Metal Guitar Solos – Can I Play One Now?

Metal guitar solos are the product of an age where young men used the guitar as a way of venting their rage and at the same time attracting chicks. These men formed groups with such names as Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly, Mottley Crue and Metallica. A feature of these groups is the guitar solo which was in direct competition with the lead vocalist for the attention of the audience.

Metal guitar solos are not as difficult to play as you might think. If you have some experience at learning guitar scales of any kind then you have some material to work with. Blues and rock are the ancestors of metal, so if you know something about these musical styles you will have an advantage when you start to play metal solos.

Metal bands promote the image of wild and crazy guys letting loose with their inspired songs and guitar solos, so can a guitarist with not much training and not much musical talent play metal guitar solos. In a word, yes. Some heavy metal guitar bands may have learnt three chords and gone on to fame and fortune, but I cannot recall hearing of any. Barre chords, pentatonic scales, memorizing the notes on the fretboard are all elements of the metal guitar solo player’s education.

The first thing you need to know is that playing metal guitar solos will cost you some money for equipment. You will be playing on a solid body guitar possibly fitted with locking whammy bar to keep your guitar in tune during heavy workouts. To truly get in the spirit of heavy metal solos you will probably be better off with a Gibson Flying V or a similarly attention-grabbing model. You also might want to consider a double cutaway model guitar to make sure you are playing at frets other guitar players never knew existed.

Feedback is extremely important in heavy metal solos so you will be always playing at maximum volume. To enhance you solos you will need some basic effects like echo and distortion. The Leslie speaker effect of the days of Jimi Hendrix and Dave Gilmour has never really gone out of fashion and if this is your bag you can go for the Univibe. For that real touch of authenticity buy yourself a tube amplifier.

Now you have your heavy metal guitar and amp set up, what techniques do you need at your fingertips to play metal guitar solos? Well, hammer-ons, pull-offs and tapping are your basics. Sweep picking makes you sound like a virtuoso but requires some work to learn. The techniques you use might be standard but how you use then depends on who your heavy metal role model is. There is a vast difference between Jimmy Page and Van Halen.

Alternate tunings you might want to experiment with for your metal guitar solos are: dropped B which is B-F#-B-e-g#-c# and dropped A – A-E-A-d-f#-b. You will need heavy gauge strings for these tunings and you might find that they are not really what you want but it is worthwhile to give them a try to check out how they sound.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Acoustic Guitar Lessons – What Kind Do I Need?

So you have an acoustic guitar and you want to take lessons. The question of which style of acoustic guitar to learn can be a bit of a conundrum for the newbie guitar player. For a start you have two basic kinds of acoustic guitar – steel string and nylon string. Then there are several basic genres you could choose to learn.

Let us begin with making the most glaring distinction in acoustic guitar music: there is classical guitar music and there is the rest. Classical guitar has grown up in the past hundred years or so. It was originally a poor relation in the classical music family with few players and very small audiences. Over the years with the appearance of virtuoso classical guitar players and composers with a high level of sophistication and enthusiasm audiences have come to know something about what to expect from a classical guitarist.

If you are interested in classical guitar music then this will probably be your first choice. If you choose to learn classical guitar you are laying the foundation for a wide musical education. You will also be trained in how to play to produce expressive tone and color in your guitar playing, not to mention your technique will be on a higher level than guitarists in other genres.

There are some skills that most serious rock or jazz guitarists have that classical guitar players do not have, Classical guitarists are not trained in improvisation. No matter how much musical theory and advanced technique he has, in a situation where improvisation is needed a classical guitarist may as well be a sculptor. Neither will classical guitar lessons give you a good ear. All your music will be learnt from the printed page, and there will be no opportunity to develop an ear.

So if you pick classical as your acoustic guitar style, the musical training you receive will give you a great background in music and the kind of technique which will enable you to move easily between genres as long as you can rely on sheet music.

If you have a steel string acoustic guitar and want to take lessons then you will be taught to play using a plectrum. The music you are taught depends on the teacher but it can range from pop to folk to country so you will need to make sure your teacher’s tastes are the same as yours. This kind of musical education can possibly give you the chance to develop skills in improvisation and playing by ear but you will most likely taught to accompany songs by strumming chords. From there you can branch out to playing electric guitar, country flatpicking or learning to play using fingerpicking techniques such as Travis picking but you will at least have a basic knowledge of guitar playing.

