How To Change Bad Habits In Playing The Guitar

In the course of learning to play the guitar, many people develop bad habits which are disturbing and inappropriate to people. These bad habits are easy to overcome once the person realizes that he has them and becomes familiar with the proper way to play the guitar. Here are some easy steps to follow that will help overcome those bad habits.

1. The person must realize his weak points. This will help him easily identify the habits that are causing him difficulties when learning to play the guitar.

2. It is suggested that the person stop playing the songs or music where his bad practices usually show up. One suggestion is to go back to the basics of playing the guitar. It may take months to remove the bad habits but by practicing the correct way, the person will be able to overcome them.

3. Once realizing the bad habits that were developed, the next step is to analyze how he got to that point. It will help him analyze what he was doing improperly that led to acquisition of the bad habits.

5. The person should take a step to reverse the bad habits and one way to do this is to analyze the reason he developed the habits in the first place. Once he becomes aware of the bad habits, he can perform alternative behavior to replace the bad habits and go back to the basic enjoyment of playing the guitar.

6. The person needs to make sure that he performs the alternative behavior whenever he plays the guitar. It is important that the behavior is effective so that he will not be tempted to go back to the bad habits.

The person should be consistent in doing these steps to overcome the habits and before he knows it, he has rid himself of those habits. He can then go back to the usual music he used to play and he will see that all the bad habits are gone.

Changing bad habits into good ones is not as hard as it may seem. It does require patience and perseverance to be able to get rid of them and learn the proper way to play the guitar. Guitar players should learn to play with the correct techniques and strategies so that they will not develop these bad habits.

4 Easy Ways to Learn Guitar

With the increasing popularity of rock music during the last few decades, playing the guitar has become very appealing for many people. While there are many teenagers out there who dream of becoming rock superstars, there are also many people that want to learn how to play the guitar just for the sake of it. However, many of them don't find the best way to learn guitar and after a few unsuccessful attempts, they finally give up.

Different people have different learning needs. In addition, we also have different resources, different jobs, different errands to run and different schedules. If you're not at the level you want, maybe it's because you haven't found the best way to learn guitar yet. There are several ways to learn how to play the guitar. Listed below are only a few of them.

Theory Books

There are thousands of theory books on the market that teach you how to play the guitar. Some of them are even very good and can provide you with all the information you need. Books are an inexpensive and comfortable strategy to learn how to play the guitar. Unfortunately, experience shows that for many of us they just don't work. However, if you are a very patient person, a theory book might be the best way to learn guitar.

Video Lessons

Video Guitar Lessons are available on DVDs and video tapes in almost any music store, as well as on virtual shops. In addition, there are also some video lessons available online. Some of them are even free. Video lessons are more dynamic and have a better chance of keeping you focused. They have the advantage of allowing you to practice at home whenever you find the time to do it. However, the inconvenience is that you can't benefit from the personalized attention and useful feedback a teacher could provide.

Private Lessons

If you are willing to dedicate a lot of time as well as some money to this, private lessons are definitely the best way to learn guitar. A good teacher can design a customized teaching program to suit your learning style and provide you with individualized attention and positive feedback to get you motivated. In addition, he/she can also spot and correct your mistakes very fast.

Learning by Ear

Learning the guitar by ear can be very fun, especially if you have some sort of musical bone in your body, and that bone is humming with lots of vibration, you might find that this is the best way to learn guitar for you. With the modern slowing down technology, it is much easier now than it used to be for our parents' generation.

You should always keep in mind that playing the guitar should be fun. If you find it difficult or stressing, your learning strategy might have a lot to do with it. Sometimes you need to try several learning methods before finding the one that works best for you. However, if you really want to play the guitar like a pro and have enough time and money, taking up private lessons is probably the best way to go

Chord Progressions

Chord progressions are the basis of playing guitar. They set a basic foundation of rhythm. The first thing you must do is find a key which you would like to work in. Let's take the key of C for example. The notes in the C Major Scale are C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. Now take the degrees of these notes and write them out.

I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII
C	D	E	F	G	A	B

Important: Certain Degrees are minor and certain degrees are major.

How we get the chords for a certain key:

• Take the major scale of a certain key (example: C major scale for the key of C -- shown above)
• Look at the Chords for the I degree, Now form those chords from the I note, which is C
• You get C Major and C Major 7 notice that the notes of these chords are in the C major scale
• You can use other chords but the ones I will show are the basic ones. I did this to simplify things
• Now notice that the II degree uses Minor and Minor 7 chords. But this time, instead of using C we use D to start the chord because it is the II degree of the major scale. So we can use D Minor, and D Minor 7 with the key of C. (Remember to go to the D Major Scale to find the D Minor and D Minor 7 chords).
• You can continue down the chart to find all of the chords.
• You might want to write them down too.

I	Major	Ionian (Major Scale)	Major, Major 7
II	Minor	Dorian	Minor, Minor 7
III	Minor	Phrygian	Minor, Minor 7
IV	Major	Lydian	Major, Major 7
V	Major	Mixolydian	Major, Dominant 7, Dominant 9
VI	Minor	Aeolian (Natural Minor Scale)	Minor, Minor 7
VII	Minor	Locrian	Diminished, Minor 7b5

Using these Chords:
There are some standard Chord Progressions. Such as a Blues Progression --> I - IV - V
Try playing C major, F major, then G major chord together.
Now try playing a I - III - IV - V progression using C major, E minor, Fmajor, G major.
Notice that the III was an E minor chord because the III degree is minor.
Try making up your own progressions. Have fun with it. but
Remember: I, IV, V are Major and II, III, VI, VII are Minor

These all sound good because they're in the same key. They're in the same key (C) because all of the chords that you went down the list with earlier use the same 7 notes which are the notes of the C major scale.

Here is a chart that shows the chords that can be used to represent each degree and still use only scale tones.

	I	II	III	IV	V	VI	VII
Regular	Major	Minor	Minor	Major	Major	Minor	Diminished
Sixth	Major 6	Minor 6		Major 6	Major 6
Seventh	Major 7	Minor 7	Minor 7	Major 7	Dominant 7	Minor 7	Minor 7 b5
Ninth	Major 9	Minor 9		Major 9	Dominant 9	Minor 9
Eleventh		Minor 11	Minor 11	Major 7 #11	Dominant 11	Minor 11	Minor 11 b5
Thirteenth		Minor 13			Dominant 13

Guitar Capo

A guitar capo is a clamp that you stick on different frets of the guitar to change the pitch or key of the open strings. Each fret on the guitar is a half step, therefore, if you put a capo on the 1st fret, all of the open strings will sound a half step higher than normal. This makes changing the key of a song very easy. Have you ever seen a song which had really weird chords that you didn't want to really mess with? With a capo, you can change the key or pitch of your guitar and make those tough chords easier to play.

For example, if you have a song in the key of G (usually, the first chord of a song gives away the key of the song) with the chords G, C, and D, you could change the song into the key of A. You would just put a capo on the 2nd fret, and play the chord shapes G, C, and D. These chord shapes will now sound a whole step higher. They will sound like the chords A, D and E.

When learning more about using a capo, there are 2 basic ideas to understand. Chord shape, and chord sound.

No matter what fret you have the capo on, when you play a G chord shape, in your mind you will always think of it as a G chord. This is a G chord shape. If you were to capo the guitar at the 2nd fret and play a G chord shape, then the chord sound would be that of an A chord.

This is the main idea of using a capo. You are using familiar, maybe even easier chord shapes to get the chord sound of less familiar, more difficult chords. If you have a Bb chord in a song, you could put the capo at the 1st fret, and play an A chord shape. But you will get a Bb chord sound.