Check out the free instructional articles below. Also remember to check back for new articles.
Knowledge is good, applying knowledge is much better. These free instruction articles will get you started in the right direction, but to learn guitar fast and know you are doing it right you will need someone to guide you along the way who can teach you the right thing at the right time and show you how to do it. To get help with your guitar playing click the big button at the bottom of the page and contact me about guitar lessons in Franklin.
Why Technique Matters For All Guitarists, Whatever Your Style
Why Technique Matters For All Guitarists, Whatever Your StyleWhat is guitar technique and why does it matter? The point of having good technique on guitar is to have the freedom to express what you hear in your head.. So that if you hear a fast flurry of notes, when you have [...]
How To Spice Up Your Blues Guitar Playing With Turnarounds
How To Spice Up Your Blues Guitar Playing With Turnarounds Blues is a great style to jam with other guitar players and musicians. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself to be a blues player or not, with just a little knowledge and know how, you can easily find [...]
How To Avoid Going Down The Rabbit Hole
How to Avoid Going Down the Wrong Rabbit Hole When It comes to learning guitar How long have you been learning guitar for? Are you getting stuck with your guitar playing? Do you read information and feel like you are being dragged down with information that you don’t understand? [...]
The Ultimate Practice Method In Learning To Play The Guitar With A Strap
The Ultimate Practice Method In Learning To Play The Guitar With A Strap In the attempt of becoming a more complete guitar player, many things can totally wreck your growth when you’re not aware of it. One of the crucial things to get right is the ability to transition [...]
The #1 Trick That Drastically Improves Lead Playing
The #1 Trick That Drastically Improved My Lead Playing Regardless of your preferred genre, chances are you’ve imagined yourself playing an amazing solo or melody line at some point! I mean, come on, playing solos on the guitar is totally awesome and a lot of fun, so why wouldn’t [...]
How To Get Started With Writing Your Own Songs Even If You Are Not Advanced
How To Get Started With Writing Your Own Songs Even If You Are Not Advanced Most people think that you have to be really amazing to write your own songs. You hear things like “you have to have natural talent” or “you either have it or you don’t” which [...]
Reasons why your vibratos aren’t sounding as great as they could be
Reasons why your vibratos aren’t sounding as great as they could be A quick introduction for beginner guitar players A vibrato for anyone who doesn’t know. Is a phrasing technique to make a note on your guitar sound super awesome. Well, it does sound super awesome when you do [...]
Why you should NOT quit guitar lessons when your life gets stressful
Why you should NOT quit guitar lessons when your life gets stressful Every guitar teacher knows that guitar lessons are often the first thing that students give up on when their life gets more stressful due to school or work demands, while other activities such as various sports are [...]
3 Major Mistakes Of Beginners
The 3 Major Mistakes of Beginners When you start out learning how to play the guitar, most of the students do not know, what they have to focus on in order to get maximum results in the shortest amount of time. One simply does not know what the consequences [...]
2 Simple Ways To Get Creative With Your Open Chords
2 Simple Ways To Get Creative With Your Open Chords A common trend I see in lots of guitar players as they start out, is that once they’ve learned their open chords, they get bored and want to move onto something else (learn new chords in other positions on [...]
Why are you struggling to encourage your child to practise guitar when there are video games around?
Why are you struggling to encourage your child to practise guitar when there are video games around? A lot of parents express to us that they are struggling with their child practising guitar because they always want to play their video games. They are also very lovely parents who [...]
How To Create A Groove Using Harmonized Scales
How to Create a Groove Using Harmonized Scales Introduction Many times in lessons, I create a groove for students (using a looper or midi-generating pedal or software) on the fly for them to solo over or practice switching chords with. The advantages of doing this as opposed to using [...]
Comparing How Amateurs And Professionals Jam
Comparing How Amateurs and Professionals Jam Because of the unpredictable nature of a jam session, each participant’s musicianship really comes to the fore in many ways. I have run many jam sessions that were open to the public over the years, and I offer this, not as a be-all [...]
