Preludio Music Lessons

  Chord Reaching Chords are a huge part of the tools you learn how to use when you start playing guitar. Because you going to spend so much time playing chords, you need to develop good practices for placing your fingers on the fretboard. Most players learn by watching where your fingers go on each string and start with the index finger, then the middle finger and finally the ring and pinky fingers last. THIS method is backwards and you should be doing the exact opposite. Try this - close your eyes. Now reach up to the lowest string with your ring finger. Feel each string and count them 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... now go in reverse with just your ring finger. Once you've got a sense of the strings, please your ring finger in the 3 fret and close (make a note) the string. Repeat this on each string from lowest to highest and back again. This is reaching. You may have noticed that each time you closed the string, your middle and index fingers curled in behind the ring finger. Reaching makes ...

 Most students initially react to the metronome the way Captain Hook reacts to tick-tock crocodile. First, they look around to see where the imminent attack is coming from, and then run in fear of the constant ticking. Working with the metronome is really a requirement if you want to take your playing to the next level. And, when you make it big, recording in a studio, you’ll have a click track to keep everyone playing together. So it’s better to start working with the metronome when you start playing an instrument. Just make it part of your routine. I ask my students to get a metronome (I use TE Tuner  -It really is much more than a tuner and metronome) to help them make chord changes in sync with time. I’d been saying, you don’t need to set the time fast, just set it to 40bpm and do four beats per chord. WHOOPS, this was a big mistake. At 40bpm, the space between the beats is, speaking figuratively, infinite and makes it really hard to learn and feel the rhythm. The 40 bpm s...