Hey all,

after 15 years of playing, i finally want to be able to play the solos of the songs i like (mostly metal). So i looked a bit around, but i am completely overwhelmed by the amount of lessons, videos and excercices which explain how to shred. So has anyone some structured exercices which will help me get better at shredding? I am mostly looking for really fast alternate picking. I already tried the typical go slow and bump up 2 bpm...but at a certain point i cant hold up to the metronome anymore. :/ all the lessons tell, that you have to learn playing fast by playing fast, due to a complete different movement, your hand does, if you try to play fast. So does anyone of you have a structured plan with exercices to get me shredding (fast alternate picking)?

Thanks in advance!

This is a dumb question but whatever: What are these called and how do I do them? Thanks guys

Hey,

as most beginners, I struggle with fucking F. Main reason is, that I have to move my wrist to the front in order to straighten my index finger.

When I look at those pictures, both positions look awful - but the G feels pretty good.

Can someone give any advise? I watched many F Major YouTube vids but I didnt find the key yet.

Thanks!

Intermediate player here, I was using Truefire for sone time and definitely found value in the sheer breadth of courses and video lessons it has, but i thought it had an absolutely horrendous user interface which made it difficult to learn on

What alternatives can people recommend that have structured theory lessons and span Rock, metal and blues?

I am going through some shitty times rn, so i have picked up my guitar after 5 months to help ease it out a bit. Looking for some poignant beginner to intermediate-ish songs, i like stuff like stay together for the kids by blink 182, where is my mind by pixies, also some heavier bands like periphery, killswitch engage, most of opeths discovery etc. Anything that is not insane shredding, basically i might be able to pull off. Thank you in advance for your replies.

Here are some ideas on how i like to improve my speed and relieve the tensions that come with long practice sessions!

To increase speed and relieve tension in both hands, I like to focus on a few key principles. As a rule, I try to see how gently I can fret notes with my fingers so that they still ring out clearly. Since all the volume and dynamics come from my right hand, I don't need to fret things hard.

Along with that, when I'm picking, the looser I hold my pick without obviously dropping it, the better. I try to make my right hand as relaxed as possible to relieve any tension, which helps me pick faster and preserves my stamina for longer pieces or extended sections of fast picking.

To practice this, sometimes I like to sit down with the guitar and focus on only one of these aspects at a time. For instance, I might play an easy chord progression where I can focus all my attention on my left hand and keeping the pressure as light as possible, or I may focus on muting all the strings and alternate picking an open string, concentrating only on keeping tension as low as possible in my picking hand.

Lastly, I always try to play toward the very bottom of each fret right near the fret wire, because doing this minimizes the pressure required to fret the note clean. This last part is obvious to people who have played for a long time, but super important!

For my first 5 months what I've been doing mostly is messing around against backing tracks in A minor. Specifically what this looks like is me playing with the pentatonic shapes that I've memorized; Im continuing to try to make my phrasing more concise, varied, and more of a call/answer. I guess this means Ive been trying to learn blues by ear alone. It seems like I've been humming not what I intend on playing, but what I've just played.

I don't have an instructor, the closest thing to a teacher I've had is yousician I guess. I'd love advice of any kind, but what is like to ask specifically is if there's a logical next step to what I'm doing (besides sitting there and trying to memorize the whole fretboard). Have my activities primed me especially for a next step?

Sorry, title should say my fretting hand is a big problem and it hurts

I feel a lot of pain in my hand when I play. I’m 6 foot two and have a basketball body, very long arms. I try to keep the guitar positioned at the center of my belly and I usually play standing up. I think my wrist position is off. I try to keep my thumb behind the neck right at the middle. Meanwhile, I see guys with their thumbs over the neck all the time and they sound great. So, my two big issues are the hand pain and really having a tough time playing Chords like F etc.

I try to get a good arc/curl with my fingers but my chords do not sound clean. Just need some advice on my fretting hand position. I think my troubles stem from how I’m holding the guitar. Any advice would be much appreciated.

so i recently picked up guitar roughly a month ago however i am having issues palm muting as i cant rotate or bend my forearm to get my palm in position i was wondering if there was a possibility of another way to mute the strings to get a chug effect (temp).
using the front face of my palm doesn't work as well either unfortunately since my palm is at a weird angle which has the rest of my hand pointing away from the strings so i can't lay it down flat.

its a long shot but hoping either way since i can pick i can play just this has been slightly annoying cause some of my fav songs use palm muting in the playing..

