Do you want to improve your musical creativity but believe in the conventional wisdom of one’s musical potential being restricted by their natural talent? If you do, then you belong in the club of millions of musicians who have all felt the same way. When I started learning to play guitar, developing high levels of creativity in music was a big goal of mine, but unfortunately no matter what I did, nothing seemed to help me to go from hearing music in my head to playing it perfectly on guitar. This left me very depressed and disappointed, fearing that I might never be able to reach the skill level I so much wanted to attain. Sound familiar?

The good news is that musical creativity is a goal that can be achieved by anyone. If you doubt your own potential to become a creative musician and fear that you ‘lack musical talent’, think about how only people who are NOT musicians (or at least are not ‘great’ musicians) make such ignorant claims, and nobody among the world’s top guitar players believes in this myth.

However, despite the fact above, there are still several reasons why so many guitar players have a hard time improving their musical creativity. Here are a few of them:

1. The majority of musicians do not consciously plan or even know what it is they need to work on to become more creative on their instrument.

2. A lot of guitarists consider creativity in music to be an isolated practice item that is meant to be learned as a single skill, similar to learning a song on guitar or memorizing a new scale. Because of this, these guitar players look for an isolated item to play/practice on guitar to reach this goal. The truth is however, that creativity in guitar playing and music is not an individual “thing/item” that you practice, but rather a result that appears from being able to use ‘several’ guitar playing skills (that on the surface seem disconnected). Think about the process of learning to be fluent in a foreign language. To speak fluently, it isn’t enough to ONLY learn ‘a lot of words’ or to ‘only’ master the rules of syntax or ‘only’ work on your pronunciation. You must do all of these tasks simultaneously in order to develop the same command of a language that native speakers possess.

3. Too many guitar players cannot distinguish between being “musically creative” and being an “original” musician. To be original, you must have the ability to come up with musical ideas that nobody has heard or played before. Contrary to that, to be musically “creative”, all that is necessary is for you to play music that YOU are happy and fulfilled with, regardless of whether or not you are truly original. The reason why I’m emphasizing the difference between these two terms is because understanding clearly the goal that you are after in your guitar playing will help you to reach it much more quickly.

The entire list of topics that is needed for becoming a highly creative guitar player is much too broad to be covered in only one article. However, in the points below I will help you to learn how to practice one particular aspect of guitar playing which is highly important for developing musical creativity. This aspect is the ability to visualize the entire guitar fretboard. Of all the skills you need to work on in order to improve your creativity, mastering the guitar neck will help you to see instant progress in your ability to express yourself on guitar, even though (ironically) this element is rarely practiced as much as it should be. Becoming totally fluent in your visualization of the guitar will make it a whole lot easier for you to master other aspects of making more creative music.

In the rest of this article I will list for you some of the ways in which you can (and should) be practicing guitar fretboard visualization. As you continue reading the points below, consider how the practicing ideas I present are interconnected to help you develop the same general skill (of fretboard mastery) from a variety of angles.

Here is what you must do in order to completely master your visualization of the guitar neck:

Master Scales All Across The Guitar Neck

This is a skill that you need to work on separately from learning individual note names on guitar. There are some guitar players who have memorized the note names for every fret of the guitar, but have never worked on playing scales in more than one area of the guitar neck. As a result, their superior knowledge of individual notes is of limited value to them because it is not connected with a more tangible musical element of scale playing. To see exactly how this should be done, watch this guitar scale lesson on video.

If practicing scales in this way is new to you, then you can expect to see quite dramatic improvements in your creativity on guitar once you learn to play scales all over the fretboard instead of only in 1-2 areas of the guitar neck.

Learn What Chord And Interval Shapes Look Like On The Guitar Fretboard

One rarely mentioned skill that is nonetheless critically important for complete mastery of the guitar fretboard is the ability to visualize the patterns (shapes) of frets that form intervals, scales, chords and general licks you play on guitar. This will enable you to play a note on your instrument and immediately know where to find a chord, interval or scale pattern based on that note. This skill will greatly speed up (and make easier) the process of expressing yourself creatively on guitar. To understand what this means, study this guitar neck memorization lesson that will make this point more clear.

Memorize All Notes On Guitar

To become more creative when playing guitar solos or writing songs, one fundamental thing you must learn is what all the notes on the fretboard are called ALL OVER the guitar. Most importantly, you need to be able to recall the notes QUICKLY (in the same way you can recall your birthday, your phone number or other facts that you know by heart). Many guitar players make the mistake of ‘stopping’ to work on learning the notes on the fretboard further once they develop the basic ability to ‘figure out’ what a note is called after thinking about it. This is not good enough. In order to have this knowledge be usable in your musical skills, you must speed up your ability to recall the note names on the guitar neck. To see exactly how to practice this, watch this guitar neck memorization lesson on video.

Become Confident At Playing Guitar In Any Key

Due to the unique nature of the guitar, it is common for guitar players to become locked in to playing in a certain set of keys that are physically easier to play. However, this leaves a significant portion of the instrument unexplored when it comes to playing in unfamiliar keys such as Db major, F minor and others. Although you probably already know how to slide/transpose barre chords and scales to any key, there is a difference between theoretically knowing “how” to do something and actually feeling confident about playing in strange and unfamiliar keys. The good news is that by practicing to play in keys that you aren’t used to yet, it will become much easier to visualize the entire guitar neck and to have your playing feel much easier and more creative as a result.

After reading the points above, it should be easy to see that building musical creativity on guitar does not revolve around tricks or secrets that only the “naturally talented few” are born with. Although there is a lot more to the general topic of creative guitar playing than what I have time to explore in this article, the practicing steps for developing visualization of guitar fretboard can be done by anyone and the result will be a much higher level of freedom and control over expressing yourself on guitar.

To get more advice and help about developing both your mastery of the guitar neck and musical creativity, study these free guitar lesson videos:

• Guitar neck memorization lesson video
• Guitar scale lesson video

About the author:

Mike Philippov is a guitar instructional author, professional guitar player and composer. He writes articles about the best ways to practice guitar that are studied by many musicians worldwide. To get more help with becoming a better guitar player, visit his website: http://PracticeGuitarNow.com

By Tom Hess

In my opinion, Yngwie Malmsteen is one of the most important and underrated guitar players in history. In fact, I would even say that you can significantly improve your own guitar playing abilities by simply understanding the entire story behind what makes Yngwie so underrated. That said, a lot of guitarists would say that it is wrong to make the claim that I am making while coming up with objections such as:

· Other guitar players have sold more albums and have a stronger influence and importance in the music world than Yngwie Malmsteen.

· Yngwie plays too fast and doesn’t know how to play emotionally with good melody.

· Yngwie has not done anything new with his music since his early days in the 80’s.

Now, before I continue on with the rest of this article, I want to mention that the first point made above is entirely off topic to what I will be discussing (the amount of albums a guitarist sells has no impact on their overall importance in the guitar playing community as a whole). Additionally, the other two points are NOT true at all and you will find out why shortly as you read below.

My goal with this article is not to turn you into an Yngwie fan. Instead, I want you to understand the reasons behind why Yngwie is such an important figure in the history of great musicians and influence to the current (and future) generation of guitar players. Once you understand what goes into his guitar playing that makes him so great, you can then begin to utilize this knowledge to improve and enhance your own guitar playing.

