3 Habits Every Guitarist MUST Know! (JUST DO THIS)

Are you ready for a lesson that will help you better understand which habits you are doing that benefit you, and which habits that you could start doing more of to improve several areas of your guitar playing that require more concentration and focus? If you answered yes, you're in luck because this lesson covers all of that and more...

 

 

 

 

The habits that you use to practice guitar will ultimately form the pathway to your study approach and the way that you play guitar throughout your entire life. 

 

Habits, (both good and bad) can have a direct impact on the excellence that comes across in your playing and in the quality of the music you perform. 

 

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All of the musical gains that you will ultimately see from your guitar playing will come down to the way that you apply your most beneficial habits.

 

Either your habits will benefit you, or the habits that you have could possibly interfere with your ability to play the best music that you are possible of creating.

 

For most musicians (and guitar players in particular), developing; songs, chords, scales and licks takes up the most practice time when studying guitar. 

 

But, there are some things which are really important to consider about playing guitar that should to be addressed as habits alongside of applying all of what you learn from songs, chords, scales and theory. 

 

In this lesson we’re going to explore a series of habits that will be very important for you to focus on prior to applying all of those other ideas. 

 

We’ll talk about the way you can achieve better note choices and phrasing, and some the methods for perfecting a part (whether jamming, or recording the idea). 

 

Plus, we’ll also look at what needs to go into developing your own style on guitar and we’ll spend some time on the value that comes out of putting a focused effort toward the study of perfection. So, grab your guitar and let’s get started with the study of our first habit.

 

 

 

 

HABIT 1).  "Sound and the Musical Message"

Excellent guitar playing can be a lot like typing an important letter or email. Whenever you need to write a serious letter to your lawyer or accountant, or perhaps write a script for a play or a production, it must be done to the best of your ability.

 

When we write seriously, we choose all of the words carefully and we carefully consider how everything fits together. Then, before we send it, we read and re-read how that message sounds from our mind out of our fingers and finally onto the audience. 

 

As a guitarist, it can work wonders to get into the habit of spending the same amount of time thinking about how the sound that you want to hear (with your musical message), is being delivered from the; note choices, the phrasing, and the technique. 

 

Remember, scale shapes and patterns on the neck are only a guide to help us if we get lost. Example one contains an example of this…

 

Example 1): Sound and the Musical Message

Simple representation, (the notes themselves)

 



 Exact representation, (the album version)

 


Coming up I’ve got two more habits for you, but first I want to tell you about a special promotional offer that’s related to my Handouts Collection eBook.

 

                      ____________________________________________________
 

I wanted to take a minute to let you know, that if you want to learn even more about scales and theory I have a great offer for you.

With any donation over $5, or any merchandise purchase from my Tee-Spring store, I’ll send you free copies of THREE of my most popular digital handouts.

One is called, “Harmonized Arpeggio Drills” (it’ll train you on developing your diatonic arpeggios).

Another one is my “Barre Chord” Handout which includes a page showing all the key signatures along with a chord progression that applies barre chords.

Plus, you’ll get my Notation Pack! It has 8 pages of important guitar worksheets for notating anything related to; music charts, guitar chord diagrams, and TAB.

As a BONUS, (from my "Over 40 and Still Can't Play a Scale" video), I'll also throw in a breakdown of all of the chords that are diatonic to the "F Major" scale.

As an EXTRA BONUS for my Phrygian Dominant video, I'll also throw in a breakdown featuring all of the chords that are diatonic to the Phrygian Dominant scale.

Just send me an email off of the contact page of CreativeGuitarStudio.com to let me know about either your donation or your Merchandise purchase and I’ll email you those digital handouts within 24 hrs.   

                       ____________________________________________________

 

HABIT 2).  "Think Before You Play"

Have you ever been in a social situation and you mis-spoke? Maybe you said something kind of inappropriate and you immediately regretted it? 

 

I’m pretty sure that’s happened to all of us. But, that age old saying, "Think Before you Speak" applies to music just as much as it does to social situations. 

 

If you can make it a habit to plan, plan, plan before you head into every serious playing situation it will go a long way because that planning is the foundation and it’s the practice that leads you to perfection of the part. 

