Guitar Tips 1 - Use a capo and save yourself a lot of trouble. A guitar capo is especially helpful to singers who wish to sing in a different key. The capo allows you to immediately play in a different chord without learning the whole song over again.

Guitar Tips 2 - Guitar Tabs - Take the time to learn guitar tablature. There are thousands of guitar tabs on the net to thousands of songs. Check out 411tabs.com, a portal that links to all the major guitar tab sites.

Guitar Tips 3 - Keep your fingernails trimmed so that you can play clearer notes on the guitar.

Guitar Tips 4 - Wash and dry your hands before playing to lengthen the life of your strings.

Guitar Tips 5 - After you play, wipe down your fingerboard and strings.

Gifts for Guitarists

Guitar Tips 6 - Left-handed? Wondering which way to hold your guitar? As left-hand guitars are available, start by picking up a guitar and see what feels more natural to you.

Guitar Tips 7 - When working on your left hand technique, try for strength, speed, and flexibility.

Guitar Tips 8 - Carrying your guitar from place to place? Put it in a case. Period.

Guitar Tips 9 - If you buy a used acoustic guitar, do have an experienced guitarist look over it. A guitar's neck will bend forward over time from the tension of the strings. There are ways to fix it, but you want to make sure it is not close to a costly repair called a "neck reset".

Guitar Tips 10 - A "cutaway" model of acoustic guitar is particularly good for reaching the higher frets. Drawbacks include the higher price and possibly a sound that isn't quite as good as a regular acoustic.

Guitar Tips 11 - If you have a cheap acoustic guitar, a reputable shop may be able to replace its plastic saddle with one made of bone for a relatively low price. This will noticably improve tone quality.

Guitar Tips 12 - Have trouble getting some of the bridge pins out of your acoustic when you re-string, etc.? Try using a golf tee to push it out from inside the bridge.

Guitar Tips 13 - If you can find an old piano that is to be destroyed, you can take any remaining ivory from the keys (assuming it is old enough to have ivory on it) and use them to make a nice saddle for your guitar. You will likely have to glue multiple pieces together for thickness.

Guitar Tips 14 - If you play an acoustic or hollow body, take a look inside sometime. See any dust bunnies? Best to vacuum them out - they can hold damaging moisture in the instrument.

Guitar Tips 15 - If you play an acoustic, be aware that direct sunlight can soften the glue that holds the guitar together. Be careful not to store it in open sunlight.

Guitar Tips 16 - If you need to practice a bit more quietly on an acoustic guitar, but you want to be able to play in a somewhat normal manner, try a "soundhole cover".

Guitar Tips 17 - You may hear of the x-brace of an acoustic guitar, and it being shifted in some designs. It is literally a brace on the inside of the guitar that makes an X, with the soundhole on top and the belly of the guitar beneath it. In older guitars, the x-brace was higher up, creating a beautiful sound, but causing the belly to poke out a bit over time due to the pull of the strings. Note that this poking out is only a cosmetic issue.

Guitar Tips 18 - Consider using an amp that uses tubes at some level if you can afford one. The maintenance is more costly, but the payoff in sound quality is worth the cost over a solid-state amplifier.

Guitar Tips 19 - The amplifier you use is as important as your guitar as far as the tone quality of your sound. Make sure you put thought into your amp. It doesn't have to be expensive, it just has to suit your playing situation. B.B. King, the most famous blued guitarist of all time, is known for having used only a few cheap amplifiers over his playing career, but they gave him the exact sound he wanted.

Guitar Tips 20 - Explore different types of pickups on you electric guitar. There are single coil and double coil or "humbucker" pickups. Many modern electric guitars have both and give you the ability to switch between them while playing.

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Guitar Tips 21 - There are many types of pickups to explore if you want to have a built-in way to get the sound of your acoustic guitar to an amplifier and thus avoid having to stand at a traditional microphone on a stand. These include contact, magnetic, piezo, and built-in microphone pickups.

