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A lot of beginning guitar players write to me and ask for advice how to play guitar ‘fast’. I inevitably write them back to ask whether they already play guitar, and just want to be faster on the fretboard, or whether they’re beginners who want a shortcut to basic proficiency.

This got me wondering whether there might be a connection between the two. It seemed far-fetched; but, the more I thought about it, the more parallels I saw between these two seemingly different levels of training.

So, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that:

1. You can learn guitar faster by studying the techniques involved making your overall playing ability ‘faster’, and..

2. You can become a ‘faster’ guitar player by re-focusing your practice sessions on the basic concepts and techniques taught to every beginner.

The reasons for this overlap and can be summed up in a handy acronym: M.O.S.T. — or, “Memorization, Observation and Strength Training.” Let’s cover each one to clarify the point.

Memorization

One of the things that slows down both beginning and intermediate guitar players, no matter how good of an ‘ear’ for music they have, is a failure to memorize:

1. All of the notes on the fretboard

2. Chords and scales for the Major and Minor Keys

It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out, or have a few year’s playing experience already. The fact is that ‘hunting and pecking’ for the right chord or note will slow you down.

You don’t have time in the middle of a song to stop so you can figure out if a Dbminor chord will work in the key of B, and then figure out where that chord is relative to your current position on the fretboard.

If you’re a beginner, then memorizing your fretboard is the place to start. This will make it easier for you to memorize chords and scale patterns, as well as understand the relationship between them in music theory.

If you’re already playing, then you should focus on strengthening your knowledge in both areas. You probably have a good part of your fretboard memorized already, but can you jump to any note or chord automatically?

Observation

Your senses of touch, sight and sound are all involved in playing guitar. As you play, you will no doubt feel the development of ‘muscle memory’ as your fingers play across familiar chords and scales. You will see patterns and relationships on the fretboard. You will hear what you’re playing and come to connect it with all of the above.

Memorization is the foundation for observation, and observation is the key to training your mind and hands to work in concert automatically.

If you want the ability to play anything you hear ‘in your head’ the moment your fingers reach the fretboard, then you must wed memorization with observation when you practice.

Strength Training

No, I’m not suggesting you lift weights at the gym! Strength training, which really includes ‘dexterity’ training, is part and parcel of everything we’ve covered so far.

Beginning guitarists often struggle to hold down chords, and to play scales with all four fingers. This is simply a matter of building strength, muscle memory and dexterity through consistent and correct practice.

Intermediate players who want to get faster on the fretboard must realize that the most likely culprit(s) behind issues with ’speed’ will be a deficiency in strength, dexterity, correct techqnie or all three.

Beginners should focus on strength building exercises and on performing those exercises perfectly. If you’re given an exercise that requires you to hit a note with your pinky, but you decide to ‘cheat’ by using your ring finger, know that your playing will hit a wall down the line.

Likewise, players who can’t seem to exceed their current speed on the guitar should examine their own technique. Have you stopped working on your strength training because the exercises are boring? Is your technique ’sloppy’?

There are some things you simply can not get away with at 160 beats per minute the way you can at 120 beats per minute.

In conclusion, the key to learning guitar faster – as well as playing it faster – rests in following the M.O.S.T. formula. It really is all about getting the basics right from the start!

This article is devoted to learning how to play guitar (and even those just thinking about learning to play or giving the gift of music to a loved one) and how to approach gaining some kind of proficiency on the instrument. Now, we’ve all seen people playing the guitar at various times, sometimes on TV, sometimes up close (a real treat), playing various kinds of music and at varying skill levels. I think the hardest obstacle to overcome when you’re learning how to play the guitar or thinking about starting is the thought that playing the guitar is only something musicians can do, or is only for people who are musically inclined. The simple fact is that anyone can learn to play the guitar. It’s just a matter of spending some time with it on a regular basis, and practicing in a manner that’s both fun and productive. Once it becomes part of your routine, it’s only a matter of time before your skill level and confidence develop.

