But how do you create an effective Guitar Practice Routine? One that will really help you to become a better guitar player?

Let me plant the flag right here and make the distinction between noodling around at home and dedicated, timed practice to a metronome.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Think about it for just a moment. Consider the micro motor precision involved in a sweep-picking run. You’re synchronising both hands while simultaneously dampening string noise in order to create a fluid sequence of notes. It’s not in any way natural. You have to train your body against its inherent clumsiness, and that takes serious dedication.

So how can you create an effective practice routine? One that will really make you a better guitarist??

Below you’ll find some of our top tips that should get you practicing like a pro in no time!

1. Your Guitar Practice Routine Should Resemble a Gym Workout Checklist

An imminent visit to the studio has forced me into action. Sitting in a booth waiting to be punched in by a producer is daunting. I’ll be musically naked and any sloppiness is going to become painfully apparent. To prepare myself I wrote out a guitar practice routine resembling a gym workout checklist.

✓ Three different exercises, three different chord shapes, five minute repetitions, three times a day.

✓ I increase the tempo by five bpm every week.

✓ This way, regardless of whatever else happens, I ensure at least 45 minutes of targeted practice per day. Within a few weeks I’ve already noticed the benefits.

2. Slow Down Your Tempo

If you’re practising something new, start slow. Obscenely slow. Begin at half the BPM you aim to achieve, gradually increasing the tempo at regular intervals. This applies to both chords and single-note melodies, but especially to the latter. Make sure the sound coming out of your guitar or amp is exactly what you want to hear, paying special attention to any unintended noises.

If you find you’re still making mistakes, slow the tempo down until you can iron out any imperfections. The results will come in time, so practice diligently and don’t get distracted. You’re building muscle-memory here, and practicing a little every day is better than once a week.

Another thing that will help you learn riffs and songs much faster is to take the time to learn basic music theory. Music theory is not the set of rules everyone warns you about to limit your creativity. It’s actually a way to quickly figure out how many songs work and what they’re up of, as far as chords, scales, and intervals go. Along with playing a song at a slower tempo and building muscle memory, taking the time to learn about all these musical concepts will further accelerate your learning speed.

3. Nothing Worthwhile Comes Without a Challenge

It’s brutal but stick with it. There’s nothing glorious about sitting in your pants, cramming ten minutes of alternate-picking repetitions at an uninspiring tempo. But that’s how it goes.

All of your guitar heroes have untold amounts of practice nested in their finger muscles. Nothing worthwhile comes without a challenge, and becoming a great musician is no exception.

Happy practicing!

Neelesh plays demented lead guitar in the Canadian alternative band We The Crooked. Check out their YouTube here.

The post 3 Pro Tips for Beginners to Create an Effective Guitar Practice Routine appeared first on Uberchord App.

We at Uberchord find something strangely powerful in the contrast of happy sounding songs which feature dark or even twisted lyrics. It’s a strong dynamic, and one which can add irony, depth and even humour to a song. We’ve asked around the office and are happy to share with you some our favourites for happy songs with surprisingly dark content.

Weezer – No-one Else

Weezer’s debut ‘Blue Album’ is a treasure chest of alt-rock classics, lifted by strong pop melodies. No-One Else ranks up there with the most catchy songs in the band’s catalogue, and was the first incarnation of Weezer’s many ‘4 chord songs’ (songs featuring the 1-5-4m-6 chord progression) to come. The lyrics, as singable as they may be, portray the jealousies of a possessive boyfriend, whose emotional grip over his girlfriend stops her from leaving the house or even wearing makeup for other people. Although a great song, it’s always faintly perverse to see young people singing along to this at concerts, even ironically.

Smashing Pumpkins – Today

This cheery 90’s anthem from alt-rock heroes The Smashing Pumpkins was always going to be a strong contender for this list. The song is a catharsis of singer Billy Corgan’s darkest and most suicidal thoughts. Brimming with irony, opening line ‘Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known’ over a buoyant 1-5-4 chord progression gives the impression of youthful optimism. Indeed, ‘Today’ will most likely remain the band’s most enduring song, having played over countless montages and ‘euphoric’ film sequences. Separated from its happy chord progression and put under inspection, the song’s lyrics in full express the bleak thoughts of a suicidal artist, with lucid reference to self mutilation in the song’s tense chorus – ‘Pink ribbon scars that never forget‘.

