Tips For The Beginner

If you’re just bought your guitar or just started playing you need to be able to focus on playing. Weed out extra distractions and frustration by following a few helpful hints below.

If you’re using a pick you’ve experienced the frustration of having the slippery thing pop right out of your fingers. I used to take a file and cut grooves in my Fender picks, few weeks later, same thing. It was annoying but what can you say, have guitar, must have picks. Of course I’d still be filing away at my picks if I hadn’t picked up a Dunlop when I forgot my pick. The simple magic behind these is they have Jim Dunlop USA etc. in raised letters on them. Makes them incredibly easy to hold. Zoom on over to zzounds and buy some, you’ll be glad you did.

Everybody wants to learn by playing easy, simple songs. Sure you need to focus on your lessons, but relieve some of the boredom by playing what you want to play. You will probably not be able to play your favourite songs yet, so look for songs that you know, but are also easy. Songs with only three different chords – preferably G, C, D or A, are usually simple to play. The same with tabs, don’t go way out and try to learn a song just because it’s your favorite. Eventually you will be able to play, and that moment will be oh so sweet, but not now. Realize where you’re at now and wait. Some of the best places to look for songs are ultimate-guitar.com and guitaretab.com.

Learn to change your strings. It’s not hard, it’s not technical and as my guitar teacher would say- “You can do it if you try”. If you don’t already have a string winder go buy one. It’s something every serious guitar player should have. Changing your strings is really, seriously easy. Go on over to Campbells Music and get step by step instructions. Another thing I learned the hard way is keep the package your strings came in when you change them. Some packs are heavier than others and if you break one, not every B string is the same size.

Playthings

One of the best accessories a guitar player can get is a Portable CD Guitar Trainer. From slowing down songs to wild distortion effects these things simply rock.

The guitar playing feature works like this. You take your CD and put it in the CD mechanism. Then you plug your guitar into the input jack and play the guitar track with your favorite band. It removes center-panned guitar from most CDs so you’re the one playing. Run it through your amp for some serious jamming or just plug in your headphones. The input and output jacks have separate volume controls also.

Don’t have your guitar skills up to snuff yet? Not a problem. Use the Slow down and learn with slow speed feature first to get the song down pat. With this you can take any CD and slow the speed of a song by 50%. But unlike when musicians used to do it back in the 70’s with records, it doesn’t change the pitch. So instead of going and looking for the chord charts or solos for songs, just use your CD to find out. After you’ve learned the song you’ll be able to gradually increase the tempo until you can play it at regular speed.

The best part
This has got to be the sweetest thing about a Guitar Trainer and that’s the effects. The CD-GT1 has 57 of these things, it’s a great way to spice up your guitar lessons. Anybody with the best of intentions will get bored practicing lessons for the hundredth time. You’ll have fun trying all the effects and relieve some of the monotony.

Most of these run on batteries but also have an AC adapter you can buy. You can figure they’re going to eat up batteries.

Anyway check these things out, they’re a lot of fun.