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CONTENTS:

Your Free Acoustic Guitar Lesson

Guitar Lessons Online - 3 Things You'll Need To Get Started

How To Be Successful At Practicing The Guitar

Your Free Acoustic Guitar Lesson

Here is a free acoustic guitar lesson to help you improve your guitar playing skills quickly.

This guitar learning techique will teach you how to fingerpick folk-style, but in a Latin rhythm in the key of A. This Latin rhythm has eight quick beats to the measure, and is accented on the first, the fourth, and the seventh beats.

This guitar lesson will focus on using your right hand, and your thumb will play the accented beats. Your fingers will follow. Finger number one, the index finger, is to pluck the third string on beats two, five, and eight, and fingers two and three will pluck the second and first strings together on beats three and six.

In the following acoustic guitar lesson, you will chord an A for the first sample. To keep it simple, let's take the beats one at a time...

Acoustic Guitar Lesson - 7 Steps to Chord an A:

1) First, the thumb plucks the open A string for a bass note.

2) Next, finger one plucks the third string, which is sounding an A.

3) Then fingers two and three pluck strings two and one together. These two notes will be a C-sharp and the open top E string.

4) Now the thumb immediately plucks string four, which is an E and works as an alternate bass string. That's beat 4.

5) Now beat five is just like beat two, with finger one plucking string three.

6) Beat six is just like beat three, with fingers two and three plucking the top two strings.

7) On beat seven, use the thumb to pluck the third string, then finish up with fingers two and three plucking the top two strings again.

When you've practiced the acoustic guitar lesson above a few times, it will become second nature to you to pluck this Latin rhythm.

Your next part of this acoustic guitar lesson is to try the same finger picking pattern using an E chord. Since the open sixth string is your bass note, you'll pluck it on beat one. Follow through with the rest of the measure in the same pattern, except your thumb plucks the fifth string on beat four and the fourth string on beat seven. When you've mastered the E chord the acoustic guitar lesson moves on to the D chord. With D, you can just use the fourth string for your thumb-plucked bass note each time.

Acoustic Guitar Lesson Tip:

Here's a fast acoustic guitar lesson secret for making the above finger-picking style of guitar playing a little fancier. Chord an A. Here's how...

When you pluck the fourth beat of the measure lift your chording finger - it's the ring finger on your left hand. Lift it and then press it while plucking. You'll get a little slur at the start of the note. This sounds great when you build speed up. Try the same little trick when playing the key of E, too. It will be finger two that you will be lifting.

Finally in this free acoustic guitar lesson for you, put everything together in a chord sequence. Play A for two measures, then D for two measures. Play E for two measures, then back to D for two measures, then A to finish up.

About The Author

Article by Anna Rowe. Visit her site: http://www.online-guitar-lesson-reviews.com to get guitar playing tips and guitar lesson program reviews. Learn how to play guitar with amazing guitar playing soluitons and free guitar lessons.

Guitar Lessons Online - 3 Things You'll Need To Get Started

Recently, I've been exploring some options to improve my guitar playing skills online. In this article I'll talk about 3 things you'll need if you want to learn guitar online. I hope my experience and tips will help you in your musical journey.

Before I start, you should know that there are some excellent tutorials online. Some of the better ones are a structured course with step-by-step videos and play along music. If you're contemplating to learn guitar online, then here's what you'll need to get started.

1. A Guitar

I know this sounds obvious, but this an important fact you'll need to know. You don't need an expensive guitar or amp to get started. Remember that its about the skill and not the instrument. I've read countless bios of famous guitarists and many of them (like Brian May who hand-built his first guitar) started with old, beaten up, hand-me-down guitars.

My point is this: Don't get hung up on your guitar. All you need is a basic guitar. I prefer an acoustic if you're a beginner as you won't get caught up with the technical aspects of it not sounding right. I can tell you from experience that I've wasted a lot of money because I thought another pedal/gear/pick will make me play better.

Just make sure it stays in tune and has fresh strings. An acoustic guitar will also free you to practice more often as you can just pick it up an play anytime without worrying about plugging in your gear.

2. A Decent PC

A good online guitar course will have a series of videos that will guide you step by step, much like a personal guitar tutor, but at your own pace and with much less stress!

To learn guitar from an online course, you'll need a pair of PC speakers. Nothing fancy, but a good pair that is clear and audible is essential. The videos themselves will be played using your browser usually with a Flash or Quicktime plugin, both of which are available free online.