If you own a nylon string acoustic guitar you could begin right off with fingerstyle guitar lessons. This entails learning fingerpicking techniques developed by folk guitarists and Travis pickers. This kind of playing is nowhere near as demanding as classical guitar but it does give you a little more technical versatility than playing using a plectrum.

This survey of the kinds of acoustic guitar lessons you could take is nowhere near exhaustive but I have given you some idea of the basic differences between the acoustic guitar styles.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Computer Guitar Lessons

Maybe you have thought about computer guitar lessons. If you could order your own tailor-made guitar lesson course for your computer, what would you request? It might help to think about the basic requirements of computer guitar lessons. Basically your lessons need to show you how to hold and play the guitar, how to read guitar tabs, sheet music or both, and some way of checking your progress. So let us look at some of the computer guitar lessons out there and see how they fulfill our requirements.

Learn And Master Guitar has a one-hundred page book, twenty DVDs, five CDs featuring backing tracks plus they offer free support. The structure of this course follows the basic principles of all computer guitar lessons: you have your learning material that you get from the book and from the DVDs, and you practice what you have learned using the backing tracks as a guide and reality check on your emerging guitar skills.

Another computer guitar course is called Amazing Guitar Secrets. Once again you have a book and DVDs containing your guitar lessons and backing tracks to play along with. You can track how you are progressing using a section of the book which allows you to have a visual record of what you have learnt.

If you have been looking around for computer guitar lessons you have probably come across Jamorama. Jamorama is for the guy who does not take music particularly seriously but thinks it might be cool to be able to play some songs and riffs on the guitar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. To be fair, Jamorama does give you plenty of substantial material in the books, audio and video which you download to make you a “real” guitar player should you so desire.

The three guitar lesson courses I have mentioned are meant to be shipped to you in printed form and on discs or downloaded and kept on your computer. There is another alternative: the membership site. The most comprehensive and so far the most successful is Jamplay. With Jamplay you get access to a number of guitar teachers who are experts in their own style of music. These teachers are videoed giving lessons illustrating techniques and how to play particular songs. The lessons cover all stages of guitar learning. So with Amazing Guitar Secrets, Jamorama and Learn And Master Guitar you get to keep all the guitar lessons at your house, your Jamplay membership gets you access to any improvements, revisions and updates that occur. Jamplay also has progress reports, a forum and support through video answers to your questions. Jamplay is probably the most economical option as you can pay by the month, and your fees drop drastically if you pay by the quarter or annually.

I should mention that none of the above computer guitar lesson courses lack for quality. The printed material, downloadable audio and video, CDs and DVDs are all first class. The difference between the methods is the varying approaches to the guitar.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Looking For Free Guitar Music

Many guitar players are using the internet as a quick and easy means of finding free guitar music. The way of finding guitar music that first occurs to most of us is to turn to a search engine. Although search engines are improving all the time we still often get results that duplicate each other or simply lead to sites with music to sell.

In the category of guitar music I include not only music written using standard musical notation but also tablature, mp3’s, free guitar lessons and video clips. If you use a search engine to look for your guitar music it is always a good idea to read the pages carefully and investigate links thoroughly to find any hidden gems.

Free guitar tabs are still easy to get on the internet despite legal wrangles over copyright. In case you are new to looking for free tabs, there is conflict between musicians who create tabs for published songs. These tabs are the creators’ own work and should not be subject to copyright. The music industry is losing money through sheet music and tab sales so naturally they are trying to find ways to stop guitarists from sharing their tablature. This has resulted in some large tab archives going offline.

There are still some useful tabs available and a list of these can be found at Harmony Central which is a community for musicians. Here is the url: http://www.harmony-central.com/Guitar/tab.html

At http://www.musicaviva.com/guitar/index.tpl Musica Viva has a searchable archive of free sheet music for classical and folk music.

If you go to http://www.flamenco-classical-guitar.com/english/mp3_uk.php?menu=classic you will find a list of great guitar music resources mostly oriented towards classical style music.

