practice tips

If you are still suffering from sloppy guitar playing, the cause is likely unwanted string noise. For some guitar players, improving guitar technique may have nothing to do with how they are playing the notes they ‘want’ to hear. The sloppy noises we sometimes hear are caused from the notes (strings) we do ‘not’ want to hear.

If you are articulating the notes you want to play accurately, but you are still hearing sloppiness in your playing then this article will greatly help you to improve your guitar technique by eliminating string noise.

To effectively mute guitar strings we do not want to be heard, we need to use two totally different sets of muting techniques: One to stop unwanted noise from LOWER (in pitch) strings; and another to mute the higher (in pitch) strings.

Although there is more than one way to mute guitar strings, some methods offer advantages that others do not and are therefore (in my opinion at least) better.

Muting The Lower Strings

Many guitar players use the palm of their picking hand to mute lower strings. Although this technique is pretty good at keeping most of the lower strings quiet there are two big disadvantages with this technique.

1. Muting with your palm will cause a slight delay in the muting of a string which has just been played a moment before. This delay causes brief moments of string noise. This happens for two main reasons:

• The flesh of your palm is much softer than the side of your thumb and therefore takes more time for your palm to actually stop the string from sounding.
• It is not easy to get your palm in the perfect position to consistently and reliably mute strings that are adjacent to the one you are playing in all playing situations.

2. When you use your palm to mute noise, the natural position of your guitar pick (when not playing) is now away from the strings. This is what I call your “Natural Point Of Rest”.

When your pick is at rest up and away from the strings (in between playing each note), it causes your picking hand to work harder and significantly increases the chance for sloppy playing, string noise and slower picking speed.

A great solution to these problems (and to improve your guitar technique) is to mute with your picking hand thumb for all lower (in pitch) strings like this.

Notice that the “Natural Point Of Rest” when using thumb muting is now ON the strings (as shown in the picture above). This greatly reduces wasted motion and enables you to pick faster with much less effort.

Muting The Higher Strings

Many guitar players are totally unaware of the possibilities for muting string noise from the higher (thinner) strings and this part of their playing is often one of the causes of sloppy playing.

There are actually two main techniques for muting noise from the higher strings that I teach to my students when training them to improve their guitar technique.

The first technique involves using the underside (the fingerprint side) of the fretting hand’s index finger. This part of your finger is used to “lightly touch” the higher strings that you want to mute. The key word in the last sentence is “lightly”. You do not want to press down so hard that these notes begin to sound like regular fretted notes. Simply rest your finger on them thus preventing them from sounding.

In addition, you can also mute these higher strings by using the unused fingers of your picking hand (fingers that are not being used to hold the pick, such as middle, ring and pinkie).

This extra layer of muting ensures that there is no possibility for the strings higher than the one you are playing to ring out and add sloppy string noise into your guitar playing.

When these ideas are combined with the string muting techniques of muting the lower strings, your playing will instantly become much cleaner than before. Now, every time you play, the only guitar strings that will be making sound are the ones you are playing!

If you have been working hard to perfect your guitar technique and two-hand synchronization (as mentioned in How To Improve Your Guitar Technique – Part 1), then you already know that if your articulation/synchronization is developed well but your muting is not, the result will still be sloppy guitar playing. So, when trying to improve your guitar technique keep in mind the five areas discussed in this series of articles:

1. Focused Awareness
2. Articulation – The First Half of Two Hand Synchronization
3. The Release – The Second Half of Two Hand Synchronization
4. Muting The Higher Strings
5. Muting The Lower Strings

To get more guitar playing help check out my 15 Free Guitar Tips.

About the author:Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

If you are like most guitarists, you probably, at one point or another have found it difficult to improvise solos on guitar. Even if you possess a high level of technique and good knowledge of music, sometimes your advanced skills (ironically) can be a detriment to self expression if used inappropriately or at the wrong moment.

In a way, sometimes it is possible to restrict your own creativity by being “too advanced”. When you have many techniques, areas of knowledge and skills to choose from and are forced to make soloing decisions quickly, you may often end up making bad musical choices which distort your creativity. Fortunately, there are solutions to solving this problem.

I want to offer you several suggestions on how to make the most out of any soloing situation you may find yourself in and give you general ideas which you can apply right away.

If you want to see and hear how all of the concepts (that I am about to describe) were put into practice, you can watch a free improvising video of me playing using the concepts I will discuss below. It is available, by the way, to my free newsletter subscribes.

You probably know that it is important to think of “melody first” when starting to solo, but I am going to tell you a bit more about how you can use melodic tools to establish a “basic framework structure” in your solos that will enable you to add faster parts later without taking away from self-expression.

