May 18, 2018:
RHYTHM GUITAR 005:
Dynamics - Stress and Accent of Time
 
 NEW  The fifth lesson of "Rhythm Guitar" studies the effects of adding dynamics around chord shots.

The lesson works on including more stress and accent to specific areas of the beat. This enhances the overall feel of the groove by emphasizing different areas of the beat.

A bonus to BASIC and PREMIUM web-site members are the MP3 play-along tracks that will help teach the specific feel of each accent demonstrated throughout the lesson. 


Paid Web-site members (BASIC and PREMIUM), can watch the associated video lessons and download the detailed PDF handout, along with the MP3 clap/strum play-along tracks...

Join the member's area to download the PDF handout and MP3's. Study all of the examples with full access to both video lessons. Be sure to spend some additional time on learning the "Rhythm Jam Challenge" piece that I performed at the start of the lesson in the "Part One" video...

Watch the Part One Video FREE on YouTube:







Paid members can download the handout along with the MP3 jamtracks in the members area at: CreativeGuitarStudio.com

Are you spending enough time practicing how to get better at rhythm guitar? After all, performing in a band will have you strumming and picking more than anything else! Guitar soloing only takes up approx. 10% or less of any song so your rhythm skills have to be top notch (or you could get kicked out of the band)...




On this video I’ll be running through a skills test that you can do to help you gauge where you’re at with respect to rhythm guitar. After you do this rhythm guitar technical skills stress test, I think you’ll be able to find out just how well you can participate in different rhythmic ideas as a rhythm player, and how good you are at adding various rhythms into all types of varied playing situations.

WATCH THE VIDEO:


I hope, this skills test, will help you begin realizing where you’re at with respect to general rhythm playing ability. Especially with regard to what areas of rhythm guitar that you still need to work on. So, let’s get things started with the first exercise of this rhythm guitar stress test...



STRESS TEST - PART ONE:
The first part of our rhythm guitar stress test has to do with how well a guitarist can discern and then copy the general understanding of a basic rhythmic feel for time, as well as, comprehend what the meter of a groove translates to with respect to the time signature.

Then, after determining what the feel is, you should be able to go forward and copy that feel exactly as heard. What I’m going to do is perform a basic rhythm guitar idea for you. It’s an arpeggiated chord groove in the key of “G Major.” Have a listen to it, and discern what’s going on by determining the time signature and the rhythmic count of the phrase. Then, copy the phrase using the correct feel…

Answer to Part One:




STRESS TEST - PART TWO: 
Proper stylistic accompaniment is a big part of being a quality rhythm guitarist in a band. So, if you plan on being versatile, you’ll need to be able to play everything from; smooth eighth-note strumming, (like those ideas found in styles such as; folk, reggae, and country music).

Along with that, you’ll want to be able to have control over Funky 16th grooves for funk rhythm, and some R and B jams. Along with those, there’s also the importance of triplet and swing feels found in Blues and Jazz music...

So, in the next rhythm stress-test, we’re going to run through five rhythm styles. These will include; Reggae, Folk strumming, 2-beat Country, a Funky 16th’s groove, and a Blues Shuffle. If you can effectively perform all of these grooves, you’re doing really good on styles. If you’re weak on any of them, you’d do well spending some study time jamming on them…

Reggae:



Folk:


Country 2-Beat:


Funk:



Blues (Shuffle):






STRESS TEST - PART THREE: 
The final round of our “Rhythm Stress Test” is checking on the ability for a guitarist to truly know and understand all of the basic chords on the guitar. These include; Triads and Seventh Quality chord types built off of the 6th, 5th and 4th string roots.

For an in-depth breakdown of this, I’m going to suggest that you run through my FREE YouTube lesson titled, “Harmonized Moveable Chord Shapes...”

That lesson has six exercises (with triads and 7th chords), moving along the neck and another SIX exercises that work within one fretting position. If you can turn on a metronome and play all of those studies in tempo around 80 beats per minute, you’ll rank with a passing grade as far as I’m concerned... Now, if you can’t do that, you’ll definitely want to spend some time studying that stuff until you are competent at playing all of those chord drills...

I’ll provide the link to that lesson in my Blogger post, in the description box, and it’ll be pinned in the comments section below.

Below is an example of one of those exercises, it’s a “Bb Major” harmony along 5th guitar string, using triads…





CONCLUSION:
Getting good at performing rhythm guitar takes a lot of steady practice and long term study on all kinds of rhythm styles. Plus, you’ll need to put in hours of exposure to a whole host of different songs by different artists.

Once you do that, (both at home and with your band), you’ll start getting a lot of practice playing all kinds of grooves and playing all different types of chords. Most importantly, if you zero in on your weakest areas, and if you spend a lot of time building up your skill for having a solid feel and great timing (from; playing with drummers, working against a metronome, and also studying time with a drum machine), you’re going to expand your ability a ton and you’re going to become well known in your local club scene as a solid rhythm guitarist.

And, being well known in your local scene will, without any doubt, turn into a lot of gigs and a lot of steady work.