 

This is everything if you're recording because you want to have your final take be as perfect as possible. A great way to practice this is by simply listening to something unfamiliar and copying it. Let me give you an idea for how this can work.

 

Example 2): Think Before You Play

Loop pedal example – playback! 

 

 


 

 

 HABIT 3).  "Creating Your Own Style"

The last habit I have for you is based on the habits that are involved with creating your own style. This happens generally by doing what musicians will sometimes call, “selective stealing.” 

 

This musical form of theft happens from 3 main areas of another musician’s approach; their style, their phrasing and also their compositional ideas. 

 

What, “selective stealing” means to our practice habits is this...

 

When we start to pay a lot more attention to all of the details and the subtleties for how another musician performs a musical idea, we can gain a lot of useful playing information. 

 

 

 

 

By practicing their style and their phrasing along with their approach to musical composition. 

 

When we do this in detail - to the absolute letter - we can then take in and use that information to carefully shape our own methods of playing and ultimately our own voice on guitar. 

 

Example three is an example of how you can work at developing this habit yourself by exploring the details surrounding a BB King style lick.

 

Example 3): BB King Style Lick

 


 

 

CONCLUSION:

Guitar players (and musicians in general), have a tough job when it comes to understanding the best habits to devote practice time. 

 

As practicing musicians, we spend years on the study of music theory and on playing techniques for our instrument. After we do that for many years we get to a point where we’ve developed our basic musical skills along with some traits of our own personal playing style. 

 

Because we will often start working in more professional situations at that point, it can be hard to spend the necessary additional time on building more refined habits.

 

Do your best to work on the playing habits I’ve covered in this lesson. 

 

Once you can repeat and develop these habits and start implementing variations on them, (as in areas like the notes you choose and the changes to rhythmic displacement - things like that), you’ll notice some interesting and very beneficial things start to happen in your guitar playing.

 


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Stop Practicing Guitar Arpeggios Like This! (SAVE A FRIEND)

When it comes to practicing arpeggios, the main thing that most guitar students will do wrong is they will approach the practice of an arpeggio pattern in the same way that they would approach the practice of scale shapes...

 

 

 

 

A full 7-tone scale, (or a 5-tone Pentatonic Scale) can be performed over all of the chords of a progression so long as the progression is within a single key signature, (diatonic). Arpeggios do not operate this way.



The standard 7-tone scale patterns work quickly and easily to create melody in diatonic situations. This is why inexperienced guitar players can often have success rather quickly by using the abridged 5-tone version of the scale, (known as "Pentatonic" Scale).

 

Unlike the common five or seven tone scales, an arpeggio does not work well when played over an entire key signature. Instead, arpeggios work the best when they are played directly upon each individual chord. Therefore, arpeggios should be practiced this way. 


WATCH THE VIDEO:

 




In this lesson I’m going to show you some things that I want you to stop doing when you’re training on arpeggios. Arpeggios are at the top of the list of the 3 most important single-note ideas that you practice as a guitarist. 

 

And, even though, arpeggios are just as important as the full 7-tone scale shapes as well as, the Major and Minor Pentatonic Scales, I can honestly tell you, (from my experience of being a guitar teacher for many years), that it is common to find a lot of guitar players who can’t play even one arpeggio. 

 

Why is that? How come arpeggios are so often a mystery for guitar players...?  It could be because guitarists interpret scales in an unproductive way for guitar. And this lesson is going to focus on fixing that.

 

 

 

 

WHERE DO ARPEGGIOS COME FROM:
Let’s get started with some background information about what exactly arpeggios are and we'll learn a really good way the think of them on guitar so we can start to use them!

 

Example 1). Arpeggios come from scales
Let’s take a 2nd guitar string “C” Major scale and learn how we can get an arpeggio out of it… first, here’s the scale played laterally.

 


Once you learn the scales notes, re-work the notes of the scale within a position - playing them more vertically.

 

Example 2). "C" Scale in-Position
Here’s the “C Major” scale pattern again, but instead of played off of the 2nd string (as we had done in example 1), here it is played vertically off of the “C” note at the 5th guitar string’s third fret.

 




Example 3). Scale Degrees
The next thing is to view the scale as what’s called “Scale Degrees.” Just replace those notes of “C Major” scale with numbers.





