Learn A New Technique In A Day! Options

[Ben Higgins]

Why am I displaying such a bold title for this post? It looks like one of those dodgy sites that sell you stuff where you have to scroll down endless customer testimonials and hard selling to get to the bottom where it promises you eternal glory for only $500.

Well, guess what? It is!

Ok, I'm pulling your chain.

I want to draw your attention to something I talked about in another post. It's the idea of learning a new technique well enough in order to use it in something. Nobody's saying you've got to be a master. Oh no. Screw that. Just learn it and practise it until it sounds good enough to actually use. If you can do that then you are legitimately using that technique in your playing. Whteher you can play another 50 licks using said technique is no matter. You can play at least one using it. So therefore you can use that technique. If you can get one lick then you can build from there, if you so wish.

I believe in this approach enough to throw down a challenge to you all. If it goes well and you enjoy doing it then we could do it again, using different techniques.

Things like picking and sweeping are a common goal amongst the guitar community but let's choose something less obvious. Let's have a hybrid picking lick.

Hybrid picking uses the pick and at least one other finger on your picking hand to pluck the strings with. This can make it easier for the player to pick complex arpeggios. However, one doesn't need to take it to that level. Just using the pick and middle finger to play something like this lick below, is hybrid picking.



 HybridPickLick.gp5 ( 1.68K ) Number of downloads: 98


Note: Use your 2nd finger to slide at the beginning and end between the 7th and 9th fret. The hybrid picking part means that you use your middle finer to play all the notes on the B string, which are marked on the tab as upstrokes.

How about tapped arpeggios? Thoughts of Michael Romeo's mind boggling mastery may swirl around your mind at the mention of such a technique but hold your horses before you get too disheartened. The difficulty of this is up to you. Remember that we've decided that a technique can be used to play licks of the simplest to the hardest category?

Don't see yourself as somebody who can use tapped arpeggios? Well, try this then.



 TappedArpeggio.gp5 ( 1.74K ) Number of downloads: 93


Note: The "M" in the tab refers to using the middle finger to tap. You may use your 1st. It's up to you.

You've just played a tapped arpeggio. If that's something you've never tried before then it's something you can now do. Whether it's perfect or not doesn't matter. The fact is, it will take you a matter of minutes to learn and memorise these licks and you'll be able to repeat them back to yourself. After maybe an hour or more you may be quite competent at them. By tomorrow you could say you can play them. Remember that we didn't say we were looking for mastery - just competence.

Now, think of all the other techniques out there that you wished you could learn but you don't do it either because you don't think you can or don't see yourself as somebody who uses them. You could pick a simple lick (or even make one up yourself) in one of these techniques and by day's end you might have it memorised and sounding half way decent.

Doesn't matter if it's slow or if it's messy. What counts is that in less than 24 hours you can play something that you couldn't when you woke up in the morning. Given such open ended possibilities for learning it suddenly seems like we can do anything.

You are at GuitarMasterClass.net

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This post has been edited by Ben Higgins: Aug 16 2015, 01:46 PM