Online Guitar Lessons

I'm looking for a great place to take guitar lessons in the Phoenix metro area. Any ideas on good places?

I've been playing off and on for 5 years and know the basics. Now, I want to take my guitar playing to another level. Looking for someone who is not just good at guitar, but can teach it well. Thanks everyone.

Right, you need to improve your guitar playing. You have been messing around now for a few months, have learnt a few basic chords and maybe a scale or two. What now?

What do I learn next?

Familiar to you?

Here is the number 1 tip that I have picked up over my 30 odd years of playing and teaching that will really sky rocket your progress. Just try it and see what happens.

1 RELAX There, that sounds easy doesn’t it. Pick up your guitar, form a chord, change to another one, strum a little. Stay relaxed. Easy. Not quite. The staying relaxed is the hard part. After watching lots of beginners play, I can tell you that if you can learn to relax whilst playing, your technique and all round proficiency on the guitar will improve.

The way to improve your ability is to relax while playing. This comes down to awareness. I know, you will say that you have enough to think about as it is, where your fingers go, the strum pattern, where your fingers go next, but just try this little exercise. Form a C chord, strum 4 times, then an F chord(you know the one, the chord that all new players avoid) strum 4 times, just down strokes are fine. Then back to the C for 4 strums, followed by 2 strums on a G chord, 2 strums on the F chord and then back to C for another 4 strums. Now, repeat this pattern. Gradually increase the tempo. Tap your foot as you go. Keep going, getting faster and faster as you go. Don’t worry we are not particularly concerned with the sound you are making here.

After a few minutes, as you can feel yourself getting tired, just stop. Don’t move though, stay in the position you are in. Now scan your body, see if you can pick out areas where you are tense.

I would imagine that if you mentally check the position of your shoulders and neck, they will be tense. Shoulders tend to go up towards the ears when a person is tense. Hows your face, your eyes, cheeks, chin, mouth. I know this may sound daft, but lots of tension is stored in a persons face muscles.

What about your legs? Another area that you might not think had a lot to do with guitar playing. Well it has, every area of our body can store tension, and it will help your playing if you can reduce it. Just scan mentally and see how yours are feeling.

Hopefully you will now be able to identify areas of your body that store tension. All players don’t store tension in the same areas, so you may feel it in certain places whilst another person doesn’t. The area where I used to feel really tense is my face. I screwed it up a lot, and pulled faces when playing. Not in the way that a rocking out lead guitarist might, but just in a tense way. Furrowed brow, squinted eyes etc.

You may need to repeat the exercise a few times to start noticing tension. It may not come easy if you have not tried before.

If you want to use your own chord sequence or favourite scale for the exercise, go ahead. Just increase the tempo until it becomes uncomfortable, then stop and scan.

Once you become adept at finding areas of tension, you can then move on to becoming aware of this during your playing and take steps to lessen it.

I have an article on my guitar website, which will give you tips on how to relax whilst playing, along with other help and lessons of interest to guitarists.

Check it out below.

Keep on pluckin’

Paul Watson guitar teacher.

http://www.focusonguitar.com