Nena – 99 Red Balloons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq1K2gc5xsE

German 80’s synth pop has always been niche territory. Try approaching the DJ at your local 80’s throwback night with a request for some Klaus Nomi and see where that gets you. If you have a spare second by the way, youtube Klaus Nomi now – they don’t make them like that anymore. Anyways, of all the dusty gems from this period, Nena’s 99 Red Balloons is likely the most recognisable. The song features a driving bass line and an unforgettable, bouncy synth melody. The kind that’s so unrelentingly cheerful it could only have originated in Cold War Berlin, where it was enjoyed unironically.

Its lyrics may sound nonsensical, but listen closely and they tell a sad and terrifying plausible vision of a world war. The exact content varies slightly between the English and original German version, with the former stressing a devastating nuclear outcome –

It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here

Nirvana – Polly

Pretty dark one, this. In the years following his death, and fuelled by the tragedy surrounding it, Kurt Cobain’s private collection of journals and personal materials were slowly leaked into the public domain. It became clear that the singer indulged a disturbing fascination with the macabre and disfigured, as suggested in the album artwork and stage design of record In Utero. ‘Polly’, one of the band’s more memorable songs, may at first appear to be a cryptic song about a parrot, but the reality is much darker. The song is about a real life incident, where a young girl named Polly was abducted from a highway and imprisoned in the house of her captor, who then raped her repeatedly.

This pushes lyrics such as ‘she asks me to untie her’, and ‘maybe she would like some food’ into a new and grim light, contrasting with the tune’s pretty chord structure. Because it’s so easy to play, Polly is often one of the first songs which beginners may learn on guitar.

The 88- At Least It Was Here

Most widely known as the theme tune for cult series Community, ‘At Least It Was Here’ by indie rock band The 88 makes the last entry on our list. Musically, the song appears to project all the breezy cheeriness you would expect as the theme for a colourful, corporate network American sitcom with a handsome cast. It’s light and catchy enough to lay hooks in the viewer’s mind. If we examine the entire lyrics outside of the 30-second edit however, they paint a much darker picture. The song is a first-person narration of the futility and hopelessness felt by someone considering suicide. ‘I can’t count the reasons I should stay. One by one they all just fade away’.

That’s us folks. Rape, nuclear war, two songs about suicide and one song written by a guy who actually did kill himself. It’s been a fun ride. Of all the information piped into your brain via the internet every day, we hope we’ve played our little role in enriching your day. Until next time.

Please feel free to share your suggestions in the comments section below.

Now if you’re ready to take a break from the darkness, we’ve got more articles for you to check out. Check out our articles on the mother we share guitar chords, famous chord progressions guitar, and oh thinking about our younger years chords. There’s a lot in here that’ll help you find a brighter light! 

Neelesh plays demented lead guitar in the Canadian alternative band We The Crooked. Check out their YouTube here.

The post 5 Happy Songs with Surprisingly Dark Lyrics appeared first on Uberchord App.

1. Uberchord

First on our list is the small but scrappy Uberchord, who have been making ripples in the guitar tech app market with their all-in-one didactic guitar teaching app.
The app was borne out of steeled ambition to change the guitar learning process. CEO Eckart Burgwedel was struck by the idea for Uberchord following an icy taster-lesson with a new guitar teacher.

After being told that his technique was poor, Eckart promptly stood up, tore out a nearby door from its hinges and left without a word. He never looked back, vowing to create a product to rob all guitar teachers of their livelihoods, crushing them underneath the emotionless advance of technology. This happy founding principle of the company underpins their work to this very day. The company recently celebrated their first year anniversary being available on the iTunes App Store, since which they have been getting glowing exposure in some of the most prestigious guitar magazines worldwide.

