Guitar playing is one of the most popular ways to personally play and enjoy music. The appeal of the guitar is mostly due to its presence in practically all popular and rock music recordings. Furthermore, it is an instrument that is very portable and versatile enough for many kinds of songs and occasions, and is practical as an accompaniment to vocalists or other instruments.

Playing the guitar requires more than the requisite musical ability, dedication and practice. A guitar player’s fingers must be dexterous and agile to allow quick single string or chord changes in rhythm or solo musical performances. Those fingers also need to be tough and strong to be able to press the strings enough during quick changes to produce clean tones.

All beginners will remember the first time they played the guitar for an extended period. Our fingertips are originally soft at the very end, with thin skin protecting them. First we feel pain after pressing down on the strings too hard when playing the fretboard, especially all of the fingers except for the thumb. If the aspiring musician hasn’t given up by then and continues to practice playing the blisters will eventually dry up and leave calluses on the fingertips. These calluses will protect the fingertips from the pain of playing for a little while but eventually the pain builds up again as the calluses keep building you end up with thick rough fingertips on a guitarist’s left (or fret) hand. Graduating to full chords, the entire 1st and 2nd fingers, which form bar chords across the strings, will also go through the process of pain, blisters and calluses. This process toughens up the fingertips, and makes it easy to press on the strings to produce the needed musical tone on the guitar. Read the rest of this entry »

How quickly can your fretting hand switch from one chord to another? The speed and confidence you have in making chord changes will be key to further mastering the guitar and successfully playing and creating music for the instrument.

The key to learning any instrument, like most intricate human activity, is to develop brain and muscle coordination, more commonly called, muscle memory needed to play the instrument. If you picture a basketball player, for instance, the key to a good shooting performance is the proper hand-to-eye coordination in order to bring the ball up, prepare, aim, and throw it towards the hoop. The different muscles of the arms, wrist and hands will learn the right movements and strength needed to score. Constant practice will condition the brain, eyes, and entire body to know the routine of shooting the ball.

This is similar to guitar playing. The muscles involved would be the arms, wrists and the fingers, with the eyes, ears and brain working in unison to relate the movements to the music being read and the notes produced by the guitar. This is the mechanism that works when a guitar player starts to change chords.

Luckily, there are simple techniques that can help the beginning guitar player to develop these muscle memories and ear training for proper chord changes. Read below and you will see that chord changes are not that difficult to do. Read the rest of this entry »

Are you happy with the color of your electric guitar? If you’re not have you ever thought to custom paint it?
It took a lot of consideration for some people to strip down their guitar and I don’t recommend it if you’re not comfortable with the idea, however if you have an old electric guitar to experiment with and you can take the risk of damaging it then you can try this idea.

Custom paint jobs are expensive. A good guitar custom paint shop can charge you easily $200 for a simple coating work, and the more complicated the custom design the more expensive the cost will be. I find it ridiculous to send a cheap guitar to this shop because the paint job price is more expensive than the guitar price itself. If you don’t know how to custom paint your guitar there is a good tutorial you can buy, and when you master the work there is always a possibility to make this custom paint guitar as your side job. A good guitar painting tutorial will cover everything needed to paint your guitar including how to select a good combination of paint colors and how to do airbrush custom paint as well. Many guitarists are inspired by custom motorcycle paint jobs so they want to see some airbrush custom paint works done on their axes too. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many factors take part in producing the sound and tonal quality of a guitar but the most important thing are the guitar materials, guitar size and guitar shape. Guitar comes in different sizes but the most shapes commonly found are dreadnought, grand concert, grand auditorium and jumbo. Read the rest of this entry »

For acoustic guitars the sound quality will be mostly determined by the guitar size and the body shape. When we are talking about the sound quality it covers both of the volume and tonal quality. Another factor that plays an important role is the guitar materials. Read the rest of this entry »