So let’s imagine that you are about to start soloing. What should you do or think about first? Here are my recommendations:

1. Start simple. Don’t be tempted to shred too much in the beginning of your solo! This may seem like an obvious point to some, but I want to make sure we are on the same page. Think of melody first and treat your slower melodic lines as a “skeleton” and think of any faster fills as “fleshing out” the skeleton. It may be tempting to play fast too soon (especially if you are able to play fast), but when you begin any new solo it is much better to think of melody first.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to play fast and shred in my solos, but I always make sure that there is a melody in them first, before thinking about adding faster parts. In the video I mentioned a moment ago, I do play a fast lick leading into the main solo, but the majority of the solo is very melodic and slow on purpose. Even if you choose to play faster licks, they need to “lead into something” and serve a musical purpose.

2. Practice “saying more” with only one note. When I was taking improvisation guitar lessons with my awesome guitar teacher Tom Hess, one of the things he had me practice was playing only one note, using only bends and vibrato as my phrasing tools. This one technique has done an incredible amount not only for my vibrato, but for my overall creativity and expression. In fact, sometimes I even use this technique in actual soloing situations when it is appropriate to create actual phrases with only one note (more on this later, in “Point 4”).

3. To get the most dramatic effect possible from your solos, try to create a harmonic background that has a lot of extended chords (seventh chords, add note chords etc…). For example, in the solo that I improvise in the video, I play over one of my most favorite progressions, iadd9 – VI7 – iv7 – ii half diminished add 11- V7 add 13. Because the chords in this progression are “add note” chords or seventh chords, soloing over them lends itself very nicely to melodic playing.

Record this progression yourself and you can hear what I’m talking about when you try to solo over it (or you can download a free backing track that I use here.)

4. Take advantage of common tones. This is one of my favorite things to do when soloing melodically over chords that have a lot of notes in them (such as the progression used above). For example, the chords listed above offer several possibilities for common tones. Even if you did nothing else except hold one note (that is common to all chords) with heavy vibrato or bending a short distance away from that note while the chords change, you will still get a very cool sound. In the progression above, the note “C” is a chord tone in all but one of the chords, and you can take advantage of this when soloing to create passing tones, suspensions and other effects.

5. Repeat phrasing ideas in different octaves. It is a very cool thing to do that will help you get more expression out of shorter phrases, particularly if you make subtle variations in the phrasing using vibrato and other things.

After you have an identifiable melody in place, using these ideas listed above as well as others, it is relatively easy to add more advanced things from that point such as, targeting melodic notes with a faster scale sequence, using arpeggios etc… The good news is that if you approach soloing in such a way, your “shredding” will become very appropriate and will add to your self-expression rather than take away from it.

In the guitar solo video that I mention throughout this article, I tried to incorporate all of the five main points discussed here to show you how a basic melody can be developed. This outline, of course, is not the only method of creating solos (there are many more), but it is one of my favorites.

I encourage you to give it a try and have fun with it!

About The Author:
Mike Philippov is a professional virtuoso guitarist, music composer and instructor. He is also a co-author of several instructional products, numerous articles and other free instructional resources available on http://mikephilippov.com

© 2009 Mike Philippov All Rights Reserved

Do you want to improve your guitar technique, play guitar cleaner, eliminate sloppy playing and unwanted string noise? Sloppy guitar technique is a very common problem. Many guitarists have been asking for solutions. This article will help you to improve your guitar technique.

There are five main challenges that electric guitar players must overcome in order to learn and master guitar technique. These five guitar technique challenges are divided into three groups:

1. Awareness
2. Sounds you ‘want’ to hear (the notes you are attempting to play cleanly)
3. Sounds you do ‘not’ want to hear (the sloppy sounds you sometimes hear such as unwanted string noise)

Today we will take a look at the first two groups. In Part 2 of this article series we’ll focus on the last group of guitar technique challenges.

Focused Awareness – Many guitar players are not fully aware of every imperfection in their guitar technique. Some of these players do sense that ‘something’ may be wrong, but are not sure about exactly what their specific guitar technique problems are. Obviously, you cannot effectively correct a technical problem until and unless you know exactly what it is.

There are two main ways you can approach this:

1. Record yourself playing a something you want to improve on. Listen back (carefully) at 25%-33% speed so that you more easily identify any unclear notes, excess string noise, scratchy noises between the notes, inconsistency in your pick attack, etc.). You may or may not be able to hear everything on your own (many people simply can’t yet) and you may or may not be able to ‘correctly’ identify the cause of each imperfection present in your guitar playing. If you can that’s great, but if you’re not sure then…
2. Work with a guitar teacher to evaluate your playing and use that feedback to begin the process of making any necessary changes to your technique. Not only will a good teacher help you to play clean by telling you ‘what to do’, but also because he will hear problems that you may not really be hearing.