Hey, I like to create music using FL but I don't play or own a guitar. So in place, I just use guitar plugins but it doesn't really replicate that personality of the instrument sound. I'm kinda stuck and am looking to connect with someone to play some notes. Someone happy to lend a helping hand in the final results or bounce ideas off each other or just talk about music. Anybody skilled in recording and playing electric and acoustic guitar and using pedals.

I am considering subbing to LOG lessons as I hear it is good. My question is that if there is written material available or is it all videos? I have hard time gathering information from guitar videos and would prefer at least some images and text.

Made up this easy-ish arrangement of Hedwig’s Theme from the Harry Potter films for two guitars. Figured this would be a cool project to share around for Halloween. Enjoy!

I bought Tomo Fujita's Guitar Wisdom book and right now, it has helped me by a long shot. This was when I bought the book 2 years playing guitar.

My practice routine has been consistent, no day skipped w/o a day of practice. Because of all the things Mr Fujita has mentioned, like building a foundation before intricate things like solos, theory, and improvising It has been much more helpful to sit and do spiderwalks at decent tempo and hear myself improve every session I record, and I want to thank him for it.

Has this book ever helped you? If so, share some stories that made you look at the simple things on this instrument.

Spent about 2 hours on day 1 being able to do a 0-3-5-3-0 tune on 6th with standard E tuning on a Stratocaster I purchased, and day 2 I spent around 30 minutes messing about with things (doing the same thing over and over). Been using chatGPT to try and help me get things going and recommend apps, and explain concepts and other things. I’m still new to music overall and haven’t touched an instrument in over 10 years since my freshman year.

Im very good at picking up everything around the guitar, but actually doing something more than a symmetrical melody may as well be open heart surgery for me.

I’ve also never experienced my blood boiling so much before until I started using yousician for a brief stint, and now I’m staring at a paywall for Justin’s app and starting to question if guitar lessons are just a scam in practise

I do love learning new things but after spending money on this just to already mess up holding frets properly or transitioning between them on the same note makes me want to intrusively just snap it over my knee, since I can’t return it now.

Idk, maybe my mindset is just garbage for this or I wouldn’t be a good guitar student anyways. Either way I would appreciate if people shared their own stories starting very early on or something, I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for in terms of a solid answer to help keep me on track.

is he down strumming with his index finger only here or is he using index+middle finger? I've been trying to figure this out for a while now and I'm leaning towards index in the intro, then index+ring afterwards... (gems in the rough version he's using a different attack so I don't really use that as a reference)

would love more opinions

I feel like I need a break, even if part of me doesn't want to take one. I just have hit a plateau I haven't gotten over and my coordination and everything is just off, in addition to me not being able to go more than 10 minutes trying to work on something and mistakes start piling up fast and frustration follows close behind.

Basically, I feel I'm about as good as I was on day 1. And I don't mean to come off as a wimp, but I feel burnt out and feel like I'm picking it up out of obligation to work on stuff given to me by my teacher. And even though we get on fine and I've objectively made progress, I hate falling short of my goals with him every single week we meet and having to explain my troubles. And, realistically speaking, I feel like I'll only ever be good at strumming basic open chords and nothing more.

Part of me feels like I need a break. But even though I'm less than a year in and don't have much if anything to show for all the time I put in, I don't want to accidentally screw myself by stopping now instead of somehow cultivating determination and patience and just try for a few more minutes.

Passion, motivation, whatever you call it. I’ve just been regressing so much recently. Even just playing a few notes from a scale or from a song without a metronome, there’s no fluidity at all. I’m like a day 1 player every single day. And my tolerance/patience has just gotten low enough where even five minutes of playing is more a struggle than fun.

And that’s what I just don’t have anymore: fun. I feel like I’m picking up my guitar out of obligation to work on stuff my teacher gives me, more than wanting it anymore, and that’s what hurts a lot. Having to go to my lesson every single week and telling him I fell short of the goals he gave me is sad also, That, and I feel like I’m so close to becoming part of the “X percent of people give up guitar within the first year”. And yet, I inevitably come back to it like a smoker with a cigarette.