Easy Ways To Create Your Own Chord Progressions
Easy ways to create your own chord progressions When you start learning guitar, most of the times you begin with learning some basic open major, minor or 7th chords. After a while, you expand your chord vocabulary to some advanced or suspended chords by learning from either chord progressions [...]
How I Climbed Mount Everest
How I climbed Mount Everest… Imagine this - you’re at the base of Mount Everest. You’ve got all your hiking gear on and you’re ready to climb. Now just the idea of climbing this mounting can seem pretty like a daunting task. I mean… that’s a lot to climb! [...]
2 Critical Ear Training Exercises You Must Master
Two critical ear training exercises you must master It is very obvious that having a good ear is important for all musicians, but it is especially important for guitarists to consciously train and focus on this. As guitar players we don’t get any automatic help in ear training from [...]
3 Reasons You Are Not Likely To Blame For Not Being Able to Play Guitar Yet
3 Reasons Why You Are Not Likely To Blame For Not Being Able To Learn To Play Guitar Yet So, you have tried to learn how to play guitar already and it did not go well. Guess what? You are not alone. The reality is that most people who [...]
Why You Should Understand The Fundamentals
More Than A Theory: Why You Should Understand Music Fundamentals On Guitar Over the years of my playing guitar and taking guitar lessons, I have noticed that many guitarists tend to not learn basic fundamentals of music which is a shame since just understanding a few basics can easily [...]
5 Reasons Why Your Guitar Playing Doesn’t Sound Good Yet
5 Reasons Why Your Guitar Playing Doesn’t Sound Good Yet A time comes, in the course of learning the guitar, where the student feels like he can play songs, riffs, licks and solos but for some reason, they don’t seem to sound good. Where he knows he’s hitting the [...]
3 Benefits Of Learning Music Theory
Three Benefits Of Learning Music Theory There are many guitar players who try to learn independently (without guitar lessons or a teacher) and for some reason take pride in it. Some of these people believe that doing so will create a unique sound for themselves, something that nobody can [...]
Beware Of Trojan Horses
Beware of Trojan Horses I don’t mean computer viruses here, nor literal wooden horses delivered unexpectedly to your door. ‘Trojan horse’ in this case is a metaphor for ‘things which you think are good for you but are actually bad.' Modern society constantly bombards us with marketing and cultural [...]
The Myth Of Finger Strengthening Exercises
The Myth of Finger Strengthening Exercises Do you spend hours working on finger strengthening exercises but still struggle to make your playing sound musical? Have you bought a grip strength builder only to find it had no effect on your playing whatsoever? Chances are you’ve bought into the myth [...]
The Top 5 Reasons People Avoid Learning Guitar
The Top 5 Reasons People Give To Avoid Learning to Play Guitar One of the coolest parts of being a guitar teacher is getting the opportunity to meet and talk with people. These people come from all walks of life and have different likes and dislikes. One of the [...]
What To Do When Practicing Guitar Becomes Stale
What To Do When Practicing Guitar Becomes Stale (PT 2 Inner Turmoil): There are many reasons why your practicing might become stale as a guitar player and so, as a teacher I think it’s important to discuss why your practicing has gone stale and how to give it some [...]
How Great Guitar Teachers Stand Out From Other Teachers
How Great Guitar Teachers Set Themselves Apart From The Rest Choosing a guitar teacher is one of the most important choices of your musical life. Choose the right one and you’ll make fast progress towards becoming the guitarist you always wanted to be. This should be your goal as [...]
The Top 5 Reasons People Give To Avoid Learning to Play Guitar
The Top 5 Reasons People Give To Avoid Learning to Play Guitar One of the coolest parts of being a guitar teacher is getting the opportunity to meet and talk with people. These people come from all walks of life and have different likes and dislikes. One of the [...]
Why tuning your guitar is important for you and how to do it
Why tuning your guitar is important for you and how to do it Tuning your instrument sometimes may seem like a chore and you might ask yourself: Will it make a difference if I play out of tune? It does make a difference. Let me count the ways: Playing [...]