Example 4). Getting the Arpeggio out of the Scale
The final thing to do, is to just get the arpeggio tones organized. The most basic arpeggio is called the, “Triad” arpeggio. These are made up of the scales; 1st, 3rd and 5th.

 


 

Looking back at that “C” scale, the actual notes are “C, E and G.” 

 

 
                      ____________________________________________________
 

I wanted to take a minute to let you know, that if you want to learn even more about scales and theory I have a great offer for you.

With any donation over $5, or any merchandise purchase from my Tee-Spring store, I’ll send you free copies of THREE of my most popular digital handouts.

One is called, “Harmonized Arpeggio Drills” (it’ll train you on developing your diatonic arpeggios).

Another one is my “Barre Chord” Handout which includes a page showing all the key signatures along with a chord progression that applies barre chords.

Plus, you’ll get my Notation Pack! It has 8 pages of important guitar worksheets for notating anything related to; music charts, guitar chord diagrams, and TAB.

As a BONUS, (from my "Over 40 and Still Can't Play a Scale" video), I'll also throw in a breakdown of all of the chords that are diatonic to the "F Major" scale.

As an EXTRA BONUS for my Phrygian Dominant video, I'll also throw in a breakdown featuring all of the chords that are diatonic to the Phrygian Dominant scale.

Just send me an email off of the contact page of CreativeGuitarStudio.com to let me know about either your donation or your Merchandise purchase and I’ll email you those digital handouts within 24 hrs.   

                       ____________________________________________________

 

Now that you know the first steps (relating to where arpeggios come from), the next thing that I want to discuss is based upon practicing arpeggios in the best way possible so that you can actually start using them to make good sounding lines and some really interesting music. 

 

But first - here’s a short promotional message about an exclusive YouTube offer that I have for my, “Handouts Collection” eBook…

 

 

 

 

Example 5). Mobility with Arpeggio Tones:
The first thing that you need to understand with how arpeggio tones operate on the neck is how they move “along and around,” the fingerboard. 

 


 

Arpeggios often operate from a set position laterally… So, that means they move around the neck very uniform!

 

Example 6). In Position Arpeggios
Or, arpeggios can alter their note layout within a position.

 


 

 

Example 7). Extending the Position
The arpeggio tones can offer further reach within playing positions and this also creates a much larger layout on the fingerboard.

 

 


 

Example 8). Change of Tonality
One other really cool idea, that’s also really easy to do, is convert the arpeggio from Major to Minor, because all we have to do is shift the 3rd degree note down by a half-step, creating what we call a “Minor 3rd.”

 

 The Minor Scale: "Along the Neck"

 


 

The Minor Scale: "In Position"



Minor Arpeggio:




 

Right about here is the point at which that most students, (who try to practice arpeggios as isolated shapes like I’ve covered here so far), will often start to fail.

 

That is why I want you to stop practicing arpeggios in isolation (like we’ve been doing so far). Instead, I want you to think about arpeggios differently. 

 

This different way of thinking will involve applying arpeggios over chord changes. In my final example, I’m going to play through an exercise that uses arpeggios to cover underlying chord changes with melody. 

 

So, instead of practicing arpeggios as just shapes on the neck, I want you to practice them applied over top of chord changes like I’ve organized in the, "Arpeggio Chord Application," example given below.

 

 

 

 

ARPEGGIO CHORD APPLICATION:

Record the chord changes, (or use a loop pedal) to create a backing track. Then, learn the arpeggio passages (as outlined below), and play through the arpeggio phrase in time with the backing track or loop.

 



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4 Guitar Exercises You Should Be Doing EVERY Morning!

Waking up feeling like your hands and fingers are far from being loose and relaxed when you grab your guitar is extremely common, especially if you need to play an early morning gig... 

 

 

In this video, I’m going to show you the 4 best guitar exercises to do every morning in order to help loosen up, nail down your timing, increase your finger dexterity and allow your left and right hand a lot more flexibility for the rest of the day.

 

When you play without loosening up, much of what you are trying to overcome is the tightness that develops within the first few minuets. This feeling of tightness tends to be worse if you're playing guitar in the early part of the day when you haven't had much time to warm-up.


WATCH THE VIDEO:

 


 

 

Each of these motor-skill exercises in this lesson will help you hit key playing areas allowing you to play guitar better and reach a higher performance level more quickly (so as not to take up much of your time).

