Tag Archives: learning

ZEN guitar Practice.

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After the nuclear war there will only be cockroaches and Keith Richards!! So let`s get practicing…with some general tips that you oughta bear in mind when you want to get all Zen on your fretboard.

1. Cultivate a desire to try and achieve excellence. When your lazy friends are down at the bar setting the world to rights you could stay at home beginning a journey to set either your own world on fire or even set the real world on fire.

2. Set yourself goals – both sensible & unattainable

Set yourself some goals and schedule your practice and STICK to IT. Perhaps consider two goals:

A.An aspirational one such as becoming as good as Jeff Beck (insert your favourite guitar maestro here) but also

B. A realistic, realtime short term goal: for example “In six months I will be able to play Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry”. Remember though it’s the journey not the destination that counts, a guitar is for life not just for Christmas if you want to go anywhere with it.

Don`t use your aspirational goal to beat yourself about though. Expecting to be able to play like Jeff Beck is akin to expecting to replicate the Cistine Chapel Ceiling on the interior of a ping pong ball – it’s a long hard difficult road walked only by those with a unique, god-given gift.

3. Find an environment that really works for you it may be outside beneath your favourite weeping willow or it may be in a quiet corner of your barn – make it as comfortable and as appealing as possible with few, or no distractions or interruptions.
If you can and you are serious about progression try to practice alone in a silent area. Also get the right chair, I`ll sometimes find myself thirty minutes into a jam session only to realise I`m curled up like a pretzel…no good man!

4. Make it easy – as the playing will initially be hard enough make it easy by using the tools that help. Buy the best guitar you can, buy a decent tuner and invest in learning materials that suit where you want to take your playing. Read this blog for more advice on the learning tools available. There is a veritable cornucopia of new digital practice tools such as the Ovation iDea guitar, the Fretlight guitars, Loopstation pedal or Fender G-Dec amplifier.

5. Develop Routines and excercises

A. start off with easy rewarding warm up work before moving onto your structured learning path (or course) – this may be a couple of songs you really enjoy, so write them down, and maybe singalong.

6. Join a band – the fastest way to leanr is from other more competent players. Use your ears and your eyes, ask questions.

7. It`s never too late to start and whatever happens don’t give up. If David Geffen isn`t ringing you up don`t worry. The journey is usually far more interesting than the destination.

8. Make mistakes and try stuff well outside your usual playing boundaries. Experiment as much as possible and try unusual positions. Try sliding chords around or even moving them across the strings.

9. If your fingers, hands and wrists are hurting then stop awhile.

10. Enjoy using effects and guitar toys but don’t fall into the trap of letting them do all the playing for you – one day you`ll want to be at the stage where you compliment the effects and not vice versa.

8. Reward yourself afterwards with something you enjoy like “icecream”.

12. Try and listen to the right records for a start but don’t limit yourself to the world of guitar. Choose your poison for example saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk and Miles Davis play some fantastic lead lines.

11. Most importantly – make sure it’s fun.

12. Have alook at “Zen Guitar” by Philip Toshio Sudo – it’s about motivation and fulfillment, not technique.

Fret Light guitars

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The guitar plugs directly into your PC too so there`s no need for clunky interfaces or stuff like that that needs configuring and the supplied axemaster software is a fully-featured guitar fretboard diagram creation tool, as well as a platform for integrated HTML-based guitar lessons. The best part about AxMaster is it is totally customizable. The chords and scales can be lit up in any key, any fret range, and in any string combination so the player can experiment to their hearts delight. Precise open tunings can be tweaked and saved and lit up on the Fretlight guitar. No other learning system can match the power of AxMaster and a Fretlight guitar. The advanced player can also make custom chord and scale diagrams and insert them into a list, called a Macro. Here they can instantly recall those or step through them with the optional dual footswitch. A powerful Macro editor allows creation of custom progressions. Fully-loaded with our entire list of chords, scales, arpeggios, triads and more. Supports alternate tunings, one click modulation displays note locations on screen and on the Fretlight Guitar neck in real-time.

Ovation iDEA

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Ovation have had the bright iDEA of building a digital MP3 recorder straight into their new iDEA guitar – FRESH! A digital recorder is part of the on-board Ovation preamp as well as an inbuilt microphone. A simple and direct recording control makes it easy to record entire songs, riffs, fragments, vocals and commentary. The iDea is also a learning tool, with audio lessons pre-installed in the memory.

The Idea also connects via USB to your computer so you can edit, rearrange, move, rename right on your desktop. Mixes from recording software, rhythm tracks, even songs can be played back through the headphones or the gutar itself.

What makes this guitar so invaluable as a learning tool is probably the fact that the recording ability allows the player to self accompany and therefore to focus upon building an innate understanding of how a guitar actually works in terms of scales, chords and their interrelationships.

If you were learning the JAMORAMA LEAD course this machine would really help you in understanding how the CAGED system works and prove ultimately beneficial in unlocking soem of the musical mysteries of the guitar’s neck.