Guitar Lessons and Techniques

There are two major types of guitar lessons available to new players: lessons for beginners and lessons to improve technique.  The former type of lesson is something every guitar player goes through in some way/shape/form, whether it’s with a traditional instructor (a professional guitarist) or using literature such as a beginner’s guide to guitars (including an online guide), the basic steps towards mastering the guitar are the same for everyone.  All beginners will busy themselves in learning how to hold the instrument, memorizing chords and fingerings, reading sheet music, and finally putting everything together in order to play songs.  Once past this introductory stage, an intermediate/advanced guitarist will need to hone their craft by learning/practicing guitar techniques to gain experience and eventually master the art of guitar playing.

For somewhat obvious reasons, it’s difficult for instructors to ‘teach’ technique to a student, otherwise everyone would conceivably be as good as Jimi Hendrix!  The best (and virtually only) way to gain skill in using guitar techniques like vibrato control, reverb/distortion manipulation, and improvisation is experience coupled with lots of practice.  Know that guitar techniques cannot be learned overnight, it will literally take years of playing before gaining the ability to treat a guitar as more of an extension of one’s body, rather than as just a tool to produce sound.

Part of the task in developing unique guitar techniques comes from the imitation of established players.  Here is where an instructor is especially useful—for while it’s hard to ‘teach’ techniques, it is quite easy to repeatedly demonstrate them for a student taking guitar lessons so that they can try and mimic the techniques.  Vibrato manipulation is an especially ideal candidate for this type of technique instruction, as the basic movements to produce vibrato is pretty similar throughout all guitar models (especially with the presence of a trembolo for electric guitars).  Reverb and distortion control can also be introduced by repetition by an instructor.  While it will take the student herself to learn the ‘feel’ of their guitar enough for knowing when she should apply more/less pressure when fingering to get a desired tone, the instructor can aid by showing how it’s done and helping her achieve the same results.

As mentioned before, improvisation is one aspect of guitar technique that cannot be taught.  This holds true even for the repetition technique outlined above.  While there is a certain amount of usefulness in memorizing chord progressions and common transitions/guitar riffs used in a particular genre, the only way to learn improvisation is to practice it.  Playing without sheet music along with a running bass line is a typical way of gaining the experience required to become effective at guitar improvisation, but again this is a technique that will not come to players overnight.  For many guitarists who are learning while in school, the best source for gaining experience in improvisation is to join the jazz band as a guitar/bass player, then branch out into other genres using those learned techniques.