Here is a small list of all the great innovations that Yngwie Malmsteen has brought into the rock and metal guitar playing community (most of which he is not commonly given credit for):

Music Composing Skills: Yngwie has brought a lot to the rock guitar community through his ability to write music that utilizes intelligent and innovative use of the foundational songwriting principles. It is true that these principles have been used for hundreds of years prior to his music; however, no one had utilized them in quite the same manner as him outside of ‘some’ jazz musicians and modern classical composers.

How can you use this idea?

The songwriting techniques that Yngwie uses are not exclusive only to his style of music; in fact, they can be used effectively in any style of music. To learn how to apply them to your particular style of guitar, check out this video about learning to put together creative guitar chord progressions.

Expressive Vibrato Technique: As far as I am concerned, Yngwie has debatably the best vibrato technique of any electric guitarist ever! That said, there are a lot of naysayers who pass over this aspect of Yngwie’s guitar playing entirely. These people focus on his ability to play fast, and disregard his vibrato altogether claiming that Yngwie’s style “lacks emotion”. Comparisons are often made to Yngwie where it is claimed that other guitarists can say more with one note than he can say with an entire solo section. However, the truth is just the opposite. If you want to hear the proof of this, simply listen to the first song on Yngwie’s album “Rising Force” and compare the sound and expressive quality of it to any other guitar players who are commonly compared to Yngwie.

As you do this, think about how the technical and specific aspects in his vibrato technique (such as the rate, depth, balance and rhythmic timing) give him the ability to play with an incredibly diverse palette of emotions while using ‘only’ one note. Compare this to the common guitar player who never truly takes the time to analyze the subtleties in their vibrato technique and cannot appreciate the difference between average vibrato and the vibrato of a virtuoso.

How can you use this idea?

When it comes to playing guitar with nice phrasing and interesting melodies, your vibrato technique is what will stand out the most. I encourage you to take note of the subtle elements mentioned above to analyze your own vibrato technique. To start with, see how big of a variety of musical expressions you can create by playing only one note and apply vibrato to it. If you are unable to utilize vibrato to create a variety of emotions in your guitar playing, you have a lot of work to do! Watch this video on how to play guitar vibrato technique and find out more on how you can improve your musical expression.

Lead Guitar Playing Techniques: Most people will give credit to Yngwie as being a highly technical guitar player (especially considering what other guitarists were playing during his time). However, most people overlook the fact that his true genius comes in the form of the variety of improvements he has accomplished in the realm of technical lead guitar playing. By merely considering this point on its own, it becomes very clear that Yngwie is of great importance to the world of electric guitar players.

The truth is, many guitar players (of Yngwie’s time) did not take the time to master all the possible guitar techniques that they could use to make music. Consider techniques such as tapping, sweep picking, alternate picking, string skipping, speed picking, not to mention subtle techniques like playing with articulation and fluent guitar phrasing. Think about how long these guitar techniques were available to be mastered before someone actually came along and mastered them all on a technical and musical level. In most cases, these guitar techniques took the span of many decades to get to the point to where they were being played at a level of true mastery. Although there were guitarists who were playing with some of these techniques at various levels of proficiency, there was no guitarist (before Yngwie Malmsteen) who had achieved a level of virtuosity for ALL of them in his guitar playing.

Yngwie was not merely ‘another shredder’, but a true pioneer when it comes to guitar technique. This is one of the most common oversights made by guitar players who mistakenly place all of the techniques he played into the all encompassing category of “Guitar technique” and move on as if there is nothing more to learn from him.

How can you use this idea?

You might not be a listener of Yngwie’s music, but even if that is the case you can still gain great insight from his ability to combine together a large variety of guitar techniques. It is crucial for you to be able to integrate various techniques in a smooth manner throughout your music regardless of the musical style you play in. Note that when I say ‘integrate’ guitar techniques, I am not referring to practicing them separately on their own like the majority of guitarists. Learn how to integrate guitar techniques together by watching this video on the topic of effective guitar practice.

Improvisation Skill: Just like a jazz guitarist, Yngwie Malmsteen has the ability to improvise music at an extremely high level. It is true that he does not commonly solo over jazz-styled harmony; however, after listening to his music it is apparent that he has total control over the emotion created in every chord he plays over. This does not mean that he simply knows “which scale fits over which chord progression”. As a master improviser, he understands how each chord will ‘feel’ in combination with what he plays (‘before’ a single note even sounds) and can quickly adapt his phrasing to create this feeling.

Additionally, Yngwie frequently improvises newer versions of his old guitar solos on a consistent basis (…and with great precision). Most guitar players simply re-play their old material in the exact same manner every time they go on stage.

How can you use this idea?

Regardless of your preferred musical style, it is crucial for your success as a lead guitar player to able to identify the emotion of each chord ‘before’ the chord is actually played. To learn how you can do this in your own guitar playing, watch this free video lesson about writing a metal guitar solo.

What is the action that you should take right now?

1. Take the time to listen to Yngwie’s songs (even if you do not particularly care for his guitar playing style). If you already like his music, grab any of his albums and go through the steps below.

2. Listen closely and identify the subtle nuances that make Yngwie an excellent guitarist (use the ideas mentioned in this article as a reference). If you are not sure how some of the more advanced musical ideas utilized in Yngwie’s playing work (such as musical expression, songwriting techniques and improvisation in different keys), locate a guitar teacher who can help you understand them in great detail and use them to enhance your own guitar playing .

3. Look into your own guitar playing to identify your level of mastery for the elements discussed in this article. Regardless of your guitar playing style (even if it is totally different than that of Yngwie Malmsteen), it is still important for you to achieve a high level of mastery for the abovementioned elements as they relate to your own style. Track your progress toward achieving mastery in these areas and do what it takes to improve in the weaker areas of your guitar playing.

By writing this article, I not am attempting to necessarily make you a fan of Yngwie; but to help you gain new musical insights that you likely have not yet considered. If you do not like Yngwie’s music after studying him in detail, that is totally fine. However, understand that by observing the subtle nuances in Yngwie’s music as described in this article, you will be able to get much more value out of the music of other guitar players. This will help you become a better guitarist and reach a new level in your overall musicianship.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains musicians to reach their guitar playing goals in his rock guitar lessons online. Visit his rock and metal guitar lessons site to read more articles about guitar playing, plus get free guitar tips and guitar playing resources.

by Tom Hess

Do you feel like you should be making a lot more money as a guitar teacher? Have you ever thought about how different your life would be if you made a lot more money in your guitar teaching business? Do you ever wonder whether or not it is really possible to make a good living teaching guitar?
Most guitar teachers would respond “Yes” to these questions and would admit that they don’t believe it is possible to build a guitar teaching business that makes an annual income of $100k or more. The truth is that it is actually very realistic to want to make 6 figures or more per year in your guitar teaching business.
Unfortunately, the majority of guitar teachers do not reach high levels of financial success; however everyone (including you) has the potential to do so if you know the right steps to take to expand your own guitar teaching business. In order to help you better understand what you must do to start making more money as a guitar teacher, I have put together 10 of the biggest reasons why most guitar teachers have a hard time making money. By reading through the rest of this article, you will be able to learn from the mistakes of other guitar teachers. The more information you gain on what NOT to do, the faster you can begin to move toward achieving your financial goals.
You are not charging enough money for your guitar lessons.
One of the biggest misunderstandings made by beginning guitar teachers is thinking that lower teaching rates means more new guitar students. Fact is, lowering the costs of your lessons not only decreases the amount of money you make from each lesson, but it also does the following:

1. If you are charging a higher price for guitar lessons, your guitar students will naturally feel a need to get the most out of their investment. Your students will feel more motivated to practice, listen during lessons, and become great guitar players. If you charge less for guitar lessons, you are taking away a huge natural advantage from your students that can help them get all they can while working together with you.
2. There are many potential guitar students who believe in the saying ‘you get what you pay for’. By lowering the costs of your guitar lessons, you create the perception that you are a lower quality guitar teacher.

