How To Never Forget A Song Again

As you learn to play guitar you"ll gather an ever increasing collection of songs and pieces that you've learned to play. If your experience is anything like mine then you'll find that it's all too easy to gradually forget these pieces that you've worked hard to master.

The reason is mostly because you don't play them again; your practice time all gets taken up by all the new things that you're working on.

This leads to the frustrating feeling that you never know how to play more than a few pieces instead of having a growing repertoire that you can play at will. This problem usually manifests itself most obviously when you're supposed to play in front of a group of people...

Here's where this simple tools helps.

1. Take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half length wise to form two columns.

2. In the left column list the pieces that you already know and then put the sheet inside your guitar case or bag.

3. Now, each time you practice or play your guitar play one of the pieces in your list.

4. When you learn a new piece remember to add it to the list.

That's it. This simple system ensures that you regularly play the pieces that you've already learned so you won't forget them. The repertoire of things that you can play next time you're asked will grow.

There's room on the for well over a hundred songs and using it ensures that you don't overlook any.

This tool costs almost nothing, is easy to use and ensures that you don't overlook any of those hard-learned pieces that you've worked on.

Blues Guitar Lick #9: Double Stops in A

Today's blues lick uses double-stops. This means that two notes are played at the same time. Here's the lick:

e----------------------------------
B-----5---7---5-s-7-s-5------------
G-----5---7---5-s-7-s-5------------
D--7---------------------7~~~~~~~~-
A----------------------------------
E----------------------------------

The lick is in the key of A and uses notes from the A minor pentatonic scale. It starts and ends on the root A note to establish the key and chord.

In between these two notes you play double stops based on the minor 3rd and the 4th notes of the scale. Play the slide-up and slide-down with only one stroke of the pick.

You can play around with this lick varying the timing, placement of the slides, or use some hammer-ons or pull-offs.

Five Reasons To Choose An Electric Guitar

Following up on my 5 reasons to choose an acoustic guitar this post attempts to even up the debate with a list of reasons you might prefer an electric.

1. Play silently

If your kids or wife are sleeping in the next room you can play your electric guitar with little or no noise.

I suggest that you choose a portable headphone amplifier instead of a standard amp. Standard amps have mains hum which I can assure you gets irritating, especially when listening through headphones.

A portable battery powered amp doesn't suffer from this problem. It also has the advantage of being easy to carry around. You can find models that also provide rhythm backing, built-in metronomes or a line-in to play-along with your favourite CDs. They much a much more useful practice tool.

2. Easier to play

Electric guitars generally have slimmer necks and lighter strings than acoustic guitars. This makes them easier to play for a beginner.

3. No bridge pins

My pet hate is the bridge pins on my acoustic guitar. Changing strings is always a traumatic experience for me with these. I know that acoustic guitar models without bridge pins exist, but I couldn't find one that matched with all the other things I was looking for.

Electric guitars don't have bridge pins, so changing the strings is much simpler.

4. Solid body is more solid

An electric guitar's solid body stands up to the assaults of your 4 year old and his friends ;-) You'll have to watch out for that neck, though...

5. Wider choice of colours

You'll have more choice of colour for electric guitars than for acoustics :-) Most acoustic guitars offer the choice of a plain old wood finish. There are a few coloured models out there, but apart from black the choice is somewhat limited.

This might not seem very serious, but colour is really important to some. And as I already said, your guitar has got to feel good to you.

So What Will You Choose?

That wraps up my acoustic vs. electrics series. I hope it helps you to make your choice, but remember the decision is yours. I wish you fun whatever guitar you choose.