When I started learning the guitar, there were a couple of learning aids I found to be indispensable. They include:

Learning to Play Guitar Chord Reference Book – This is really helpful when you’re not sure how to play an F chord or a B minor, or want to learn some other ways to play it

Artist Songbook – This is a songbook which has the piano, lyrics, and guitar chords to your artist’s favorite songs, and is great for learning how to strum and change from chord to chord

Classical Guitar Book – This helps you familiarize yourself with the feel of scales and arpeggios, and also improves your sight reading

Guitar Tab Songbook – As you progress, you’re going to want to play some of the guitar parts from your favorite songs note-for-note, meaning exactly as your favorite guitarist plays them. This type of book has the music for this both in standard notation and guitar tablature

I had a very insightful guitar teacher who started off each lesson by showing me a new chord and how to play it. Some good chord reference books that tackle these types of chords are the Whole Book of Guitar Chords and The First Book of Chords for the Guitar both written by Dan Fox. Once I had a feel for the chord, he would choose a song from a songbook from one of my favorite bands that used this chord (say a B minor or an A7) and would have me learn that song using an appropriate strum pattern. My mom played the piano, and would often visit the music store to buy sheet music songbooks from her favorite artists, so eventually I got her to buy me a few gems of this type:

Beatles Complete – This is a valuable book for two reasons. One is that it’s The Beatles. The second is that The Beatles composed songs with relatively few and very easy to play chords (“I Saw Her Standing There” has three), and also songs with many and often unorthodox chords (“Michelle” has, um, a lot), especially when used in rock music. This makes it a great vehicle for learning new chords incrementally via their songs

Neil Young – Decade – My brother wore out this recording and when I started playing some of the tunes from it on the guitar, it gave his little brother some instant credibility. Many of the songs in this book were recorded by Neil on the acoustic guitar, so it lends itself to the beginner who’s learning on an acoustic

Led Zeppelin Complete – This is a strange and beautiful book. It has the main guitar riffs for every Led Zeppelin song on the first five albums (I – IV and House of the Holy) but it’s in standard notation. I spent a summer learning every song in this book and not only did my guitar playing improve, but so did my sight reading

Eric Clapton Deluxe Revised – This contains some of the best songs from Cream, the Layla disc by Derek and the Dominoes, and some of Eric’s early solo work, but it’s unique in that it has a separate section with some of Eric’s best guitar solos transcribed. Eric is a great role model when you start learning how to play a guitar solo, because some of his solos are simple enough that they can be played by a beginning-intermediate guitar player (though it takes a lifetime to learn to play it with as much feeling as Eric)

Once we covered the chord of the week and the song that went with it, we would tackle a classical piece. One of the best classical books I can recommend, especially if you’re not a classical guitarist, is Classical Studies for Pick-Style Guitar – Volume 1. This book is great for developing your right-hand picking and also for developing your sight reading since all the music is in standard notation. There are some interesting pieces by Matteo Carcassi, which require you to arpeggiate various chords, and also some Bach Inventions that are arranged for duet guitar, so you can play with a friend. You can hear how this sounds in an on-line guitar lesson I created at WholeNote – Bach’s 8th Invention.

The one thing that’s changed over the past decade in sheet music for guitarists is the emergence of guitar tab songbooks. In the late 1990’s, an archive of guitar tablature files was collectively created and dubbed the On-Line Guitar Archives (OLGA), in which random guitarists from around the world created text files containing their own transcriptions of how to play your favorite songs by your favorite bands. The problem was that the quality and accuracy of the transcription was hit or miss. Sheet music companies finally wised up and started releasing accurate note-for-note transcription books, which were the real deal. In my day, you were a god if you could play the guitar solo, “Eruption”, played by Eddie Van Halen off Van Halen I, because you had to learn it by ear off the record, which is pretty much impossible. Today, you can just buy the Van Halen I guitar tab songbook and get all the music for Eruption both in guitar tab and standard notation. Oh, and they also throw in the rest of the songs from Van Halen I, and from Van Halen II, as well. I’ve always loved the whacked-out intro that Eddie plays in Mean Street, which opens the Fair Warning recording. The Van Halen Guitar Anthology Series has the tab for this, note for note, including every last harmonic, pick scrape, bend, and tap. It’s unbelievable. And it’s not just Van Halen. You can find similar guitar tab songbooks for The Beatles, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, Nirvana, Green Day, Audioslave and pretty much anyone else you can think of.