Guitar Tips 22 - Try enhancing your sound by experimenting with adding "delay" to your playing. It is an electronic effect that is much shorter in duration and stronger in volume than reverb.

Guitar Tips 23 - Before buying a pedal that uses a power supply instead of batteries, be sure to listen for any "buzz" it creates in your output.

Guitar Tips 24 - Strumming Tips - First and foremost, think like a drummer when strumming. Ultimately, you have to keep good time. Practice with a pick on a corrugated piece of cardboard. Listen to the rhythm and make sure you have that down before transferring this over to a guitar.

Guitar Tips 25 - Learn to use accents in your playing to add interest, especially when strumming. This means striking some beats harder than others.

Guitar Tips 26 - Try out the sound of a guitar with a "multi-scale" fretboard. It takes a cue from the piano and has strings of varying length. You may find that you like the way it plays better than a traditional guitar where all the strings are of the same length.

Guitar Tips 27 - Be aware that if you play guitar consistently, you will get calluses on your fingertips over time. Most guitarists, however, carry a kind of demented pride in them. I still remember a high school friend showing me how he could stick thumbtacks in the tips of all his fingers without feeling any pain.

Guitar Tips 28 - One way to build calluses quicker is to take rubbing alcohol and rub it into your fingertips a few times a day. This helps dry them out and the calluses build more quickly. Just be sure that it doesn't split the skin.

Guitar Tips 29 - Fingers hurt after playing? Try one of two thing - 1) soak them in a bowl of icewater or run them under a cold faucet, just not to the point of pain. And only do this when you won't be playing for a while. Or, 2) use aloe on your fingertips. Either of these will prevent blisters.

Guitar Tips 30 - There are many commercial products designed to strengthen your fingernails if yours are getting beat up when playing. Just be sure to follow the directions carefully as some products can do damage over time if used improperly.

Guitar Tips 31 - New to fingerpicking? It's a great technique, much different than using a pick to strum or play individual notes with. To listen to a master, listen to Spanish classical guitarist Andrs Segovia - likely the most famous classical guitarist of all time.

Guitar Tips 32 - Now that you know the traditional fingerings for the basic chords, learn "bar chords". Learning to bar the chords you already know will make it easier to move from some chords to others and will also give you a different inversion or voicing of the chords you already know that will be more appropriate in certain musical situations.

Guitar Tips 33 - Having trouble hearing a chord of a song? Listen to the bass line. Often the bass line is the root note of the chord you're trying to figure out.

Guitar Tips 36 - Practice good form. Don't play with your guitar hung down near your knees. This serves to do nothing but hinder your ability to perform at an optimum level.

Guitar Tips 37 - There is a classical and modern way to hold a guitar. The classical method points the fretboard higher in the air.

Guitar Tips 38 - Regardless of how you hold the guitar while sitting, try to get one leg off of the ground by crossing your legs or putting a foot up on a box. This makes playing more comfortable and less fatiguing.

Guitar Tips 39 - Regarding hand position; try to keep your wrist parallel to the fretboard, so that your pinky can reach the notes just as easily as your index finger.

Guitar Tips 40 - Tablature is great for guitarists. Once you can read tab, start reading a plain music staff as soon as you can. It will open up a new world of possibilities for you, such as reading a melody in a piano score, solos transcribed for other instruments, etc.

Guitar Tips 41 - You'll find some tabs for songs online that suggest lowering the tuning of your guitar by a quarter step to a full step. While this can be legitimate in rare cases, it is usually the result of the recording technique altering the pitch that was played.

Guitar Tips 42 - Tune, tune, tune. No matter whether you play jazz, classical, ska, or punk. Tune before a gig. Tune before you practice. Tune when you wake up in the morning. Tune when you sneeze. Just kidding, but you get the point. If you can keep in tune, you rise above at least 50% of all guitarists. The next step is to get the rest of the band to tune.

