My guess is that Dave is trying to skillfully walk the line between the two. I happen to like a lot of the songs on this album for the exact same reason that most diehard Megadeth fans will hate them, because they provide the sort of variety that early Megadeth albums didn’t.

There are a few songs here (Kingmaker, Built For War, Dance In The Rain) designed to appeal to traditional Megadeth fans. The problem is that these fans won’t be satisfied with “a few songs.”

There are a few songs (Off The Edge, Beginning Of Sorrow, Don’t Turn Your Back, Burn!) that fall somewhere in between metal and hard rock. These songs, for the most part, have metal intros and/or verse sections, but for the chorus sections move noticeably toward a more hard rock sound. Some times it works (Off The Edge, Beginning Of Sorrow) and sometimes it doesn’t (Don’t Turn Your Back, Burn!).

Finally there are three songs which are not metal at all:

• Super Collider – while I can hear legions of Megadeth fans howling in agony, I actually like this song. It’s 100% commercial hard rock, but I like commercial hard rock. Most diehard Megadeth fans don’t, though.
• The Blackest Crow – Megadeth does “Wanted Dead Or Alive.” If Joss Whedon ever figures out a way to bring back the cancelled-too-soon series Firefly, this should be the new theme song.
• Forget To Remember – the Megadeth faithful will be up in arms about this song as well. Swap in Geoff Tate on vocals and you’ve got a Queensryche song. There’s even some “ooh and aah” vocal harmony in the chorus. Not metal, Dave. Not metal.

This division of songs into metal, mainstream and hybrid seems very much like Cryptic Writings, which Mustaine himself described as “divided into thirds” in much the same manner.

For fans of Chris Broderick’s prodigious shredding abilities, there’s not a lot of space on this album for him to really cut loose. That’s bad news for shred-a-holics, but good news for those of us who are interested in hearing him branch out a bit stylistically. I particularly like his bluesy work on Don’t Turn Your Back… though I’m less sold on his work in Super Collider, which sounds like some first take solo tracks that were supposed to be replaced by something more polished, but never were.

I’m not surprised that this album is getting a lot of bad reviews by “death to all but metal” critics, and while it certainly isn’t perfect, there are some cool songs, as log as you’re not demanding Rust In Peace all over again.

The post Megadeth – Super Collider – Review appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

Amp Model

The best amp model for high gain is the Treadplate (and its matching cabinet). It’s important to understand that when it comes to modeling, you’re never going to achieve exactly the same sound that you would hear out of a real world signal chain. So forget about dialing in the Marshall JCM800 with the Tube Screamer in front of it, because that combination (to my ear, anyway) doesn’t sound all that great with the POD.

Microphone Model

This is going to sound weird, but skip over the SM57 models and go all the way to the bottom of the list of mics. Pick the 87 Condenser (a model of the Neumann U87). The 87 Condenser is the only mic that gets rid of the “ice pick in the ear” high gain digital sound that is so often associated with modelers without lopping off so much top end that you can’t add it back with your treble and presence knobs.

Cabinet Settings

If you haven’t updated the firmware on your POD, make sure you’ve got the latest version. Line 6 added some cabinet tweaking options that are critical to beefing up your tone and making sure that it doesn’t disappear in a live mix. Once your POD is on the latest firmware, go into the cab parameters and increase the thump setting. The default is 50/100. I increased mine to 70/100. This fills in the “punch in the chest” feel that you can get from a real amp but that so many modelers can’t deliver. The thump setting controls the frequency range that makes palm mutes nice and punchy. Without it you’ll be forced to use gobs of gain to get punchy palm mutes… way more than necessary. With it you’ll be able to dial in a sound that won’t feed back at you like a wounded animal every time you stop playing.

Lead Boost

I stole this idea from the Line 6 forum, but it’s great so I’ll mention it here. Get yourself a short patch cable and connect FX SEND on the back of your POD to the L/MONO effects return. This will allow you to enable the FX Loop effect in your patch and dial in a clean solo boost for whatever dB level you want. I’ve got mine set to 5 dB. Then you can map that effect to one of you foot switches so you can enable and disable your lead boost on the fly during shows.

