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 Tips To Making Successful Chord Changes By Zach Payton   Tired of struggling to make successful chord changes? Today we’re going to talk about a few things that will help your progress, on how to make your chord changes more fluently. First thing, let's decide on which progression we’re going to use. Let’s choose G major, C major, D major.   Now we need to memorize the progression. Once you have the chords memorized, we need to make sure every string is ringing. Here’s an exercise that will help.     When you pick each note in this exercise, if one of the notes doesn’t ring out, start the exercise over again but this time focus on making the note

By Jake Willmot There is a worldwide crisis going on that is hurting musicians without them even realising it, or if they do realise it they are in too deep that they feel too unconfident to solve it. How did this come about? Well once upon a time a long long time ago, musicians developed the skills they needed to become a musician, everything from their physical playing abilities to music theory knowledge, their aural skills etc. People faced challenges when they were developing their skills but they got there in the end.   But then one day, disaster strikes! This has brought the death of aural skills to musicians. In the 1990’s the internet came along, which brought a lot

 Tips To Making Successful Chord Changes By Zach Payton Tired of struggling to make successful chord changes? Today we’re going to talk about a few things that will help your progress, on how to make your chord changes more fluently. First thing, let's decide on which progression we’re going to use. Let’s choose Gmajor, Cmajor, Dmajor. Now we need to memorize the progression. Once you have the chords memorized, we need to make sure every string is ringing. Here’s an exercise that will help.   When you pick each note in this exercise, if one of the notes doesn’t ring out, start the exercise over again but this time focus on making the note that isn’t ringing and don’t worry

A question I get quite often from intermediate guitar players is whether or not they need to learn how to play modes. There are good arguments on each side of the coin, and whether you choose to focus your attention on modes now or at a later time is a decision that I'm going to try to help you with. I’ll lay out reasons for both sides so that you can decide for yourself whether now is the right time for you to be working on modes or not. But Before reading further, if you find yourself asking “what is a mode?”, you can click here to read more about them. Let’s start with reasons why you might want to

One of the most common problems I have seen with intermediate and advanced guitarists lies within their understanding of what ‘modes’ are, and how they are used. If you have read into, studied, and practiced the concept of modes, you fall into one of two categories: 1) You fully understand the concept of modes, and know how to properly utilize them 2) You THINK you know how modes work, but really have no idea how to use them (even if you think you do!) Now, as you are reading through this, and you feel that you know how to properly use modes, humour me and keep reading, as you just might be one of those guitarists who fall into the

By Jason Wilford I know many people that feel like it’s impossible to find the time to continue practicing guitar throughout the summer at the same level they were throughout the winter months. For guitarists, the winter can be a time where it’s really easy to grab a guitar and hang out inside practicing for hours (especially in Canada). When the summer rolls around, however, we all find ourselves doing other activities and it may feel like the guitar is taking a backseat to everything else. A common response to this by many of us is to just give in and not think too much about it. Some of us stop working as hard, slow down on practicing, and maybe even just

***photos courtesy of Katie Tsuji***