Guitar teachers who earn a lot of money in their guitar teaching business do not lower their prices to attract new students. Instead of doing this, they focus on increasing the value of their guitar lessons as much as possible so that the price of lessons seems low when compared to the MASSIVE results and benefits their students receive.
You exclusively teach private guitar lessons in a 1 on 1 format.
A big myth among guitar teachers is that guitar lessons in a 1 on 1 format are the best way to teach (and learn) guitar. Although this format can be good in some cases, it is certainly not the only way to get good results for you students. On top of that, it is an extremely limiting format in terms of making money as a guitar teacher. A better approach is to combine various different group teaching formats together with your current 1 on 1 format. This will not only make you more money, but will also help your guitar students to reach their goals much faster than if they were taking one on one lessons only. To find out more about how to teach guitar lessons in a variety of unique formats, make sure to watch this video on how to make money teaching guitar.
You are not sure how to promote your guitar teaching business and get students on a consistent basis.
The majority of guitar teachers are only aware of a few ways to get the attention of potential guitar students. On top of that, these teachers almost always go about marketing their guitar lessons in very inefficient ways. Guitar teachers who make a lot of money in their guitar teaching businesses use many different strategies to gain new students all throughout the year. One of the major factors for their success is the fact that they do not rely on any single method to build their student base. This way, if one method turns out to not be particularly effective, they still have many others to draw from. Find out how you can become more effective at attracting students by taking this short survey about how to attract new guitar students.
You don’t know how to consistently turn your guitar students into really great guitar players.
Fact is, guitar students come to you in order to make progress and reach their musical goals. The better you are at helping them accomplish their highest guitar goals, the more new guitar students you will get through word of mouth and referrals to friends. Any highly successful guitar teacher who makes $100k+per year has a strong reputation for transforming average guitar players into great guitar players (in short periods of time). This is what helps them to build and expand their guitar teaching business. If you have a hard time getting great results for your guitar students, check out this program about how to teach guitar for a living.
You don’t make money from guitar lessons for every week of the year.
Many guitar players experience great frustration due to the fact that they do not get paid for every single week of the year…whether their guitar students show up or not. In most cases, guitar teachers think that they must either take unpaid time off or teach guitar lessons more often. However, these two options are NOT the only choices you have. In fact, it is possible to take PAID time off while also delivering great guitar teaching material to your guitar students. If done right, your students will be more than willing to pay you good money for days when you are not even there teaching them in person (yes, you read that right!). To get several ideas to help you do this in your guitar teaching business, download this free eBook for making a lot of money teaching guitar.
You are not currently implementing a solid teaching policy.
One of the biggest problems for most guitar teachers is that they do not have a solid teaching policy in place for their guitar teaching business (or they do not enforce the one they have). This has various negative side effects, including the following:

1. It makes you seem as if you do not take your guitar teaching business seriously. Your guitar students will quickly notice this, and will respect you much less as a guitar teacher. Some students will show up late (or not at all) for lessons, re-schedule, or miss payments.
2. Since your guitar students do not respect you as a guitar teacher, they will feel less motivated to practice the things you show them during lessons. As a result, they will make much less progress on guitar.
3. You will need to put out a great deal of extra effort to contact students, ask for late payments and teach make-up lessons (on your own, unpaid time). This will become frustrating very quickly.

You must create and enforce a strict guitar teaching policy in order to get your students to take you seriously as a guitar teacher. This will save you A LOT of time and money, and will help you to build a positive reputation in your local area. Find out how to create a good guitar teaching policy with this free guide for making a lot of money teaching guitar.
You are not able to make a strong connection with your guitar students.
Most guitar teachers do not understand that teaching guitar is based around meeting the emotional needs of your students first. In order to reach high levels of success as a guitar teacher, it is essential that you learn how to directly communicate the following points with your guitar students:

1. You are totally COMMITTED to helping your students reach their highest goals on guitar.
2. You understand the struggles that they are experiencing with guitar and have had to deal with them yourself.
3. You can identify with their current struggles on guitar and have been through them yourself.

When you build strong connections with your guitar students (and follow up on giving them the results you promised), your students will become very loyal to you. As a result, they will continue guitar lessons with you for years, and will help you make much more money.
You get in the way of your own progress.
Most guitar teachers only consider 3 different things when thinking of ways to make more money with guitar lessons:

1. The price of their guitar lessons.
2. How many hours they spend teaching each week.
3. How many guitar students they have.

If you attempt to become a successful guitar teacher using the three points above, you will be MASSIVELY limiting your potential to grow your guitar teaching business. Although these three points are important, they are only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to making more money as a guitar teacher. What would you think if I told you that you could make three or four times your current yearly guitar teaching income without charging more per lesson? Believe it or not, this is a reality for most highly successful guitar teachers. Learn how to do this by watching this video on how to make money teaching guitar.
You do not have a specific strategy that will get you from your current financial situation to earning $100k+ with guitar teaching.
The most successful guitar teachers build their guitar teaching business through extensive planning and strategy. These teachers do not rely on any form of luck, instead they work hard to implement new ideas until they manifest their own success. Unfortunately, the majority of guitar teachers simply copy what other teachers are doing in hopes that it ‘might’ work for them too. The main problem with this is that most other guitar teachers are unsuccessful, and do not make a lot of money teaching guitar. By doing the same things these teachers do, you will only be working toward mediocre results (if any). If you want to build a highly successful guitar teaching business while making a lot of money, it is necessary to seek the advice of someone who knows what you need to do to become the most successful guitar teacher in your local area.
You aren’t sure how to keep your current guitar students coming back.
The primary focus of most guitar teachers is on ‘how to find new guitar students’. In their efforts to get new students, these teachers often lose focus of keeping the students they already have. If your students are not staying with you for two years or more, this is a sign that you are struggling to keep students.
The key to maintaining your guitar teaching business is to increase your student ‘retention rate’ (how long students continue taking lessons with you). Once you know how to keep your students for longer periods of time, you will not need to keep finding new students just to replace the ones who have left in order to return to the same level of income. This will allow you to grow your guitar teaching business steadily without having to constantly worry about losing money due to decreasing student numbers.
If you identified with some of the problems I have discussed, you have become aware of some of the biggest areas you need to improve in order to earn more money as a guitar teacher. Once you have taken the time to implement the points talked about in this article, you will experience significant growth in your guitar teaching business.
Get help to expand your guitar business and make more money as a guitar teacher with these free guitar teacher resources:

• eBook about making a lot of money teaching guitar.
• Video about how to make money teaching guitar.
• Guitar teaching test to help you attract new guitar students.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar teacher, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains guitar teachers how to improve their guitar teaching methods. Visit his website, tomhess.net to read more articles about guitar teaching, get free guitar teacher skill assessments and guitar teaching tips.