Effects

I’ve got a noise gate active at all times, but with decay set at 0% and the threshold at only 15%. This stops any buzz that I might pick up from the lights at some of the venues, but doesn’t interfere at all with sustain.

Aside from that, your effects are up to you. The core of your sound will already be in place. I like a bit of reverb and not much else.

Live Setup

As I mentioned earlier, I use a QSC powered PA speaker instead of a guitar amp. This allows the POD HD500 to simulate everything: amp, mic, effects and cab. It’s important to remember that if you want to dial in a great sounding patch for going direct, you have to have a direct setup at home so you know what your settings will sound like when you get to the venue. If you dial in your sound through an amp and then try to go direct once you get to the show, you’re screwed.

Odds And Ends

I’ve got high output passive pickups on my guitar, so you might have to adjust the gain setting a bit to tailor the patch to your guitar. Also, I like mid-heavy, 80′s sounding high gain. If you want a more scooped sound, you’ll need to adjust your EQ settings accordingly.

Shameless Plug

I would not have been able to get to this point with my live sound without the help of my Sweetwater sales engineer, Nick Schenkel. He helped me put together a live rig that sounds great, didn’t break the bank, and fits in a Mini Cooper. Tough to beat. Give Nick a call at (800) 222-4700 ext. 1399.

The Patch

Here it is: Line 6 POD HD500 High Gain Patch.

Enjoy!

The post My Line 6 POD HD500 High Gain Patch appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

If you missed Black Gives Way To Blue and haven’t heard Alice In Chains since the 90′s, fear not, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is 100% authentic Alice In Chains: dark, troubled, and gritty, but somehow still offering an abundance of singable hooks.

And that’s a big part of the genius of Alice In Chains… their ability to meld musical opposites and as a result appeal to seemingly incompatible audiences. They began in the late 80′s as a metal act, but were subsequently accepted by the reactionary grunge / alternative audiences of the 90′s, so much so that they became one of the top grunge bands of the era (along with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden).

The grunge era is long over, but it’s no surprise that the appeal of Alice In Chains endures. Though there’s not much new musical ground covered on The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, that’s not a bad thing. There are bands from whom we expect a degree of musical experimentation on each new release, but Alice In Chains is not one of them. We want more songs with that signature sound, and The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here delivers with a bunch of great, great songs.

It’s not very often that I get to say this about an album, but there is no filler here. Twelve songs, and not one of them will prompt you to hit the “next” button. Each song will surround you in the veil of darkness and desperation that you’ve come to expect from Alice In Chains. How dark, you ask? Well, there’s a song called “Hung On A Hook.” Yup. That dark.

With an album this solid from top to bottom, it’s tough to pick out just a few top tracks, but after much consideration, here they are:

• Hollow
• Breath On A Window
• Choke

This is, of course, a guitar site, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t specifically cover the guitar aspects of the album. Jerry Cantrell has never been, and never will be, a jaw dropping guitar virtuoso, but if you’re looking for virtuosity then you’re missing the point of Alice In Chains. Yes there are a few guitar solos and each one of them works within the context of its respective song, but Alice In Chains was never about guitar solos. Cantrell’s songwriting, moody rhythm work and backing vocals are far more important to the sound of Alice In Chains than his guitar solos. Alice In Chains is about the songs, and these songs are so good that I think you’ll find yourself not really caring about whether there are guitar solos or not.

The post Alice In Chains – The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here – Review appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

Legal wrangling aside, the Geoff Tate version of Queensryche released Frequncy Unknown in April. The cover art for the album contains some good old fashioned childish “nyah nyah” material, depicting a fist wearing the album’s initials as rings (F-U), a not-so-subtle shot at the “other” Queensryche.

The question on the minds of all Queensryche fans is undoubtedly which one will come closest to the classic Operation Mindcrime and Empire sound that we fell in love with so many years ago. The “other” Queensryche has not released a full album yet, so a full comparison is not yet possible, but I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that if you’re looking for a classic sounding Queensryche album you won’t be very happy with Frequency Unknown.