Benefits Of Exams For Guitarists
Benefits Of Exams For Guitarists For a lot of guitarists, taking an exam to evaluate their musical ability can be a daunting prospect. After all, many of us opted to pick up the guitar strictly for enjoyment, and some may fear that undertaking an exam could seemingly turn a [...]
The Lick Problem
Here Is Why You Will Always Run Out Of Licks Are you familiar with the following scenario? You sit at home and study a whole bunch of licks by your favorite guitar player. You're looking forward to your next band practice to jam with the guys and fire off [...]
Is It Hard To Learn The Guitar?
Is It Hard To Learn The Guitar? Learning the guitar is a long term process. You cannot binge practice for a month and become a great guitar player. You need to practice regularly for a long period of time to reach advanced levels of guitar playing. But is [...]
3 Reasons You Want To Play Guitar With Other People
3 Reasons You Want To Play Guitar With Other People by Maurice Richard It's pretty intimidating right? You have seen others play together in a group at a campfire or party before. You saw how much fun they were having and you want that too. But your skills are [...]
What Parents Can Do To Support Their Childs Development On Guitar
What Parents Can Do To Support Their Child's Development On Guitar As a guitar teacher and trainer I teach a lot of kids how to play the guitar. One of the most most important things, in this process is actually not me teaching the kid, but me educating the parents [...]
Finding The Right Guitar Teacher For Your Child
Finding The Right Guitar Teacher For Your Child After you’ve purchased the right guitar, the right accessories and an amp (the amp is not necessary to get started) you are going to need someone to teach your child how to play guitar. Without knowing what things to look for [...]
Music by Numbers
Music by Numbers Do you want the holy grail of music? I’ll tell you where it is, but remember, don’t look at it directly or you will turn to stone. Of course I’m being facetious, but what I mean is, I can tell it to you in one sentence, [...]
Up Your Creativity With String Skipping
Up Your Creativity With String Skipping String skipping is one of those techniques that is quite difficult for a lot of people to do at first. On a technical side and the creative side. I won’t go deep into how to handle it on a technical level, but more [...]
How To Work With Other Band Members
How To Work With Other Band Members Like it or not, a band is a family of sorts, and like all families, a band comes with its own drama. This article will be about how to deal with any type of drama among the band members that may arise [...]
Get Excited about Practicing Guitar Again
Get Excited about Practicing Guitar Again We all love guitar, but how come sometimes getting better at the guitar feels like such a struggle? We know we want to improve, but there are periods where it just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And sitting down to practice guitar [...]
Catapult Your Guitar Playing This Year
Catapult Your Guitar Playing This Year The years always pass by more quickly than we would like. Every new year is an exciting new time where many people make their new year’s resolutions in areas of their life such as work, health, hobbies etc… but here’s an interesting [...]
How To Practice Guitar For Maximum Effectiveness
How To Practice Guitar For Maximum Effectiveness by Tommaso Zillio What is the best way to improve your guitar playing and avoid frustration? There are few dos and a few don’ts you want to be aware of when you are practicing your instrument that will make everything easier for [...]
Learn To Sight Read Faster
10 Key Principles to Help You Prepare To Learn to Sight Read Faster as a Seasoned Guitar Player If you would like to do certain things with your guitar, learning to sight read will be very helpful. Such as being a working musician, having to play with other instruments. For [...]
How to Develop Better Guitar Phrasing for Beginners
How to Develop Better Guitar Phrasing for Beginners Guitar phrasing is a massive subject. I could probably write a whole book on the subject, but if you are a beginner, there are a couple steps you can take to work on your phrasing to become a better guitar player. [...]
Form: The Lesser Known Musical Element
Form: The Lesser Known Musical Element The big 3 when it comes to elements in music are melody, harmony, & rhythm. This article is about one of the other 4 elements that perhaps get less attention, and they are form, dynamics, timbre, and texture. Today’s topic is on the [...]
How To Best Practice Guitar To Play The Way You’ve Always Dreamed
How To Best Practice Guitar To Play The Way You’ve Always Dreamed You’ve heard the saying “practice makes perfect”. This however is not entirely true. It assumes one will not only practice, but practice the correct way. It would be better to say “perfect practice makes perfect”. Simply picking [...]
