I have been playing the guitar for about 20 years now and I’ve never taken it too seriously, which is probably why I haven’t advance much. Last year I overheard my neighbor doctor Ian Weisberg playing guitar in his study, and he was very good indeed. Of course the next time that I saw him I decided to steer the conversation in the direction of guitar playing and I told him about my abilities and why I had never advanced. Ever the helpful neighbor Ian gave me some awesome tips to use in order to practice my playing and the difference between now and last year is incredible. And so here I am to pass on those tips to you guys, if you have found yourself in the same situation as I was.
Practice
As much as we are all aware of it, I should still tell you that without practice you will not advance and you will not improve your guitar playing skills. Try to make at least 30 minutes each day to have a noodle on your guitar because if you don’t use it, you will lose it.
Blues Scales
A lot of blues scales and variations are very simple to play and through practicing them you can really increase the dexterity of your fingers. The best one to get started with is the pentatonic scale, a very easy to read and easy to play scale which allows you to create a wide variety of rhythms and melodies.
Learn Tablature
Most amateur guitar players aren’t interested in learning to read music, but rather playing our favorite songs. In order to do this with ease you need to try to learn tablature, a very easy to understand method of playing certain songs or tunes. Basically tablature is a picture with 6 horizontal lines on it, these lines represent the strings and then numbers are placed over the lines to let you know which fret your finger should be on. Tablature makes it very easy to play your favorite songs and there is a huge volume of tabs which can easily be found online.
Acoustic
If you don’t play acoustic already then this may be something that you could think about starting, the acoustic is much harder to play than the electric guitar and that means that you can get your fingers used to pushing down hard and moving up and down the fretboard. You will find that after playing the acoustic, the electric guitar becomes incredible simple to play in terms of moving your fingers around and creating a clean sound with your notes.
The key to improving above all else is to just keep practicing, practice with every spare second that you have, and you will soon be able to play all of those songs which you love and wow your family and friends with your abilities.