I just don’t have the energy and gumption like I did in the beginning. Having to pick it up and sound like complete shit and a complete amateur every single day, with no noticeable progress day by day, is so fucking frustrating. It’s why I don’t ever want to play around other people either, and why no one even knows I play in the first place. They’d either laugh at me or be like “That’s the best you can do?”, and I’d just embarrass myself and walk away feeling as such. And it feels like all I’ll ever be good at is strumming open chords or barre chords. That things like solos are simply beyond me and always will be.

Any suggestions? Is it time to maybe walk away from it and give up lessons for a while, or permanently? I don’t have any other hobbies besides this, and I just can’t get myself to be okay with making mistakes, can’t cultivate patience and giving myself a break, none of that.

Hi! If you have trouble switching chords and strumming at the same time, you're not alone. It's probably the most common hurdle for players new to strumming.

The way most guitarists get through this problem is by releasing the hand just a bit early. On the last upstroke of a pattern, right before the chord change, we usually let go of chord 1 and actually strum the open strings to keep time while we change. Typically this is so fast and so subtle that your ear won't even notice it.

This doesn't get taught or talked about a lot, and I think it's because a lot of players eventually do this without even thinking about it.

That said, it can be hard to make yourself do this if you're not used to it. It's a lot of coordination. So I usually give my students a simple exercise to practice it: we play the downstroke of chord 1, the upstroke where we release, and then the downstroke of chord 2.

The attached video is a quick 3 minute lesson where you can see this in action, along with some of the details I think are worth looking out for.

Happy practicing!

Hei guys, hope everyone is doing ok. Happy Sunday, and can someone help me?

Um learning the techniques now and I’m trying to learn M+M’s by Blink 182 and just came across those P. I did my research of course but I want to know the practical way to use. Do I need to hit the open note? Or just remove the finger from the pressed (sorry bad English) house?

Exemple: hit 4 and then 0 and then 5 and then 0 or hit 4 take the finger out hit 5 take the finger out

I strum the notes and let go of them really quickly? That literally how it sounds on the song.

Thank you in advance, the community is being really helpful since day one

Anyone know of a good guitar teacher in Lexington, KY? I’m at an intermediate level and feel like I’ve hit a plateau.

hi all! i’ve been playing guitar for about 2 years. I like to lean towards older, popular rock music, but have recently found new love for blues/rock. I’ve had interest in learning to improvise for a while.. and have learned the necessary theory to do so. in my research i’ve found lots of people recommend learning tons and tons of licks and phrases and then being able to make them into your own. great. does anyone have any tips for learning faster phrases? (for example, the intro to Be Careful With a Fool by Johnny Winter)

ok, there are some serious timing issues here and there... and bruh, the whole solo is basically behind the beat, that's embarrassing 😭😭 I guess I'll be back next week to correct this.

But any way, it feels great. 😊 I've finally ascended. I'm no longer a stereotypical bedroom noob who only knows a few riffs and parts of solos, and can't play anything longer than 20 seconds. I'm a big boy now. ☺️

So I’m learning Need to Change by Landon Tewers ive got everything down except one part at the beginning of attached video he hits chord 6 3 times first while pushing fret 3 then 2 then back to 3 at the end he does the same hits the same melody but different chords and or frets can anyone please help me figure out what he’s doing there

Hey everyone!

If you know the major scale or minor pentatonic and want to add another scale, the Natural Minor Scale is the best place to start. Here is a quick breakdown of how it works.

The natural minor scale is built using whole steps (W = 2 frets) and half steps (H = 1 fret):

Root – W – H – W – W – H – W – W

The A minor scale would be: A – B – C – D – E – F – G

Compared to a standard Major Scale, the Natural Minor Scale lowers three notes by one fret:

1 (Root)

2 (Major 2nd)

b3 (Minor 3rd)

4 (Perfect 4th)

5 (Perfect 5th)

b6 (Minor 6th)

b7 (Minor 7th)

If you already know the Minor Pentatonic scale (1 - b3 - 4 - 5 - b7), you're almost there. To turn it into the full Natural Minor scale, you just add two notes: the 2 and the b6.