3 Mistakes Of Beginner Guitarists
3 Mistakes Of Beginner Guitarists This article will cover the 3 mistakes of beginner guitarists. Most new guitar players do not know what they have to focus on in order to get maximum results in the shortest amount of time. One simply does not know what the consequences of [...]
Why is Ear Training Important?
Why is Ear Training Important? When you first learn how to play the guitar, doing ear training may not seem that important. As your physical skill improves on the guitar, your ear will start to develop with it. Whether it's your ability to pick out the separate guitar parts [...]
How To Achieve ‘Hendrix Sounds’ With Blues Guitar Chord Inversions
How To Achieve ‘Hendrix Sounds’ With Blues Guitar Chord Inversions This Will Open The Door To Play Blues Licks Like Jimi Hendrix By Antony Reynaert Knowing this concept and using it in your improvisations as a guitar player, will give you this overall bluesy Hendrix sound. Hendrix often uses [...]
Getting Your Fret Hand In The Best Position
Getting Your Fret Hand In The Best Position By Paul Kleff Most beginning guitar players have difficulty learning to play chords on the guitar. It is important that you learn the basic open chord fingerings and become fluent at placing your hand into the chord shapes. Until you memorize [...]
How To Clean Your Guitar So It Will Stay In Perfect Condition
How To Clean Your Guitar So It Will Stay In Perfect Condition In this article I will tell you how to clean your guitar, so it will keep being in perfect condition for your performance. You want your guitar to sound the best it can and the first step [...]
How to Kill Self-Doubt
How To Kill Self-Doubt Overcome Your Frustrations, Your Fears, And Every Obstacle That Holds You Back From Becoming the Musician You Want to Be. Self-doubt destroys motivation. It prevents people from reaching their full potential and when left unchecked, self-doubt leads people to give up on themselves and their [...]
3 Ways A Guitar Teacher Makes You A Better Player Faster
3 Ways A Guitar Teacher Helps You Become A Better Guitarist Faster It’s no secret that taking guitar lessons with a great teacher helps you become a better player in less time. Guitarists who learn exclusively on their own rarely become great players and commonly end up quitting guitar altogether. [...]
Three Huge Mistakes Your Guitar Teacher Could Be Making
3 Big Mistakes Your Guitar Teacher Could Be Making When your guitar teacher makes mistakes it costs you as the student. Working with a mediocre teacher potentially holds you back or worsens your playing. You should be very careful to make sure you only take lessons with great guitar teachers [...]
3 Guitar Practice Myths That Slow Down Your Musical Progress
3 Guitar Practice Myths That Slow Down Your Musical Progress By Mike Philippov To become a good guitar player quickly, you must make your guitar practice as effective as possible. Effective guitar practice is about: Knowing what to do to improve your guitar playing quickly Staying away from common [...]
How To Guarantee Results When Practicing Guitar
How To Guarantee Results When Practicing Guitar Disclaimer: only you are responsible for your results. I cannot guarantee anything. This approach is considered a way for you to guarantee and ensure your progress when practicing guitar. There is one very important LAW I want everyone to know about how to [...]
The Forgotten Force Invaluable To Improving Your Guitar Playing
The Forgotten Force Invaluable To Improving Your Guitar Playing Do you remember what first got you interested in guitar? How about what first got you excited enough to buy a guitar and start investing the time into improving your guitar playing day after day? Was it a song you [...]
How To Make Practice Exciting Every Time You Pick Up The Guitar
How To Make Practice Exciting Every Time You Pick Up The Guitar Have you ever struggled to do what you wanted to do, but couldn't find the motivation to even pick up the guitar? Has practicing guitar begun to feel like a chore even though you knew you really wanted [...]
How To Follow Through With Your Resolutions
How To Follow Through With Your Resolutions Most people make resolutions for the new year, but they happen all throughout the year and should. The new year is only a number, but can still be pretty useful and motivating or demotivating. It's very valuable to do a quick check [...]
