Let’s think for a moment about star athletes. A world class runner does not begin the day running at full speed. The best baseball players still take batting practice and field grounders before the game. Athletes ease into full practice and performance. Why do I bring this up? Because, as much as playing the guitar is a creative, an emotional, even a spiritual endeavor, guitar playing is ultimately a physical activity.

Try to get in the habit of warming-up, like athletes do, at the start of your guitar-playing day. I recommend simple exercises that don’t require too much brain power but that get your blood flowing, get both hands working together and get you focused on good technique and tone. Generally, don’t start your warm-up with songs you are trying to learn. This is a quick path to ingraining mistakes! First, get in touch with the instrument, get focused, centered, and then begin practicing on bigger things.

Beginners, I suggest a long-view perspective with this same advice in mind. If you are just starting out on the guitar don’t worry about playing your favorite songs right away. Spend some time, a couple of weeks to a couple of months, concentrating on basic technique, chords and patterns. Establish good habits with single notes, produce good tone, clearly articulated notes, good sounding chords, steady rhythms, etc. There is a lot of musicality in playing simply, clearly and in time. Your favorite songs will come soon enough.

An example of a simple and effective warm-up exercise is shown below. It is a chromatic fragment played one-finger-per-fret. It moves simply across a string, then moves up a fret and then reverses the direction of the notes. This type of exercise has many possible variations. The second example shows how this warm-up fragment can be moved around the neck.

I made a short video showing the jam track guitar parts so you can play the jam track yourself. It might help you out the next time you are in a blues jam to have a bass line you can show somebody and the 2nd guitar part uses jazzy, horn-hit backing chords that are kind of cool. Check out the video and tab below.

12 Bar Bass Line

Backing Chords

The video shoots are are work in progress so I would appreciate any feedback on what you find helpful and what you want to see more of. Thanks!

Practicing long and hard is no guarantee that you will achieve all of your goals on the guitar. But not practicing guarantees that you won’t achieve any of your goals on the guitar. There is no avoiding that practice is a primary component of moving your guitar playing towards where you want it to be.

I have heard and read all ranges of answers for how much guitarists practice, from “I never practice” to Steve Vai’s monk-like “10-Hour a Day” practice sessions. I have provided some quick tips on practicing in previous posts. Coming up, I have a series of posts devoted to the subject of guitar practice in more detail. These cover practice routines, structuring your practice time, developing proper practice “mind set” as well as covering tools and resources to get more out of your practice sessions.

But to start I want to know more about you - here’s the poll (it’s also in my sidebar):

Do you practice every day? Every other day? How long is a typical practice session? Do you have a routine, do you just wing it or do you just “jam”? I would love to get comments below to add on top of the poll results. I think we could all learn a lot! I will weigh in with my 2 cents without trying to influence the poll before it is complete.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results on this one!

With individual students I find out what value I can provide through initial consultations or online forms.  Finding out what I can do for a group of 3000+ monthly readers is different. It means taking a poll. Starting today, I will feature a poll question on GuitarTeacher.com, changing questions every week or two.

Some weeks ago I asked the question: What content do you want more of @ GuitarTeacher.com?

• More audio and video guitar lessons?
• More looping jam tracks?
• More diagrams/reference material?
• More gear and website reviews?
• All of the above?

The results are in:

In an effort to add more video guitar lessons, last week I began regular live group guitar lessons. This guarantees I will have at least one hour of new video lessons going up on GuitarTeacher.com each week. More jam tracks are on the way. I am trying to address my resources, knowledge and 25 years of experience to satisfy as many of you as possible.

The new poll question going up later today will shine a light on our practice habits. This ties in with a series of upcoming articles I am writing on getting the most out of your practice time. At times, these poll questions may not seem immediately relevant or just plain frivolous. Sometimes they might in fact be! But I intend, most often, to ask questions that give me insight to and better serve the readership of GuitarTeacher.com. I want to help you play guitar better. If you want to spend more time on my site or sign up for lesson packages, that’s great!

I will continue to write posts on specific reader questions. Because of this I strongly encourage you to leave comments on my blog or visit my forum. But if you can find the time (and the two mouse clicks) to complete the poll questions I believe you are helping me show that I can help you.