Guitar Tips 43 - The easiest way to tune your guitar is to use an electronic tuner. You simply plug your guitar into the tuner and then read the gauge to know when each string is in tune. They are a relatively inexpensive but invaluable tool for any guitarist.

Guitar Tips 44 - A "Nashville Tuning" involves using lighter weight strings and tuning the guitar to match (mostly) the upper strings on a 12 string guitar. It is typically played alongside a regularly tuned acoustic guitar.

Guitar Tips 45 - The key of E. It's the old standby for any guitarist - kind of like the key of C for a piano player, or the key of Bb for a tenor sax player. That's just the point - different instruments are acclimated to different keys. So, as tempting as it is, try to veer away from playing in E, A, D, and G. Try to play in keys with flats, too - not just sharps. You'll be a better band member for it.

Guitar Tips 46 - E, A, D, G, B, E. If you're a guitarist, you know that those are the notes that a guitar's open strings are customarily tuned to from low to high. Don't be afraid, however, to experiment with alternative tunings.

Guitar Tips 47 - Just beginning? Consider making up an acronym to remember the note names of the "open" strings from lowest to highest - E, A, D, G, B, E

Guitar Tips 48 - Try to use your first finger as an "anchor" as you move between chords.

Guitar Tips 49 - If you're having trouble switching chords quickly enough, implement a simple practice plan. Use a metronome to keep time if you have one available. If not, there is plenty of free metronome software for your computer available online. Start out playing through the chords at a slow, steady tempo. When you can do it well at the slow speed, go a little bit faster until you can do it right at the increased speed, and so on.

Guitar Tips 50 - Have a chord book handy in your case, especially if you play any jazz. It can really help you to find a good voicing for a new type of chord you haven't played a lot. Faug7b9#11 anyone?

Guitar Tips 51 - Want to be extra versatile for paying gigs? Learn to play from a "fake book". They are simple charts or "lead sheets" with chord symbols and melodies for hundreds of songs in a single book. While they used to be primarily jazz, you can now find rock, country, and blues fake books.

Guitar Tips 52 - Did you know that only the top two pairs of strings on a 12-string guitar are tuned in unison (tuned to the same note)? The bottom 4 pairs are in octaves.

Guitar Tips 53 - New to the guitar? Be sure you know what kind it is before you put new strings on it. There is nothing that sounds worse than steel strings on a classical guitar that calls for nylon strings.

Guitar Tips 54 - It's always a good idea to keep a spare set of new strings in your case. It's also a good idea to keep an old, used set of strings as a 2nd backup!

Guitar Tips 55 - How often do you change your strings? Did you know that this is one of the quickest and easiest ways to make your guitar sound better? Be sure to change your guitar strings way ahead of the gig so that they have time to stretch in.

Guitar Tips 56 - Different strings, alternate tunings, age, temperature and humidity, and other things can alter a guitar's pitch and tuning. One way to mitigate this is to have your guitar's saddle compensated by a good repair person.

Guitar Tips 57 - For some new sounds and a different feel to your playing, try experimenting with different picks. They come in various widths and materials. There are even steel picks for a harsh, metallic sound.

Guitar Tips 58 - When playing, jazz, experiment with the volume knobs. Many jazz guitarists playing a solid-body electrical like to turn the guitar all the way up and then turn the amplifier down to a low volume in an effort to sound more like a hollow-body electric guitar.

Guitar Tips 59 - When buying your first electric guitar, think about the style of music you expect to be playing in. Will you concentrate on classic rock, funk, alternative, jazz, punk, blues, or what? Or, do you want the guitar to be versatile enough to play in many different genres? Knowing your thoughts on this will make it easier for your local music store salesperson to help you find the perfect match.

Guitar Tips 60 - Doesn't is sound great when a blues guitarist like B.B. King, Albert King, or Robert Cray bend a note? It's a great technique of used correctly. Just push the string toward the center of the fretboard while holding the note. Generally, play a note that is a half step below the third or fifth of the chord and bend the note up.