2. Uberchord

Uberchord takes second place, having created a neat little app which serves as a guitar teacher. Like its meatier, human counterpart, the app can ‘listen’ to your guitar playing. It does this by using the inbuilt smartphone microphone to detect audio. Strum a guitar near your device and Uberchord’s guarded chord-recognition technology comes into play.

The app processes the audio and is able to give the user instant feedback on what he is playing. Matching the file against a huge library of chords, Uberchord will tell you the name of any chord you stumble upon, be it simple open chords or spidery 8-fingered jazz abominations. Throw a flower pot at the fretboard and see what chord it makes. Amazingly enough, their technology can also tell you if you’re fingering a chord wrong, and how to fix it.

3. Uberchord

Worth a mention is Uberchord, a Berlin-based startup whose app of the same name has been getting international attention. With its newest update, Uberchord has taken a step forward in providing the full guitar-learning package. Not content with just providing a suite of funky guitar learning tools, sophisticated as they may be, the company’s ‘Uberpath’ feature provides a campaign mode. Selecting their entry skill level according, users will be gently pulled up a tree of increasingly complicated chords and songs.
For those whose need for self-validation is met only by daily performance statistics, Uberchord also tracks user progress. Upon request, the app provides instant numeric data on time spent per exercises, and users are awarded XP points accordingly. Just like a real guitar teacher.

4. Uberchord

Uberchord is a company which makes a guitar app called Uberchord. Uberchord is an app made by a company also called Uberchord. Both the firm and its product share the same name. This isn’t really that confusing, or novel. Actually this happens all the time and I don’t really know where I’m going with this.
Anyways, Uberchord deserve a mention here for their little app, which has been performing well on the App Store following its long-awaited release last year. Tucked away in plain view is a powerful in-built tuner. What separates this from the infinite list of other tuners out there is the use of Uberchord’s prime audio detection software. The ultra-sensitive microphone picks up the sound in high-fidelity, allowing for a quick and precise tuning.

5. Uberchord

Sorry, we couldn’t resist putting ourselves at the end of the list. We’ve never been a company to shy away from a nice marketing opportunity, and we like to think we could go toe-to-toe with any of the excellent companies mentioned in this post.
We try not to drone on about our benefits or features. There’s no need for overkill. Our aim has been to provide a tool which addresses and appifies the concerns that we as guitarists had when learning. Creating a product to, quite literally, revolutionise the guitar-learning process isn’t a humble objective. We’re dedicated however, to slave away in continuous product development and the waking nightmare that is marketing to achieve a product which is deserving of that much desired adjective ‘indispensible’.

It hasn’t been smooth-sailing. There’s been more than a few meltdowns and that black week where our emergency office suicide-pact came closest to being executed is one we’ll long remember. Startups like ours often fail, quickly and expensively. We’re thrilled to be in our second year of business and our dogged motivation has been fortified by the extremely positive response we’ve received both by the international press and on the ground at trade fairs like NAAM.

Neelesh plays demented lead guitar in the Canadian alternative band We The Crooked. Check out their YouTube here.

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In a time of smartphones and hopelessly divergent music trends, it’s almost other-worldly to imagine England during the late 60’s, from which a unified movement in rock music was sweeping the airwaves. A legendary times in music history, bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones were forming the connective tissue between the murky traditional blues tradition and a new, rapidly emerging and British-led rock revolution.

As a guitarist, Page’s blues influence seeped out of his dragon pants. He fathered a sleazy style of playing which would become a template for countless Gibson-wielding guitarists after him. With this came a whole bunch of licks which by now should form part of every guitarist’s core vocabulary. Licks that have since been passed down the generations where they have branched off and been incorporated into different styles. We’ll go through some of them today.

A word of warning. Don’t nail yourself to Page’s solo style. Even for the hazy 1970’s he was often pretty sloppy, or ‘elastic’, depending on your point of view. Times have changed and many would consider his solo playing primitive and unsophisticated by today’s standards. It didn’t matter because he was a creative frickin’ genius and the most iconic guitarist of his time, playing in the biggest band in the world for which he was also the chief songwriter. Discover, absorb and move forward with your own journey.

