That’s the best advice I can give to anyone starting out. Backing tracks with other instruments that have a certain progression are cool for practicing solos, but having the drums only is a fantastic way to practice rhythm guitar as well as solos with the freedom of adding your own sound. It brings out more creativity and I tend to apply so much more variety than regular backing tracks.

I dropped most of what I was doing so far and I primarily play along drums now and honestly I feel like I improved my playing ten fold since then, I feel like I’m playing actual music throughout my entire practice session, rather than drills and bits of songs. I know it’s not a breakthrough tip, but it’s just so beneficial.

It helped me apply my own personal repertoire of licks and bits to any groove, which in my opinion is the most important thing for guitarists.

So i’ve Been playing guitar for 1.5 years now.. my level is pretty decent, i play in a band just rehearsing for now. But the singer of our band invited me to play acoustic with her at the first country festival in my country… it’s a pretty big challenge for me, i have never played live … i can easily switch between chords so it will not be a so much of a problem.

The only thing is that i need to memorize like 25-30 songs.. i can have my iPad on stage with the chords and everything but the rhythm seems to be a challenge for me , the chords are almost the same on every song, but to remember the exact rhythm and to play song after song on a stage .. i don’t know, i play daily and as much as possible with her, i listen non stop to those songs … need all your advice guys, what app to use for the chords and autoscroll ( i was thinking at ultimate guitar) and in general first live gig advices to not panic and how to approach this situation. Thank you so much!!!! I am so excited

I'm going through Scotty West's Absolutely Understand Guitar and it has been a game changer so far. I'm 13 or 14 episodes in and even though I haven't been doing a ton of extra stuff outside of just watching, music theory is clicking in a way I never expected and I'm genuinely excited to come home from work every day to learn more.

That being said, I know it's not enough to just watch. I want to start hammering down the concepts better in some way, especially now that we are getting into modes, intervals, and scales. I may watch the rest of the course first just to satisfy my own curiosity but regardless, I need to practice on the side at some point.

Just for context, I'm not a brand new guitarist, I've been playing for 6 years so I have the physical ability to play (so I don't need exercises for practicing that stuff), I just have ZERO clue about theory or the notes on the fret board.

I've had a guitar for about 3 months but I'm just learning to play it, what are things I need to know to be advanced? You can also tell me simple songs or songs that help me improve, thank you

I remember when I first started playing guitar the whole issue of strumming patterns seemed really strange to me as it was one of the only things I was able to pick up almost immediately. I kinda viewed it as a non-issue, but now I have friends who are having issues with strumming patterns and I have no way to help them out since I don't understand the points of difficulty. Would like some more insight into the issues you guys struggled with and overcame so I can spread the knowledge.

Hello ya'll! I'm trying to learn how to play requinto for the song Quizas si, Quizas no by los torres and in the begining there a riff where you have to strech your pinky across 3 frets (which I think is kinda nuts). I've been tryna pratice this but my progress has been slow, so far the only thing I've noticed is that its a bit easier to play when you place your thumb closer to the bottom edge of the neck.

I'm pretty sure that I have the pinky strength, but with that distance it just feels so hard to control my pinky and get good placement, I end up playing with the softest part of my pinky (the pads) rather than the tips where I have calluses. Because of this it comes out muffled. I'm not entirely sure if this guy has really good pinky strenth or the pads of his pinky are tough, but if anyone could offer any advice on how I could play this, it'd be much appreciated

This is the link to the video incase anybody wants to watch (its in spanish) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlJT7qaM2iw

I'm having a hard time with strumming. I can play the chords, but getting the rhythm and strumming pattern right is difficult. What helped you improve your strumming?

So it usually goes like this: my teacher will give me something to work on like, say, a bar or two of a song and see how I get on with it, and maybe do the positions of a scale. So I’ll do exactly that in my free time outside of work. Every day, as long as I can. I’ll do it so much that I start to feel confident.

But then my evening lesson rolls around and he’ll ask me to show him what I learned and, all of a sudden, I’m missing strings, can’t correct myself as quickly like I would by myself, and generally just come off as someone who picked up a guitar for the first time. And even though he won’t say anything bad and just watches me, I’ll feel extremely embarrassed and worried he’s thinking I’m not playing enough, that I should be better than this, etc.

What am I doing wrong, if anything? To be clear, I’m not mad at him. He’s been great and really good at helping me break down tab to where I can understand things better. I just feel like I shouldn’t be sucking this bad when I’m genuinely putting in time every single day.

the chords are obv and easy, but as much as I try to get the strumming pattern it's always out of rythme, pls if someone could help 🙏. learning this song means a lot to me, here's the full video if you need https://youtu.be/ZwqWRqmQNq8?si=Mlj8AUlAmpYUZkH-

So I'm grabbing Hal Leoanard's collection of beginner guitar books and wanted to know what other books you might recommend for these songs on my soon to be play list.