Finally, as you develop your practice routine, the one thing most often overlooked during practice is being able to play in time. When you start to get comfortable with chords and strumming, there’s a natural tendency to stop or to hesitate while switching between chords. A good metronome will make you aware of this and force you to play in time. The Qwik Time QT-7 Quartz Metronome is a good budget option and provides a good click, while the Wittner Wood Case Metronome w/ Bell and Cover is the kind you can hang onto forever and pass along from generation to generation (and I should know – I have one from my grandfather). The Fender MT-1000 Chromatic Tuner/Metronome is unique in that you get both a metronome and a guitar tuner in one convenient package. Very handy, indeed.

You too can learn to play the guitar today! Hopefully, this gives you a bit of direction as you learn to play the guitar. Remember that it’s simply a matter of spending some time regularly practicing some of the basics and then applying them to your favorite music. Keep expanding your knowledge of the basic chords and learn to play songs that use them, along with the strumming patterns of the tune. Combined with some classical pieces for dexterity and developing your sight-reading chops, you’ll be well on your way to mastering the guitar in no time!

If you want to play guitar for an audience it is vastly different from performing by yourself in your room. Once you are in a position where people are watching you play or sing, everything changes. You become aware of yourself in a totally different way and you can no longer play automatically the way you do when you are alone. So it’s a whole new journey together from being able to play alone to being able to play guitar for an audience.

Start with a plan for a basic set lasting about three hours. As a rough guide your songs are probably 3 to 4 minutes long, and you have a minute or two between songs. So you need to get yourself a list of say, forty songs. You will, of course, include your favorite songs, and you will also need to draw upon a list of popular songs. If you look on the internet you will find many people’s definitions of popular songs, just choose some songs from a list that more or less corresponds to your style. The truth is, it will take quite a long time for you to memorize so many songs, so get yourself a music stand and some sheets of paper with your lyrics written on them. These will be your cheat sheets until you have your repertoire memorized.

You will then need to practice your microphone technique. Go to as many gigs as you can and check out what kind of setup solo players work with. For this aspect of performing there is only so much practice you can do at home. The rest is learning on the job.

You would think it would be unnecessary to say this, but you need to practice every day if you’re going to play guitar for an audience. Daily practice brings your guitar playing persona to the fore. So force yourself to practice for at least half an hour a day, more if you are learning a repertoire!

When people start to play guitar for an audience, making mistakes is natural. And quite often a guitar player will try to go back to a point where he can start again to play without the mistake. Don’t do this. You’d be surprised how little attention your audience is really paying, so they probably won’t notice the odd mistake. It’s sad to think that you’re not getting the full attention of your listeners, but that’s the way it is.

Likewise, your audience will not notice the odd guitar playing fumble. If you’re technique is a little rusty on the night, don’t worry too much about it, just slow down a little and leave out any of your usual attempts at virtuosity.

Have you ever felt that you have feelings inside you that could be expressed through music? And have you regretted not learning to play the guitar? Do you feel that you could get REALLY good at guitar playing? That you would love to experience first hand the excitement of watching your fingers fly all over the fretboard? Maybe you actually started to learn to play a guitar but your life got in the way. Maybe you know a few chords and you would like to progress some more.

Naturally many guitarists believe that there are overwhelming advantages to learning how to play guitar with the benefit of face-to-face lessons with a live teacher. Your guitar teacher can give you personal guidance, watch as you play while correcting your mistakes and complimenting you when you have done well. If you feel that you can’t do without the personal touch of one-on-one lessons from a private teacher then that’s okay. But you should be warned that personal lessons are now an extremely expensive way to learn guitar. The internet is an ideal medium for passing on knowledge with little effort and no cost. Text, pictures and videos teaching you how to hold the guitar, how to read conventional music notation and guitar tablature plus instruction in all guitar styles can be downloaded into your life in an instant.