Exercise 1

A primarily pentatonic player, Page would take fragments of traditional blues licks, beef them up with a rock sound and loop them! This is a classic Page riff found in the solo from forgotten B-side ‘Stairway to Heaven’. It’s been slowed down a touch. 

Exercise 2

Another example is this hum-dinger, which sounds familiar as a stock blues lick. It takes on another character when you speed it up and repeat it.

Slash would later take this idea and run with it, often extending it over entire solo sections.

Exercise 3

There’s something about moving to the 3^rd pentatonic box in a straight rock or blues song which presses upon a certain emotion. Compared to the familiar sounds and note layout of the 1^st box, this box seems to slice diagonally through the mix, and Jimmy Page made extensive use of this. Note the overbend. I get a little excited when I think of overbends because they convey a burst of irrepressible excitement. Page deployed them to emotive effect.

The post PLAY LIKE JIMMY PAGE – LESSON ON STRING BENDING IN BLUES appeared first on Uberchord App.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was one of a kind. Like a comet he came around, revitalised an entire genre and promptly died ahead of his time in a senselessly tragic but nonetheless Rn’R helicopter accident. That kid you imagine yourself to be in your guitar fantasies, rocking up to an open session and burning the place down – that was him.

Maybe it’s worth thinking of him as the alpha blues player. An advanced version of all those who came before him. To say ‘the best’ is a futile matter of taste, but most would agree he was the most virtuosic guitarist to have stayed purely within the blues genre.

We wouldn’t recommend this, of course. I mean, who are we to tell you what to do? Do what you want, man. Part of being a beginner is to do and buy shit that you’ll never use, like the time I saved up £70 to buy an e-bow that was totally going to revolutionise my playing style, or using a bizarre mediterranean tuning in a pathetically transparent attempt to be different. Heavier strings are more difficult to play, and while you’ll get a thicker tone from them, your dexterity will be compromised. Unless you have hands like a lumberjack, 0.13s may seriously demotivate you. So don’t do it. Or do, whatever. We don’t care.

Stevie, like any musician, was a product of his influences. He synthesised elements of traditional Blues with the brawny Texas Blues of his home state. Few would dispute however, that his ‘primary’ influence was Albert King. This shines through in Stevie’s monster bending technique, which we will take a look at in the following exercises of increasing difficulty.

Exercise 1

This lick is a good example of how to switch between your pentatonic boxes while bending, which is a way of playing that is perhaps not immediately obviously.

Exercise 2

Following from the idea of the first exercise, this chromatic bending has became somewhat of a hallmark of Stevie’s playing. Note how he bends up a half-step on a major 3^rd, which creates a very particular sound. This is a wonderful move to absorb into your vocabulary, but use it sparingly – it’s unmistakably Stevie!

Exercise 3

Here is a lovely style of bending which you’ll find among Stevie’s slow blues solos. Although the note choice isn’t all that different from the previous two examples, the ‘train wreck’ effect is produced by bending two strings simultaneously. Multi-string bending sounds quite difficult, but it really only requires a slight alteration of your fingers. Simply leave more room at your fingertips to grasp the B string along with the high E. As always, be mindful of your intonation.

Need more inspiration? Watch this video where SRV discusses his influences and playing style. We’ve also got lots of free lessons and articles that go deeper into the concepts behind SRV’s music like guitar zen exercises, our app that listens to music and tells you the chords, as well as how to transition smoothly between guitar chords. 

The post Play Like Stevie Ray Vaughan – Lesson on String Bending in Blues appeared first on Uberchord App.

Anyways, bending is probably the defining characteristic of the guitar as an instrument. By bending a string, what you’re doing is shortening the length between the fretted note and the bridge, resulting in a change in pitch. As bending is so closely associated with lead guitar playing, it follows that most famous guitar players have their own very distinctive ways of bending. Indeed, this can often give away a guitarist from their first note or entry into a solo. We’re going to explore some of the biggest names in guitar and take a lens to their bending techniques.

