Basic Guitar – How to Play Notes Confidently
I remember during my early days with guitar how to play notes without making mistakes became the biggest mystery for me. By that time I had no clue how come those guitar gods could confidently ran their fingers along the fretboard and made no mistakes at all. Why did any single fret they touched sound good in their fingers? They could even play some cool riffs or licks without looking at their fingers at all ….
Most of guitar beginners perhaps have the same question. Some of you probably have seen guitar advertisement promising you can master the guitar fretboard instantly. Well, actually there are no short cuts or magic pills in playing guitar, if it sounds too good to be true then probably it is. Just like any other things in this real world to become skillful at something you need to practice. But it’s not just practicing: there is a BIG difference between people practicing with and without guidance.
OK, back to our topic about guitar: How to play notes confidently (umm, and correctly of course. There is no point playing wrong notes confidently unless you want to humiliate yourself)?
To achieve your guitar goals you need to understand at least two aspects: Theoretically and Technically. By theoretically I mean to become a proficient guitarist you need to know some guitar scales and understand your guitar fretboard by heart, meaning you SHOULD know each note on your fretboard. To learn the guitar scales you can start off from the pentatonic scale. This scale is heavily used in rock – including the heavy metal, rock & roll, rockabilly, etc. – and if you add a ‘blue’ note to the pentatonic scale you will be able to play the blues style. We will talk about the pentatonic scale in the future post.
To learn the guitar scales you will need to know the notes on your fretboard. Can you remember each string on your guitar? Try some meaningful words, started from the thickest one (number 6) like this: Each Abandoned Dog Got Back Easily. Find something unique, be creative. Now that you have memorized the open string notes you should be able to find the other notes on the fretboard easily. If for example you are looking for ‘f’ note you can make it by pressing the first and sixth strings on the first fret, or by pressing the fourth string on the third fret. If you need further help you can always return to the guitar fretboard basic tutorial.
From the technical aspect you can enrich your guitar playing with string bending, guitar tapping, guitar vibrato, guitar picking and other techniques such as guitar arpeggios that can help you perform better. Some of these techniques will be posted here so please stay tuned. In the realm of guitar how to play it makes your performance stand out above the others.
To Your Guitar Success
-TJ-
the Beginner Guitar Lessons Blog Admin
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