If you have been searching for information on any subject you have probably visited about.com The guitar section of this site will keep you busy for days with free lessons, mp3’s, sheet music and tabs. This is a real gold mine of guitar music that has been online almost as long as the internet has existed. The address is http://guitar.about.com/

http://classicalguitarmidi.com/ is a collection of classical and flamenco guitar midi files featuring the most popular works by the most popular composers for guitar. This site is extremely useful for guitarists who need a quick way of listening to an unfamiliar piece of music before going to the trouble of learning it.

http://www.consult-eco.ndirect.co.uk/guitar/tab.htm has a huge collection of acoustic guitar tabs in the TablEdit format.

http://www.myguitarsolo.com/ is a site dedicated to turning guitar players into soloists. Here the guitar music is focused on chords, scales, modes and licks. The basic idea is to provide guitar students with the tools to accelerate their progress as solo guitar players.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Finger picking guitar

Using finger picking techniques to play guitar makes your music more interesting and varied. Flat picking does not give the guitar player the chance to pick several notes at the same time, to play in octaves or explore the possibilities of the finger style technique known as Travis picking. A skilled finger picker can create the illusion of the sound of more than one guitar being played. Playing the guitar finger picking style is said to have originated with ragtime music. This was part of the early blues music era and was very popular played on the piano. It was not long before guitar players were using their fingers to pick out melodies in imitation of the ragtime pianists.

When you use finger picking guitar playing technique you can use the flesh of your fingertips to pluck the strings, or you can grow the nails slightly longer on your right hand to give a sharper sound which is similar to that of flat picking. You also have the option of fitting a thumbpick and/or fingerpicks on your picking hand. This is the best option if you are playing an electric guitar or a steel string acoustic because steel strings can be hard on the nails.

Travis Picking was developed by a country guitarist named Merle Travis. It is a simple technique that sounds more technically demanding than it really is. As a general rule the thumb plays the bass strings which are the fifth and sixth strings using an alternating bass pattern. The index finger plays the third string, the ring finger the second string and the third finger plays the first string. Or you can simplify your playing by using the index finger or the index and ring fingers to play the melody notes. Assigning strings to particular fingers is just a way of starting off your finger picking in a disciplined way rather than a hard and fast rule. You will find as your technique and your confidence progress that you will want to use chords where your bass notes might be on the fourth and third strings so you will be varying your technique accordingly.

To get the hang of Travis picking just fret an A minor chord and start picking an alternating bass on the fifth and fourth strings.

Here is your chord . . .

E -0———————————

B -1———————————

G -2———————————

D -2———————————

A -0———————————

E -0———————————

. . . and here is your picking pattern on the fifth and fourth strings:

1 2 3 4

D ——2———-2

A -0———-0—–

Now you can use your index finger or the middle and ring fingers to throw in random notes that fit in with your alternating bass pattern. To start you off, here is your alternating bass with a few notes thrown in. Just use your index finger to pick the melody notes on the first and second strings. Note that you start this pattern with a “pinch” where you play your bass and melody notes simultaneously.

1 2 + 3 + 4 +

E -0——————–0

B ———1—–1——-

G ———————–

D ——2————2—

A -0———-0———-

E ———————–

As you begin to see what can be done with finger picking guitar techniques, you will also see that your playing of single note runs will be slower than if you were using your plectrum. This limitation on speed of playing can be overcome by working on your thumb picking. The thumb can be quite fast if you use the “rest stroke”. This is technique used in flamenco and classical guitar where the thumb picks a note and comes to rest on the string below it. The resulting note will be much stronger than if you simply used free stroke where your thumb moves outward from the string. As you become more familiar with finger picking you will develop the confidence to use pull-offs and hammer-ons to augment your finger picking.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Classical Guitar Reviews

Once you get beyond the beginner stage in classical guitar, you are immediately looking at serious musical instrument quality. If you do not have a huge guitar-buying budget, you will need to be quite choosy and able to bear in mind the qualities you feel that your present guitar lacks. Your next classical guitar is, to a large degree, your musical voice, so do not let a tight budget make you buy a second grade instrument.

Let us start with Alvarez guitars, makers of a wide range of guitars. Alvarez guitars have been recognized as one of the leading acoustic guitar brands in the world. Alvarez guitars have been made in America since 1965 and are handmade in limited quantities making use of traditional construction techniques and naturally seasoned wood. Because the Alvarez craftsmen do not use computers to build their guitars, each guitar has its own unique feel and character.

Alvarez Regent Series RC10 Classical Guitar is towards the more affordable end of the Alvarez guitar range. but the Alvarez family craftsmanship still makes itself felt. A hand picked spruce top projects a warm tone topped off by mahogany sides and back. Rosewood fretboard and bridge and a real mosaic rosette make for a sumptuous look set off by gold machine heads. The novice guitar player will be pleased with the low action and optimal string spacing.