That’s not to say that Frequency Unknown is bad. It isn’t. It’s not great, either, but there are a few songs that are really good:

• Cold – This song has a bit more of a modern sound than classic Queensryche, but it’s a good listen nonetheless. It’s obvious that Tate still has it in him to write great rock tunes with compelling lyrics, the kind that always separated Queensryche from the rest of the late 80′s / early 90′s rock and metal pack.

• Everything – This is the song that comes closest to what most of us would consider the classic Queensryche sound. Driving rhythm, classic-sounding guitar riffs (though with a more modern high gain tone than classic Queensryche) and great hooks full of vocal harmony.
• The Weight of the World – Obviously meant to be the album’s tour de force, this song clocks in at 6:14 and makes me think a bit of Suite Sister Mary from Operation Mindcrime, sprawling and somewhat self-indulgent, but still a solid piece of work.

The rest of the album, unfortunately, contains a lot of filler and even a bit of WTF material (the vocal interlude near the end of Slave comes to mind). Tate is obviously over the classic progressive hard rock / metal sound and is interested in pushing into uncharted territory. Many of the songs show darker influences of bands like Alice In Chains and Staind. The problem here is twofold:

1. Tate doesn’t do the darker thing as well as Alice In Chains or even Staind.
2. If Tate is going to go in this direction, he should do it as a solo artist instead of putting the Queensryche name on it.

And there’s the rub. Tate has something to prove to his former bandmates, and he really wants to give them the “F-U” that’s on the album cover, but he’s damaging his own Queensryche legacy in the process.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the four classic Queensryche songs that Tate includes as bonus material on Frequency Unknown. For some reason Tate has decided that we’re in need of updated versions of four of the most loved Queensryche songs ever recorded:

• I Don’t Believe In Love
• Empire
• Jet City Woman
• Silent Lucidity

Whether this was done because of contract dispute purposes over who owns the classic songs or not, the results will likely be a PR disaster for Tate. He’s not the young man he was when these songs were originally recorded, and it’s not hard to tell that he can’t hit all the notes that he used to hit. All Tate has done by re-recording these songs is give the public the means to compare Geoff Tate 2013 with his “other” Queensryche replacement, Todd La Torre, and based on this “sneak peek” recording from the “other” Queensryche, Tate is going to be on the wrong side of the comparisons.

If the rest of the June release from the “other” Queensryche sounds like this one teaser song, there will be no doubt as to who the “real” Queensryche is.

The post Queensryche – Frequency Unknown – Review appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

So let’s skip the boring stuff and cut to the chase, shall we?

How Is Guitar Pro 6 Different From Power Tab?

Here are some fundamental differences between Guitar Pro and Power Tab that you should know about:

• Guitar Pro is actively developed and currently supported By Arobas Music, which means there’s a company standing behind the application that will help you if something is wrong. Power Tab, though available for free, has not been supported since about 2005.
• Guitar Pro 6 will run on Windows, Mac and Linux, and an assortment of mobile operating systems. Power Tab is only available for Windows.
• The playback audio in Guitar Pro 6 is far superior to that of Power Tab. Power Tab has a few basic guitar and bass sounds, none of which are very convincing. Guitar Pro sports a full library of different guitar sounds, and even allows you to define your signal chain with various amps and effects. The only sound that doesn’t really hit the mark is high gain guitar (regardless of the amp/effects simulations used), especially where palm muting is concerned. Guitar Pro also offers drum notation options and audio, while Power Tab does not.
• The playback controls in Guitar Pro 6 are also far superior to their Power Tab counterparts. In PowerTab you can play, pause, stop and skip around in the score so you can start at different points. With Guitar Pro you can do all of those things, but Guitar Pro also gives you a set of track controls so you can drop out certain tracks during playback, or adjust the volume of each track individually. Guitar Pro also allows you to create playback loops for practice purposes.

