5 things to do better in 2021!

How exciting it is that we have reached 2021! Last year was a rocky one, but let’s start this year as positive as possible, and what better way than improving your musicianship and taking your guitar playing to new levels? I find that each year it is important to reflect on areas you can improve musically, as it will make the next year even better.

Here are 5 things you can do better in 2021…

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1. make time to practice

Practicing can be so rewarding but it is very easy to put off. Making it a priority in your life and dedicating at least 20 minutes a day to it will get you fast results. Make sure you’re not going to be disturbed, and enjoy the process!

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2. stop comparing yourself to other guitarists

Youtube has endless videos on it of guitarists of all ages playing amazing stuff. who cares? I certainly don’t! It’s great to use this as inspiration to get better, but don’t let it get you down that someone can play faster than you, or they know more. remember how far you have come and keep focused. There is no secret to getting better at guitar, You just need to practice the right things and work hard!

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3. make learning fun

are you practicing on a cheap guitar through an amp that sounds horrible? Are you playing on a guitar that has had the same strings on it since you got it? do you have a dedicated space to practice music? Take a moment to organise your practice space and get your guitar in working order. use backing tracks on youtube to make practicing fun and play along to songs. Buy music books and expand your knowledge. Work through them and learn at your own pace.

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4. create a practice diary

buy yourself a little notebook, or use the notes app on your phone and write down a plan of what you need to work on. practicing is simple: you practice the things you need to get better at. Split your practice diary into groups of warm ups, scales, improvisation, chords, songs you’re learning, songs you’re playing, arpeggios and anything else you can think of. document what you worked on and what you still need to practice. repeat this each day.

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5. become an all-rounder

keep pushing yourself to learn more things. you need to progress through different scales, chords and arpeggios etc. adding new ones you don’t know. You should also be learning different styles of music, jazz, blues, rock, pop, punk, metal and everything in between. You also need to be improving your ear, playing along to songs, jamming with other musicians, working on improvisation and using everything you know to create musical ideas. there is so much to be working on, just make sure you don’t ever stop learning, as your potential is endless!

use guitarpush to help!

GuitarPush is a website we have created to help you achieve your goals, we are creating free articles and content that will help you to learn new things. Head straight to our home page - GuitarPush.com, bookmark the page and get learning straight away! Enjoy and good luck!

Welcome to GuitarPush!

Welcome to GuitarPush!

This website is for players of all levels and is ultimately designed to make you learn new things that will push your playing and musicianship to the next level.

Here are some of the sections that you should keep your eye on…

GUITAR SCRAPBOOK

This section is full of all the guitar blogs you’ll ever need. Articles on scales, chords, improvisation, notes, music theory, techniques and everything in between.

HOW DO YOU PLAY THAT?

the internet is full of amazing guitarists playing amazing guitar parts and we have set up this section to enable all aspiring guitarists to be able to play them too.

together we will create a page full of incredible guitar parts to learn. Get your requests in now!

ARTIST FOCUS

Artist focus is the section of GuitarPush where we look at a specific artist and learn some of their famous licks. You can learn each lick in its original key and then a transposed version so you can play over the backing track.

DIVE IN and get learning!

BOOKS!

We have written 10 books that are available to buy all around the world right now! They are focused on improving your knowledge of chords and arpeggios, as well as how and what to practice on guitar. Go check them out now!

We really hope you enjoy this website and it becomes a popular hub for your learning! Keep practicing and get in touch if you have any suggestions of things you’d like to see added!

THanks,

James @ GuitarPush

 
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How to memorise every note on the guitar

Learning the notes on your guitar is crucial if you want to progress as a guitarist or a musician. Guitarists are unique, as many of us learn first through tablature, using numbers to learn how to play the instrument. However this can hold you back when working with other musicians, or when learning songs from other forms of music notation.

STEP 1 - UNDERSTAND WHAT A NOTE IS

This one seems obvious, but I have seen some confusion among guitarists who mistake terms like ‘minor’ and ‘major’ for a note. A note is simply a single letter, that may have a sharp (#) or a flat (♭) next to it (there will be more on this in the following steps). This letter represents a pitch, that then links to a fret on your guitar. The frets are the gaps between the fret bars that you put your fingers on to get a different sound.

