Acoustic Guitar Player

To improve your guitar playing you need to get your hands on some good guitar exercises that will help get your fingers play different patterns than what they are used to.  Most guitar players get caught in a musical rut because they only play certain exercises that are repetitive and predictable.  Although I always stress that the end result needs to be good music that sounds musical and not like scales or exercises, there is still a need to strengthen the fingers on a regular basis so you’ll be equiped to play at a decent standard.

The exercise above is a  sort of a crab walk where you play to fingers then jump to the next string.  When you get this one down, try swapping the order of the fingers e.g. 21 34 21 34 etc.  I highly recommend after you have done some finger exercises, it is worthwhile playing some music.   idon’t recommend finishing the day or musical practice session on finger exercises.  It is important to get something back from the practice session, and that is MUSIC itself.

I’ve uploaded a printable version to make it is easier on your eyes.  Click the link to download

Guitar Finger Exercise - Free Tab and Music Notation

 Free Tab and Guitar Notation guitar Exercises

Sometimes there’s very little time to warm up before playing a live gig.  you’ve done everything right, been organised, turn up early and kappow, everything goes skewiff.  I always like to warm up before I play.  Above is a very basic warm up exercise that I have found to be very valuable if there is very little time befor I go on live.

It is a simple D major arpeggio (A chord broken up) played across the top (highest sounding) three strings of the guitar.  Work your way all the way up the neck.  Yes there are many exercises, but if I’m really pushed for time, I’ve found this one to be tremendous.

 PRINTABLE VERSION available Click Here Guitar Warm Up

Learning to play a Twelve Bar Blues is very common.  What I’ve done is written out a simple 12 Bar blues but in a minor key instead of using the standard seventh chords. It has a much softer feel than the standard E7 A7 B7. What you will use is an E Minor 7th chord, and an A minor 7th chords instead of the E7 and A7.

 This is very soulful sounding and works well if you play it slow

Click on the link to download the printable acrobat reader pdf
E minor Blues Free Notation and Tab 12 bar blues

To improvise over this use the E minor Blues scale that is also useable over a standard blues.

You’ll find it here http://the-guitarplayer.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/e_blues_scale_3_octave.pdf