VISIT THE WEB-SITE:
Well, hey, thanks for joining me, If you'd like to Find Out What You Should Learn Next on Guitar - take a look at the courses over on my website at CreativeGuitarStudio.com.

My step-by-step; Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced courses will cover what you need to know, along with how to be able to move forward and become the best player that you can be.

I've worked on these courses since 1992 and I feel that all together they're the best guitar program you'll ever find. The courses will help you learn to identify what's required to get you up to the next level of guitar playing, in a very organized way, that makes sense.

So, I look forward to helping you further at CreativeGuitarStudio.com ...Until next time - take care and we'll catch up again on the next video. Bye for now!

May 13, 2018:
GUITAR TECHNIQUE 004:
Funk Picking and Slap Bass
 
 NEW  This unique Creative Guitar Studio course  explores exercises for increasing dexterity and coordination between the hands. The goal will be to increase mobility and control.

Guitar Technique topics will focus on hand skill for perfected movement. The desired results  include greater; clarity, agility, speed and accuracy of movement. 


Lesson four of Guitar Technique works on ways of incorporating funk picking (string snaps /pops), along with how to generate a "slap-bass" effect from your guitar.
 
Paying members of the Creative Guitar website can watch both video lessons and download the PDF handouts...

Join the member's area to download the PDF handout and start study of these exercises. Study all of the examples with full access to both video lessons...

Watch the Part One Video FREE on YouTube:

Have you ever tried creating a well thought out practice plan? Do you have a list of subjects that you want to study? If not, what are you waiting for... This is extremely important, because once you learn how to how to organize a daily /weekly practice plan, you'll be able to properly focus on improving individual areas of weakness in your guitar playing. 



This is an important topic because without a proper guitar practice plan, you’ll drift day by day through study topics. And, in the long term you'll never properly address your short and long term study goals...

WATCH THE VIDEO:



The biggest factor involved with developing your guitar playing skill is to have a large amount of playing topics that you practice within one well-scheduled daily routine. The routine needs to constantly vary in order to cover everything throughout the week.

I did a video about varying scales titled, “Stop Doing Hours of Scales.” That discussion touches on the importance of changing up your scale routine. But, every routine should cover multiple days and should constantly change.

The other area is disciple with your topics, because you don’t want to study anything that you can already play. If you practice things that you can already perform, you won’t be progressing. So, instead it is critical that you create a list of subjects and ideas that you can’t do, and keep forcing yourself to further your education and skills across those non-integrated topics and across new ones.



Understand your knowledge for a topic? 
There needs to be a determination made about what skill level you have for a topic. Let’s say for example that you wanted to learn 7th quality chords. To do this most effectively, you’d want to begin by making a list of the popular seventh chords. These would include, “Maj7, Min7, Dom7, ½ Dim., and, fully diminished.”

Then, (once you’d have your list made), expand the topic further by finding out which strings (if any) you already know these chords off of. Focus on which chord patterns that you can play now, on the 6th, 5th and 4th strings. And, if you need to, draw chord pictures (of any chord patterns that you’re not very good at) onto a piece of chord diagram paper using a pencil.

Then, start practicing any chords that you’re weak at in a drill of some kind, to get your fingering technique much smoother and more precise. If this specific topic of chords is new to you, spend some time studying my two-part lesson on, “Harmonized Moveable Chord Shapes.” 




Create a musical subject list: 
One thing that will often really surprise a musician is when they’ll attend music college, or a music university program. There's a unique intensity of working through a group of “music subjects” across a week.

The nice thing is that you don’t have to spend a ton of money for a Professional music diploma or a college degree to do this yourself – at home. Anyone can do this. Just divide up what it is that you’ll include in your practice routine so that it follows some type of musical subject list.

This means you’ll want to produce a list that contains music subject topics, like; “Music Theory,” “Rhythm,” “Ear Training,” “Guitar Technique,” “Music Reading,” “Transcription,” “Composing and arranging,” (I think you get the idea).

If you approach creating an at home practice schedule that follows musical subjects (just like you’d study if you were at a music school), it’s amazing what starts to happen.

All too often the at home guitarist spends most of their time learning songs. However, a college or university music student barely does that. Because the focus is on becoming a musician who plays guitar, and not on simply learning a few popular songs on guitar for fun. 




Working in Short Time Frames:
In wrapping up, I wanted to share with you, one of the most important things (one of the most valuable study techniques), that I have learned and implemented. It's a study approach taught to me from some of my favorite guitar teachers of the years. And, this “one thing” is the value that comes from working within short time frames, done using a timer.

When you have a timer, (the Wrenwane Digital Kitchen Timer works great), and when you work within time frames you create a very different type of learning environment. And, you also get a lot more done in a lot less time.

Once you establish a short time period for the study of individual topics, I’m talking about perhaps just only 3 or 4 min. (for one topic, for a single area of study), you can move into other areas faster – taking much better control of the time that you schedule for guitar study during the day.

When you work within time frames, you can continue to study much longer, because what you’ll experience is better focus. The bottom line is that you won’t suffer from the common feelings of burnout of working for too long on one practice idea.

