by Ty Morgan As a young player trying to find my place in the local music scene back in the early 90's I had little, if any, concept of what my responsibilities as a musician in a band were. As an overconfident guitar player, I definitely had some crazy misconceptions. Looking back I realize band rehearsals were something I didn't understand very well and that misunderstanding cost me a lot of great opportunities. Looking back over the past several decades and really taking stock of the 1000s and 1000s of rehearsals and production runs; my hope with this article is to help you take advantage of more opportunities throws your way by making wiser decisions than I did... Actually, successful

  By Chris Glyde   This article is for musicians with eight-to-ten years of playing under their belt who feel like they’ve lost their love for music, for those who feel like they’ve sold out by changing and developing their style, and for those who don’t believe their style should change at all. Most musicians go through an ever-changing relationship with music. If this happens to you, just remember that it’s expected, common, and completely acceptable. That being said, some peoples’ interest in and relationship with music never changes, and that’s okay as well.  This article isn’t very relevant for the latter group, however. Let me take some time here to share my own journey with music. When I first

By Michael Korte As a singer-songwriter or interpreter of acoustic songs, especially covers, who accompanies the voice with the guitar, you might find yourself in situations, where you found chords to a song, or you wrote a song yourself, but the melody you want to sing or you had in mind is too high or too low for your current abilities and simply out of reach for you. To get comfortable with your singing, you need to learn how to transpose a song into a key, that fits for you. What does that even mean? The beauty of the way our modern times musical system since the development of the well-tempered piano is built up, lies within the relation between

  by Dennis Winge  Suspended chords are created when you take a basic triad (first, 3rd and 5th notes of a given key) and move the 3rd up a half-step, which creates a sus4, or you take the 3rd down a whole step, which creates a sus2.  A sus4 chord, then, consists of the intervals 1, 4, 5.  A sus2 chord is 1, 2, 5.  When you hear a musician say “sus” without a number after it, it is safe to assume he or she means “sus4” because this is the most common type of sus chords.  I.  Common Voicings The 3 most common voicings on guitar for a Dsus4 chord are above.  Notice that the f# note, the 3rd

 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

By Jennifer Barlow What’s one of the things about your performing that if you improved, would help to captivate your audience more when you perform? You might think it’s your stage moves, maybe playing more complicated songs, or maybe even improving the sound of your singing.  All of these are important but there’s something else you can do that will help to get your listeners attention and keep hold of it throughout entire songs, or even entire shows. The big skill for you to work on The big skill that is most overlooked is something called “dynamics” (put simply, playing loud and quiet).  This is one skill that great performers are using throughout every song they ever play. Here’s how

Are guitar scales important or is that stuff just for the theory buffs who want to do everything by the book? The short answer to this question would be: “Yes they’re important. But to what extent and how many scales you should learn depends on your musical goals.”  Let me explain further. I talk about the importance of goal setting in many articles but for the specific purpose of learning guitar scales, I’ll simplistically divide your musical goals in two: Whether you intend to just play other people’s music only. Whether you also intend to create your own music. Because while learning scales is important if you have either of these goals, a more thorough understanding of, and ability to

  Many Beginner to Intermediate Guitarists struggle to learn and improve their Strumming skills to their satisfaction. This begins with the challenges presented by the right hand not being in sync with the fretting hand that is playing the chords.  What most beginner guitar players fail to understand is that it’s the easiest thing to learn and develop on guitar, if you pay dedicated attention towards it.  This might require practicing strumming in isolation, playing rhythm to a metronome or drum beats and lot of other ways. Whatever is your method to work on your strumming skills, you can fasten the learning process  if you just remember a few key principles every time you practice strumming.  This would begin with