Learn How to Play Electric Guitar – Tips for Beginners
Would you like to know tips on how to play the electric guitar? In the following paragraphs, you will find essential tips to remember during the learning process. This advice will guide you in the right direction of playing electric guitar. Simply for one reason: it will show you how not to do it.
You might be interested in learning only the basics of playing your favorite acoustic or electric guitar music. Or wish to get into an advanced level with the electric guitar from the beginning. You can create your songs, solo, improvise and use the most diverse techniques. Whatever your goal, the advice is the same. They apply to any guitarist and help them to get further and faster. So let’s go to what matters.
How to play electric guitar – Think in the Long-term
Learning to play the electric guitar is just like building a house. If you do it in a hurry, you will undoubtedly have problems ahead. But if you do everything right and carefully, you will be surprised by the results, and all the effort will be worth it. And the best part is that you can enjoy the house however you want.
Do not develop bad habits.
Many people discard perfection when they rush out to learn something. The desire to play faster causes the guitarist to make small mistakes. It creates a habit that is hard to get rid of.
A bad habit is a tendency to do something wrong (or at least in a less efficient way). We always end up following this tendency. When you get used to doing something in a certain way, it’s hard to break the habit. The top tip for avoiding bad habits is to find them before they get out of hand. It’s easy. Whenever you want to cut corners or make a slight change in the right way of playing, stop and think: “where will it take me?”.
When you play a song and make a mistake, go back to the beginning and play it right. Don’t get used to playing wrong.
Perfect Play
Don’t be satisfied playing well. Try to play until it can’t be any better. It requires more training in the beginning, but you will reap the benefits in the long term. Soon it will be easier to learn new songs, and you will make fewer mistakes. Have good hearing. If it doesn’t sound good, find out why and solve the problem.
How to play electric guitar – Be patient
In the beginning, it may seem you are developing slowly. You might even think this is not for you. This is not a minor issue. Almost every guitarist feels the same way in the beginning. It’s weird to do all those chord layouts. We forget the correct positions and can’t open our hands very well to reach the notes. There are many difficulties, but we get through them. Don’t worry. All this goes away.
How? Check out the following tips.
The Details are Very Important
The electric guitar is an instrument with many details. The more details you get to know and the more accuracy you can affect them, the better guitarist you will be. A single detail might not impress much, but the combination is extraordinary when you put it all into a song. This is precisely what a great guitarist does. Every song, every phrase on the electric guitar, and each solo is detailed. Even songs that sound simpler have many details behind them.
This article will not discuss these details because the site talks about them. But we can say that when you listen to a guitarist and get impressed with the song he is playing, don’t simply think, “this guy is great.” An excellent exercise is to observe what he is playing and try to find out what the composition is. All you need to do is to divide the song into parts and smaller parts again and pay a lot of attention to it.
You are probably thinking, “to play an electric guitar, I need to think of many notes at the same time? I thought I just had to play and be done” the answer is “no.” A guitarist doesn’t think about many notes simultaneously when playing one song. It’s simply a part of a way to play. But there is a lot of necessary training to get to this level of playing. While training, pay attention to every single note until you memorize them. As if your fingers would remember how to play by themselves.
Dedication is the key to playing the electric guitar.
The most common thing for beginners is to think about your favorite guitarists and ask yourself, “how can they play so well?” The answer couldn’t be any more straightforward: dedication. Slash, Eric Clapton, B.B king, and David Gilmour all have dedicated part of their time to better playing the electric guitar. “Nothing is better than one day after the next.”
This means: you don’t have to learn to play today; you need to play a little better than yesterday and do the same thing tomorrow. Don’t rush, but don’t waste time. Every minute you play will make you better.
Discipline
Dedicating yourself is not enough; you need to dedicate yourself correctly. Most of the time, it means dedication efficiently. For this, you need to be methodical. Unstructured training won’t take you very far.
You can set up goals and do your best to reach them. An example of the goal is to learn three songs every week. There are thousands of possible goals. Always try to improve and avoid stopping. Set more challenging goals every time (use your creativity).
Training
If you have lessons, dedicate a good amount of your training to practice the exercises your teacher gives you. There is no one better to say what to play and how you should train. If your teacher is not used to giving homework after a lesson, ask him to do it more often.
It’s just like a sport. Football, basketball, and volleyball players practice all the time. That way, they are in great form and ready to make the right moves when the games begin.
Repetition
This is one of the most critical lessons for whoever wants to learn how to play the electric guitar. Never forget this: “if you want to learn, you need to make a lot of repetitions.” This is one of the most significant truths. This serves beginners as much as it does those who have played for years.
The fastest guitarist known worldwide are those that most train repetitions. There is no secret – when you talk about technique, repetition is what matters the most.
Get a Teacher to learn how to play the electric guitar
Having a teacher is just like getting a coach for a sport. He knows you and helps you improve. He knows the fundamentals and principles and will put you on the right path. Complex subjects such as musical theories can’t be left aside. A pro guitarist is the most suitable person to teach you.
Steve Vai knew the importance of having a good teacher and searched for the one that soon would be one of the best in the world – Joe Satriani taught him everything he knew. Steve Vai was his most dedicated student; nowadays, he is one of the best guitarists in the world.
Self-teaching
We believe 100% in your capacity to look for knowledge. Throughout your life, you’ve learned to do many things by yourself. By playing the guitar, you will have the chance to use your self-teaching. Even though we strongly recommend that all guitarists look for a teacher, we greatly value self-teaching. It is an excellent way of learning. Often even faster. We can easily forget what we are told. But we never forget what we learn by ourselves.
Self-teaching is a way of learning that uses our intelligence to discover new things. In other words, to reach conclusions by your logic. This way, we can see that the electric guitar is a great way to exercise your intelligence.
We suggest you make the most of both ways of learning music on the electric guitar. Have a teacher and learn things by yourself. This way, you will maximize your potential and use your time efficiently. To help you along this path, remember that music is just like science, where everything makes sense. Notes are not played randomly to sound good. There is an explanation for everything played, but this is another subject (musical theory).
A teacher will teach you everything he can (a lot of things) in an organized way. The self-teaching is what will make you unique. No teacher taught Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page to do what they do.
How to Play Electric Guitar – Be Curious
Knowing how to play the electric guitar is a world. Once in, you can spend years discovering new things. However, you will only figure it out if you chase them. Even if you have lessons with an excellent teacher, he won’t tell you everything you want to know unless you ask him. He won’t say it for two reasons: There is a lot to say, and he probably doesn’t know everything (nobody knows everything). So you can’t wait for the information to fall into your lap. Go after them!
The principal trait of a curious person is to look at the world as a scientist and want to understand how things work. Being curious is not accepting what is told. It is to want to know more. For this reason, you must ask questions, think about issues, have doubts, and suggest a hypothesis. And, of course, look for the answers. The pieces of the puzzle come together with time.