So, if you take away anything from this discussion, get into the valuable habit of using a timer to track your minuets, and to help you move through more topics as you study music and guitar skills daily.



VISIT THE WEB-SITE:
I'd like to end the discussion by saying, thanks for joining me... If you want to learn more about what I do as an online guitar teacher, then head over to my website at creativeguitarstudio.com and sign up your FREE lifetime membership.

When you want more, you can always upgrade to either a Basic, or a Premium lesson package and start studying the guitar courses I've organized for the members of my website.

Also, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on all of this in the comment section, (either here or on YouTube)... if you enjoyed this video on YouTube, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more.

Thanks again and we'll catch up next week , for another episode of the, "Guitar Blog Insider."

How are you practicing guitar scales? Do you include the chord associated to the scale? Are you taking the time to include practice on the arpeggio that relates to the scale and chord? If not, you're really missing out on a fantastic study drill that will push your playing up into seriously "Badass" guitar player territory...




In this lesson – I discuss one of the most important concepts covered in every professional guitar course taught by all of the major institutes. It has to do with the way a guitarist would be studying the development of their scales, arpeggios and chords in relation to both performing them and the lengthy study involved with their general training.

WATCH THE VIDEO:



TYPICAL LEARNING - NOT VERY BAD-ASS!
The way that a guitarist will typically learn on their own is quite different to how a player would be studying material if they were involved in a guitar course. When students study on their own they tend to focus on the scales the most, with the chords generally coming in second and the arpeggios a distant 3rd.

This isn’t the best way to go about it, so in this lesson, I’m going to teach you a Badass Guitar Drill "practice approach" that involves hitting all three at once!




STEP 1 - SCALE:
The first thing I want to do is have a run through a typical scale shape on the guitar. For our example, I’ll be using the “Pattern #1” Major Scale shape (taken from the curriculum in my advanced guitar program). Here’s how that scale looks played off of a Tonic note of “F”


STEP 2 - ARPEGGIO:
The next shape that we’ll be going over will be the arpeggio that is directly associated to the scale shape we just covered. In my curriculum the scales and arpeggios actually directly link to one another. So, in this case we’ll learn the “Pattern #1” arpeggio from the major scale. And, since in this system, each pattern will be established off of the same tonal name, this ends up giving us the, “F Major 7th,” arpeggio…






STEP 3 - CHORD:
The final idea to link everything together and complete all three elements of our study (that works to cover one fingerboard positions scale, arpeggio and chord), is going to be organizing the chord (that also directly associates to the scale, and to the arpeggio which was just completed in the previous studies).

In my curriculum, (Advanced Guitar Program), everything is associated. So, the chord pattern that we’ll be using will have the same pattern name, it will be titled as a, “Pattern #1,” “F Major 7th,” chord…

Here’s what that chord looks like on the guitar fingerboard…





WHY DO THIS?
This style of exercise (with chords, scales and arpeggios all studied as one collective process) is extremely important, because it takes these three primary areas of a guitarist’s work and directs the whole process at a single “fingerboard study” of material where everything is related.

This process combines them so that the player begins comprehending these ideas as a singular principle on the guitar neck. Plus, it also helps the guitarist realize what they can combine during the performance of a piece of music.

It’s not at all uncommon, for a rhythm guitar player to decide to add in a few tasty licks or melody lines around a rhythm part that they’re performing in a song. In fact it happens quite often. And, learning a system like this can be extremely beneficial when it comes to the application of scales, arpeggios and chords.



CONCLUSION:
Now that you understand the basic principles of this practice system, take it upon yourself to apply the process to every scale you know. For example, if you were studying a mode like “Dorian,” this scale would lead you to an associated arpeggio of “Minor 7th.” And, the associated chord would also be Minor 7th.

If you wanted to, you could study the triads instead of the seventh quality arpeggios and chords. Or, you could add the triads, (i.e., Scale, Triad Arpeggio, Seventh Arpeggio, Chord).  It’s totally up to you.

The take-away on all this is, once you learn the process in one region of the neck, you can take it all across the fingerboard. It can be done with any scale type and it can be done in every musical key.

Just imagine the working knowledge you’d have over your guitar neck if you spent a number of weeks applying this principle to all of the scales that you know right now. Your recognition of how all of these important guitar theory elements both combine and associate to the fret-board, would be absolutely badass.



VISIT THE WEB-SITE:
Well, hey, thanks for joining me, If you'd like to Find Out What You Should Learn Next on Guitar - take a look at the courses over on my website at CreativeGuitarStudio.com.

My step-by-step; Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced courses will cover what you need to know, along with how to be able to move forward and become the best player that you can be.

I've worked on these courses since 1992 and I feel that all together they're the best guitar program you'll ever find. The courses will help you learn to identify what's required to get you up to the next level of guitar playing, in a very organized way, that makes sense.

So, I look forward to helping you further at CreativeGuitarStudio.com ...Until next time - take care and we'll catch up again on the next lesson. Bye for now!