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Guitar Tips 61 - Love the guitar? Great. Who do you listen to? Probably those that play songs that you like. It's a good idea to listen to guitarists who play other kinds of music, even if you don't care for it, in order to learn other techniques by listening. Try some Flamingo guitar, Classical, Mariachi, Funk, Rockabilly, Eastern European. You'll likely find yourself using a new skill here or there.

Guitar Tips 62 - Dedication is key to learning to play the guitar. It takes a lot of time and practice to learn to play. The more determined you are the better guitar player you will end up being.

Guitar Tips 63 - Help prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. It has cut the careers of many guitarists short, and interrupted many as well. Make sure that you hold the guitar properly, not gripping the fretboard tightly, wrapping your thumb around the back to play low notes, etc. It is also a good idea to stretch your hands and arm muscles before and after playing.

Guitar Tips 64 - For tendonitis (pain in your tendons), go see a doctor. It is advisable to break from playing if possible. The doctor may give you stretching exercises and/ or suggest icing the area down before doing a deep massage. Wearing a wrist brace while sleeping may also help.

Guitar Tips 65 - There are lots of ways to learn how to play the guitar. You can learn with the help of books and DVDs. Or you can enroll in a guitar-playing class at a local music shop.

Guitar Tips 66 - Need guitar lessons? Online lessons are even an option now, as long as you have a webcam on your computer. There are both free and paid classes. Paid ones tend to have a bit better instruction.

Guitar Tips 67 - It is beneficial when learning to play the guitar to gain knowledge of guitar concepts and proper playing techniques.

Guitar Tips 68 - Whether you like jazz or not, you'd do well to give a listen to Stanley Jordan. He has taken the methods of Wes Montgomery and George Benson to a whole new level, and increased the vocabulary of the guitar in general. Not only is he amazing technically, but he is incredible musically.

Guitar Tips 69 - Start with learning the basics - basic cords C, A, G, E and D - strumming patterns - terminology - which string is which. These are the things that you will build on to get to playing songs.

Guitar Tips 70 - If you want to start learning some scales, try C major and C minor. They are relatively "open position", and very useful when playing with a band.

Guitar Tips 71 - A "Power Chord" is an important tool in Rock. You play it with only 3 strings and mute the rest. In the key of E, the notes would simply be E, B, and an upper E. It is just a fifth with the octave on top.

Guitar Tips 72 - Knowing all of the note names on the bottom two strings is important to being able to find any note on the fretboard.

Guitar Tips 73 - Think that a new guitar is the way to go? Think again. Unlike many things, a good guitar will only get better with age if it is cared for well. This is why the instruments of professional classical guitarists and string players are often hundreds of years old. The wood becomes more resonant over time. So, for the same price you may pay for a sub-standard brand new guitar, you can likely find an older one that is a much better instrument.

Guitar Tips 74 - Guitarists are well-known gear heads, constantly trading up, trading down, selling and buying. While it will definitely improve your skill to be able to play multiple guitars in multiple configurations, there is a point of diminishing returns. Also, consider Hendrix, B.B. King, and the Beatles, all who stuck with one or two guitars throughout their playing career. Most great classical musicians will also find a particular instrument they love and stick with it.

Guitar Tips 75 - When you go to concerts of your favorite musicians, watch how they play. If you can, and are close enough, watch their fingers as they move across the fret board.

Guitar Tips 76 - Many great guitarists look absolutely boring when they play, or even look bored themselves. This detracts from the hard work you've put into your craft. Watch other exciting guitarists who play in your genre. Then, video yourself and see how you can do better. It may seem awkward at first, but it will become second nature over time to do a bit of moving around.

Guitar Tips 77 - Pedals. They're cool. They're fun! They're like having toys to play with. Just don't let it get out of hand. It can be distracting if a guitarist is always messing with a board of pedals. Rule of thumb - only use a pedal if the sound it creates is serving the music.

