Guitar skills are what it’s all about when you’re learning to play the guitar, but sometimes you can’t be sure where to start and what’s important to learn. You see famous guitar players moving all over the fret boards with their sweet techniques and it may get confusing as to what you should learn.
The best way to go at it is to cover all of the basics and introductory skills that will allow you to start learning songs quickly because we know that’s what you want to do. So, just to get you down the right track, here’s a list of 5 very important skills that every guitarist should know.
1. How to form and transition between chords
You can’t play songs or get even close to jamming around the campfire unless you know at least three chords. There really isn’t all that much to playing the guitar besides knowing chords and having some lead riffs to go along with them.
Once you sit down and actually hash out what the chords are to your favorite songs, then you can begin to get down to business.
2. How to warm up before practicing
Most guitarists don’t know what it means to warm up before playing their practice material and it can be holding them back. One of the most important aspects of practice time is warming up. I guess you could think of it like eating breakfast in the morning.
3. Hammer-ons and pull-offs
Hammer-ons and pull-offs are some great guitar skills that are used in almost every song with lead riffs because they’re so impressive to hear, yet easy to play.
To execute a hammer-on, you simply press a finger very quickly onto the fret board on a string to get it to ring. To execute a pull-off you reverse the action and attempt to sound the note by pulling away with your finger.
4. How to follow a tempo closely
All of these riffs and chords don’t mean squat if you can’t go along with a drummer or any sort of beat in real life. It’s alright to plan on playing by yourself forever, but most of the time, musicians like to progress into a band.
Learn to pay close attention to a metronome when you play in order to get that beat ingrained in your skull so that it almost haunts you in your sleep.
5. Double-picking to improve your playing speed
If you’re playing every note by moving the pick in a downwards motion every single time, you’re wasting your talents. Eventually, this method is going to slow you up and you’ll need to start double-picking.
Double-picking is when you strike a string by moving the pick downwards and then hit the string again when bringing the pick back up. You essentially double your picking speed with this new way of picking.
Now, all of these skills are extremely important to learning how to play the guitar properly, but nine out of ten times, it takes the guidance of a professional to truly get a beginner off their feet. Whether it’s from books, magazines, videos, or the internet, there’s usually a guitar instructor that knows how to get you going.
The newest craze of learning guitar skills is by way of online guitar lessons that you can access from your home computer. They’re very convenient and affordable and they can turn you into a great guitarist by teaching you skills like:
* Tackling lead riffs and licks with less stress
* How to remember tons of chords without having to look them up
* How to remember more songs so that you don’t run out of material
* How to create a great practice schedule that will keep you motivated and won’t burn you out