How To Make Money Teaching Guitar

Are you looking for information on how to open your own guitar teaching business? Are you already teaching guitar and want to make more money from your lesson programs? Do you want to learn how to open your own guitar school? Perhaps you teach guitar from home or are teaching guitar for a music school that is not your own? Whatever your guitar teaching situation, you can make a fantastic living as a guitar teacher.

Author Bill Lurie covers everything from how to advertise to registration tips to income strategies in How to Make Money Teaching Guitar. Bill shows you all the techniques and strategies he used to get the guitar students to come in and register for guitar lessons. He was able to register over 75% of every guitarist who called or dropped by from his ads. It took Bill 27 years to develop these strategies. It is all revealed in this comprehensive, instantly downloadable ebook. To learn more:
Click Here!

Scales and Licks: The Building Blocks for Improvising

When I was in my early teens, I remember an evening when I watched
and listened with amazement as one of my friends improvised lead
passages to "Hey Joe" in the style of Jimi Hendrix. Like the
Energizer Bunny, he kept "going and going," refrain after refrain,
each time adding something different, something new, something
fresh, something unique--all the while making it look so easy. He
even looked like he was a bit bored as those wonderful lead guitar
passages came forth! In later years I became enamored with
bluegrass music and I witnessed bluegrass guitarists doing the same
thing when it was their turn to take fast-paced lead breaks. Each
time around they did something completely different, sometimes on
the low strings, sometimes on the high strings.

It seemed like another world existed--a world beyond my
comprehension--a world where guitarists could, on their feet, at
any time, create new, rapid-fire music that would be perfectly
suited to fit the structure in which they were called on to
improvise. Were they actually creating new music on the spot, or
were they playing music they had already rehearsed? The answer is
that they were doing both: They were creating new music from
"building blocks" they had rehearsed time and time again. They
were, in rapid sequence, placing those building blocks where they
knew they would fit. What are these building blocks? Scales and
licks.

In music, a scale is an ascending or descending series of notes or
pitches. The pitches of the notes in any particular scale are
usually related by a mathematical rule. According to classical
guitarist Jamey Andreas (guitarprinciples.com), "The really
important thing about any scale is the SPACE between the notes, and
by space, I mean the space in terms of PITCH. It is the distance in
pitch between two notes that contains the EMOTIONAL CONTENT of
music."

There are different types of scales, based on the distances between
the pitches they contain. A G major scale will sound similar to D
major scale or an A major scale. Major scales all convey the same
"feeling," because they have the same pattern of spaces, or
intervals, in between each of their notes. I think of major scales
as being "happy" scales. Minor scales are spaced differently than
major scales, and the emotion they convey is what I would call
"sad," or subdued.

Andrés Segovia, the father of the modern classical guitar movement,
wrote, "...the study of scales will solve a greater number of
technical problems in a shorter amount of time than the study of
any other technical exercise." One of the best things the beginning
or intermediate level guitarist of any genre can do is to begin
learning to play basic scales in each key.

A lick is quite different from a scale. A lick is any phrase of
notes which is memorized so it can be applied in improvisation.
Andrew DuBrock, on acousticguitar.com, explains: "A lick is a
short, formulaic phrase generally used in improvised solos."
DuBrock expounds, "Many players string these licks together,
letting their fingers remember what to do next. They instill their
own personality in the solo in the way they play the lick or in the
moments between the licks, as well as in the melodies they pull out
of their head."

I remember a recording in which jazz saxophone player Eric Kloss
worked the phrase from the jingle "Things go better with Coke" into
one of his sax solos. That's an example of a lick. I play a lot of
old-time fiddle tunes on the guitar, so when I improvise a lead
break I often work in licks that are short phrases from the fiddle
tunes I've learned.

Do you want to create great lead breaks and be comfortable
improvising in any and every situation? Acquire the building
blocks: scales and licks. Get them ingrained so thoroughly in your
mind that your fingers know where to go without asking you.

Click Here for a Great Resource for Learning SCALES!

Click Here for a Great Resource for Learning LICKS!

Think You Know Guitar Strings?

Many guitarists know their stuff when it comes to guitars and equipment. They know everything they need to know when it comes to selecting a good guitar or amplifier. Yet they are in the dark as to something that can be even more crucial to the way they sound. They could actually improve the sound of their guitars drastically with the right set of strings.

Professor String has just published a book about one of the most misunderstood components of the guitar: Strings. According to the professor, "All sounds made by your guitar or bass start with the vibration of a string. Yet most guitarist overlook the basic principles of how to select the best strings for their playing style. They often start with a particular brand of string and stick with it forever. Or, they are constantly switching brands and never focus on anything specific to their playing goals."

Especially intriguing is the chapter on Advanced String Intonation (ASI). For more details on this instantly downloadable ebook from the professor himself:
Click Here!

Keeping a Guitar Journal

Here's an article that I put in my weekly newsletter awhile back. If you don't subscribe to my FREE newsletter, sent by email every Tuesday morning, why not sign up on the right hand column of this blog? The Flatpick Post Newsletter includes articles, product reviews, guitar playing tips and techniques, and guitar tablature for some great licks.

As some of you know, I paint (sporadically) in acrylics and egg
tempera. (You can see some of my work by going to
http://GriffsArtGallery.com and scrolling down to the bottom 5
paintings.) While I was working on one of my acrylics, I felt the
need to record some of the combinations of the colors I was using
so that I could refer to them as I continued with the painting. I
decided to buy a small and somewhat fancy soft, leather bound
sketchbook. I wound up using this book not only to record my paint
formulas, but for sketches and studies--and to track my progress
each session I painted. I also used this book to write down my
thoughts at different times--and even to write down quotes from
artists who inspired me.

Recently, I realized that keeping a journal would also be great for
a guitar player. What kind of things would you write in a guitar
journal? Well, for starters, you could track your progress on a
given song or lick between specific points of time. If you practice
with a metronome (which you should!) you can record the speeds at
which you able to play cleanly from session to session.

A guitar journal is also a great place to put your goals on paper
and then track your progress toward those goals. A journal can be a
good place to generate ideas. Write down the titles of songs you
want to learn and techniques you want to master. When you get
things on paper, one thought will often be the spark that leads to
other important considerations.

Write down, in notation or tablature, licks from your favorite
musicians that you want to learn. Create your own licks and get
them on paper so you won't forget them.

Observe a particular aspect of your playing and critique it.
Determine how you might make improvements and write it down.
Explore the possibility of expanding your style and genre and
record your ambitions.

Here and there, in your guitar journal, include quotes from some of
your favorite musicians, and even your favorite philosophers or
spiritual commentators. All of these things are just suggestions, of
course. It's your journal--do it your way--and enjoy!

Mastering Perfect and Relative Pitch

Did you know that for centuries the world's greatest musicians and composers have had a secret weapon that few others knew about? And even more astounding is the fact that every single person has this same ability lying undiscovered inside!

This special ability is pitch recognition, more commonly known as perfect pitch and relative pitch. These two skills have been the guiding force behind some of music's biggest names.

So what exactly is perfect pitch? It is the ability to hear a musical note or chord and name it. Relative pitch is the ability to hear and comprehend the relationship between one note and another. In other words, a musical interval. For example, a perfect 5th is an interval. To learn how mastering these pitches can help you a be phenomenal musician:
Click Here!