Thanks,

Storm Stenvold
-GuitarTeacher.com

The following 10 Early Rock licks work in many styles, from Rockabilly to Blues, from Rock to Punk. Learn them and then re-work them into hundreds of “new-yet-so-familiar” phrases. The licks are all shown in the Key of A but move around the neck easily.

I covered these licks in my first Live Video Guitar Group Lesson here on GuitarTeacher.com this past Thursday. Check out the video and tab transcriptions below. I even have a cool rockabilly track for you to practice with that I first covered here. Have fun!

10 Early Rock/Rockabilly Cliches

A selection of guitar licks that fit into many soloing styles:

Accompanying Jam Track

I have hosted live group lessons before, back in my days collaborating with Riff Interactive (you can find a list of my Riff Interactive group lesson archives here). Each of those guitar “webcasts” had a specific topic as part of a larger lessons series. For these new GuitarTeacher.com webcasts I will use an “open counseling” format. Through the embedded chat client you can ask me YOUR guitar questions. To improve the chances I get to a specific question, ask in advance through the ‘Ask The Teacher’ section of my forum so I can prep a reply. Right now, some of the content planned for this Thursday includes:

* Blues Turnarounds
* 10 Early Rock/Rockabilly Licks
* Single String Scale Patterns & Licks

The cool thing of having a blog is if I can’t fit all this great content in the allotted time or answer every question I can always role it out on GuitarTeacher.com!

After the preview this Thursday, the plan is to move the Live Group Lessons to Tuesdays, starting June 16th @ 2:00 PM (PST). The lessons will progress weekly from that point on.

If you like these lessons or the content here at GuitarTeacher.com and you want more personal attention, I also teach Private Students online. The sign up process starts with a 15-minute FREE
consultation with me via Skype. Go to my Private Lessons page to start.

Head over to the forum and/or comment below. Then I hope to see you Thursday!

Storm Stenvold
GuitarTeacher.com

It’s at times like these you just want to sit back, relax and jam to a nice diatonic progression in C major using simple triads. Like the following jam track:

Download original file (.mp3)

This track is actually great for working on triad forms and chord tone targeting, something that has come up recently in a couple of my online private guitar lessons. I will elaborate more on these concepts in some upcoming posts. Until then, try these suggested scale patterns:

As always, have fun!

Mike Chafe

I’ve sent Mike an email notifying him that he is the winner. He has 72 hours to reply to it. If hedoesn’t, then I’ll be drawing another name. Better reply Mike, the clock is ticking!

If you didn’t win, don’t despair. I have decided to run the same contest in May!! All you current newsletter subscribers are again entered. If you want to get in the running, fill out the form with your name and email address. If you aren’t feeling lucky and simply want to get started with online 1-to-1 guitar lessons do so here.

Thanks, congratulations Mike, and keep visiting GuitarTeacher.com!

-Storm Stenvold
-GuitarTeacher.com

Even if you don’t win the contest you will receive a site summary of new posts and lessons on GuitarTeacher.com emailed to you for free as well as special pricing on Guitar Instructional Products. So there really are no losers, right?

Sign-up NOW!

1. Free Online Guitar Jam Tracks
2. 4 Scales You Should Know
3. Finger Stretching Warmup – “The Rack”
4. Parts Of The Guitar
5. The “Secret” Pentatonic Shapes
6. 10 Must Have Items for Guitarists
7. GuitarTeacher On Twitter
8. Learning Note Names on the E String
9. How NOT To Teach Guitar
10. Riff Interactive Lesson Archives
11. E Boogie Rock Jam Track
12. Win A Month Of Online Guitar Lessons!!
13. Guitar Harmony Chart
14. “Canon Rock” Guitar Lesson – How to play the YouTube classic
15. 16 Tips For Playing Music In A Group
16. Rock Shuffle in A – Guitar Jam Track
17. “Spider” Guitar Warmup
18. Rock Triad Rhythm Guitar Lesson
19. Play “About A Girl” by Nirvana – Video Guitar Lesson
20. Changing Guitar Strings
21. Uptempo Blues Jam Track, Key of D
22. Famous Guitar Riffs – “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” by Led Zeppelin
23. Major Scale Chords – Guitar Keys of C,A,G,E,D
24. New Year’s Guitar – ‘Auld Lang Syne’ Chord Melody Arrangement
25. Famous Guitar Riffs – Play “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhoads

And did you know that GuitarTeacher.com has a Facebook page? I would love to hear from my fellow six-stringers there!