The guitar is one of the most versatile instruments, and learning how to play can give you the ability to express yourself through music.
The Depths of Guitar:Understanding the Fundamentals
Learning any instrument requires practice, patience, and understanding of the core fundamentals needed to effectively play and express your style through music. Here we give you some of the main techniques and fundamentals used to express yourself through Guitar.
Chords A series of 3 or more tones, played at the same time, to produce one unified sound. A few example are Open Chords, Fifth Chords, 7th chords, and Barre Chords.
Soloing If being a Lead Guitarist is something that excites you then you must learn what makes a good solo, and how to execute a good solo. There are multiple techniques, such as slides, bends, vibratto, hammer-on/pull-off, and other picking techniques that can contribute to an amazing solo performance.
Picking Different styles of music require different picking techniques. We teach everything from Finger Picking, Economy Picking, and Alternate Picking to Cross Picking, Hybrid Picking, and more. Learn them all to match your style.
Muisc Theory At it's core, music is the combination of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Understanding the laws and language of music is essential to being a master guitarist. Music Theory is the knowledge of how music works. You will always compose and perform better if you understand what you are doing.
Composition If creating music is your passion then learning how to compose is a must. We teach many compositional concepts that will help you be successful in taking your ideas, and turn them into musical masterpieces.
Improvisation Improvisational playing is the concept of playing music without the musical piece being pre-written. Understanding how to improvise will significantly boost confidence in composing, and test knowledge of scales, rhythm, technique, and key identification.
Speed Training Everything starts slow when you are first learning chords, scales, picking techniques, and songs. This is where muscle memory is developed. We teach the proper way to speed train effectively in order to play your songs, surpass your limits with your playing.
Rhythm Concepts Rhythm is often expressed as the "beat", "groove", or "flow" of the music. Rhythm guitarists specialize in carrying the underlying chord progression throughout the song in order to support the pace and melody of the music.
Lead Concepts Lead guitarists are often seen playing solos in songs, but that is not their only job. Lead guitarists are also responsible for adding melody and harmony amongst the rhythm and chord progression. This adds variety to the sound, which helps the song sound more "full" or complete.
Reading Music and Tablature With the guitar being so modernized there is now more than one way to read guitar music and start learning your favorite songs. Here, we teach you how to read both notes AND tablature so you have access to as much music as possible.
Arpeggios Arpeggios are chords that are broken up and played one note at a time, rather than all-together. There are many different arpeggio shapes and sequences used to reflect the exact ideas that you have for your music.
Scales Learning scales is an essential part of mastering the guitar. The key of your song, the chord progression, melody, and harmonies can all be figured out by using scales. Scales are a series of notes that work together to help produce the key and sound, or tone, of the overall piece.
Modes The 7 Modes of Music have been used to compose music since the early 1400's. About 80-90% off all western music is composed using Modes. We teach all 7 modes and modal progressions to maximize your playing, knowledge, and compositions.
Technique Having good form and proper technique will always lead to more efficient playing. We make sure to take our time and address all the positive and negative habits that guitar players have when developing proper techniques.
And Much More... The guitar keeps evolving and new techniques are always being created to push the sound of music into newer styles and genres. Ask our instructors about some of these new techniques used in music today.