Guitar Pro 6 Playback Controls

• The user interface of Guitar Pro 6 is intuitive and easy to use. The user interface of Power Tab is functional, but pretty bare bones, and definitely looks as if it hasn’t been updated in years, which is, of course, the case.
• Guitar Pro provides a number of useful tools for increasing your knowledge of music theory. First is a scale and arpeggio generator, where you can enter, for example, the tonic note and the mode (or type of chord in the case of arpeggios) that you want. Guitar Pro will show you what notes are in that scale, and also allow you to hear what the scale sounds like. Second is a chord diagram generator, which allows you to select pretty much any type of chord you want and then see all the different ways there are to finger the chord. As an extra added bonus, if you want to insert a chord into your tab notation, there’s a portion of the interface that allows you to insert entire chords all at once based on the fingering you’ve chosen. This cuts down significantly on the amount of time you might have spent entering chords into your notation one note at a time. Power Tab does not have any scale building functionality. It does have a chord diagram builder, but does not give you the ability to insert full chords into your tab notation the way that Guitar Pro does.

That’s Great – What Does All This Mean To Me?

Good question. I was getting to that. Now that you have a sense for some of the differences between the two pieces of software, here’s a comparison of what you can do with each:

• Power Tab is a solid application for basic tab notation, especially since it’s free. If all you want is some basic notation software (assuming you run Windows) then Power Tab might be perfect for you. Guitar Pro, on the other hand, has lots of niceties that will make your notating life easier, especially for more advanced musicians. For example, if you want to make some enharmonic changes to the notes (such as changing C# to Db, which is the same pitch but completely different when it comes to music theory) you won’t be able to with Power Tab, but you can with Guitar Pro. My Bach cello suite transcriptions used to have all sorts of errors in them when I had them in Power Tab. The tab was right, but the standard notation was wrong because I couldn’t edit the standard notation. Now that I’ve migrated those scores into Guitar Pro everything looks the way it should.
• Guitar Pro gives you all the tools you need to learn songs quickly and accurately. With Guitar Pro you can take a transcription and use the many playback options to drop all the tracks out except for the one you want to learn. You can loop portions of that track, slow it down, and enable the metronome until you’ve got it. Then you can turn your playback inside out, dropping out only the guitar part you learned and bringing all the other tracks back so you can use Guitar Pro as a backing track. Power Tab simply can’t keep up with these features.
• Guitar Pro can help you learn to improvise. Using the chord builder, you can take various chords and drop them into the score, then use the looper to play those changes over and over again so you can get used to soloing through the changes. Power Tab doesn’t have a looper and the sound quality is not very good, so it’s easier and also more fun to practice your soloing using Guitar Pro. Here’s an example of what a looped G major / D major chord progression sounds like in Guitar Pro 6.
• With Guitar Pro it’s easier to find quality transcriptions than it is with Power Tab. Head over to Ultimate Guitar and you should be able to find both Guitar Pro and Power Tab transcriptions, but Guitar Pro also offers professional transcriptions via its mySongBook website. No, the transcriptions aren’t free, but the quality of the transcriptions is top notch, and when you combine the transcription quality with the playback tools for practice purposes, this is where Guitar Pro 6 really shines.

Costs

The full version of Guitar Pro 6 is $59.95, while the individual song transcription downloads from mySongBook range from $.99 to $2.99. There’s also a Fretlight version (for integration with Fretlight guitars) which costs $99.99.

Conclusion

There’s nothing wrong with Power Tab, but all the features packed into Guitar Pro 6 make it easily worth the money for those who want a practice tool in addition to a notation application. Power Tab will show you the tab. Guitar Pro 6 will help you get better.

The post Guitar Pro 6 – Review appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

The FourChords Karaoke Guitar App is a bit like a mobile version of Rocksmith in that you don’t need to have any prior guitar knowledge to use the app and start playing along with your favorite songs. The app will teach you all the chords you need to know and there’s an on-screen guide to playing along with each song. Whereas Rocksmith tries to be all things to all guitarists, offering content and difficulty levels from complete beginner to advanced shredder, the FourChords Karaoke Guitar App is laser-focused on beginners. The idea is that you can play a bunch of your favorite songs using only four chords per song. The hope is that if you can learn a bunch of fun songs quickly and easily that the guitar will stay in your hands for longer periods of time and that you will get better faster than you would using more traditional methods… “traditional methods” meaning the C Major scale and “Mary Had A Little Lamb” as mentioned above.