3. Determination and Persistence!

I mentioned earlier that with an online guitar course, you can learn at your own pace. However, that can also be to your disadvantage as you will not be accountable to anyone except yourself!

That's why its important that you set goals for yourself. For example, to learn a certain lick or song by the middle of next month, etc.

Your guitar playing can also reach a "plateau" and you feel like you're playing the same thing over and over and not improving. That's where you'll need to persevere and not give up. Even if its a few minutes daily, continue to practice and one day, you'll have a breakthrough. How fast that comes depends totally on you!

That's it for now. Remember that all the best guitarists have one thing in common - practice. Yes, that's the secret to mastering your instrument and there's no shortcut around it. Vary your practice routine with breaks in between and treat yourself once you've nailed something down.

Remember, you're on your own when you take guitar lessons online, but its an excellent way to improve your guitar playing from the comfort of you own home at your own schedule.

About The Author
Al Tan tries to be a guitarist when he's not building websites. One of the best resource to learn guitar online that he's come across which has step-by-step guitar lessons on video is http://www.LearnMusicFrom.Us/Guitar. For acoustic guitar, try http://www.LearnMusicFrom.Us/AcousticGuitar

How To Be Successful At Practicing The Guitar

Practice: to work on something repeatedly for the purpose of improvement.

That says a lot. It tells you what to do (work), how (repeatedly), and why (to improve).

Once you understand what "practice" is, you can proceed to learn how to use this new tool to your best advantage.

1. TUNE UP: It's important to play music at correct concert pitch.

2. WARM UP: Play through an easy piece, slowly. The idea here is to loosen up your muscles. Don't play anything that is hard or fast.

3. DIRECTION: Before you go any further, settle your mind upon what it is you wish to achieve today. At this point it's important to remember two things.

a. You are practicing to improve. this means getting results.

b. You learn the guitar, or grow into music, in the same way you grow into an adult - over a period of time. You may experience fast progress, or experience a slow gradual growth. There may even be times when you don't seem to progress at all.

However, if your practice program is directed towards results (whether they come fast or slow), you'll see them soon enough - providing you keep on working systematically at your study program. Don't be overly concerned about mistakes - if you keep looking for mistakes, you'll succeed in finding mistakes - and very little else.

4. TODAY'S PROBLEMS - YOUR CURRENT LESON: Here you confront new material that must be learnt. As you progress, this part of your practice schedule will change. That is to say, as you complete one assignment you will move on to the next. (Keep working with the thought in mind that you are practicing to improve).

5. REPEAT: In learnng the guitar there are three things you're doing.

a. Acquiring and storing information in your memory.

b. Developing muscles.

c. Developing muscular and mental co-ordination.

Usually you will be working on all three at the same time, although from time to time you will encounter information that uses only the first process.

You will make the best progress by repeating any new idea's over and over until it is properly internalized.

6. MAKE NOTES: Get out a piece of paper and write down your questions, problems, discoveries, things that seem to keep going wrong, things that seem to need extra work etc. If you make notes about the problem areas, you'll find answers to your questions, solve your problems, remember your discoveries, and save a lot of time.

8. WORK SLOW TO FAST: When learning is new, go slowly. As you improve. you will naturally play the assignment faster. Don't think about playing anything fast until you have properly worked it out.

9. RELAX: Stay as relaxed as you can. Steps five, seven and eight are especially helpful in doing this. You should also understand that when the material is new, you will naturally be more intense - you may even find your muscles tightening up. As you come to know the material you should be able to relax more, but you must think about it. Feel the muscles - try to make them relax. Remember too, that you can tense up just from an excess of concentration - so that's a good reason for taking regular breaks.

10. WORK ON THE PARTS: If you're having a problem with something, take it apart. With every few exceptions, you play the guitar with two hands. They both work together to produce one result. This means that the combination of the two moving together could be causing the problem. Work on developing right and left hand synchronization.

11. Review: At the end of your practice session, go over your lesson and give some extra attention where it's needed. This could also include past assignments that still need additional attention. Use a review as a way to wrap up you day's practice.

About The Author
Mike Hayes is a guitar teacher, author, performing musician and session guitarist with over 30 years of professional experience. Mike's methods are legendary and have earned the praise of top authorities in guitar instruction. He reveals his guitar secrets at http://www.GuitarCoaching.com.