Guitar Tips 78 - A digital pedal board can be a lot of fun - it almost turns your guitar into a synthesizer, and you can get many sounds for a low price. However, sound quality is the tradeoff. You will rarely see a professional guitarist use one of these all-in-one units. Consider finding 2 or 3 analog pedals you can really get some good use out of before buying a digital board. Digital doesn't always mean better in sound reproduction, especially on stage.

Guitar Tips 79 - One technique that many non-classical guitarists forget about is vibrato, or making the pitch pulsate quickly by repeatedly going sharp and then back to the actual pitch over and over very quickly, as a singer's voice does. This can be done in two ways. For a more tight vibrato, rock your finger on the headboard between the guitar body and the headstock as you are holding the note, pulling the string slightly over and over. The other way is to use a tremolo bar.

Guitar Tips 80 - Have a small guitar for a child? The tuning may be different - some start on A, for example, instead of the customary E. Check the manual or take it to a shop with a good reputation.

Awesome Gifts for Guitarists

Guitar Tips 81 - Guitarists are NOTORIOUS for playing "in the breaks". What I mean by that is playing when everyone else has stopped, both in rehearsal and even on gigs! Please, have some respect for your bandmates and the music and be silent when the music stops or the bandleader cuts the song short in rehearsal.

Guitar Tips 82 - Keep volume in mind. I have played with guitarists who thought they should be louder than the rest of the band combined as well as guitarists who were inaudible from the audience because their amp's volume was so low. Balance is key.

Guitar Tips 83 - Electronic tuners are great. Get one. Use it often. But only after you attempt to tune it by ear. This exercise will work wonders for your musicianship and you will see improvement over time.

Guitar Tips 84 - If you don't have a tuner handy (and you don't have perfect pitch), you can pick up a telephone to get a pitch from a dial tone. In the USA, the dial tone consists of two pitches, which are roughly an F and an A (440Hz) a third above. Tune to the A, or sing a half step below the F to get your E.

Guitar Tips 85 - Notice some very thin vertical lines on the surface of the body of your guitar? No need to worry. It's referred to as "silking". They are simply natural lines in the wood.

Guitar Tips 86 - To see whether a guitar is solid wood or if it is laminated, look inside the sound hole. Then, look at the same spot on the back of the guitar. If the grain matches, it is solid.

Guitar Tips 87 - Every now and then, take your guitar into a shop to have the intonation checked, or do it yourself. Just because your strings are in tune doesn't mean that a note you play high up on the fretboard is in tune. This is a result of your guitar's neck bending slightly over time in response to the pull of the strings.

Guitar Tips 88 - You may hear of different fret sizes, such as "jumbo" and "medium-jumbo". These descriptions are not standard among the industry, so one manufacturer's "Vintage Jumbo" may differ from another's. Make sure you play it to see how the difference feels.

Guitar Tips 89 - "Revoicing" a guitar means making permanent adjustments to the instrument in an effort to improve the sound. One example would be a guitar repairman or craftsman hollowing out extra parts of the inside of an existing guitar.

Guitar Tips 90 - From time to time, you will need to get your guitar's frets "dressed", especially on an electric guitar. A repairman will file them down and reshape them. Over time, frets get a dent where you press the strings to them.

Guitar Tips 91 - Try to clean and lubricate your fretboard with some quality products every time you change strings to avoid buildup.

Guitar Tips 92 - Some guitarists put soap or a lubricant in the nut slots at the top of their fretboard to help the guitar stay in tune.

Guitar Tips 93 - Avoid traditional wood cleaners when cleaning the body of your guitar.

Guitar Tips 94 - Getting ready to record your guitar at home? Wondering about latency? For best results, it should be 10 milliseconds or less. However, if you are recording live to a single track with no overdubs, latency won't be an issue. Just turn off any monitor.

Guitar Tips 95 - If you are trying to find a band to play with, you would do well to go and listen to a few in person. This can be so much more productive than answering ads online or in free classifieds. Introduce yourself and you might even be