Greetings guitar players, and welcome to the ‘Woodshed,’ a place where all things are possible! A place you should visit often, and depending on how much you put into it, a place where you should acquire the skills to last a lifetime. There are many ways to practice and improve on our technique, but sometimes we can get into a rut. Strumming the same chords or simply running up and down scales can become rather tedious and trite. Here are a few exercises designed to inspire you to become a better musician and develop your own style.
SING IT - Sing out loud any riff or melody that comes to your mind and then find the related notes on your guitar. Now sing the line and play it at the same time. Try and find different patterns and transpose it to different keys. You can always start by sliding up and down on one string to find all the notes. This exercise lends itself to improve on your scat technique - an old blues and jazz trick, and will help to develop a more lyrical style of playing as well as being able to play any melody that you can think of; this is key on learning how to improvise.
IN A DARK ROOM - Find a dark room or use a blindfold so you will not be able to see your fretboard and then try to play songs, riffs and licks from your repertoire. This may be easy for some, and impossible for others. This exercise will improve your feel for the neck and ability to concentrate on other things like vocals and scanning the room while entertaining a crowd.
ONE LESS STRING - This exercise can be done when its time to change the strings, and is invaluable for soloists who find themselves breaking strings on the gig. The idea here is to play your usual licks less one string. For example take off the G string, and leave all the other strings on and try and find where the note you would normally play is, now try it with other strings. This exercise will improve your ability to grab a note when you need it.
CHORD BOOK FISHING - Everyone should own several chord books, if not go buy one! What happens here is pure chance and can have really cool results. Open up the book several times at different locations and pick a chord, now string them together and play them in succession. It is often hit and miss and sometimes you may need to move a chord up or down a fret or change a note or two here and there to get a good sounding progression. You might try playing it backwards, but ultimately the pay off will give you new chords to play.
In conclusion, I hope these few lessons will help in defining your overall approach as a guitar player; remember to start slow and use repetition. They say practice makes perfect, but what is the perfect way to practice? You will find it in the ‘Woodshed’.
Enjoy, and always keep your ears open.
- Jackie Don Loe -
Guitar
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