B.B King

For this article, we’ll turn our lights to the late, great BB King. Along with Freddie King and Albert King, B.B was the last of the three ‘Kings’ of blues, and his recent death finally closed the chapter on an entire era of pre-war blues musicians. B.B’s legacy is, frankly speaking, stupendous. He is arguably the most influential guitarist in the world, and a person whose licks and playing style have trickled down through generations of guitar players to this very day.

Although known back in the day for his muscular playing and rambunctious shows, B.B’s mournful bends were to become his signature attribute. As his body and playing inevitably slowed down, his bending began to define his solo style, and in his later years, he would often wring entire concerts out of only a handful of notes.

In contrast to other traditional blues guitarists who would make exclusive use of the minor scale, B.B King distinctively incorporated major tones into his melodies. This note choice delivered in his trademark vibrato creates a distinctive ‘sweet’ sound.

I’ve tried to emulate the man the best I could in the following exercises. Obviously, he used hollow-bodied Gibson guitars, and I have a strat. I also don’t have portly, blues-adept sausage fingers. Depressingly enough I’m also not an elderly American blues legend. Indeed, with a style as unmechanical and delicate as BB’s, you’ll never be able to sound exactly like him. However, it’s always nice to grab ammo for your arsenal of blues licks, and B.B King is a human treasure trove of licks.

Ideally, we’d want to dedicate a full post to this in the future, but B.B King is a guitarist who makes extensive use of microtonal bends. This is related but slightly different from the concept of vibrato, which means only to ‘shimmer’ notes. In order to mimic the cadence of the human voice, which isn’t restrained by frets or keys, B.B often and unconsciously tug notes a fraction, not quite reaching a semi-tone bend. This lends his style a very expressive and, well, human quality. The sort of thing which couldn’t be replicated by a computer or software, no matter how smart or hellbent on infiltrating the blues scene.

Exercise 1

This tasty lick comes from the legendary ‘Live at the Regal’, which is critically considered one of the best blues albums of all time, even if the artist himself was blasé about it. It was John Mayer’s choice of dressing room music before every show on his Continuum tour. A major motif, it can be applied to anything and works particularly well over a fast shuffle.

Exercise 2

This one comes delivered in a package with B.B King’s face plastered over it. A truly representative lick making use of the third pentatonic box. Excruciating guitar face gets bonus points.

Exercise 3

A lovely example of over-bending gone right. In more conventional playing, bends are either a clean half or full tone. B.B often ripped out one-and-a-half tone bends, which creates a taut, ‘reaching’ quality. This is a nice and unexpected way to imbue some life into your blues licks.

God bless Youtube. What would have otherwise remained a dusty VHS in somebody’s basement has now been uploaded for the world. A ‘rare’ masterclass from the man himself.

The post Play Like B.B.King – Lesson on String Bending in Blues appeared first on Uberchord App.

Of course, the content cannot help be influenced by its author. These are only examples of how I developed my playing. I personally fell in love with fluid, ‘loopy’ pentatonic licks, which seem to fold back on themselves and when played at full-speed, generate a flowing cascade of notes. Some of these licks bear strong country influences in respect to the major third and peddling the root note, but I would call them genre-neutral.  Perhaps it would be best to think of these licks as cool little tricks that you can dissect, reassemble and hopefully deploy in whichever way you see fit. Use them, learn from them and make them your own.

Lick 1

This lick starts off with a slide from the minor to major third, a move which adds a distinctive ‘happy’ flavour demonstrated famously in the opening riff of ‘Hideaway’. Keeping the root note held down under your slides produces a lovely, rolling effect. The last two notes are the 5^th and the root of the key signature, respectively. If let to ring together, they form a pleasant-sounding, inverted power chord – a harmonically satisfying way to finish the melody.

Lick 2

This lick encapsulates some of my favourite moves. Try to get used to rolling notes back and forth. In the middle of the lick I hammer-on from the 4^th to the minor 5^th (the blue note), kiss the root note on the top E-string, then return to the G-string, sliding the notes in reverse before pulling off to the minor 3^rd.. What’s common here is to use a slight micro-bend on minor 3rds. It creates a tense, ‘groaning’ sound and begs for harmonic resolution, which makes it a great anticipatory note before going back to your root.