IF you have an excellent ear, you should be able to identify the fine details of your problem, if not, work with your guitar teacher.

Articulation – The First Half of Two Hand Synchronization

The second step is to focus on your articulation. Articulation is the first half of two hand synchronization. To play cleaner you need your hands to fret and pick each note at precisely the same time (simultaneously).

There are three critical things you need to do to improve your articulation:

1. Use a clean guitar tone when practicing (no distortion and NO effects!). Distortion and effects will mask any imperfections in your articulation, so do not practice with them when focusing on “Articulation” (the rules will change when we talk about “The Release” in the next section).
2. Play loud enough so that you can truly hear what is happening as you are playing.
3. When you are practicing something slowly MAKE SURE that you do NOT change ANYTHING about how you approach and articulate each note. Fact is, most guitar players actually play very differently when playing slow compared to when playing fast. If you change anything in the way you are articulating the notes (such as playing with a lighter touch, using a weaker or stronger pick attack, changing your hand position, pick angle etc.) you will NOT fully improve your technique because the sound you make when playing will be different and therefore harder to detect and identify any problems with your articulation.

The Release – The Second Half of Two Hand Synchronization

The third step toward cleaner playing is ‘the release’. For most guitar players ‘the release’ is the hardest problem to detect and correct. That’s generally because once players articulate a note cleanly, they ignore what immediately comes after (small sloppy noise in between the notes or two notes slightly ‘bleeding’ together.

And practicing your guitar with a ‘clean’ tone (no distortion) – as described above when focusing on articulation – almost always masks problems in the release phase of playing a note. This is why many people think their guitar playing sounds pretty clean when practicing without distortion but sense something is wrong when later playing with distortion… but they are not sure what the problem is… or worse, they actually do not hear the problem at all (but other people do). This is why focused awareness is so critical.

I use multiple steps to help my guitar students fully solve this problem (not all of which can be fully demonstrated or expressed in an article), but here are the absolutely necessary steps toward correcting problems with ‘the release’.

1. Practice your guitar WITH distortion (but NO EFFECTS!) now. (Notice, this is the exact opposite advice I gave you to identify and correct ‘articulation’ problems above).
2. Again you need to play your guitar loud enough to hear precisely what is coming out of your amplifier (other noises in the room can mask the subtle things you need to be listening for).
3. Practice slow (but as stated above, do NOT change ANYTHING in the way you articulate OR RELEASE a note compared to when you are playing fast!).
4. Listen for any subtle noise in between notes (you will probably notice a ‘scratchy sound’ just before you play the next note). If you have a hard time hearing anything then record yourself and listen back to the recording at 1/4 or 1/3 speed (I guarantee you will hear this short scratchy sound now!)
5. Now that you know what to listen for, you will probably notice it all the time whenever you listen very carefully… and THEN you are ready to being to correct the problem…

Fact is there can be several reasons why your guitar playing may not be clean during the release of a note, but the most common cause is this: When you release a note your brain is probably telling your finger to ‘lift off’ (make an upward motion away from the string you just played). This can cause all sorts of nasty technique problems (fatigue, slower guitar playing speeds, and sloppy guitar playing… among other things).

The solution is to stop your brain from sending your fingers instructions to ‘lift off; of each note and instead to simply ‘relax’. When your finger relaxes it will naturally, immediately and effortlessly ‘release’ the note you just played. There are two main benefits to this:

1. Because the motion is effortless, you can play faster and for a much longer time (and most importantly) with greater ease.
2. Because your brain does not give the finger the instruction to make a ‘lift off’ motion this actually prevents your finger from moving (or preparing to move) prematurely (which is a major cause of the sloppy ‘scratchy sound’ that may be present in your guitar playing.

It is now very important to realize two things. First you CAN solve these problems and improve your guitar technique. Second, it won’t happen over night, this will take time and some consistent practice (possibly over several weeks or longer). But the benefits of being able to play guitar clean are well worth the patience required.

To get more help with your guitar playing check out my 15 Free Guitar Tips.

In Part 2 of this article series we’ll focus on the last group of guitar technique challenges.
About the author:Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and teaches electric guitar lessons online.

©2009 Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

If you began to read this article, chances are that you have been working on your sweep picking technique and struggled with improving it. If this sounds like you, then I want to show you how to avoid the 4 most common technical pitfalls that many guitarists fall into when trying to improve their sweep picking.

