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Guitar Tips Results 1 - 40 for guitar tips Guitar Tips 1 - Use a capo and save yourself a lot of trouble. A guitar capo is especially helpful to singers who wish to sing in a different key. The capo allows you to immediately play in a different chord without learning the whole song over again. Guitar Tips 2 - Guitar Tabs - Take the time to learn guitar tablature. There are thousands of guitar tabs on the net to thousands of songs. Check out 411tabs.com, a portal that links to all the major guitar tab sites. SHOP FOR GUITAR GIFTS AT GIFTYS.COM Guitar Tips 3 - Keep your fingernails trimmed so that you can play clearer notes on the guitar. Guitar Tips 4 - Wash and dry your hands before playing to lengthen the life of your strings. Guitar Tips 5 - After you play, wipe down your fingerboard and strings. guitar gifts Guitar Tips 6 - Left-handed? Wondering which way to hold your guitar? As left-hand guitars are available, start by picking up a guitar and see what feels more natural to you. Guitar Tips 7 - When working on your left hand technique, try for strength, speed, and flexibility. Guitar Tips 8 - Carrying your guitar from place to place? Put it in a case. Period. Guitar Tips 9 - If you buy a used acoustic guitar, do have an experienced guitarist look over it. A guitar's neck will bend forward over time from the tension of the strings. There are ways to fix it, but you want to make sure it is not close to a costly repair called a "neck reset". Guitar Tips 10 - A "cutaway" model of acoustic guitar is particularly good for reaching the higher frets. Drawbacks include the higher price and possibly a sound that isn't quite as good as a regular acoustic. Guitar Tips 11 - If you have a cheap acoustic guitar, a reputable shop may be able to replace its plastic saddle with one made of bone for a relatively low price. This will noticably improve tone quality. Guitar Tips 12 - Have trouble getting some of the bridge pins out of your acoustic when you re-string, etc.? Try using a golf tee to push it out from inside the bridge. Guitar Tips 13 - If you can find an old piano that is to be destroyed, you can take any remaining ivory from the keys (assuming it is old enough to have ivory on it) and use them to make a nice saddle for your guitar. You will likely have to glue multiple pieces together for thickness. Gifts for Guitarists Guitar Tips 14 - If you play an acoustic or hollow body, take a look inside sometime. See any dust bunnies? Best to vacuum them out - they can hold damaging moisture in the instrument. Guitar Tips 15 - If you play an acoustic, be aware that direct sunlight can soften the glue that holds the guitar together. Be careful not to store it in open sunlight. Guitar Tips 16 - If you need to practice a bit more quietly on an acoustic guitar, but you want to be able to play in a somewhat normal manner, try a "soundhole cover". Guitar Tips 17 - You may hear of the x-brace of an acoustic guitar, and it being shifted in some designs. It is literally a brace on the inside of the guitar that makes an X, with the soundhole on top and the belly of the guitar beneath it. In older guitars, the x-brace was higher up, creating a beautiful sound, but causing the belly to poke out a bit over time due to the pull of the strings. Note that this poking out is only a cosmetic issue. Guitar Tips 18 - Consider using an amp that uses tubes at some level if you can afford one. The maintenance is more costly, but the payoff in sound quality is worth the cost over a solid-state amplifier. Guitar Tips 19 - The amplifier you use is as important as your guitar as far as the tone quality of your sound. Make sure you put thought into your amp. It doesn't have to be expensive, it just has to suit your playing situation. B.B. King, the most famous blued guitarist of all time, is known for having used only a few cheap amplifiers over his playing career, but they gave him the exact sound he wanted. Guitar Tips 20 - Explore different types of pickups on you electric guitar. There are single coil and double coil or "humbucker" pickups. Many modern electric guitars have both and give you the ability to switch between them while playing. Guitar Tips 21 - There are many types of pickups to explore if you want to have a built-in way to get the sound of your acoustic guitar to an amplifier and thus avoid having to stand at a traditional microphone on a stand. These include contact, magnetic, piezo, and built-in microphone pickups. Guitar Tips 22 - Try enhancing your sound by experimenting with adding "delay" to your playing. It is an electronic effect that is much shorter in duration and stronger in volume than reverb. Guitar Tips 23 - Before buying a pedal that uses a power supply instead of batteries, be sure to listen for any "buzz" it creates in your output. Guitar Tips 24 - Strumming Tips - First and foremost, think like a drummer when strumming. Ultimately, you have to keep good time. Practice with a pick on a corrugated piece of cardboard. Listen to the rhythm and make sure you have that down before transferring this over to a guitar. Guitar Tips 25 - Learn to use accents in your playing to add interest, especially when strumming. This means striking some beats harder than others. Guitar Tips 26 - Try out the sound of a guitar with a "multi-scale" fretboard. It takes a cue from the piano and has strings of varying length. You may find that you like the way it plays better than a traditional guitar where all the strings are of the same length. Great Guitar Gifts Guitar Tips 27 - Be aware that if you play guitar consistently, you will get calluses on your fingertips over time. Most guitarists, however, carry a kind of demented pride in them. I still remember a high school friend showing me how he could stick thumbtacks in the tips of all his fingers without feeling any pain. Guitar Tips 28 - One way to build calluses quicker is to take rubbing alcohol and rub it into your fingertips a few times a day. This helps dry them out and the calluses build more quickly. Just be sure that it doesn't split the skin. Guitar Tips 29 - Fingers hurt after playing? Try one of two thing - 1) soak them in a bowl of icewater or run them under a cold faucet, just not to the point of pain. And only do this when you won't be playing for a while. Or, 2) use aloe on your fingertips. Either of these will prevent blisters. Guitar Tips 30 - There are many commercial products designed to strengthen your fingernails if yours are getting beat up when playing. Just be sure to follow the directions carefully as some products can do damage over time if used improperly. Guitar Tips 31 - New to fingerpicking? It's a great technique, much different than using a pick to strum or play individual notes with. To listen to a master, listen to Spanish classical guitarist Andrés Segovia - likely the most famous classical guitarist of all time. Guitar Tips 32 - Now that you know the traditional fingerings for the basic chords, learn "bar chords". Learning to bar the chords you already know will make it easier to move from some chords to others and will also give you a different inversion or voicing of the chords you already know that will be more appropriate in certain musical situations. Guitar Tips 33 - Having trouble hearing a chord of a song? Listen to the bass line. Often the bass line is the root note of the chord you're trying to figure out. Guitar Tips 34 - Spice up your guitar playing with special effects units, slides, and the like. Use creative micing techniques, and practice being a showman. Are you exciting to watch on stage? Guitar Tips 35 - A good song to practice to help with "string skipping" is Bouree In E Minor by J.S. Bach. Guitar Tips 36 - Practice good form. Don't play with your guitar hung down near your knees. This serves to do nothing but hinder your ability to perform at an optimum level. Guitar Tips 37 - There is a classical and modern way to hold a guitar. The classical method points the fretboard higher in the air. Guitar Tips 38 - Regardless of how you hold the guitar while sitting, try to get one leg off of the ground by crossing your legs or putting a foot up on a box. This makes playing more comfortable and less fatiguing. Guitar Tips 39 - Regarding hand position; try to keep your wrist parallel to the fretboard, so that your pinky can reach the notes just as easily as your index finger. Guitar Tips 40 - Tablature is great for guitarists. Once you can read tab, start reading a plain music staff as soon as you can. It will open up a new world of possibilities for you, such as reading a melody in a piano score, solos transcribed for other instruments, etc. FIND MORE GUITAR TIPS Home  |  About  |  Leave a Tip  |  Featured Tips  |  Links