The post Learning the Blues Scale: The Pentatonic Scale Box Exercise appeared first on Uberchord App.

Guitar interpretations of ‘Happy Birthday’ are varied, from the brisk and punky version by The Ramones, to complex solo instrumentals. We’re going to tackle the basic chord progression, which you can then twist any way you like.

Chords

For a tune so widely reproduced as Happy Birthday, there’s no set key. But considering we’re playing this on a guitar, let’s make life easy for ourselves and pick the key of G. Here are the 4 chords:

Happy Birthday to You

G                                D

Happy Birthday to You

D                                G

Happy Birthday, Dear [Name]

C                                  G

Happy Birthday to You

D                                  G

That’s it for this week, folks. Exciting, wasn’t it? Equipped with this mighty chord progression, you’ll be able to provide slightly underwhelming accompaniment to the most famous song ever. Congratulations. Try to save some girls for the rest of us.

This is just the beginning of the many free guitar lessons and resources available here on Uberchord and in our app. You can learn music theory, lead guitar, how to find the right gear for your sound, or even how to move past the beginner level. Some articles we suggest checking out right now include whats a stompbox, sailing sutherland brothers key, and soloing in a key. 

Neelesh plays demented lead guitar in the Canadian alternative band We The Crooked. Check out their YouTube here.

The post How to Play Happy Birthday On Guitar (easy) appeared first on Uberchord App.

At the risk of oversimplifying matters, the process of learning an instrument can generally be divided into two distinct stages. The first is mechanical, or academic. We read chord books, watch youtube videos and practice chords, scales or pieces. This image of the diligent student is probably the first which leaps to mind when we imagine learning guitar solo. Through it, we build up muscle memory and base musical ability, and learn how to combine the two. The second, and ultimately most important stage is application. How can we draw from these reefs of knowledge to create something truly musical?

In the context of guitar solo, this generally comes through phrasing. The linguistic analogy is very much pertinent here. You really are phrasing your notes as one would construct and utter a sentence. Let’s stretch this analogy to its unnecessary limits. Imagine the following. We as a species marvel at our own ingenuity; we’ve created some sort of humanised android which we’ve programmed to download, process and internalise all documented forms of knowledge throughout history.

A conference is held to which the world’s press is invited. Important diplomatic negotiations are abandoned as we invest humanity’s hope into this super-being whose absolute knowledge and multiplicity will breathe enlightenment to our world. We sit in a lurid exhibition hall, waiting with bated breath as the android is wheeled onto centre-stage and placed expectantly behind a spotlit microphone. It opens its mechanised mouth-hole, only to regurgitate excerpts from Beowulf at high speeds, occasionally interspersed with lyrics from early ‘Hole’ albums and quotes from Elijah Wood’s unofficial biography. It would be underwhelming and people, after removing themselves from the absurdity of the situation, would quickly get bored. The result isn’t epigrammatic wisps from the cloud of collected human wisdom, but the mechanical re-spouting of subject matter.

As a guitarist, this is essential to remember, as to be able to avoid it. Not necessarily that tedious analogy above, but that your phrasing forms the membrane between your internal guitar knowledge and its impact on your audience. Regardless of the guitar wizardry you aim to accomplish, your guitar solo should be lyrical. All of the more notable guitar players have, consciously or subconsciously, reached a high level of musical phrasing to the point where you can often sing their solos.

There is something about the frequential nature of an amplified guitar solo; the trebly and piercing quality of tightly wound nickel-strings through pickups which can make a badly-phrased guitar solo sound, at best merely ‘impressive’ in a robotic sense, and at worst – freaking unbearable.

So, to mould your developing musicality around more mindful and lyrical playing, we’re going to use a simple but rather novel exercise. Let’s take a scale you’re more than likely getting very familiar with – the trusty minor pentatonic. What we’re going to do is isolate some notes of this scale, handily arranged in the form of a ‘box’ and discipline ourselves to play only those notes, trying to wring the most musical value out of these few sounds. For sake of ease, we’re going to play around a basic 12-bar blues in A, using the second box of the pentatonic, which is represented below.