 

It is important to understand that these guitar exercises are ones that you can do at the start of every day. Each exercise will help you improve your; fretting technique for left and right hand coordination and they’ll also help you with the accuracy of your picking hand technique. 

 

This is important because many guitar players do not do any exercises at all, (and that can be for a lot of reasons).

 

 

 

 

Maybe a guitarist don’t know what to do, or even if they do know a few exercises, maybe they’re not all that sure of how to begin incorporating them.

 

That won’t matter for today’s lesson because we’re going to cover both of those areas for you and give you a collection of single-note ideas along with 2-note chord exercises that will go a long way to helping you get your technique together at the earliest part of your playing day. 

 

After your morning warm-up, the remainder of your day will have you playing both more relaxed, (and most important) more accurately. So, grab your guitar and let’s get started with our first exercise.

 

Example 1):
Chromatic Pedal-Tone Exercise


In our first exercise a pedal tone works to maintain the same note in position to hold the location and allow for a second series of tones to progress across both the bass and the treble of two adjacent strings. The study can move anywhere along or across the neck into any position.

 


 

Example 2):
Two Note Chord Study


Our second exercise is similar to the first with respect to how the frets are utilized in similar ways. However, the main difference has to do with the way the notes are performed. During the performance, you’ll want to practice each strike of the two notes having them occur all at once maintaining the position and having the fret-hand fingers sustain the notes for as long as possible.
 

 


 

 

Coming up I’ve got two more exercises for you. But first, I want to tell you about a special promotional offer that’s related to getting yourself a copy of my, “Handouts Collection eBook.”

 

                        ____________________________________________________
 

I wanted to take a minute to let you know, that if you want to learn even more about scales and theory I have a great offer for you.

With any donation over $5, or any merchandise purchase from my Tee-Spring store, I’ll send you free copies of THREE of my most popular digital handouts.

One is called, “Harmonized Arpeggio Drills” (it’ll train you on developing your diatonic arpeggios).

Another one is my “Barre Chord” Handout which includes a page showing all the key signatures along with a chord progression that applies barre chords.

Plus, you’ll get my Notation Pack! It has 8 pages of important guitar worksheets for notating anything related to; music charts, guitar chord diagrams, and TAB.

As a BONUS, (from my "Over 40 and Still Can't Play a Scale" video), I'll also throw in a breakdown of all of the chords that are diatonic to the "F Major" scale.

As an EXTRA BONUS for my Phrygian Dominant video, I'll also throw in a breakdown featuring all of the chords that are diatonic to the Phrygian Dominant scale.

Just send me an email off of the contact page of CreativeGuitarStudio.com to let me know about either your donation or your Merchandise purchase and I’ll email you those digital handouts within 24 hrs.   

                       ____________________________________________________

 

 

Example 3):
Flat-Picking with Finger-rolls

Our next exercise focuses on the practice of combining finger rolls with the development of more accuracy from the pick-hand. You’ll want to maintain the picking so that it functions very smoothly, but at the same time it must track as perfectly as possible while keeping the beat in time.

 


 

 

Example 4):
Fret-Hand 2-Note Interval Drill

Our final exercise focuses on re-organizing the fingerings for two note intervals. In this exercise, these intervals exist along 2 strings while maintaining a playing position. The interval changes are meant to occur on the beat, so always be sure to use a metronome for the most accurate feel across the count.

 


 

 

CONCLUSION:
Guitar exercises are one of the best ways to start your day. In fact, when you stop and think about it, exercises are really an excellent path to; mapping the neck and learning better control over the use of your left and right hands. 

 

In fact, exercises (like the ones we covered here), also help us learn better individual movement skills for the fingers of the hand. Plus, guitar exercises have long been one of the best ways to help with getting timing together through the use of a metronome.

 

 

 

 

And, that’s important because many Beginner and Intermediate guitar players tend to find it rather difficult to learn how to perform parts perfect alongside a metronome. So, tomorrow - first thing, start with guitar technique (before playing anything else). 

 

And, keep in mind that while guitar technique might not be easy to develop, exercises like these will go a long way to help a guitarist nail down the necessary skills for improving not only playing technique, but also for your sense of rhythm - for feel, and for timing.

 


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