IJ's Guitar Blog

Why You Can’t Always Learn From A YouTube Video

ij — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:57:56 +0000

// //

// ]]>

Image via CrunchBase

I often get new students who have tried and failed at learning guitar by watching YouTube videos. I have a couple of videos myself, so I’m certainly not against the idea of learning this way! In fact, many budding guitarists benefit from the generosity of players who [...]

Getting Out Of A Strum Rut Part 2

ij — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:12:03 +0000

In Part 1 of this article, we discussed how keeping your hand in motion is key to strumming, and learned how to play along with a couple of basic strums. The standard strum that I used as an example, can be played more than one way, however! So let’s review what [...]

Getting Out Of A Strum Rut Part 1

ij — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:19:28 +0000

One of the main problems many people have with playing guitar over a period of time, is always resorting to the same strum for pretty much every song. After awhile, even songs that should sound very different, don’t!

If this is something you’re experiencing, then let’s go back to some basics [...]

To Watch or Not To Watch?

ij — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:53:12 +0000

Eric Clapton NOT looking

When you’re first learning to play guitar, you might find yourself constantly hunching over watching either your chording hand or your strumming (picking) one. Of course you need to do that when you’re very new to playing because how else are you going to get a [...]

Changing Strings – Info For Beginners

ij — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:22:30 +0000

If you’ve got an older guitar and you don’t know when the last time the strings were changed on it, you might consider buying a set and learning how to change them. Or if you’ve had your new guitar for awhile and you need to learn how to change strings, I’ll [...]

Heart Of Gold

ij — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:25:50 +0000

Here’s a bit of a lesson on how to play Heart of Gold. When I give individual lessons, I slow down a LOT to show students how to play this. The video quality is lousy when I do close up shots, but at least it’ll give you an idea of how it is done:

[...]

Kids ‘n Guitars

ij — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:07:11 +0000

Image by Johan Koolwaaij via Flickr

Teaching kids to play guitar is a whole different experience from teaching adults. Over the years I’ve taught many children, with varied results! One thing you have to keep in mind with children is the fact that they have shorter attention spans . I tend to take [...]

A Brief Explanation of Tab (or Tablature)

ij — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:49:17 +0000

If you’re scouring the internet for songs to play, you’ve probably come across the word “tab” or “tablature” along with a weird mixture of lines and numbers and strange codes like this:

e|--------------------|-------------------------| B|--------------------|-------------------------| G|----5---5----0---0--|---5-~~~-----------------| D|----5---5----0---3--|---5-~~~-----------------| A|--------------------|-------------------------| E|--5---5----0---3----|-5-----------------------|

If you’ve never seen tab before, it can appear confusing at first. I’ll give you a brief [...]

Getting Back To It

ij — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:17:01 +0000

Some of you, like me, take a break from playing for awhile for one reason or another. I usually take the month of August off teaching to re-charge, but that leaves me with little in the way of calluses by the time September rolls around again!

If you haven’t picked up your guitar for some [...]

Finger and Hand Placement

ij — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:58:17 +0000

Here are some tips about finger and hand placement when playing the guitar.

When a new student came to me once and told me that her last teacher, who was actually a piano teacher, told her that her fingers needed to be in the middle of the fret on the fretboard, I thought that misinformation [...]