The App

Because the FourChords Karaoke Guitar App focuses on a few core pieces of functionality, it’s very easy to use. Here’s what you can do with this app:

• Learn some basic chords and hear what those chords should sound like – Each song contains chord charts for the four chords needed. You can choose open chords for strumming on an acoustic guitar, or power chords if you want to crank up some distortion on your electric guitar.
• Play along with each song – each song includes a backing track and on-screen guide which will tell you exactly when to play each chord. There are some useful configuration options as well that allow you to control how much of the backing track you need as well as the tempo of the song. As you get better at strumming the chords you can start using your own strumming patterns against the backing track.
• Record yourself – When you get good at playing a song, you might want to record yourself and post your playing to social media sites. The app has a recording option that makes this easy to do.
• Tune your guitar – definitely recommended before playing along with a backing track or other musicians.

Cost

The FourChords Karaoke Guitar App is free to download and comes with a few free songs to get you started. If you want to download additional songs from the songbook each song is $.99. There’s also an option to get access to the entire song library for $4.99 per month.

Conclusion

If you’re a beginner and you want to learn some chords and play along with some songs this is a great way to get started. You can get access to a bunch of songs for less than the cost of a single guitar lesson. If you’re already taking lessons you can use this app as a supplemental tool. It’s definitely more fun, and more educational, to play along with backing tracks than to just play alone. On the other hand, if you’re an intermediate or advanced player, this app is probably too simple to push you and keep you challenged.

The post FourChords Karaoke Guitar App – Review appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

• A child learning guitar may have small hands and learn to play while overly tense in the name of one finger per fret.
• Students intent on adhering to “the rules” may choose one finger per fret in a situation where an alternate fingering might be a) more comfortable and b) make the music sound better.
• Blues and rock passages involving string bending do not lend themselves well to one finger per fret since the third finger is much stronger and can typically execute bends more easily.
• When playing passages on the lower frets it might make sense to use your pinky when covering only three frets where possible to avoid unnecessary stretching.
• When playing passages on the very high frets it might make sense to cover four frets with three fingers to avoid having to cram all your fingers into those small spaces.

Anyone who tries to force one finger per fret on a student in the above situations… I’ll address them in order… stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid aaaaaaaand stupid.

I can hear the questions forming in your mind right now, so let’s get the most obvious ones out of the way:

• Does this mean I should definitely NEVER cover four frets with four fingers? Of course not. There are plenty of cases where this makes perfect sense. As a hard and fast rule, though, covering four frets with four fingers is completely arbitrary.
• Is there any validity at all to working on one finger per fret exercises? Sure. Training your individual fingers to move independently of each other is extremely valuable. But these are exercises. When it comes time to make music, there is only one rule, and that is to do whatever is necessary at the time to make that music sound the best it can possibly sound.
• What should I do if my teacher keeps yelling at me about this? This is a difficult one. If your teacher is helping you to advance in other areas, then see if you can agree to disagree. If you teacher is a doofus, then find another teacher. There also might be cases where your perfectly intelligent teacher asks you to try a different fingering in the name of legitimately helping you to get better. This is different from a “100% all the time never to be broken” arbitrary rule.
• If I don’t use this rule then I don’t know which fingers to use. Welcome to taking ownership of your improvement process. Experiment. Figure it out. Watch some other people play the song/passage (if it’s a cover) and see how they do it. YouTube is awesome for this. Going from student automaton to fully invested owner of your musical journey is a big step. Take it and don’t look back.

In case there are still doubters out there, here’s my trump card. It’s the undisputed king of technique, Yngwie Malmsteen. Ever watch his left hand while he plays? Does he always cover four frets with four fingers? No? I rest my case.