Alvarez Masterworks Series MC90 Classical Guitar is maybe the finest classical guitar in its price range. Its Indian rosewood back and sides, plus Western cedar top with precision scalloped bracing are features usually found only on much more pricey guitars. This instrument features a really elaborate mosaic rosette, rosewood body binding and headcap. The gold machine heads with tortoise buttons make it a guitar you will be proud to play and be seen playing for many years to come.

And now for the Jose Ramirez 4E Classical Guitar. The Ramirez name has been synonymous with fine guitars since 1882, and the 4E Classical Guitar is the top of the line. It is all made completely by hand and contains much of the look and feel of more expensive instruments. With hand-inlaid purfling, the marquetry and detailing are the most refined of all the Ramirez student guitars. Humidicase is included. The Jose Ramirez 4E Classical Guitar features a Cedar soundboard, solid rosewood back and sides, Spanish cedar neck strengthened by ebony topped off by an ebony fretboard and Fustero machine heads.

Finally, the Manuel Contreras II C-7 Classical Guitar. Manuel Contreras was born in 1928 and died 1994. He started out as a cabinet maker moved onto making guitars in Jose Ramirez’ guitar shop in Madrid in 1959. He started his own luthier business in 1962. Manuel’s son Pablo was born in 1957 and presently makes guitars himself aided by a smallish staff. Although the Contreras II C-7 guitar is at the low end of the Contreras line, you still get the benefits of the Contreras tradition of making top quality classical guitars. This guitar features a light, player-friendly action and a satisfying clarity and evenness of tone.The Manuel Contreras II C-7 Classical Guitar features a Solid cedar top with Indian rosewood back and sides plus Honduras cedar neck and ebony fingerboard.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Guitar Songs – The World Of Chuck Berry

Many learner guitar players go looking for songs to play that suit the mood of a singer alone on stage with his guitar. Maybe, like many people, you gravitate toward songs like “Smoke On The Water”, “Iron Man” or “Stairway To Heaven”. But there is a whole new direction to go looking for your guitar songs: the music and lyrics of Chuck Berry.

Chuck Berry’s influence on rock and roll is indisputable. Musical movements have always converged around a central figure and Chuck Berry’s songwriting talent and enthusiastic approach to sharing his music with diverse audiences have inspired many rock and roll performers and generations of music lovers. Chuck Berry’s songs are stories of people who meet life with unfailing optimism and they were ideal lyrics to blend with the new rock and roll rhythms.

Many legendary guitar players owe their success to Chuck Berry’s singular relationship with the guitar. His guitar playing is an extension of his personality just like his lyrics and like his songs, his guitar riffs and licks made young guys want to pick up a guitar and make it talk. John Lennon, Keith Richards, George Thorogood, George Harrison were among the many rock and roll celebrities who were inspired by Chuck Berry. Angus Young of AC/DC even adopted Chuck Berry’s stage move of balancing on one leg and propelling yourself forward by moving the other leg back and forth. It is called the “duckwalk” and looks nothing like a duck walking but somehow the name fits.

Chuck Berry’s songs are about pretty girls, good times and fast cars. The stories are easy to identify with and surprisingly easy to play. One Berry song that is a real landmark is “Roll Over Beethoven”. In this song Berry manages to fit in references to a couple of classical composers, a nursery rhyme and a some other rock and roll songs. It was written in 1956 and served notice on the music-loving public that rock and roll had arrived.

“Rock And Roll Music” is another song designed to announce to the world that there was a new force in the world of popular music. The song has been covered by The Beatles, The Beachboys and rock and roll pioneer, Bill Haley.

A song that has touched the hearts of millions, “Memphis Tennessee” is a poignant story unfolded in Chuck Berry’s plain talking style leaving the punch line of the story to the very end. This song was covered as an instrumental by Lonnie Mack and by Johnny Rivers who had a similar style of singing to Chuck Berry himself. An interesting side note to this song is that Berry played the slide guitar on the record and also played the bass and rhythm guitar.

Another song that springs an interesting predicament on the listener in the final verse is “No Particular Place To Go”, a song about young love thwarted by a car’s seat belt.

“Ridin’ along in my calaboose
Still trying to get her belt a-loose
All the way home I held a grudge
For the safety belt that wouldn’t budge
Crusin’ and playin’ the radio
With no particular place to go”

The phrase “no particular place to go” at the start of the song is imbued with lusty enthusiasm. By the final verse the phrase takes a tone of hopelessness and frustration. Just like real life.