STEP 2 - LEARN THE NAMES OF THE NOTES

There are 12 notes on your guitar. They are:

A, A# or B♭, B, C, C# or D♭, D, D# or E♭, E, F, F# or G♭, G, G# or A♭

The # stands for SHARP

The ♭ stands for FLAT

Sometimes seeing this sequence on a piano can help you to visualise how this works out.

Practice saying the sequence out loud and then write all 12 notes out by memory 5 times.

STEP 3 - Play this SEQUENCE while saying the note names ON THE E and A STRINGS

There is something about saying these notes out loud that helps get the sequence into your head.

Starting on the A strings:

the open string is A, First FRET is A# or B♭, second fret is B, third fret is C and so on…

Then Jump to the E string:

the open string is E, First FRET is F, second fret is F# or G♭, third fret is G and so on…

 

MEMORISE THE 3rd, 5th & 7th FRETS ON THE E and A Strings


Next we need to speed up the time it takes to FIGURE OUT where a note is on the guitar. THE first thing to do is to memorise the 3rd, 5th and 7th fret names on the E and A strings.

Say it out loud, write it down, play the fret, whatever you need to do get it in your head!

On the E string -

And then on the A String, do the same thing -

Memorising these 6 notes will speed everything up, for instance if you want to play a C#, you can now look at the C (3rd fret on the A string) and then go up a note. Or if you need an A# you instantly jump to the 5th fret on the E string (which is an A) and then move up one fret.

Practice some RAndom note challenges and see how quickly you can find them on those two strings.

FINALLY, ONCE YOU HAVE DONE ALL THAT, LEARN THIS SEQUENCE

The next sequence will allow you to find all the notes of the same name everywhere on the guitar.

FIRST DO IT IN THE KEY of G, UP AND DOWN THE GUITAR:

Then ONCE YOU Have this memorised, Try it in every key (AGAIN Back and FORTH). Here it is in the Key of A:

HOPEFULLY THIS IS ALL MAKING SENSE AND YOU ARE STARTING TO NAVIGATE AROUND THE FRETBOARD KNOWING THE NOTES YOU ARE PLAYING.

NOW TEST YOURSELF WITH RANDOM NOTES

So the way to get super quick at this is to tie the two main things you’ve learnt together. Firstly from now on, whenever you want to FIND a note, you can relate everything back to the E or A string.

For INSTANCE If you are trying to figure out a note on the B string, use the sequence you just learnt to navigate back up to the E STRING.

AS AN EXAMPLE IF YOU WERE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT the notes on the 8th and 6th FRET ARE ON THE B STRING, this is how you would do it…

This will also work when trying to figure out notes on the G string. For instance if you are trying to find the 6th and 8th frets on the G String, this is how you would do it…

so NOW you should (maybe without realising) be able to locate and identify any note on the fretboard.

PRACTICE AND GET QUICK!

Okay so that’s basically it! That is the secret! NOW, you just need to put it into practice and get super quick.

GOOD LUCK AND DON’T FORGET TO SHARE THIS ARTICLE IF IT HAS HELPED YOU!

 
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The first scale every guitarist should learn...

There are literally hundreds of scales you can learn on guitar. But where do you start? What’s the best scale to start with? Major scale? Minor Scale? Dorian? Phrygian? Harmonic Minor? Blues scale?

I’d like to make a suggestion and say you should learn the minor pentatonic scale… Why?

THE Minor Pentatonic is one of the most popular scales for all styles of music when improvising and playing solos. Some of your favourite solos may even just use this scale the whole way through. The Scale has 5 notes in it and is the perfect scale to give you a great foundation to learn others.

