Posts Tagged ‘Jimi Hendrix’

The Greatest Rock Guitarist – Who Is He?

It seems that rock guitar players have always been a crowd pleaser, even going back to the days of Les Paul. He may not qualify as a rock guitarist in the sense that we understand it today, but Les Paul certainly made people sit up and take notice whenever he played. Of course, Les was in at the very beginning of the solid body electric guitar’s entry onto the stage, so at that time there were very few guitarists who were even interested enough to get the technique to become a great rock guitarist.

The foundation of the concept of the rock guitarist lay in the consolidation of the small group with drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitars, plus, maybe a keyboard. Groups like The Shadows, The Ventures and Dick Dale’s Dell Tones made young men go out and buy guitars and sit in their rooms for hours practicing. When The Beatles became the first small group to gain international attention from people of all ages, the guitar reached the height of its popularity.

The era of the great rock guitarist began in the late sixties with Eric Clapton in Cream. But as with all innovations, there was someone else working on his flamboyant guitar technique in another part of the world. Jimi Hendrix’s first appearance in England made Eric Clapton feel a little insecure on his throne, as his guitar playing and stagecraft hypnotized audiences. The extended guitar solo was born, along with its dull-witted siblings the bedroom guitar and the garage band.

If we think about who we consider to be the world’s greatest rock guitarist, names from the sixties and seventies, like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton immediately appear in our heads. Indeed, most people who vote in polls about this sort of thing seem to go for Hendrix – a guitarist who had a very short life about forty years ago.

These are guitarists who became famous when loudness was king of rock guitar and flashy technique was its gay partner, but what about the guitarists whose names are not generally known, even though they were with popular bands? Pete Ham of Badfinger springs to mind, or Jerry Miller of Moby Grape. Mick Ronson was an English guitar player who made a name for himself as David Bowie’s lead guitarist, and Mike Campbell, Tom Petty’s guitarist for about a zillion years is admired by many guitar players but unknown to the general public. There are lots of guitarists in bands now whose approach to music is very different from the rock guitarists of previous decades, even though their debt to the music of the seventies is obvious. The question of who is the greatest rock guitarist of all time will continue with more names being added to the mix as time goes on.

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How to become a good speed guitarist

Right, now you’re playing guitar, but want to play at guitar-burning speeds? Are you awed by people like Kirk Hammett and Jimi Hendrix and the breakneck speeds they play at? If you’re just starting out with speed guitar, here are some tips and ideas for you to get good at it.

  • Get comfortable: Always warm up before starting speed guitar practice. Find a pick you are comfortable with, and a comfortable position – one that is relaxed, not tense. Also find out how you prefer to attack the string – perpendicular or at a slight angle?
  • Coordination. This is one of the most underrated aspects of speed guitar. Most people think you only need a quick left hand on the fretboard – but picking skills are vital, as you will see! Good speed Guitar Lesson needs a high level of coordination between your right and left hand.

Make sure your left hand is light on the strings, and does not need to move too much – use your wrist for most movements. A correct right hand technique involves correct picking, as we will see below. Don’t underestimate any of these components!

  • Alternate picking. This refers to a technique involving quickly alternating the pick stroke upwards and downwards. The quicker your right hand can make these strokes, the quicker your playing will be. To practice alternate picking, simply use a guitar pick to play one note with a “down” stroke and the next with an “up” stroke. Play all notes in these motions. It is important to aim for clean, accurate notes first – try for speed later!
  • Tremolo picking. A useful way to practice alternate picking is through tremolo. Simply put, tremolos are fast recurrences of a single note. Try and begin each of your lessons/practice sessions with tremolos. They really help warm up your right hand!

Playing tremolo is simple – pick any phrase and then triple each note.  Try out a wide variety of styles using this method – blues, jazz, solos – the works. Be patient, and you’ll see the huge advantages this technique brings you!

  • Chromatic exercises. This is another set of useful exercises to help you become a good speed guitarist. Chromatic exercises involve playing 4 consecutive frets, ideally with increasing speed. These exercises will also build your finger strength – a vital skill for speed playing. Use a metronome to chart your progress – begin with a speed of around 100-120 BPM, and slowly increase. Also, use variations within your chromatics to mix it up!
  • Use a metronome. You can do hundreds of exercises to build your speed skills, but without actually using a metronome there’s no guarantee you’ll get faster. A metronome will help you measure your speed in definite terms – and this is always motivating! Most standard electronic keyboards are equipped with a metronome – or you can download free ones from the internet. Use it to increase the number of notes you can play per beat of the metronome.
  • Focus on the music. Good speed playing is nothing without a sense of rhythm and musicality – don’t forget that! Listen to some of the greats to get a sense of how to blend speed with melody and rhythm. John McLaughlin, Frank Zappa, Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen are people you could listen to.

Now get shredding! Good luck!

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How to Read Guitar Music

Every man must have had the craving to learn how to play the guitar during his teenage years. This is only normal when growing up, especially in an age where rock music and pop culture are both prevalent and plays a significant part in shaping someone’s personality.

Many individuals learned how to play the guitar through friends. It is a good thing now that there is the Internet where one can browse through thousands or millions of web pages and websites that offer nothing but guitar lessons.

Perhaps the very first thing that a guitar player should know, aside from the parts of the guitar, is how to read guitar music the right way. As we all know, this can only be made possible if the player knows how to read guitar chords from a chart. This is the only way that one person can read through the tabs, play them, and see if the guitar music is right or wrong.

Learning how to read guitar chords is the only way to learn how to play guitar. Being able to do so saves someone the hassle of looking for another person just to ask for information. In time, after learning how to read guitar music, one can easily say that what he has on the magazine guitar chart for a certain song is wrong. He can then move on to changing it and in turn, tech his friends the right chords for playing a song.

The standard way of displaying the correct guitar chord is through a guitar diagram. A guitar chord diagram is made of a drawn square or rectangle with six lines, representing the six strings of a guitar. The squares are segregated into bars and these are the representations of the guitar frets. The way guitar chords are displayed is inverted, as if looking at the mirror. Keep in mind that at the left hand section of the drawing, you will find a thick line, which symbolizes the n of the guitar’s neck, where the tuning nuts are.

The places where you need to press the strings are symbolized by dots. If a dot is found at the second fret at the third string, this means that you need to press that string at that exact location. There is also a proper way of pressing the strings in terms of what fingers to use. On top of the drawing, you will see numbers form 1-4. The number on top of a dot tells you what finger to use. This means that if the number two is used or a dot located at the second fret on the third string, you have to use your middle finger to press that chord at that location.

How to read guitar music may not be an easy challenge to many. This is more aggravated by the fact that for beginners, they may think they are pressing the right chord but they cannot produce the right sound. Patience is always a key to learning how to play the guitar. No one can really learn how to play the guitar overnight. It may take days to master even just a single chord.

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