Part of my job as a guitar teacher is curating songs that my students might like to play. While some students know exactly what they want to learn and enthusiastically pursue every item on their ever-growing “to-learn” list, others just …
8 Ways to Practice Guitar Scales
Know some guitar scales? With each new scale position you learn, here are eight simple ways to practice it into perfection.
Chord-Changing Exercise
Here’s a little chord-changing exercise that will help you move between chords much faster. If you’ve been frustrated by how long it takes your fretting fingers to make the switch from one chord to another, this exercise is for you. …
Fretboard Twister
Here’s an awesome little finger exercise for guitar. I call it “Fretboard Twister,” because it works just like the popular Twister game. Instead of moving your hands and feet to different spots on a floor mat, you’ll be moving your …
How to Practice Chords: Hit the Bullseye
Practicing guitar chords is very much like practicing darts. When playing through songs, you often need to strum a chord the instant your fingers land on the strings. There’s no extra time to make adjustments and get the chord re-fingered …
The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises – Part 4 of 4
The final episode in the “Mother of All Major Scale Exercises” series is here. (Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 first.) Part 4 combines parts 2 and 3, moving through the Cycle of Fourths with every position …
The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises – Part 3 of 4
The “Mother of All Major Scale Exercises” series gets even tougher with Part 3. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2 first.) This new iteration of the exercise takes the zig-zagging up and down the fretboard from Part 1 and …
The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises – Part 2 of 4
Part 2 of “The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises” will be a little harder than Part 1. (Make sure you check out Part 1 before diving into this.) Now we limit the exercise to two strings at a time, …
The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises – Part 1 of 4
A few years ago, I developed what I call “The Mother of All Major Scale Exercises.” It’s divided into four parts. In the video above, I walk you through Part 1. (You can see a brief explanation of the whole …