By Tom Hess

Tom Hess, international music career mentor and guitar player in the 1.5+ million album selling operatic metal band Rhapsody Of Fire discusses what it takes to achieve success as a pro musician.

How is it that many people cannot seem to achieve success as professional musicians, while some people quickly build and develop highly successful music careers? One of the ideas that I continually stress in my articles is how your success as a professional musician is directly related to your ability to build value while minimizing risk (if you are not familiar with this concept, take this music career success building test now before reading this article). Once you have become familiar with this idea, your potential for success in the music industry will increase tenfold. However, to get everything out of your potential, you must do more than simply ‘know’ about this concept.

As a trainer to musicians, the main thing I train people to do is to learn how to become effective at offering maximum value with minimum downsides/risk with every action taken. In my experience I noticed that most musicians easily grasp the idea of lowering their risk in conventional/obvious ways, however many people do not realize that even their ‘positive’ traits and skills can hold elements of severe music industry risk. This lack of awareness makes it much more difficult (if not impossible) to reach lasting success in one’s career as a professional musician.

To end up as one of the few highly successful musicians, you MUST find out how to reduce the inherent weak points that lie on the opposite extreme of your music career strengths. As you read the rest of this article, I will demonstrate how to do this and explain how this analysis will bring you closer to the music career success that you want.

The Introspective Character Of A Professional Musician

In the process of working towards a music career, you have no doubt spent a lot of time to acquire skill sets with intention of using them in your musical projects. At the same time, if you are like most musicians, all your skills were acquired in a random fashion, lacking an underlying plan of how these ‘assets’ will fit together to enable you to build a music career. As a result of this random planning, it is more than likely that your positive pieces of value will also contain contradictory weaknesses that can be interpreted as damaging elements of risk if they remain unchanged. I observe this unfortunate scenario very often in musicians in all areas of the music business, and the most frustrating part is that this frequently happens without them being aware of it.

To accelerate the advancement of your career as a pro musician, learn to get the most from your positive attributes while minimizing the negative/opposing weaknesses that they create in your music career strategy. All musicians with a thriving career do/have done this at one point or another, while those who fail to become successful continue to wonder why some musicians can ‘make it’ in the business and they can’t. The good news is that it is possible for anyone to get on the right track with their approach and I will explain how to get started as you keep reading.

To begin, see the table below that lists (in the left column) several music career assets/strengths that musicians typically have. In the adjacent column, is an illustration of how a seemingly positive attribute can frequently contain elements of risk/weakness that lies beneath the surface. While giving music career training, I come across the issues listed below on a continual basis (among many others) and these are the reasons why a person typically struggles to make it in the music business even though they possess many great skills and accomplishments.

Note: Of course as a general rule, the items you will read about in the left column of the table are good/positive (at least when taken in isolation). However as you will see, when taken in context of your specific goals they also often contain unexpected weaknesses that can hurt you unless you take proper actions to prevent this from happening.

After having seen how and why your music career assets can also become your weaknesses, there are a few things you need to do right now to maximize your chances for success for doing music as a career.

1. Understand that not all elements of music career value are ‘positive’ when taking into account YOUR long term music business goals. Certain elements that may at first seem overwhelmingly positive can very often do more harm than good (as you have seen in the above analysis).

2. Make it a high priority to get the clearest understanding of your current risks and values in your music career. To get help with this, fill out this quick music career success building test.

3. Organize a music business plan detailing the goals you want to reach. In the process, list the assets (elements of musical value for the industry) that you will need to acquire and also make a plan for how you will minimize their opposing negative side effects. To get help with doing this, you should work with a proven music career coach who can guide you effectively through this process. Additionally, through music career training you will often discover new and powerful ways to make yourself more valuable in the music business that you have not considered before.

4. Keep in mind that compiling a comprehensive plan for reaching your music career goals demands having a clear image of what you want to achieve and supplementing that vision through ongoing training. Fact is that the majority of musicians are not hard-wired for thinking in this way. They, as most creative business minds, tend to act on impulse and intuition. Although it can be helpful to rely on your gut feeling occasionally, doing ‘only’ this will make your music career results unpredictable and random.

Last but not least, remember that in your quest to build new pieces of value for advancing your music career, your actions will be of limited use until you complete the self-analysis of your strong and weak areas in the way I explained here. After learning how to get the most from your current potential, your progress towards a successful music career will become greatly enhanced.

To help you learn more about your current potential to build a successful music career, fill out this free music career success building test.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is an electric guitar teacher online and a music career mentor. He plays guitar and tours with the band Rhapsody Of Fire. Tom also trains musicians on how to succeed in the music business. On his professional musician website tomhess.net you can read many more articles about making a living with a music career.

By Tom Hess

Do you want to be able to fully express yourself with your guitar? One of the most powerful aspects of music is its ability to serve as a tool for expressing our ideas and emotions. It is for this reason that musical expression should be one of your greatest goals. In order to enhance your musical expression and clearly communicate your ideas, you must understand how to think creatively when you play guitar. Once you have mastered this, you will be able to use your guitar to create very deep connections with those who listen to your music.

Most guitarists want to be able to express themselves better with their guitar playing; however, the majority of guitar players have no idea how to actually practice this skill. This leads to a lot of time being wasted on practicing guitar in a way that does not produce big results. The solution to this problem is to develop a more accurate fundamental understanding of how to develop musical creativity.

Many people play the guitar songs and melodies of great guitar players hoping that they will soak in the same musical expression abilities through time and experience. Although it is cool to play nice guitar riffs, and learn your favorite solos on guitar, doing this alone will not give you musical creativity. The reality is that copying other musicians will bring very few results on its own. There are essentially two things you need to understand in order to become highly creative and express emotions in music:

1. You have to understand the manner in which great guitar players and musicians ‘think’. More specifically, this means determining WHY they choose the specific notes and musical ideas that they do. This is something that you cannot learn if you simply copy the “notes” of your favorite songs and guitar solos. Rather than just playing the same notes as other musicians, you must spend time thinking about the musical emotions you want to express, and what specific musical choices you need to make to achieve that goal. Once you gain this level of musical creativity, you will develop your own unique sound as it relates to the ideas and emotions that come from your mind.
2. You must learn why certain musical elements create very predictable emotions for people, and then use this knowledge when playing music for others. The best musical artists will generally make decisions in their music based on the goal of influencing the emotions of the listeners in a specific way (whether the artist, or their audience consciously realize it themselves or not). Without this ability to intentionally express your unique emotions in music, you will be limited to merely playing the musical ideas of others.

If you want to truly master musical creativity, you will need to learn how to use music theory. Unfortunately, most guitar players have one of two misconceptions about what music theory IS. Some people stay away from theory because they believe it contains unbreakable “rules” that will limit their freedom of musical expression. Other guitar players think that the purpose of music theory is only to learn abstract ideas about all the nuts and bolts that make up music.

The truth is, music theory is neither of these things. Music theory is the idea of connecting one’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions together through musical expression. It is the ability to explain WHY we feel emotions in music, and how we can continue to use musical creativity to recreate our emotions.

