Here is a quick guide to the 20 most used chords on guitar. This little cheat sheet is perfect for the beginner who wants to have an instant guide to the chords they should practice and memorize.

One of the aspects of a properly balanced practice approach that is VERY often overlooked is REVIEW. The common tendency of most students is to focus on "new" things to play, even if last month’s or last year’s "new" thing was never properly learned. There are a few reasons for this...

I know your dream. Maybe you want to be on stage, or play for friends, or maybe just for yourself. Regardless, you've got things to say and emotions behind your voice just screaming to get out. You picked up a guitar because you thought you'd be able to get all of that into song. You've learned your chords and scales - but that hasn't gotten you anywhere. Maybe you've got lyrics but you can't figure out how to organize them into something that feels right. If this sounds like you then read this series! This is the first installment in some mini-lessons related to songwriting - I'm calling the first one "Getting Started.”

In this edition of the “Being a Dynamic Player”, I would like to focus on one of the top reasons that many player can not seem to gain speed in their playing. I call this “The Death Grip”. The Death Grip is a habit that many new guitar players get into when they are first starting to learn to play. They focus so much on holding the chords and getting a clean sound that they often overcompensate on the strength needed to hold the strings to the frets. There are two major downsides to The Death Grip. These unfortunate side effects consist of sounding out of tune and reduced fretting hand speed. These are the problems we are going to cover here.

When you are first learing how to solo, you are told to memorize a bunch of patterns up and down the neck of the guitar. So, if you are interested in soloing and lead development, I'm sure you've seen the mezmorizing array of diatonic and pentatonic scale patterns – single string, CAGED, three notes per string, etc. If you are like me, you tend to find them a bit confusing and hard to learn, let alone apply them in a lead setting. In my quest to keep things simple, I think I found an easier way. I call them mini-patterns.

Amplifying the acoustic guitar as been a ongoing dilemma for both manufacturers and producers and players alike. In live situations, you may sacrifice a bit of sound quality for tonal consistency. However, in recording situations you may rely on microphones that reproduce the guitar with outstanding fidelity, but are prone to feedback and ambient noise. In this lesson, we review your options and help you decide which is the best option for your needs.

I mentioned in “Part 1” of this series that a guitar player should remember that there are other musicians on the stage that also need to be heard. We dealt with your guitar volume drowning out these other players. Let’s take the dynamic issue a little further and talk about collaborating with the band as a whole.