Electric Guitar Lessons
Electric guitar is as different from acoustic guitar as an electronic keyboard is from piano, and
most of the techniques are quite different as well. Power chords, Barre chords, upper partial chords, double stops,
open 6ths and 10ths, pentatonic scales, modes, soloing, riffing between singing lines, riff based rhythms, palm
muting, arpeggios, artificial harmonics, and tons of others skills will be learned with a focus on electric
guitar.
Surprisingly, the type of electric
guitar that you own goes a long way toward shaping you technique and your sound. There is legendary debate
about which is better, a Strat or a Les Paul, but to understand which is best for you, a study of the
differences is in order. A guitar is a guitar, right? Well, with these two, they have different scale lengths
nut to bridge, different fretboard radius, different pickups, single coil vs. humbucker, and different pickup
selection options. All these choices make for different sounds, and different sounds make for different
choices about how to play. And we’re not even talking about semi-hollow guitars like the Gibson ES-335, or
thousands of other choices.
One of the biggest factors in developing as an electric guitarist stems from learning to play
your guitar/amp system as well as playing the instrument. Tone is an enormous part of the performance equation, and
much of that tone comes from equipment choices. The kind of guitar you own working in tandem with the kind of
amplifier that you have goes a long way toward creating “your sound.” The array of stomp boxes and/or digital rack
processors adds another layer to the sound. How you play your instrument in the environment of equipment choices,
along with all the settings on your guitar, amp, and processing equipment, will create the impact that your playing
has on your listener’s ears. It’s enough to require electric guitar
lessons just to understand how all your gear works and how
to get the best sounds out of it.
While this is a relatively new addition to the playing field, the pickups that allow high quality
pitch to MIDI conversion are getting better and better. This allows guitarists to transcend just being a guitar
player but also adds a whole lot of booby traps. Trap number 1 is that you can’t play with your regular guitar
technique while playing the “sample” of an entirely different instrument. For example, you can’t play Van Halen
tapping style on a trombone patch. There is a term which speaks of playing an instruments in the style that it is
normally played. The term is idiomatically. When you play guitar through a guitar synth rig, you must play
idiomatically to the type of instrument you are emulating.
Hopefully you can see that almost half of your
electric guitar playing comes from elements beyond what you do with the guitar that you hold in your hands. Having
an incredibly knowledgeable, master electric guitar teacher will have an amazing impact on your playing. Having
electric guitar lessons from the Guitar Lesson Expert will
put you in the perfect position to realize your every dream about playing the electric guitar.
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