Change The Way You Think About Music Theory

In order to really understand music theory, you need to first get rid of any of the current misconceptions you have about it (as described above). Once you do this, you can truly unlock your greatest potential with musical expression and creativity. The main thing to understand about music theory is that it is very useful for explaining how music makes us feel various emotions.

There are many ways to demonstrate this, and here is one example of how I teach my guitar students to become more musically creative by applying music theory. First, I have them take out a piece of paper and write down all of the thoughts, ideas, and emotions they want to convey through musical expression. Once they have done this, I ask them to try to figure out the various music theory tools that can be used to express these things. The key here is to emphasize “applying” music theory in a creative way so that you integrate the music world together with everyday thoughts and situations.

Using exercises such as the one above is great for helping you to understand the connection between raw music theory concepts and their application for specific expressive uses. This helps you to learn to associate musical concepts with the ideas you have in your mind. If you would like to hear a more detailed explanation of these ideas, watch this musical creativity guitar video.

Here are the most important skills you will get from learning music theory:

1. You will gain an understanding of exactly WHY you enjoy listening to certain kinds of music. This will allow you to create the same musical emotions that you get from the music of your favorite artists without copying/cloning their exact guitar licks and solos. This skill will greatly enhance your musical creativity.
2. You will no longer have to waste time trying to find the “right notes” when making your own music. You will be able to quickly identify the exact musical elements needed to express your emotions in music. This will put your level of musical creativity far ahead of most guitarists and musicians who simply play around on their instrument until something sounds interesting.
3. Music theory gives you all the equipment you need to put together new musical ideas much more quickly, without having to rely on remembering the way something sounds. Having the ability to associate specific feelings and emotions with the musical tools needed to express them allows you to compose and organize entire sections of your music on paper (or by ear) before even playing any notes.
4. When you understand how to connect emotions in music with the musical ideas that create those feelings, you will be able to make music that puts the listener into a specific emotional state (that you get to choose!)

What Do You Need To Do Right Now?

If your goal is to become highly skillful at musical expression, then you need to follow these steps to start achieving this on guitar:

1. First, watch this musical creativity guitar video.
2. Remember that although music theory is extremely important for maximizing your musical creativity, you need to also develop a variety of musical skills to achieve the most freedom in your musical expression.
3. Understand that music theory skill is not developed by merely taking a certain number of music theory lessons, but rather by your ability to use your current knowledge to accurately bring out your emotions through your music. Use the exercise mentioned earlier in this article to see how well you can use theoretical music concepts to make music that is consistent with the ideas you want to express. If you struggle with this, this either means that your music theory skills are low or (most commonly) you do not understand how to use what you know in music theory in an actual musical context. If you play guitar while integrating together music theory and musical expression, you will notice a HUGE surge in musical creativity!

Remember, it doesn’t matter if you know a lot about scales, chords, and other theoretical concepts. The most essential thing when it comes to music theory, is understanding how to consistently integrate your music knowledge with the thoughts and ideas in your mind. Once you can do this, your musical creativity will be overflowing!

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains musicians to reach their guitar playing goals in his rock guitar lessons online. Visit his website, tomhess.net to read more articles about guitar playing, get free guitar tips and guitar playing resources.

What is the first you do when you feel low on inspirational ideas in your guitar playing? Most guitar players attempt to solve this problem by seeking out new guitar scales to practice and play. Unfortunately, no sooner than they find the next new sale to practice, they realize that they are again feeling bored and out of creative options in their guitar playing. Ironically, rather than seeking a more effective and better way of practicing scales in general, these guitar players instead attempt to solve the problem by learning “even more” new scales. This creates a never-ending vicious cycle of frustration and disappointment.

The good news is that there is a superior way to learn scales on guitar that will enable you to make more progress in less time. The single most critical point you need to remember is that it is necessary to fully explore every creative option offered by a new scale before you move on to start learning more scales. By doing this, you will improve your guitar playing with scales much more quickly and will enjoy the process of practicing guitar a lot more.

Below I will outline for you several essential tips that will help you to get much more out of every scale you practice on guitar. Following this advice will enable you to not end up in the very common dilemma described above, and instead move forward much more quickly towards your guitar playing goals.

To see in more details how to use the advice from this article in your own guitar practicing, watch this free video on playing guitar scales.

1. Break Out Of “Box Patterns” And Master The Guitar Fretboard Fully By far the most popular mistake the vast majority of guitarists make when learning to play scales is only playing them in a single area of the guitar. The most common example of this for blues/rock guitar players involves playing the A minor pentatonic scale in the fifth position on the fretboard (only) and completely neglecting to learn it in other areas of the guitar. The result of this is similar to watching a movie on TV and switching channels at the first commercial break to start watching a different program, and without ever coming back to finish the original movie continuing to switch channels to watch something brand new as soon as another commercial comes.

In guitar playing world, doing this leads to never being able to truly use the scales you have “learned” to their full potential in your music. To overcome this VERY common problem, you must make time in your practicing to learn to play every scale you want to master all over the guitar. Fact is, you can write much more music (much more expressively) with only a single scale that you know on the guitar inside and out than you can with dozens of scales that you can only play in one area of the guitar.

To watch me demonstrate several examples of how to practice scales around the guitar neck, watch this free video about playing guitar scales.

2. Avoid The CAGED System Even though this system of playing guitar scales is quite popular among some guitar teachers, it is NEVER used by world class virtuoso guitar players because it places a huge number of restrictions on your ability to freely use scales in music.

Without writing a 100 page dissertation about all the flaws of the CAGED system, its single biggest weakness is that it is not based on “how scales ACTUALLY work in music” for all instruments and is instead intended to create a shortcut only for “guitar players” by exploiting several isolated and completely illogical visual shapes on guitar (that, by the way, only work in ‘standard tuning’ and become totally useless in drop tunings or open tunings). The result of such a crippling system is that guitarists remain forever restricted in the way they can use scales musically and cannot play scales all over the guitar on the same level as other musicians who have a real and complete understanding of how scales are supposed to work in music.

Fortunately, the complete and most efficient ways of practicing scales on guitar are not any more difficult to learn and understand than the (much flawed) CAGED system.

3. Find Out What Scales Your Favorite Guitar Players Use (And HOW They Use Them) A great training exercise you should do in addition to your regular practice sessions of learning scales on guitar involves listening carefully to your favorite music (and guitar solos in particular) and studying what scales your favorite guitar players use. If you are less advanced in terms of your ear training, you can use someone else’s transcriptions (if you trust the transcriber) or figure the solos out by ear on your own.

On top of being a tremendous training drill for developing awesome ear training, this kind of practicing will show you ideas of how you can and should use scales in your style of music to write songs, guitar solos and improvisations.

4. Get Specific About Your Scale Needs Depending on the style of music you play, there will be some scales that are much more common to your guitar playing style than others (for example: the Harmonic minor scale is much more common in Neo-classical metal guitar compared to the Blues scale, and vice versa for Blues/Classic Rock guitar players). With this in mind, you need to prioritize your guitar practice time by focusing your attention FIRST on getting the maximum creative potential out of the most important scales for your style. Only “after” doing that does it make sense to spend significant time to begin practicing exotic and unusual scales.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how to play lots of scales, but in order to truly get results from doing that, several things need to happen first: You need to have already done the work of mastering the most essential scales for your musical style (as described above), and you must have a reliable method for practicing that you can apply to quickly learn any scale on guitar.