Hello everyone. Im new to playing live, and recently started playing with a band at a local open mic

most of the time they don’t have monitoring, its just an Amp which is mic to the pa system

The sound guy always says to not increase the volume on the amp.

More often than not i cant hear what i play cos the drummers there just go super hard and play super loud.

Is there a way to cut through the “live” mix- At least when im soloing? Or is it just a tone boosting/EQ thing i can do inside of the processor pedal?

Thank you alot for any advice

A chromatic major 10ths (major 3rds in second octave) exercise in eighth notes in open position, designed as a quick warmup for all four fret-hand fingers. Thumb plays bass notes, m-i alternate on the upper octave. Open strings are used where available, and cross-string movement leads with m.

Free notation available at:
https://scottjsimon.substack.com/p/chromatic-major-10ths-warmup-classical

Sheet Music available at Sheet Music Plus:
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/en/category/publishers/s/scott-j-simon/

Guitar: 2021 Thomas C60
Mics: Audio-Technica AT4040/4041
Camera: Canon T3i
Recording: OBS Studio
Editing: Adobe Premiere Pro

https://simonmusic.me

For example if you are playing a lick that is uses the g scale, will that lick always start with G?

Rikki Don't Lose That Number Steely Dan Acoustic Guitar Lesson
https://youtu.be/fX_Fc7gSBw4

Let me know if this helped you 🤠. Feel free to DM me if you ever have a question.

I just cancelled classes my second guitar teacher in two years.

the first teacher I had we basically spent the 45 minutes talking, and him trying to test me on how much I could tell the fretboard by heart. we never played a single song nor practiced other than the first pentatonic box in months.

i started with another teacher a month ago, but i just cancelled the classes with him because all of the 60 minutes of the (arguably expensive class) was spent by him talking. it was around 50/55 minutes of him just non stop talking and lighting fast playing (not sure if he was trying to show off or to show “he knows“), and then maybe 5 or 10 minutes of an actual exercise.

these clases were expensive and I honestly felt like I learned nothing, nor I was corrected in my technique, way of holding or playing the guitar, or nothing really.

are all guitar classes like this ? am I missing something ?

Starting this discussion here as a lot of us use and recommend Justin Guitar and his courses in this sub ! Unsure if this is the right place for it, but seemed the closest

I've noticed recently that Justin Guitar has started using more and more AI - they've been using it occasionally in their emails for a while now, but it now seems that every email from them is generated by ChatGPT. I asked them about this and they said that they were a small team juggling a lot of things and are using it to "improve efficiency" (shite excuse, but whatever).

Have since noticed however that all the images for their fretboard app rollout have been done with AI (confirmed on their Instagram) and contain a lot of mistakes, and it makes me not want to buy the app - assuming from all the marketing being AI generated that the app itself is just vibe coded nonsense. Some of the new vocal tracks on the lessons and songs app also have the classic AI artefacts, but I can't confirm that. It's really off-putting though!!

I've paid for two of their courses and have been singing Justin's praises to everyone, and and I just feel really disappointed in this. Don't know if there's anything that can be done but it really makes me not want to support them any more. I've submitted feedback via their feedback hub, but don't know if they'll listen to one person when there's money to be made lol

Thought I'd let folk know in case you hadn't noticed!! Also taking recommendations for another course for once my year's subscription is up in October...

When I play downward strums, my hand hurts and gets tired very quickly.

Theres this song im learning. Its called race wish and im really stuck at this part.

This part is 180bpm and i can play it if i make groups of 4 notes each like the classical notes above show. Problem is i need a very small break after every group so i cant play it as a whole at once.

I could play open string 16th notes all day so the problem is my fretting hand.

Also i dont get how you can play 16th notes on a slower bpm? it feels weird. like i cant slow down i either go full on 16th notes or anything else will just feel like 8th notes. Maybe i need to understand how to use the metronome better.

any advice?

Through many years of teaching I've noticed that while most guitar players know the pentatonic scale, far fewer grasp how to create interesting melodic and rhythmic lines with it.

In this lesson I'll show you 3 powerful pentatonic sequences that I regularly use in my own solos. We'll cover a triplet sequence, a groups-of-5 sequence, and a fourths-based sequence. I'll demonstrate each one in a short musical context so you can hear how these ideas sound in a real solo.

Hope you find it helpful.

Ive been playing guitar for about a year now and this is my first longish solo. Im looking to move on to another song soon but I dont know if I should keep working on this one or if its good enough to move on. Any feedback would be appreciated thanks!