FIRST LEARN EACH SHAPE

Exercise 1 - G minor pentatonic scale (E Shape)

Exercise 2 - G minor pentatonic scale (D Shape)

Exercise 3 - G minor pentatonic scale (C Shape)

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Exercise 4 - G minor pentatonic scale (A Shape)

Exercise 5 - G minor pentatonic scale (G Shape)

 

THEN PRACTICE EACH SHAPE STARTING FROM THE ROOT NOTE

Exercise 6 - G minor pentatonic scale (E Shape) - from the root

Exercise 7 - G minor pentatonic scale (D Shape) - from the root

Exercise 8 - G minor pentatonic scale (C Shape) - from the root

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Exercise 9 - G minor pentatonic scale (A Shape) - from the root

Exercise 10 - G minor pentatonic scale (G Shape) - from the root

 

ONCE YOU HAVE THESE DOWN, EXPERIMENT WITH MOVING THEM AROUND TO DIFFERENT KEYS AND IMPROVISE OVER SOME BACKING TRACKS.

We are in the key of G minor, so first start there! Here is a backing track for you play over. Get each position memorised in your head.

LOOK OUT FOR MORE ARTICLES ON GUITARPUSH FOR HOW TO USE THIS SCALE!

 
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INTRODUCTION TO ARPEGGIOS AND HOW TO USE THEM!

Arpeggios are great things to make you start understanding chords and the notes within them. A lot of guitarists spend most of their time worrying about lead playing, using licks and solos and trying to play faster and faster (I don’t blame you, it’s fun!!). However it is really important as a guitarist to think about chords and you will actually find your lead playing improves as a result.

So what is an arpeggio? An arpeggio is playing all the notes from a chord in sequence. Lets look at some chord formulas... 

CHORD FORMULAS

Let's learn some chord types in C major as the C major scale has no sharps or flats so you are only using the white notes on a piano.

Major – 1 3 5

 

Minor – 1 ♭3 5

Dominant 7th - 1 3 5 ♭7

 

Next let's learn these chords on the guitar. This time listen to how each chord sounds. The major chord should sound happy, minor is sad, a dominant chord wants to resolve and a diminished chord should sound dark! But make your own mind up!

 

C major – C E G

 
 

C7 – C E G B♭

 
 

C minor – C E♭G

 
 

C Diminished – C E♭ G♭

 
 

LEARNING THE CHORDS – KEY OF A MAJOR

If we are in the key of A major (which has 3 sharps - F#, C#, G#), we can us the chords A major (CHORD I), C#minor (CHORD iii), E7 (CHORD V) and G#diminished (CHORD VII).

 
 

The first thing we should do when learning arpeggios is to learn how to play the chords. There are many places to play each of these chords, but I have decided to stick to one section of the neck. This is a great way to start really understanding the different areas of the neck, by singling out the sections.

A major

E dominant 7

C# minor

G# diminished

(QUICK TIP- Diminished chords can be moved up 3 frets on a guitar and the chord is the same!)

Make sure you use your ear and really listen to each chord and how it sounds.

3. ARPEGGIOS

The first arpeggio we will learn is the A major arpeggio, notice I have added the chord before each of the examples, make sure you play the chord first and then the arpeggio whilst you are learning these shapes!

Exercise 1 - A major arpeggio (E Shape)

Exercise 2  - C# minor arpeggio (A Shape)

Exercise 3 - E7 arpeggio (C Shape)

 Exercise 4 - G#diminished arpeggio (E Shape)

 

CREATIVE WAYS TO PRACTICE ARPEGGIOS

The following exercises are to get you playing around these arpeggios in some creative and cool sounding ways! Give them a go...

Exercise 5 - Ways to Practice Arpeggios (Pattern 1)

Exercise 6 - Ways to Practice Arpeggios (Pattern 2)

Exercise 7 - Ways to Practice Arpeggios (Pattern 3)

Exercise 8 - Ways to Practice Arpeggios (Pattern 4)

Exercise 9 - Ways to Practice Arpeggios (Pattern 5)

PLAY ALONG WITH THE BACKING TRACK

I have created a backing track with the chords in this article in the key of A major. Play through the following example and listen out for the changes and it will hopefully aid your improvisation!

FINALLY IMPROVISE!

Your final challenge is to improvise over the backing track. Use what we have learnt in this lesson to inspire your solos. Feel free to add in extra notes and play around the arpeggios. The main idea is to make it sound good! Here is my attempt:

Hopefully this has given you some things to think about with arpeggios and now you can start using these shapes in your playing. Record yourself playing over the backing track and tag #GUITARPUSH when you do so we can watch your solos!

 
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