These four problem areas typically do not occur in isolation. Typically if you have one of the four problems described below, you have the others to some degree also. The good news though is that once you work on fixing at least one of these problems, the others tend to improve as well (it works both ways). As you read on, you will understand why.

If you want me to show you on video how to correctly practice the following ideas in this article, you can watch a (totally free) 20 minute sweep picking video lesson at my website that is available to my free newsletter subscribers. Otherwise, I will do my best to explain these technical points to you using text alone.

Separating the notes

Many players struggle with separating the notes of arpeggios, because they do not release the fingers from the notes that have already played, which results in all of the notes of the arpeggio ringing together. Although this follows the theory of “minimum motion” for the fingers, it breaks the most important rule of clean sweep picking: each note must have definition and clarity! So on one hand, it is tempting to want to minimize the motion of the fretting hand fingers as much as possible, and on the other hand, you also need to make sure that the notes are sounding cleanly.

The solution is to find the balance between releasing the fingers from each note right after you have played it, but doing so without letting the fingers come up “too far” away from the strings. Obviously if your fingers move too far away from the strings, it makes it difficult to bring them back down to play when needed. That being said, you need to lift the finger off the string slightly after it has played (so that it stops ringing), and also mute that same string with your picking hand (more about this later).

Remember that economy of motion is a “relative” concept and not an “absolute” concept. So even though releasing the fingers from the notes they have played is not an “absolute” application economy of motion, it is necessary to do this in order to play the technique cleanly. This advice may seem like perfect common sense when you read about it, but MANY guitarists have a difficult time with finding the right balance between the economy of motion and playing cleanly (in this part of guitar playing technique especially, but also with other techniques).

Rolling

One of the biggest sources of confusion of the rolling technique is that it is often confused with “barring”. When you play barre chords, you fret notes of two or more strings at the same fret with the same finger and you let all the notes ring together. When you perform the rolling technique, you have to actually physically “roll” the finger across strings by bending it backwards. As a result, the notes sound separated.

This technique is best shown on video or in person, but basically you play the first note of the roll with the tip of the finger, and then bend it backwards fretting the remaining notes of the roll with the soft fingerprint. You then reverse the motion when you descend. Your first knuckle of the finger becomes the pivot point that bends or collapses allowing you the flexibility of fretting the notes cleanly. If you are unsure about how to specifically practice this motion, I can show you precisely what the finger rolling motion should look like in the free sweep picking video at my site.

The good news about the rolling technique is that although it is hard in the beginning, it is actually one of the absolute easiest things to do on guitar once you get better at it. But in order to make sure that you do master it in minimum time, make sure to follow the guidelines above.

Pull offs:

Many players neglect isolating and practicing this part of the arpeggio in the shapes that require a pull off on the top string. As a result, the weak pull off distorts the rhythm of the notes and the arpeggio doesn’t sound clean. The picked notes usually sound rushed, and come out much louder than the pull off (which is barely audible). The solution is to practice just the pull off part of the arpeggio with the amp off. You should be able to hear the pull off very clearly even with the amp turned off. If you apply more force to make the pull off loud when you practice with no distortion, then after you turn distortion on, it really becomes a lot easier to play the entire arpeggio smoothly and cleanly.

Try to match the volume of your pull offs as closely as possible to that of your picked notes. This will not be entirely possible, but by constantly striving for it you will make great improvements in your legato playing in general and in this area of sweep picking specifically.

Muting excess string noise

Conventional wisdom suggests to practice sweep picking with a clean guitar tone in order to make it easier to hear imperfections in your technique. This is true on some level, BUT practicing only with a clean tone makes it hard to hear excess string noise that can occur either from letting the notes ring together (problem 1 described above) or from not muting the strings that are not supposed to be playing.

In reality, it is even more important to practice with distortion because only then will you become aware of any excess noise that may be present and correct it. If you have limited time to practice, then definitely you should practice with distortion only. This one practicing tip (which I learned from my guitar teacher, friend and mentor Tom Hess) helped me to greatly improve my own sweep picking in a short amount of time.

When you do become aware of the sloppy extra noise, it becomes much easier to fix it and mute it (using a variety of techniques in your picking and fretting hands).

Think carefully about the points in this article and apply them to your playing. You will see great results when you do!

If you are unclear about any part of what I explained above and want to see me do it on video, visit my website and I will show you the free sweep picking lesson on video that I send to all my newsletter subscribers. You can also contact me by e-mail at mike@mikephilippov.com with any questions.

About Mike Philippov

Mike Philippov is a professional virtuoso guitarist, music composer and instructor. He is also a co-author of several instructional products, numerous articles and other free instructional resources available on http://mikephilippov.com