Much of this material teaching you how to play guitar is packaged and sold by expert guitarists who make their living sharing with others the pleasure of playing the guitar. The key phrase is “make their living”. Everybody has to do it, and the fact is I can’t think of one guitar course available on the web that is poor quality or low value for money. The difference between the various packaged guitar courses and membership guitar sites is musical tastes and different approaches to teaching.

There is also a great deal of free material out there that will show you how to play the guitar. There are free computer programs that will help you tune your guitar and learn the notes on the fretboard. There are thousands and thousands of videos teaching you all kinds of basic and advanced guitar techniques. There are free guitar tabs and sheet music for any song you could ever want to learn. If you want to learn how to play a guitar for free, all you have to do is put all this material together by downloading it to your computer or bookmarking it so you can find it when you need it.

Maybe it is not a good idea to try to learn something new without a teacher looking over your shoulder. You never know until you try. Based on the experience of many beginner guitarists, it could easily be possible for you to learn to play the guitar without the help of a teacher.

There are so many tools for learning how to play guitar that you can get on the internet, it makes you wonder whether how to play guitar books have a place in the world of technology. When you used to have to learn to play guitar from a teacher you always had to have a book that you learnt out of. It was a way of making sure you and your teacher understood where you were in your guitar playing. And if you did not have a teacher you possibly learnt to play guitar by copying what you heard on the radio or on records. Even then you probably had to go out and buy a guitar tutor or at least a chord book.

The advantage of books is that the printed page is a record of information that you might learn today but need to refresh your memory at some time in the future. Video guitar lessons are a fantastic way to learn to play the guitar but the written word has its own way of expressing thoughts or helping you with your approach to music, and you do not have to go through the laborious process of fast forwarding through countless videos to remind yourself of something the teacher said. Also a book can be read when the power is down and you have to practice on an acoustic guitar by candlelight!

So let us look at a few really excellent how to books for guitar. An example of concise, easy to understand, useful guitar info is “The Guitar Book” by Chris Lopez. This book not only contains all the solid information you need to begin your life as a guitar player, you will find it is an inspiration to share in the author’s obvious passion for the guitar. This book has everything for the beginner guitar player: basic chords, changing from major chords to minor, chord progressions, playing blues guitar through to slightly more advanced but extremely useful stuff like transposing a chord progression if the original key is not right for your voice. If you are sticking with playing chords to accompany your singing or if you want to get into solo guitar, this book should be by your bedside.

“The Everything Guitar Book” by Ernie Jackson promises to have you playing like a pro in no time. It certainly contains all the basic information like some history of the guitar and the names of all the parts of the instrument, and all the basic chords. This is the kind of stuff you would expect to find in a how to play guitar book. You also have a reference guide for the information you will need to keep in your head as you learn how to play guitar. The circle of fifths is covered,as are scales and arpeggios. You are introduced to playing songs by getting to know what you can play on the treble strings first, then you are introduced to bass patterns.

“The Everything Guitar Book” also introduces you to guitar players you should know about in whatever musical genre you are interested in whether it is classical, jazz, blues, flamenco or whatever is in between. The book then gives you an intro to playing electric guitar, buying an instrument and finding a teacher. Like any book that covers everything, there are some spots that you will need to explore elsewhere but this is a good first book for a beginner guitarist.

Frederick Noad is a classical guitar player and teacher who wrote a famous classical guitar tutor called “Solo Guitar Playing”. He also wrote a book aimed at the wider world of guitar players called “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Guitar”. This book carries a heavy classical guitar orientation but it also gives a good start for playing blues and flamenco. So it is a book for acoustic guitar players, but it is by a guy who know how to get the best from his instrument without causing severe injury to his hands and back and without using amplification. If you are a rock guitarist, do not skip past this book. There is a bunch of stuff in here that will help you become a great guitarist, and you probably will not find this kind of material anywhere else. Get it.