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What are The Best Drum Machines & Metronomes for Guitar Practice?
There are so many software and app choices for metronomes and drum machines it can be easy to be overwhelmed. So what are the best drum machines and metronomes for guitar practice? Here we will look at a range of free and cheap ones that are great tools for guitar practice and to help develop your sense of time.
While metronomes are fairly simple there are a few things to consider when choosing one. Some metronomes accent the 1st beat of the bar with a higher pitched beep or click. While I personally find this to be annoying others like this feature. Read More -
How To Play Great Guitar Arpeggios
Arpeggios are the notes of a chord played individually rather than all together. A famous example of this on guitar is the intro to Led Zeppelins Stairway to Heaven. Imagine how different the song would sound if Jimmy Page simply strummed the chords at the start of the song.
To learn how to play arpeggios on guitar using a pick we are going to look at a 2 chord exercise using D and G major. The first chord is D major but played one string at a time verses strumming all the strings at once. Have a listen to the audio example to hear how it should sound.
D Major Arpeggio | Download
Listen to the audio of the D major arpeggio being played with the DOWN/UP picking directions at 120BPM. Read More -
12 Bar Blues, Rock n Roll & I IV V
In the post What do I IV V (1 4 5) chords mean and why should you care? we learnt how I IV V chord harmony works, what songs they’re used in and how to transpose songs between keys. Now we’re going one step further down this path and looking at how the I IV V chords relate to Blues and Rock n Roll.
There are thousands of Blues and Rock n Roll songs using I IV V chords and something called the 12 Bar Blues. The 12 Bar Blues is a 12 bar song structure that looks like the diagram below.In the key of A it translates to the following chords. To give this a more “bluesy” flavour try playing all chords as (dominant) 7th chords. Read More
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How to Change G C D Chords Avoiding Common Beginner Mistakes
The 3 chords G C and D major are used in 1000s of songs including:
Blowing In The Wind – Bob Dylan
Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison (plus an E minor)
Flowers in Your Hair – The Lumineers (plus an E minor)
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – Green Day (plus an E minor)
I Feel Fine – The Beatles (plus an A minor)
Knocking On Heavens Door – Bob Dylan (plus an A minor)
Love Me Do – The Beatles
Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynrd
Steal My Kisses – Ben Harper
To Her Door – Paul Kelly (plus an E minor)
Werewolves of London – Warren ZevonSo you can see that its essential to know how to play the G C D chords and to be also able to change smoothly Read More