Warm up drills for guitar serve a few purposes for both students and teachers: They get the left and right hands synchronized on a purely technical level without concern for the music that is being produced. This is especially important before learning or practicing a new song or skill. Warm up drills can also help develop technique because Read the Rest…
How to Practice Guitar
This week Mike shares a few tips to help get the most out of your practice sessions, including goal setting, environment, mind set, attitude, and more.
Combine Chords & Melody
For most guitar students the early stages of their studies focus on learning the foundations of playing the instrument. These things include the mechanics of playing single notes, strumming patterns, and basic chord vocabulary. Sometimes teachers are so consumed with these building blocks of playing that students aren’t taught how to combine chords & melody into Read the Rest…
Singin’ the Blues
In this week’s expert tip Mike Christiansen explains how to come up with great lyrics for the blues. Learn to write melodies and rhythmic phrasing that will have you singing the blues like you came straight from the delta. Post your own blues lyrics in the comments below!
Tablature Vs. Standard Notation
In classroom guitar it’s important to understand the benefits of tablature and how to use it in your guitar curriculum as a tool to transition to standard notation. Some of the great benefits of tablature include learning rhythmic values, get comfortable with notes in a given position, play songs in an alternate tuning and more. Read the Rest…
Major Pentatonics Classroom Guitar
In this blog post Mike talks about Major Pentatonics for Classroom Guitar. This is a great sounding scale that is easy to play and works well over nearly any major chord progression. This scale is extremely popular and used all the time even by the pros. Another great scale is the Minor Pentatonic Scale, which is Read the Rest…
Getting Started With Improvisation On Guitar
There are many ways that improvisation can be approached. Here is a sequential format that has been used successfully with many guitar students and provides a solid foundation for further study of improvisation. It seems as though guitarists come out of the womb playing the minor pentatonic scale. The E minor pentatonic scale is easy Read the Rest…
