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Easy to follow techniques for playing songs on your guitar

If you try to understand and apply these tips, it will be lot easier for you to learn any lead riff or lick or rhythm pattern of your favorite artist and then replicate it on your guitar.

A general tip is that, you should always start practicing the songs slowly, especially if it is a fast song and then gradually increase the speed and try to match up with the song speed. This will not only improve the dexterity and strength of your left and right fingers but also will help you play any song with perfection.

If you are looking out for learning a song from a heavy metal band with difficult lead segments then I would suggest you learn the shredding methods. Shredding consists of a set of playing styles that is used in different combination in a song. Usually you will find shredding widely being used in Rock n' roll, Heavy Metal and blues. It includes different types of picking, tapping, arpeggios etc.

Now I will give you a brief understanding of some easy to follow techniques that you can try out to learn to play songs on your guitar. They are,

* Learning from Tabs

* Learning by Ear

Learning from Tabs - Tabs is the most popular method used for learning songs. You can either buy them from a musical store or you can find thousands of them on the internet. But the ones you get from an authentic guitar course or musical store will be more perfect than the amateur ones that you find on the internet. Tabs usually provide you the notes and also show you how to play them, by representing the fret and position on your guitar. And It will contain both the rhythm part and lead segment, mostly printed on the same page.

If you are completely new to tabs, then there is a certain level of learning associated with it. In order to make things easier, I would highly recommend you to first learn the musical theory and the standard musical notations and then couple them with the tabs..

Learning by ear - You can also learn a song by listening to it from a record or from your tutor or from a concert video. Though learning by ear might sound hard a bit hard, it is a lot easier to do it. But for making things really easier it is very much recommended to know the scale and music theory in general i.e. musical notations and tabs, how to read them and most importantly to build scales and chords. Since chords are built from various degrees or notes on a scale, you must know how to build scales first. If you know these basic things, learning by ear is just a walk in the park.

Scale or Chord Theory - I will quickly introduce you to one of the basic scales in music and will show you how chords are derived from it.

So let's take the most basic diatonic scale - C Major. The notes in this scale are

C - 1st note - Tonic

D - 2nd note - Supertonic

E - 3rd note - Mediant

F - 4th note - Subdominant

G - 5th note - Dominant

A - 6th note - Relative minor

B - 7th note - Leading note

C - 8th note - Octave

The chord progression of a typical song is usually built from the Tonic, Sub-dominant and the Dominant notes of a scale. So if we apply the same chord progression on the above scale we will have the chords C Major, F Major and G major chords respectively. But there is no strict rule as such and you can surely use any combination of degrees in that scale to build a chord progression.

About the Author

I am really thankful to Guitar Tips from Elmore Music for providing me many invaluable tips on guitar theory, teaching me popular genres and most importantly making me a more matured and versatile musician.

For more information on Guitar Tips you may visit http://www.onlineguitarschools.com/Guitar Tips

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