Tips for Electric Guitar Beginners – Part II

 

When learning to play the electric guitar, you need to incorporate a lot of things in your program. Merely learning how to play songs is not enough. Some of the things that would help you as part of your musical education are given below. Consider them as tips for undertaking a more well-rounded musical education for your guitar ambitions.

Learning to tune your guitar

Keeping your guitar tuned is really important if you are to learn how to play good music. If your guitar is not properly tuned, you might find that you are sounding wrong even when you are playing all the notes right. This will not help you learn at all. By far, the best way to learn how to tune your guitar is to do it yourself. This should be one of the basic electric guitar lessons. The guitar would generally come with a guitar tuner. You just have to learn how to use it, and slightly more important, when to use it. With time, this will become a habit and you will learn to keep the guitar always tuned, ready for playing.

Learn music theory

In Part I of this article, found at http://guitarlessonssingapore.com/tips-for-electric-guitar-beginners-part-i/, we discussed how important learning how to play by ear is. But the opposite is true as well. Once your ear is trained, learning formal musical theory would help you understand the notations for the music you love to play. Learning theory might be boring for some people, but it is still an essential part of your music education. The sooner you learn, the better it will serve you in the long run. Learn to read sheet music as well as chord charts and tabs. Sight reading is extremely important, because it can be crucial during performances. But whatever theory you learn, pair it up with actual playing so that you learn very early to identify the notes you read.

Listen to different music

Music is very versatile and there a large number of options for all guitar players to obtain ideas and lessons from different genres of music. A good musician is one who is aware of different genres and is able to handle all kinds of music. It is understandable if you are focused on learning a particular genre of music, and you should definitely work on that. But this should not be the boundary of your musical world and your electric guitar lessons for beginners should be more versatile. The best guitar players are those who consistently explore and learn, try out new things and learn all the time. It is possible that you might develop a liking for more than one genre and become a better musician for it.

Practice!

And last, but not the least, practice regularly. Devote an hour or so every day for your guitar practice. Listen to music as often as you can, so you can develop an ear for it. Tune your guitar every week so that it becomes a habit for you. Make sure that you keep your guitar clean and dry so that it continues to give good service. Read music theory and try to learn the notes. Practicing includes all of these things as well as the actual playing, so make sure to include all that you can in your daily practice!

For more information on learning electric guitar, refer to www.guitarlessonssingapore.com.