You can use one of 2 ways (or preferably both) to achieve the goal above: you can either ask a guitar teacher to simply tell you what the most important scales for your musical style are, or you can improve your aural skills (ear training) and knowledge of how music works to hear what scales are used in your favorite music yourself.

5. Practice Playing Scales On Each Single String Of The Guitar In Addition To “Scale Shapes” Most musicians are comfortable with playing scales “vertically” (from the low E string to the high E string). Even though this is an important foundation of all playing of scales on guitar, it is equally important to learn how the scales are laid out on each of the 6 strings of the guitar from the first fret to the last fret (by playing “side to side” across the guitar neck). Training in this way will help to picture scale shapes in every position of the guitar more easily, even if you are starting to play a phrase from a string other than the 6th string.

What Is The Next Step? Obviously, there are multiple ways to proceed regarding learning scales on guitar and certainly some are more effective than others. In order for you to determine which one is the more appropriate for your needs, observe the rate of progress you are experiencing as you go through the process of practicing. If you have struggled to get great results from the way you used to learn scales on guitar up to this point, apply the tips given in this article. In addition, use the advice presented in the free video on playing guitar scales that was discussed earlier. As you do this, you will see your rate of improvement skyrocket.

About the author: Mike Philippov is a recording artist, guitar teacher and author. His articles on practicing guitar are read worldwide. Visit http://PracticeGuitarNow.com to find more free resources and lessons on improving your guitar playing.

One of the most fundamental skills to develop if you want to play guitar well is the ability to change chords accurately and reliably. Sadly, many musicians have a very hard time doing this in their guitar playing. Since you began reading this article, chances are high that you struggle with this common problem and you can relate to the frustration of not being able to reliably change chords of your favorite songs as you try to play them for yourself or perform them for others.
Although this problem cripples many musicians for years, it is very realistic to overcome. In this article I want to show you one of the ways to do this that will help you to greatly improve your guitar skills and have an easier time playing the music that you love. This process involves 4 distinct steps that, when practiced consistently, will allow you to confidently and smoothly learn to play any chord change that you currently struggle with.
Here are the 4 points you need to follow when practicing any difficult chord change on guitar:
Step 1: Get Specific To successfully overcome any difficult aspect of the music you are learning, you need to get very specific about which pair of chords is causing your playing to fall apart. Doing this will make you very focused and will help you to spend your time more wisely by practicing only the sections of the song that you really NEED to improve. Even if you are trying to play a piece of music where it seems that every set of chords is difficult to play, narrow it down to working on a single chord change at a time. This will help you to minimize frustration and will build confidence from breaking down the problem into bite-sized components.
Step 2: Play And Release Once you have narrowed down the problem area of the music to a sequence of chord changes, spend a few minutes mastering the fingering of each of the chords in isolation. Forget about the actual transitioning motion for now and only focus on placing your fingers down into the correct playing position for ‘each’ individual chord. Your challenge is to make the motion with fingers coordinated and moving “together” and to keep the rest of your arm relaxed as you do this. After your fingers land on the correct notes, release (relax) them off of the strings and immediately repeat the process, continuing for 1-2 minutes. Then do the same exact exercise with the second chord of the pair that is giving you trouble. Again, don’t pay any attention to the transition motion between the two chords yet (that will come next) and focus on refining the way your fingers come on and off of each chord.
If you want to see a video explanation of exactly the right way to practice this motion, study this free guitar video lesson about chord changes on guitar.
Step 3: Focus Specifically On The Shifting Motion From One Chord To The Next The next step, after developing the coordination needed to play the chords individually, is to focus ONLY on the moment of transitioning your hand from one chord to the other. In order to practice this, first play chord number 1, then relax the hand gradually away from the strings and proceed to slowly transform it into the shape of the chord you are moving to. If the chord change you are practicing involves chords played in different parts of the guitar neck, move your entire arm while forming the shape of the target chord as your hand moves to the correct fret. As you make this transition, keep your mind focused on the points listed below:

1. Do NOT allow your fingers to fly up too far from the guitar neck. The lower the fingers are to the strings, the faster you will arrive to the target chord.
2. Look for common notes between the two chords. This means that if there is one or more notes to be fretted with the same finger(s) between the 2 chords, don’t let those fingers come up at all from the guitar in order to eliminate the extra motions that your fingers do not have to perform.
3. Keep your eyes focused on the fretting hand the entire time you are playing. This will allow you to control the motion from start to finish, ensuring that the fingers land exactly where they need to be for the new chord.
4. Take your time to work through the motion and avoid rushing to arrive to the next chord without paying attention to how your hands move in the process. Too many guitar players simply make a rushed attempt to land their fingers onto the next chord without taking the time to really train the nuances described above. This leads to inconsistent playing and frustration when it comes time to perform the music you have been practicing. After you have completed the chord change 1 time, repeat the entire process to return to the first chord in the progression and continue this practice session for an interval of 2-3 minutes.

You should strive to reach the level of making the transition with all of your fingers arriving at their target chord “simultaneously” and without making any micro adjustments after fretting the notes. Any adjustments made after the fingers land on the strings mean that you haven’t yet mastered the transition between the chords. If you are still confused on how to practice this part of the motion, this free video about learning chord changes on guitar will help to make it clear.

Step 4: Complete The Puzzle
After completing the previous step of the practicing process, it is time to insert the chord change into an actual musical context you want to play it in (such as a song you are learning). To do this, simply lengthen the original 2 chord section you have been practicing in the earlier steps by about 2 seconds. Begin by playing the part of the music that occurs 2 seconds prior to the isolated chord change and then continue playing through about 2 seconds of the music that comes after the chord change. This will help to prepare you for actually playing the song all the way through and test how well you have practiced the previous steps of the process described in this article.
As you follow the practice steps outlined here you will see your problems with chord changes starting to disappear, enabling you to get much more enjoyment out of playing music on guitar.
About the author: Mike Philippov is a guitar instructional author, professional guitar player and composer. He writes articles about the best ways to practice guitar that are studied by many musicians worldwide. To get more help with becoming a better guitar player, visit his website: http://PracticeGuitarNow.com

by Tom Hess

Do your guitar solos sound very similar to each other? Are you frustrated by your lack of ability to come up with fresh and inspiring lead guitar phrases? If so, then you are not alone. It is common for many guitarists to get into the habit of using similar melodies and musical ideas when creating guitar solos. Some of this difficulty comes from the habit of listening to the same guitar players on a daily basis and emulating their particular lead guitar soloing style. However, the biggest reason why guitar players tend to play solos that sound alike is due to continuously using the same process for creating lead guitar parts.

If you are like most guitarists, then you probably approach your guitar solos in the following way: you listen to the chords or riffs that you will play over, and then improvise some melodies until something feels right. This process continues until you have built a completed guitar solo.

Although this approach is a legitimate way to approach soloing on guitar, you need to realize that every time you use it, you are relying on the same guitar soloing process as most other guitarists. As a result, the guitar solos you create will have the same (or very similar) sound to other musicians you know.

