Nov 8 / Christopher

21 Tips for Better Guitar Playing

Guitar Teaching, posts from the classical guitar blog

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A lot of what a good teacher does is tell the student to do the things written on the page. All those dynamic and tempo and expression markings are important. Do them.
Exaggerate everything. Play Forte crazy loud and Piano very soft. Play staccato very short and legato as connected as possible. Your audience will thank you.
In practice, fix one thing at a time. Never try to fix a whole piece at once.
Practice perfect. Find the way that you can play a passage perfectly and do it. It does no good to screw something up 9 times, get it right once and quit.
Think small. Virtuosity is in the little things.
Technique practice is important, and should be done daily.
That said, no one comes to a concert to hear technique exercises. Don’t forget that playing any instrument is about playing music. Technical exercises are a means to an end.
Just thinking of a group of notes as a unit changes the way you play them. Find the groups.
A phrase is a group of notes. Phrases crescendo slightly towards their climax, and diminuendo away from it — phrases have a shape. Sometimes the phrases are written in for you with phrasing slurs, play them as such (see number one).
The most expressive thing in music is silence. Start and end a piece with a moment of poise, and be sure to “play” the rests. For guitarists that means we have to mute strings.
Not all phrases are created equal. Not all phrases need a huge ritard. The end of a phrase shouldn’t sound the same as the end of a section; the end of a section shouldn’t sound the same as the end of a piece. There’s always a hierarchy.
The most important technical aspect you can work on is relaxation. Guitar playing should feel easy.
The big knuckles (the one connecting your fingers to your palm) on your left hand do not absolutely have to be parallel to the guitar neck. Sometimes an angled position makes things easier. Pay attention to what works, and do whatever is easiest.
If you don’t notice what you’re hands do during a difficult passage, there’s no hope of fixing it. Pay attention. Analyze the movements. Break it down, and figure out what gives you trouble. Practice that. (see number five)
Scales get all credit for making great guitar players, but we spend most of our time playing arpeggio textures. It only makes sense to give arpeggios a fair amount of practice as well.
Keep a practice log. If you can’t remember what you practiced a week ago, how do you know you’ve gone anywhere at all?
Record yourself. It’s enlightening to hear what you really sound like.
Melody gets all the attention, but the bass line matters too. Pay attention to the note values and the bass line’s shape. Changing the way the bass is played can change an entire piece.
Play lines separately. Get a melody or bass line to sound perfect on its own, then put it back in the complete texture an try to make it sound the same.
Left hand fingers can be sequenced. Before plopping fingers down, ask yourself when they really need to be added. Waiting to add a left hand finger can make a hard passage easier.
File your nails the night before or at the start of a practice day. Never in the middle. It’s too much work to get used to the “new” nails.