Alright, so let’s get the following blues progression on loop, and jump straight into the exercise.

Speak, don’t play!

The key here is to resist overplaying, and instead try to really express a sentiment with notes. We don’t have to start method-acting and ask you to tap into buried pain or heartbreak, but you should at least attempt to ‘say’ something with your licks, as opposed to playing for its own sake.

If we look down at the fretboard and imagine the notes as corners of this pentagonal box, we can often be tempted to mathematically spread out our note selection, trying to give each corner of the box equal attention. While this may seem as if it makes you playing sound more varied, it can often overcomplicate simple melody lines. Let’s start out with a simple ‘call and response’ lick, which incorporates deceptively few notes. This popular element in blues lead guitar is characterised by the first melody – the ‘call’, which is inflected in such a way (often using a short bend) that it begs for a harmonic response. It is then duly answered by a second lick, which resolves the ‘question’. Some guitarists twist their heads inquisitively when doing the call in a marriage of body and music. We can’t explicitly recommend this, but if it helps – go for it!

Repetition and Motifs

Throughout my experience of playing with other, normally more technically-minded guitarists, there seems to be a real resistance towards repeating notes and phrases. Don’t be afraid of playing a lick again if you feel it deserves more presence. If you need further convincing on this matter, try to translate some of your favourite vocal melodies on to guitar. You’ll be surprised at how often they consist of precious few notes. Simplicity is key, never forget that. Those who have mastered good phrasing need not play fast to impress or touch people.

Here’s a delightful video of the late great B.B King in his better days.

Have fun with this. Next week we’ll dig a little deeper into tips on how to really make a few notes stretch a lot further, including ‘cheats’ on how to use bends to open up harmonic possibilities within a pentatonic box.

The post Guide to Phrasing Your Blues Guitar Solo appeared first on Uberchord App.

This begs the following: how are harmonically identical songs made to sound different? Removing ourselves from the trappings of genre and instrumentation, let’s redefine the question: how can we make two songs which use the same chords sound different on the acoustic guitar? The most effective way is the vocal melody. Considering that your average music ‘fan’ pays most attention to the lyrics, the vocal melody can powerfully manipulate the listener’s perception of the song. The second way is with strumming patterns, which is closely linked to rhythm. In this series, the aim is to introduce you to some fundamental strumming patterns.

Even if you don’t plan on being a music theory wizard, you should at least be aware that for most popular music and almost all of rock, there are four beats in a bar. This is represented by the time signature 4/4, which means literally that the song or piece in question contains four quarter note beats. A strumming pattern which features a strum on each beat of the bar would be considered a quarter note rhythm. Listen below:

STRUM QUARTER NOTE

Although these certainly exist in guitar music, they’re rarely employed for the duration of a song. This is because of its trite simplicity and lack of propulsion. Far more commonly seen are songs featuring an 8^th note strumming pattern. These include an extra strum in between the beats. A stellar example of this would be the first three chords in the progression ‘Where is my Mind’ by The Pixies:

WHERE IS MY MIND

In practical usage, most songs use a combination of eighth and quarter notes.

While we can open up these elements of music for closer examination, you really shouldn’t let this impinge on your musicality. In almost all circles of musicians I’ve been in or exposed to, strumming patterns are rarely, if ever, talked about, and good strumming comes instead through a mindful ‘feel’ of the rhythm. Don’t be that guy who, when requested to play a song, needs to ask what strumming pattern it uses. You’ll confuse your non-musical friends and your musical friends will be embarrassed.

I’ve heard there are no straight lines in nature, and as an organic expression of creativity, this adage aptly covers music, too. You shouldn’t be coming into musical situation with a roster of preset strumming patterns, but rather a solid and flexible sense of rhythm. Don’t be afraid to deviate from a strumming pattern if you feel the song demands it dynamically or emotionally. You should be able to feel a strumming pattern, that’s the main objective here.

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