Before I explain a new and very innovative way for you to solo, I’d like to further illustrate my point above with an example of a popular guitar player by the name of Yngwie Malmsteen. Yngwie has a career spanning several decades, which he has built on his reputation as an incredible lead guitar player. I bring this up to point out that he is an example of a guitarist who frequently uses the exact same approach to his guitar solos. I am not saying this in order to criticize him (in fact I love his guitar playing myself), but rather to point out what I have observed. The fact is, Yngwie is very content with his guitar playing, and his approach to creating music obviously works for him. However, if you find yourself frequently unhappy with the way your guitar solos sound similar to one another then a change needs to be made.

So what is a good way to solve this issue? Here is one of the methods for creating great guitar solos that I have found to work with great success.

Take a listen to all of the singers that you enjoy and choose one. For this exercise, you are going to compose a guitar solo based on the way your favorite singer sings his/her melodies. There exist many ways to go about doing this, and I’m going to outline one of them for you below. I’ve also provided you with a video to watch which gives a guitar demonstration of this.

There are 5 steps you need to do:

Step #1: Pick one of the vocal lines that your chosen singer sings in a song.

Step #2: Using your guitar, play this melody. Spend some time to really understand how the vocal melody works. Articulate the specific style that the singer uses as closely as you can (don’t simply ‘play the same pitches’).

Step #3: Once you can play the melody in a very articulate manner, pick out the notes which seem to be the strongest points of the melody. Write this down in some form.

Step #4: Cut out all of the ‘non essential’ pitches, leaving only the most important notes of the melody.

Step #5: Now that you have created a foundation for your new guitar solo, you can start to get creative. Keep the main pitches that you’ve selected, and fill the space in between them with new guitar licks centered around those notes.

Watch the video below to see and hear how this all works. Oh, by the way, I brought Fabio Lione (Rhapsody Of Fire’s singer) all the way from Italy to Chicago to sing the vocal melody for this 2-hour guitar solo master class (here is a short excerpt of it).

The more you practice the method described in this article, the better you will get at playing melodic guitar solos whenever you want. You will see great improvement as your guitar solos stop sounding like all the other solos you’ve already heard, and start to take on their own distinct sound.

When you practice using the information in this article, you will start to develop some seriously melodic guitar solos. By combining the power of your favorite singer’s vocals with your guitar playing, you can stop making guitar solos that sound like every other solo, and start making highly unique guitar phrasing that really stands out.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains musicians to reach their guitar playing goals in his rock guitar lessons online. Visit his website, tomhess.net to read more articles about guitar playing, get free guitar tips and guitar playing resources.

Do you wish you could write cool rhythm guitar riffs for rock and metal? If you are like many rock guitarists, you have much stronger lead guitar skills than rhythm guitar skills. In most cases, guitar players only learn the basic power chords, open chords, or barre chords when learning to play rhythm guitar. As a result, they have great difficulty coming up with cool rhythm guitar riffs because they do not truly understand how to play rhythm guitar in a creative way. For the rest of this article, I will talk about how you can by use creative rhythm guitar practice methods to write your own rock and metal guitar riffs.

First, it is important to understand that being able to play interesting rhythm guitar ideas means focusing more on HOW you play what you play than WHAT specific notes you are using. The truth is that you can make any basic guitar chord sound great without adding in many new notes. In fact, you can probably already start writing good rhythm guitar ideas with just a fundamental understanding of power chords and open chords. However, in order to truly master the ability to play great rhythm guitar riffs, you will need to learn new guitar skills that you probably haven’t thought of before.

You probably already know that to truly master rhythm guitar playing, you must work on improving a variety of different skills and you may even know what some of those skills are. However, if you are still having a hard time writing rhythm guitar riffs that you are happy with, most likely your approach to practicing this area of guitar playing could use additional help (even if you aren’t aware specifically of “what” skills need to be improved). If you would like to understand exactly what needs to be done in order to improve all areas in your guitar playing, I recommend that you seek out a great guitar teacher who has already helped many other guitarists make significant progress toward their musical goals. In the meantime, there are 5 essential ideas that you can use to make great rhythm guitar riffs regardless of your current skill level. Once you have become comfortable with using these ideas in your rhythm guitar playing, you will be able to make creative guitar riffs any time you pick up the guitar:

1. Create multiple guitar riffs by using the rhythm of just one. Find an interesting rhythmic pattern that contains no actual pitches and apply it using any number of different sets of chords, notes, or chord progressions. By doing this, you will MASSIVELY improve your rhythm guitar creativity. Also you can do this the other way around: Take one chord, note, or chord progression and play guitar using a variety of different rhythmic patterns. This will give you a lot of material to use when coming up with new guitar riffs.
2. Think about the way the actual rhythms you play work together to make the guitar riff as a whole. Similar to lead guitar, many guitarists ‘overdo it’ when playing rhythm guitar riffs. That said, in order to make awesome rhythm guitar riffs, you only really need a few notes at most. Although it is fun to learn new ideas to use in your rhythm guitar playing, keep in mind that your number one focus is to play something with an interesting ‘rhythm’!

By stripping your guitar riffs of any excess notes, you will force yourself to think more about the actual rhythms being played. To practice this, start by writing down four measures worth of 8^th notes on a piece of paper. Then remove 6 of these notes at random and replace them with rests. After doing this, play the rhythm you have just created using only a single note or chord on guitar. Once you give this exercise a try, you will quickly notice that you can create nearly endless rhythm ideas for your guitar riffs. Additionally, you can make things more interesting by using various time signatures or alternate note durations.

1. Practice making your rhythm guitar playing as clean and TIGHT as you can. Being able to do this is necessary for playing great sounding guitar riffs. The majority of guitarists know that you must be able to play consistently in time in order to play good rhythm guitar, however few guitarists know what it sounds like when someone is playing TIGHT rhythm guitar that locks in with the metronome. If you can’t consistently play in time, your rhythm guitar ideas will not sound good even if they are really cool ideas.

A good way to test your ability to play rhythm guitar ‘in time’ is to record yourself playing a row of quarter notes using any basic chord (that uses 3 strings or less). Record yourself over a quarter note drum track or metronome. If you can play with perfect rhythmic timing, you will notice that the beat seems to become silent as it matches up in unison with your guitar playing. If you are not playing tight, you will easily hear yourself falling behind or getting ahead of the beat.

Aside from having great timing when playing guitar to a beat, it is important to improve other areas in rhythm guitar playing such as palm muting control and pick attack articulation. Having the ability to play well in these areas will not only help improve your overall rhythm guitar skills, but it will save you A LOT of cash in the studio if you ever record an album. Learn how to master these aspects of rhythm guitar by checking out this free guide about learning how to record guitar.

1. Work to improve your pinch harmonics and vibrato skills. These two guitar techniques can make your guitar riffs sound very intense (especially in rock or metal guitar playing). Vibrato is useful for giving your guitar a voice-like quality, and when you combine it with pinch harmonics, the end result is a powerful guitar riff that is sure to get the attention of your audience. If you have not fully mastered these techniques, start by using them separately. Once you are more comfortable with each one, combine them both together at the end of your guitar riffs for an extra strong finish!
2. Learn creative ways to combine guitar chords together. This will enable you to think of many cool sounding groups of chords to use in your rhythm guitar riffs. If you are familiar with the idea of ‘keys’ when using chords, this will be much easier for you. However, if you don’t know about this yet, simply combine different major and minor chords together with power chords. For instance, if you are playing a guitar riff that contains an A power chord, you can add in the notes of an A minor chord to get a different sound. Experiment with this idea to expand power chords into full major or minor chords.