How To Avoid Distractions And Stay On Course With Your Guitar Playing
How To Avoid Distractions And Stay On Course With Your Guitar Playing Do you find yourself jumping all over the internet trying to find solutions to your guitar playing problems? Or maybe you just search out new things to play all the time because you feel like it will [...]
How and Why to Choose a Style of Music to Play on the Guitar
How and Why to Choose a Style of Music to Play on the Guitar This subject might be quickly dismissed by most, but it is more than essential to give some attention to. For many the style of music they want to play on guitar is simply what they [...]
How To Improve Your Guitar Playing Right Now
How To Improve Your Guitar Playing Right Now Do you wish you could be a better guitar player right now? Do you feel lost on how to improve your guitar playing? Have you felt overwhelmed by having so many things to practice? Every guitar player no matter how good would [...]
3 Overlooked Things to Consider when Choosing a Guitar Teacher
3 Overlooked Things to Consider when Choosing a Guitar Teacher Lets first cover why you should have a guitar teacher Guitar is a complex instrument. Many people try to learn on their own. Most quit very quickly. Many of those who have quit could have be great, but they [...]
How To Tune Your Guitar
How To Tune Your Guitar Each string on your guitar has a letter name that it must be tuned to. They are as follows: This is a quick guide about how to tune your guitar. To start you will need a tuner. The one on this page shows the strings [...]
Where To Begin: Playing Guitar For The Guitar Illiterate [Part 1]
Where To Begin: Playing Guitar For The Guitar Illiterate [Part 1] There is a uncomfortable feeling when first attempting anything you’ve never done. Playing guitar is not an exception. It’s not the easiest instrument to learn. Especially by yourself. The best route to venture down is to find a [...]
How To Deal With And Overcome Your Stage Fright
How To Deal With And Overcome Your Stage Fright You know that feeling you get when you accomplish something. This feeling can be subtle or overwhelmingly awesome. Subtle when it applies to doing dishes, you’re glad they’re done and you don’t have to worry about it anymore…. until tomorrow. [...]
Using An Electric Tuner; Step By Step Instructions
Using An Electric Tuner; Step By Step Instructions Playing guitar is a lot of fun. Like anything in the beginning it can be intimidating, especially if it isn’t in tune. You pick up the guitar and strum a chord and it causes you to cringe. You think you did something wrong. You [...]
The Secret to Playing Like a Master
The Secret to Playing Like a Master The act of practicing or performing can be a very daunting thing. Most people refer to these as "playing" guitar, but it doesn't feel like play when you're all "worked up" about it. Do you feel stressed out when you think about [...]
2 Secret Keys to Improve Your Guitar Playing
2 Secret Keys to Improve Your Guitar Playing Like any instrument it takes lots of knowledge of the instrument. To truly improve your guitar playing it will take consistent practice and time to learn to apply what you've learned and lots of patience. This is common sense, but for [...]
4 Reasons Why You Are Not Growing As a Guitarist
4 Reasons Why You Are Not Growing As a Guitarist I've met many people who play guitar. Most are mediocre at best and are not growing as a guitarist. I don't say this to knock them and feel better about myself. When I hear great guitarists I am challenged [...]
Why And How To Use A Metronome
Why And How To Use A Metronome Many new musicians aren't fully aware of how to use a metronome. They are even less aware as to why they should use it. A metronome is a very useful tool to help you improve your rhythm on guitar. It is a [...]
Buying A Guitar – Tips For Beginners
Buying A Guitar - Tips For Beginners Buying a guitar is always a challenge for anyone just starting to play guitar or who have an interest in starting. People ask me all the time about their guitar. If they don't I know they are curious what I think. This [...]
Where To Begin: Playing Guitar For The Guitar Illiterate [Part 2]
Where To Begin: Playing Guitar For The Guitar Illiterate [Part 2] This is part 2 or this series, make sure to read the first article, Where To Begin: Playing Guitar For The Guitar Illiterate [Part 1], so you are a little familiarized with the instrument. It doesn't matter if you [...]