One of the best ways that I have found to give thanks for something, especially a skill or talent, is to teach it to someone else. While there are many benefits in doing this, some very specific ones come to mind and they are: It makes you better at whatever your doing, It gives someone else the opportunity to learn what you know, and its a great way to show that you aren’t selfish and want to help others. So with this idea in mind, let me give you some in depth reasons why teaching other people guitar makes you better player.
When I first started teaching guitar I was still in college and my first student was a kid who needed to learn some basic classical music so that he could audition for the school of music at SUNY Fredonia. I was a little nervous about teaching him at first because I didn’t know if I would be good enough to teach him properly. After a few weeks of lessons, I quickly found that there were many aspects of his playing that I would be able to help him get better at. The most important thing that I found was that teaching someone else to play makes you dissect what your actually doing to a very detailed level. This in turn makes you understand so much more about your own playing and technique. When you need to describe a certain chord shape, scale, or technique, you will find yourself taking a whole new look at what your doing. This is necessary to do so that you can find a way to tell another person how to do it. After just a month or two of working with my first student, I found myself playing with more precision and more confidence because I truly understood more about my own playing. Now fast forward about seven years of teaching guitar as my main occupation and you can only imagine the confidence and insight that comes with that much focus on showing other people what you already know. Read the rest of this entry
I chose to write about this topic this month because I am actually recovering from a pretty bad hand injury that I sustained over a month ago. The actual injury was a result of a combination of things but it has given me a very good reason to remember the importance of warming up before playing and practicing because, due to my injury, I have not been able to play my guitar for over a month! Not cool to say the least.
I’ll first give you a quick recap on what happened and then I talk about some exercises and warm up routines that you can do to prevent injury. I recently started working on writing a new song that was very technical and fast. Although I play a lot of this kind of music, I have not been keeping up on it lately because I have been busy working on other things. I also got into indoor rock climbing over the summer. On one particular day about a month ago, I was working on writing for about a four hour stretch, then I went in to teach for about another four hours. To top the day off, I then went climbing that evening for the third time in a one week span. I knew that I was pushing it but I wasn’t really feeling any serious pain so I moved through the day without much caution. The next couple days however I started feeling some serious sharp pain in my left hand and wrist. I knew that it was a combination of too much technical playing and rock climbing in a very short time span. Rock climbing, by the way, is extremely hard on your hands and fingers, not the best activity to be involved in if your a guitar player. The pain continued and only got worse when I taught and played guitar. After a couple weeks of this constant pain, I paid a visit to my doctor. He basically told me that there shouldn’t be any long term damage and that I probably just inflamed some tendons in my hand and wrist. He told me to ice it when it gets sore, to take Aleve to reduce the inflammation, and to stay off of it as much as possible. Fat chance of that happening! It’s been a little over a month now and it is feeling much better. I’m still not 100% but I can play and practice pretty regularly without much discomfort.
Now lets talk about Good Pain and Bad Pain Read the rest of this entry
By: Mike Deiure
If you are learning to play guitar and are starting to get into playing leads,
solos, and improvising, then it is very important to understand what guitar
scales to practice and when to use them. Before we go shredding away playing
crazy guitar solos, we need to take a look at what type of chords are being
used in our song or chord progression to help us decide what scales on guitar
will work the best.
The basic idea of how chords and scales go together is this: If a chord is
only made up of a couple notes (such as a power chord) then you will want to
play a pentatonic scale over it because this scale only has five notes in it.
If a chord is made up of three or more notes (such as a major or minor chord),
full major and minor scales will work better because they are made up of seven
notes and have more notes in common with the chord. One of the great things
about soloing and using scales in rock music is that once you have found your
key signature and corresponding scale, you don’t need to worry about changing
it if you don’t want to. The one scale will work great for the whole song. When
playing over more complex styles of music, such as jazz, one guitar scale won’t
work for the entire song. You need to change scales as the chords change. Read the rest of this entry
By: Mike Deiure
When I start working with a new student I have a huge responsibility on how
I am going to train them to read music so that they can play the songs that they want to play. There are two main options for any student to work with; reading real sheet music or reading guitar tablature. The biggest factor that I consider when deciding what path to lead my students down is their age. Basically if they are 12 or younger, I start them off on site reading and teaching them how to read real music. If they are a teenager or older, I usually start them off with reading guitar tabs. The main reason for using guitar tabs instead of real sheet music is to keep them interested in getting better. After working with hundreds of students I have found that the younger they are, the better and quicker they learn whatever I teach them. While I always keep in mind the most important elements that any guitar player should understand, I must also make sure that the student is having fun and learning what they want to learn as quickly as possible. Read the rest of this entry
By: Mike Deiure
Students who are just starting to learn guitar often ask me “What is a good guitar amp to buy”? This usually comes right after the initial question of “what is a good guitar to buy”? My answer to the second question is much simpler than the first. I always tell people to buy the guitar that inspires them the most that is within their price range. When it comes to amps however, you should put a little more thought into deciding what is right for you. Hopefully the rest of this article will give you some insight on how to make a wise buying decision.
First of all, when it comes time to buy a guitar amplifier we are going to focus on what you need for an Electric Guitar. You can certainly buy an amp that is made for an acoustic guitar, but were not going to be talking about that here.
There is a huge market out there for amplifiers and you have tons of choices between brand names, what features the amp has, and of course how loud the thing can go. Here are some of the main features that you want to know about when looking for your first amp:
1. How many channels does it have?
You will find that most amps have a clean channel and a distortion channel. A clean channel is pretty self explanatory, a distortion channel is what is going to give you a hard rock tone that sounds good with power chords and when soloing. What you want to look out for here is that the two channels are completely separate with their own volume and tone controls. This will give you the ability to switch between them at will, preferably with a foot switch so that you can change channels on the fly. Read the rest of this entry