Mastering the ability to play creative rhythm guitar riffs does not happen overnight. However, as you have read, there are many things you can work on right now to make good progress in this area of your guitar playing. When you learn how to write your own rhythm guitar riffs, you will have a great time coming up with cool ideas on guitar with little effort. By practicing your rhythm guitar skills you will become a much better musician overall. On top of that, if you would like to become a professional guitarist, these skills will be very useful while performing live shows on stage and recording songs in the studio.

To learn more about becoming a really TIGHT rhythm guitar player, read this free guide about learning how to record guitar.

Get professional advice to help you improve your guitar playing on this page with tips on how to play guitar better.

About The Author: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher online, composer and a touring musician. He plays guitar in the epic metal band Rhapsody Of Fire. He teaches guitar players in his rock guitar lessons online.  Go to tomhess.net to get more guitar playing resources , guitar playing eBooks, and to read more guitar playing articles.

Do you want to improve the efficiency of your practice time? Virtually every guitar player would answer “Yes” to this question and yet many musicians face painfully slow progress in their guitar playing year after year. It may appear that many guitar players may simply be unable to progress as quickly as others despite their best guitar practice efforts. Fortunately, it IS quite possible for anyone (including you) to drastically improve the results obtained from practicing guitar, and the best part is that you can do so without increasing the total amount of time you spend learning to play your instrument.

The reality is such that the world’s best guitar players have various things in common in the ways they approach the process of practicing their instrument. (Watch this video about learning to play the guitar to find out what these things are.) Likewise, guitarists who practice for years and never seem to get any better ALSO have things that are in common in their guitar practice methods. These common flaws are some of the reasons why many guitar players never become the great musicians they have the potential to be.

As you keep reading below, I will explain a few of the more common mistakes guitar players make in their approaches to practicing. If you have a hard time getting better on guitar despite practicing regularly, be honest with yourself and ask if any of the issues you will read about are true in your own guitar playing. If you can identify with even one of the guitar practice mistakes listed in this article, you will have taken a big step towards overcoming an important obstacle that stands in the way of you becoming a better musician.

Guitar Practice Mistake 1: Paralyzing Yourself With Too Many Choices Guitar players today have a very easy time with finding lots of guitar playing exercises, tab lessons and videos. Everything is only a click away. However, the irony of the situation is such that the number of truly great guitar players in the world (and the rate at which musicians progress) has NOT gone up, despite the advancements in technology. Why is this so?

The reason why the above problem exists is because this overabundance of information leads to one of 2 outcomes:

1. Guitar players start to move from one set of guitar playing materials to another with no idea whatsoever about how doing so will help them to advance their guitar skills.
2. Guitar players become paralyzed by the overload of choices and different guitar learning paths to take and are unable to come to a decision about ‘what’ steps to take next to move forward in their guitar playing. In each of the situations described, your guitar playing will improve much slower than it could otherwise.

Top guitar masters know how to prevent the above issues by staying with a consistent approach to developing their musical skills and know how to filter out all but the most essential guitar practice materials that are needed to overcome their musical challenges. This is the key that helps them to avoid this common mistake.

To learn how you can do the same in your musical training and become a much better guitarist more quickly, watch this free lesson (on video) on learning to play the guitar.

Guitar Practice Mistake 2: Obsessing About ‘How Long’ It Takes To Become A Better Guitarist

A lot of musicians (especially those who began studying with a teacher recently) spend a great deal time asking questions similar to the following: “How long does it take to develop into a great musician?”

Even though it is normal to be preoccupied with this issue in the beginning of your guitar playing life, investing too much time into this question will only slow your rate of improvement as a musician and will make you miss the exact steps you need to take to get the result you want. This happens because the process of learning to play guitar depends NOT on the length of time that has transpired since you started to practice your instrument but rather on how well you used that time. The maxim: “It’s not the time you spend, it’s HOW you spend the time” applies to this issue perfectly.

Obsessing over “the amount of time” it takes for you to develop a set of guitar playing skills will often – without you realizing it – move your attention from focusing on making your guitar practice sessions more productive to simply ‘waiting’ for a certain date on the calendar to arrive, hoping to reach your goals by that time.

Instead of making the mistake above, your energy should be directed on making every moment you practicing guitar become highly productive. It’s only AFTER your guitar practice sessions become extremely effective that time you spend with your instrument will begin to matter.

Guitar Practice Mistake 3: Not Being Patient After you discover the secrets to effective guitar practicing, it will get easier to progress more quickly as a musician. Nonetheless, it is equally important to realize that at some point there is no way to speed up the rate of your progress to a level faster than is natural.

This is exactly the same as the process a gardener goes through when placing a seed into the ground in the hopes of someday seeing it develop into a fruit tree. No matter how much the gardener attempts to speed up the process of the seed blossoming into a tree, there are some stages of growth that cannot be sped up past a certain point. This analogy applies perfectly to becoming a better guitar player.

Sadly, too many guitarists do not realize the true importance of patience in the process of improving their musical skills. As a result, many become frustrated too quickly and start doubting their potential to improve if they do not see results by some arbitrarily set deadline. When the unrealistic results are not achieved quickly, this leads to even more negative mindsets that will only discourage you from practicing guitar.

To overcome this problem, realize that the journey to becoming a great guitar player is a never-ending process and you have your entire life to develop your musical skills. This is the first step to clearing your mind enough to have the energy needed to practice guitar effectively.

Guitar Practice Mistake 3: Not Relying On Yourself Enough The first 3 mistakes mentioned earlier often apply to guitarists who are self-taught.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, lack of “self-sufficiency” is very widespread among musicians who take guitar lessons with a teacher. This concept means understanding the very obvious fact that only YOU are the person in charge of your own guitar playing progress (or lack of it). Although having a guitar teacher is a great way to make faster progress in your playing, it is not a replacement for the fact that “you” must take the actions needed to get to where you want to be as a musician.

All of that being said, “relying on yourself” does NOT mean to be skeptical of everything your guitar teacher says or believe that you know more about playing guitar than your teacher. Obviously if “did” know more than your teacher, you wouldn’t be the one taking guitar lessons, would you? However, taking responsibility for your own guitar playing progress DOES mean to take your own initiative with getting the most out of whatever resource you use to improve your guitar playing. It also implies making an honest effort at discovering the answer to your musical questions by thinking about the issue before asking for extra help. The idea is to “balance” relying on yourself with knowing when to ask for help if you are truly stuck. If you do this on a regular basis, you will achieve the best of both worlds: you will progress more quickly in your guitar playing and you will also avoid developing a feeling of dependency on any single guitar learning resource.

If you want more advice on how to practice guitar like the best guitarists do, start by watching this free video on learning to play the guitar. This video will help you to understand the ideas from this article on a deeper level and will enable you to know with greater clarity what steps you need to take right now to greatly improve your skills on guitar. By taking advantage of the guitar practice approaches that great guitarists have in common, while avoiding the mistakes that the majority of musicians typically make you will move towards your goals much faster than you ever thought possible.

About The Author: Mike Philippov is a guitar instructional author, professional guitar player and composer. He writes articles about the best ways to practice guitar that are studied by many musicians worldwide. To get more help with becoming a better guitar player, visit his website: http://PracticeGuitarNow.com