The post Stupid Guitar “Rules” – One Finger Per Fret appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

This only the second time I’ve ever recorded a performance that I didn’t think was a total piece of garbage. I don’t think any musician will ever be completely satisfied with a performance, otherwise what drive would there be to get better? I do recognize progress, though, and I’m taking it easy on myself. Much less flogging… much more analysis and improvement.

Here’s what I like about this performance:

• Most of this piece I could play blindfolded and hanging upside down in front of 10,000 people. When it comes to Bach on guitar, there are always a few passages that just don’t fit all that well on the fretboard and are always a challenge, but those portions are getting smaller and smaller for me. I’d say I’m totally comfortable with 95% of this piece. When I first started this website I was comfortable with 0% of anything I played. Major, major progress. This bullet is actually a two-fer because I’m attacking technique and stage fright at the same time.
• Because my technical ability to play the piece is, for the most part, not an issue, I can take my entire brain and focus on the music. That elusive rhythmic pulse is something that I’m thinking about and feeling while I’m playing now. That makes it fun, instead of holding on white-knuckled for dear life to every note because I might blow a tire at any moment.

All of the things that I’ve had to do to get myself to the point where I can play this piece are documented on this site. The big three in this case are:

• Finger independence
• Alternate picking
• Rhythm

Onward and upward. Next up are the bourrées.

The post JS Bach – Cello Suite #3 BWV 1009 – Courante appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

This isn’t a black and white proposition where either you have finger independence or you don’t. It’s a million shades of grey. When you first start playing your fingers will not be very well coordinated, and everything you do will feel foreign. You’ll try to move one finger but another one will move instead. It will generally feel like trying to play the guitar with boxing gloves on… not very precise at all. As you continue to get better and your coordination improves, your fingers will start to be able to act without causing problems for the other fingers. Finger independence, then, is really just a fancy-pants way of saying “coordination.” It builds gradually with patience and practice.

For those of you who want to focus on finger independence specifically, there are ways to accelerate your development of this skill, but as with many other aspects of guitar improvement, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. It’s another one of those topics that most teachers handle with a focus on exercises… “Just do [INSERT EXERCISE HERE] and you’ll achieve finger independence.” For example, one of the most commonly taught exercises for finger independence is this type of chromatic exercise featuring all sorts of hammer on and pull-off combinations:

As I’ve mentioned numerous times in other articles on technique, however, it’s not the exercises themselves that matter, it’s how you approach them. There are a couple of problems with presenting exercises like this as the path to finger independence:

1. The exercise itself is usually presented as the solution to the problem, with no guidance as to how to approach the exercise as all. “Just muscle your way through it and it’ll eventually get easier” is the implied message. This is bad advice, implied or not.
2. The exercise is far too complex for guitarists who are just beginning to address the concept of finger independence. Excessive tension is almost guaranteed, and excessive tension doesn’t lead to finger independence, it leads to frustration. The teachers who recommend these kinds of exercises typically already have achieved a good deal of finger independence, but fail to remember all the steps along the way that helped them achieve it. Using an exercise like this with a beginning or even intermediate player is like skipping to the end of a weight training regimen: “It’s your first day… here… bench press 300 pounds.” Not advisable.

Finger independence isn’t about exercises, it’s about gaining an understanding of the weights and balances associated with fretting notes and how to shift those weights and balances around as you change from finger to finger.

Instead of tying your fretting hand into a pretzel with the above exercise, let’s try something simpler. It’s not about the notes you’re playing or how quickly you can get from beginning to end. This is about learning to be aware of how it feels to fret a note and change from finger to finger:

1. Place your first finger on a fret. Any fret on any string will do. Feel the weight of your arm pulling your finger into the fretboard and how that weight is balanced on the tip of your first finger while it’s fretting a note. See if you can move your other fingers. If moving your other fingers is difficult or impossible, it probably means you’re holding on too tightly with your first finger. Release, shake out your hand and try again. Stay aware of what it feels like to fret that single note and see if you can locate the source of the excess tension. Mine is always in the smallest tip joint at the end of my finger. If this joint is rigid, the rest of my hand tenses up and “the claw” starts to happen.
2. Repeat step one for the other fingers of your fretting hand. Notice how the weights and balances of your hand and arm feel different depending on which finger is fretting a note.
3. Start switching from on finger to another. Any two fingers will do at first. At this point the goal is to take two different balance points (one for each finger) and shift between the two. Initially all you’ll be doing is picking up one finger and placing the second, but if you stay aware and patient you’ll notice that eventually it will become possible to turn these two motions into one smooth motion.
4. Repeat step three for the other combinations of two fingers (1 and 2, 1 and 3, 2 and 3, 2 and 4, 3 and 4).
5. Start picking the notes as you play them. At first you want to take your picking hand out of the equation altogether in order to isolate the fretting hand, but as you feel more comfortable with the movements more of your brain will be available to do other things, like pick each note.
6. Get out your metronome. At first you’ll want to work on these motions without a metronome so you can focus on comfort and effortlessness. Once you’re comfortable with the movements themselves, introduce a metronome to make the movements more rhythmic. Not too fast, though. The purpose of the metronome is so that you can start changing from note to note with some sort of rhythmic pulse, not to push you out of your comfort zone.
7. Start introducing hammer-ons and pull-offs. You should only do this when you’ve started to gain a good amount of proficiency with steps one through six. Hammer-ons and pull-offs (especially pull offs) are more complex for the left hand, so you’ll want to have a decent amount of finger independence already in place before introducing these motions.

Notice that we’re not focused on the actual notes in the exercise, we’re focused on what it feels like to play, and making the necessary movements as effortless as possible. If you approach finger independence in this way, with patience and awareness, you’ll see rapid improvement.

Furthermore, when you’re comfortable enough to start attempting the more difficult chromatic legato style exercises (like the first one mentioned in this article), I think you’ll find that it makes more sense to just take difficult passages from songs that you like and turn those into exercises by applying the steps I’ve outlined above. This way you’ll be killing two birds with one stone… learning new music and improving your technique at the same time.

Check out the video below for examples:

The post Finger Independence appeared first on WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.

Then one day my world got turned inside out.

I don’t remember which aspect of harmony we were discussing specifically, but somehow we got onto the topic of whether the rules were really rules, or something different. Our professor calmly explained to us that harmony’s “rules” were not really rules at all. No music god from on high handed down the 10 commandments of music theory carved in stone. It turns out that the “rules” of harmony and voice leading are just a collection of best practices based on the works of Western music’s greatest composers: Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. The “rules” weren’t invented. They were catalogued.

Let that sink in for a minute, and consider a couple of key implications:

• All those players who say they can’t read music and know little or no music theory, but somehow sound great anyway… it starts to make sense. Music theory is nothing more than a way of organizing the best practices for things that sound good. Therefore, if you can create music that sounds good, does it really matter whether or not you know where that music fits into that theoretical set of best practices? No. It doesn’t. Not one bit.
• The “theory snobs” don’t know what they’re talking about. Go into pretty much any online musical discussion group, or look in the comments section of many YouTube videos on the topic of music and you’ll find at least one theory snob. These are the people who can always find some theoretical reason why the things they don’t like are “wrong.” Notice that the theory snobs almost never use their knowledge of music theory to explain why something sounds good. They’re always tearing stuff down.

And now the dirty little secret of the theory snobs starts to unravel. The theory snobs aren’t musicians. They’re musicologists (and bad ones). It’s a big part of the reason that they’re always so negative. It infuriates them that they “know” more about music than the musicians they attempt to belittle, yet the extent of their musical reach is limited to commentary and analysis.

Theory is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It’s a common language that musicians use to communicate with each other. It’s a way of analyzing music for educational purposes. Knowing theory does not make you a musician. Lack of theoretical knowledge doesn’t mean you aren’t a musician. The ability to make music, and that ability alone, makes you a musician. If you can create music that sounds good, then you “know” theory… you just “know” theory in a way that isn’t mathematical.

I’m not here to tell you that music theory is useless or that you shouldn’t learn any. I love theory. It helps me make sense of music and communicate with other musicians. Music theory alone, though, means nothing. What you create with your knowledge of music theory means everything.

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