the same way over and over week after week. In this video, I’m going to show you 4 easy guitar tricks that you can do everyday to help loosen up your rhythm and increase your flexibility for playing scales and chords. 




Much of what you are trying to overcome during practice will; often center on the stale repetition that develops from doing the same things over and over day after day during your practice sessions.

Each of the "Guitar Tricks" in this video will help hit several key areas and allow you to do expand your playing style quickly allowing you to increase your playing skills in record time.

In this post, I’ve got Four Easy to Apply Guitar Tricks that are so straight-forward, you’ll be able to work with them immediately, and we’re going to cover them ALL right here – right now!

WATCH THE VIDEO:





GETTING STARTED:
You can start adding any one of these ideas into your guitar playing to-day, there's no order to learning them! They’re all pretty basic, they cover areas of guitar playing like scales and chords as well as, jamming.

These ideas also relate to guitar neck layout concepts and rhythm ideas. So let’s not waste any time and get started on our first application.






GUITAR TRICK #1).
Rhythm Strum-Pattern (Delay /Sustain)

The first idea that I have for you is a rhythm concept, and it’s based upon practicing a delay across the feel of the beat.

Normally most guitar players start learning about rhythm guitar by playing a very straight groove, that goes something like this…

Straight Example:


What is really nice, is to learn how to simply add a delay to the feel of the beat. The delay works by replacing the straight 8th note feel with a dotted-quarter and then playing into a half-note that ends up sustaining into the end of the measure. It sounds like this…

Delay Example:


Once you develop a basic delay rhythm like that one, try applying other delays throughout the beats as well. You can even try mixing the delay with a straight-time feel to create blended rhythms. Now, let’s move onto another trick that’s often referred to as “smooth-connected bass-lines.”





GUITAR TRICK #2).
Smooth /Connected Bass-Lines
This "Smooth Connected Bass-Line," idea is all about searching for nice sounding bass-tones that you can add in between chords that are part of the songs you’re playing.

Here’s an example of how this works... Let’s start off by exploring a group of common sounding chords that you might find used in a typical song situation.

Basic Progression:


After learning this progression, most players would quite likely feel that they were all done and they wouldn’t need to take it any further… My suggestion is to take it further! Try to make an attempt to add in passing tones and inverted chords.

Even if you have no clue what you’re doing, just start simple and experiment. Here’s an example of doing this with that progression I just organized above…

Smooth Bass-Line Progression:


Now, that group of chords was pretty involved, but you don’t need to get that complex. You could come up with interesting passing notes by keeping the connections simple.

The main idea is to bring this concept into your playing! …Now, the 3rd Guitar Trick that I have for you involves blending ideas for Blues lead guitar.





GUITAR TRICK #3).
Blues Lead Guitar - Scale Blending
Most players don’t know this, but you can have two directions with your Blues Lead playing. You can have a major or a minor color.

Let me demonstrate this over a couple of chords from a key of “A” Blues... Here’s a typical sounding key of “A” Blues jam using A7 and D7 chords…

Short Blues Jam: Key of "A" Blues



Over this Blues sound it’s important to understand that we have two options of playing some lead guitar licks and scale runs.

We could play lead using a Major Pentatonic Blues sound, like this…

 Major Pentatonic Blues Lick:



Or, we could use a Minor Pentatonic Blues sound like this…

Minor Pentatonic Blues Lick:





As you can tell, moving back and forth in between the Major Pentatonic Blues and the Minor Pentatonic Blues will sound fantastic. And, all it takes is some experimenting by overlaying one scale against the other to make it all come together smoothly.

But, what’s really cool about doing this is that it won’t feel like work because it’s so much fun to practice! Now, this brings us to the fourth and final idea that I have for you.





GUITAR TRICK #4).
The "Human Touch" (Phrasing Devices)
This last guitar trick is one that I’m constantly on about to my own private students here at Creative Guitar. It involves adding the human touch to everything that you play.

What I’ll notice is that students will spend a lot of time learning “about” a lick or a chord idea, or how a riff sits on the neck, (how the notes are placed). But, after doing that there’s usually a gap in the learning of the parts.

After the initial knowledge has been acquired, I like to stress to my students that there’s a whole other side to practicing any idea after you learn the part. Let me give you a quick example of this…

Here’s a fairly common sounding (very basic), key of “A” minor guitar riff, and I’m going to ask that you perform it really straight forward - without any technical phrasing whatsoever…

Key of "A" Minor Riff:
 

 
Alright, now let’s start experimenting with how we can use phrasing devices to add more life and a more human touch to this riff.

First let’s focus on adding in some slides along with some vibrato… 

•  Perform the "A" Minor riff with slides and vibrato

Next, let’s try adding in some hammer-ons and pull-offs along with a few embellishment tones as grace notes…

•  Perform the riff and add some hammer-ons, pull-offs and embellishment tones

Finally, experiment with adding in some bending ideas. This way we’ll learn to hear how to really color up the overall impact of our guitar riffs in a more unique way.

• Perform the riff with additional bending ideas included