So if you are looking for the quintessential guitar songs, do not go past the contagious rhythm and the deceptively simple lyrics of Chuck Berry. But remember your humility. As Jerry Lee Lewis’ mother once said: “You and Elvis are pretty good, but you’re no Chuck Berry.”

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Acoustic Blues Guitar

Well, it is around the hundred year mark since the world first started noticing blues guitar players. Of course they were all acoustic guitar pickers then because they had very few places to plug their electric guitars in, but they made the best of what they had. Just as a basic first impression, I would say that blues guitar players kind of favor acoustic guitar every bit as much as electric guitar. A glaring example is the success Eric Clapton had with his Unplugged album, but there are plenty of other electric blues players who are on record playing acoustic guitar. Even Jimi Hendrix appeared on TV playing some acoustic blues songs.

Acoustic blues guitar was brought to the world by the likes of by Robert Johnson, Bill Broonzy, and Rev. Gary Davis. Fingerpicking acoustic blues uses your thumb to play the bass notes while the first and second fingers play the melody. Bear in mind that the thumb is responsible for keeping time, so it will take some time getting your fingers to work independently but it will be worth it. Rev. Gary Davis was an acoustic blues player who used his thumb to strum the chords and only his index finger to play the melody.

Lightnin’ Hopkins was another acoustic blues player whose style was out of step with fashion when he was trying to make his way as a guitar player in his youth. Hopkins grew up listening to music played by bands but he learnt to play the guitar in isolation from other musicians. So he developed a guitar style that imitated a band playing lead, rhythm and bass. He even provided his own percussion by slapping the body of the guitar.

The secret to playing lots of acoustic blues songs is in learning a basic chord sequence. A one, four, five progression – for example C, F and G or G, C and D usually make an acoustic blues guitar chord sequence. Listening to the music of Mississippi John Hurt is a good way to get started on acoustic blues. His early career as a blues performer was hampered by his guitar and vocals being too subtle and expressive than was fashionable at the time.

You can do a web search for lessons on how to play acoustic blues guitar like the great bluesmen of the past, but as a general introduction to playing acoustic fingerstyle guitar, you cannot go wrong with the guitar technique known as “Travis Picking”. The basis of this style is to use the thumb, first, second and third fingers of the right hand to pick the strings in a predetermined sequence while the left hand plays chords. This is the basic idea of the style, but once you can perform this kind of picking with ease, you will find that you will begin to develop your own musical ideas that allow you to depart from rigidly playing standard chords and the same right hand picking patterns. “Travis Picking” was made popular by Country guitarist Merle Travis and popularized further by Chet Atkins.

So we have covered the names and techniques of great acoustic blues guitar players and found a basic way of playing the guitar that will set you on the road to being a blues guitarist.

Ricky Sharples has many more tips for guitar players of all levels at his blog Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free, a continuously updated directory of free guitar lessons, videos, chord charts and lots of useful guitar stuff.

Bob Dylan Guitar Chords – Why Learn Them?

Many guitar players are still learning the chords to the songs of Bob Dylan. Tab arrangements of his songs are being downloaded from the internet by people whose daddies did not even have glints in their eyes when the songs were written.

Bob Dylan is one of the big time songwriters of the universe, carried a guitar around all the time, always played guitar on stage but does he qualify as a guitar hero? Bob Dylan composed his songs on the guitar and anybody who has seen “No Direction Home”, Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan, knows that he lives and breathes music. But he is essentially a rhythm guitarist – a guy who sings and plays the guitar. Can we learn anything about guitar playing from him? Maybe he doesn’t “do” much but it seems hard to believe we cannot benefit from watching a guy who expressed himself on the guitar without even thinking. It’s part of his language.

Take “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”, a song written for a movie nobody cares about any more. The movie has vanished from our hearts and minds but the song has stayed. Just like “All Along The Watchtower”, a song expressing the confusion an individual feels in a complex and hostile world. This song has lived in our consciousness for many years, too, but probably because of the definitive version made by Jimii Hendrix.

Bob Dylan’s music was born in the era of the protest song. The sixties was full of young people protesting about the injustices of society. The war going on in Vietnam was the catalyst but people had been unhappy with straitlaced American and European society for many years. The main gripe in the protest movement was personal freedom. White people griped about how black people were not free. They complained about being sent to a war that was unjust. They were not happy with the homemaker’s role that was forced upon women. They felt generally stifled by society.

Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ In The Wind” is the definitive protest song of the nineteen sixties. It is a list of the ills of mankind with a suggestion that the solution is an ongoing matter for anybody who cares. Rolling Stone magazine made a list of the 500 greatest songs of all time and “Blowin’ In The Wind” came in at number 14. Forty years after it was first released. That song carries a whole lot of power.

Of course Bob Dylan wrote many other songs that became icons in their own way. “Just Like A Woman” was supposed to be about Dylan’s affection for either Joan Baez or a New York socialite who moved in the Andy Warhol circle. A song about a woman, but this too is on Rolling Stone’s list of all time greats.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary, a folk trio who could mesmerize huge crowds of music lovers at their concerts. Three hundred thousand copies of the song were sold in the first seven days after it was released. Many people have said that Bob Dylan might not have sold records in those numbers relying on his own singing. I still think we lose out if we do not get to know his songs and his guitar playing.

Ricky Sharples has been playing guitar his whole life, and is presently engaged in building a blog called Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free which features free tools, lessons and resources for guitarists of all ages and stages. Ricky updates the blog regularly so if you are interested in learning to play guitar there will be an enormous variety of tip, tools and tutorials for you. Here is a post on tabs for more Dylan songs

Flatpicking Guitar Lessons

As rock and roll continued to take over the world in the nineteen seventies, the plectrum-wielding lead guitar player became fixed in the minds of music lovers. This style of guitar playing originated in the nineteen thirties with jazz guitar players like Eddie Lang and Django Reinhardt, and reached a wider audience through prominent guitarists like Charlie Christian, Les Paul and Hank Marvin.

It was inevitable that a generation of “lead guitarists” would be born from the rich musical tradition of bluegrass. In fact there were already famous flatpickers in bluegrass music with names like George Shuffler, Don Reno, and Bill Napier. During the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies flatpicking guitar players like Clarence White, Tony Rice, Norman Blake, Larry Sparks, Charles Sawtelle, and Russ Barenberg rose to prominence.

To get some insight into the evolution of flatpicking guitar playing, it might help to look at how Doc Watson, whose guitar playing career began in the nineteen fifties, contributed to the use of flatpicking guitar in bluegrass music. It was simply that the band he was working with did not have a fiddle player and Doc was not able to become a good fiddle player himself. So because he enjoyed fiddle tunes, he simply learnt how to play them on the guitar.

Another astounding flatpicker is David Grier. The son of an accomplished banjo player, David was shown a few chords by his father and allowed to develop his love and talent for music naturally. As a result he never learnt to read guitar tab or conventional music notation.

And where did the first bluegrass guitar album come from? Dan Crary. Dan, if not the father of bluegrass guitar, is at least one of its uncles. Many bluegrass standards were recorded with the guitar for the first time by Dan Crary.

Now to get onto more technical stuff, let us look at what a flatpick is and how to use it. A flatpick is made of tortoiseshell, plastic or nylon. If you want to learn to be a flatpicking guitar soloist, you will need to learn to use a thick pick. If you are like most guitar players you will be using a light to medium weight pick. For flatpicking solos you will have a much greater control over your playing by getting used to using a heavier weight pick. The main advantage to flatpicking over fingerpicking is tone. A steel string acoustic guitar sounds much nicer using a flatpick compared to fingerpicks, and using nails is totally out of the question. You will also gain speed much quicker if you use a flatpick. Playing fast with right hand finger picking techniques takes alot of intense practice.

One question you are going to be confronted with as your flatpicking guitar technique develops is whether to play using your hand and forearm as one unit holding alot of tension in your wrist, or to play with your wrist relaxed. There are guitar players who swear by either of these ways of playing and some who use both. Generally speaking the advantage of having a stiff wrist is speed. A relaxed wrist does not take as readily to playing fast but many guitarists feel that it gives then greater control.

The thing you need to do if you are thinking about learning flatpicking is to widen your knowledge of the genre by listening to a range of guitar players. Jesse McReynolds, Clarence White and Tony Rice are a few flatpicker guitarists to look out for but I am sure you will find many more as you explore this wonderful musical genre yourself.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a blog moderated by Ricky Sharples which helps people like you who wish to learn how to play bass, acoustic or electric guitar. You will find guitar lessons, videos, articles and reviews to answer your questions, calm your fears and help you play the guitar.