40 Tips for Better Guitar Technique

The guitar is one versatile instrument. It is both a rhythm and a melody instrument. It works well as a solo instrument or in a band. Electric and acoustic guitars have very different personalities, yet similar skills will allow you to play both. It is portable enough to take with you on a trip, and loud enough to entertain a whole room of people.

Learning how to play guitar requires mastering a set of skills. You can achieve great improvement in your playing by getting fussy about your technique, and caring enough to do things properly. You need to banish sloppy playing from your musical vocabulary.

Here are 40 tips for better guitar technique:

1. Practice at least an hour a day. Practice makes perfect! (Were you expecting that tip?) But seriously, you won’t develop better guitar technique if you don’t spend hours working at it.
2. Your fingers will stop hurting when you develop callouses. You develop callouses by playing a lot. Even when it hurts.
3. Relax your right and left hands as you play. Apply only as much pressure as is required.
4. Minimize the movement in your left and right hands. This will help you play faster.
5. To play well requires finger memory, and finger memory requires lots of repetition. Practice!
6. Make sure your guitar is perfectly in tune, otherwise you won’t know whether you sound bad or just the guitar. I recommend using a good electronic chromatic tuner.
7. Put variety in your practices, and make sure you always learn something new. Spend time learning chords, scales and licks. Spend time learning and playing songs. Spend time just mucking around. As often as possible, spend time playing with someone else (or a recording of someone else).
8. If you want to make progress, make sure you practice the things you find hardest. Don’t take shortcuts.
9. Practice loud and practice quiet. Learn to add dynamics to your playing. Learn how to go from soft to loud and back again smoothly.
10. Memorize the songs you learn so that you can play them confidently without looking at music. Make it a habit early on. Revise the songs you have learned regularly so that you don’t forget them.
11. Learn songs in more than one key. Transposing songs is a great skill to have, and you’ll learn a lot more about how chords relate to one another.
12. When learning chords, learn more than one at a time. Your fingers need to learn how to move between chords.
13. Learn all of the common open chords: C, F, G, D, A, E, Dm, Em, Am, Bm.
14. Finger the strings as close to the fret as possible without touching it.
15. When learning chords, pluck each string one by one and make sure the sound is clean and unmuted. If the sound is muted, make sure your finger is close enough to the fret, and that another finger is not leaning on the string.
16. Once you learn a chord, learn all of it’s variations, including sus2, sus4, 6, 7, M7.
17. Practice upstrokes and downstrokes when picking and strumming. Make them as even as possible.
18. Practice with a metronome, drum machine or sequencer. Force yourself to play in time.
19. Practice slow and make sure every note sounds clear. Then speed up without losing the quality. “The slower you go, the faster you will get there.”
20. Heavy picks give you more volume and tone.
21. To develop soloing power, learn as many licks and scales as you can. Start with the pentatonic scale. To learn licks, refer to this Guitar Licks Directory.
22. Once you know some scales, try to work out the melody to some songs. Try nursery rhymes (they’re simple!), Christmas carols, songs you like, and songs you don’t. Listen to songs on the radio and try to work out their key so you can play along.
23. When learning barre chords, start with the E and A shapes. Later, learn the CAGED system.
24. Experiment with picking and strumming at different points along the neck. Pay attention to the different tone that you get.
25. Experiment with different guitars. Try different brands and sizes. Try electric and acoustic. See how changes in your playing affect the sound on different guitars, and get to know the sounds you like best. Visit music stores from time to time. Check out the guitar books and magazines while you are there.
26. Find a good guitar forum, and ask lots of questions and get lots of advice. You may even be able to answer some questions.
27. Search Youtube for “guitar lessons” and “learning guitar”. Add your favorites to your Favorites. Play along with the videos. Make the most of the free lessons!
28. Develop groove. Tap your foot and move your body while you are playing. Don’t just play notes and patterns, feel what you’re playing. If you don’t feel it, neither will anyone else!
29. Take turns in focusing on your left hand, then your right. You can’t focus on both at once. Many people neglect their right (strumming/picking) hand.
30. Learn different strumming patterns, and make up your own. Experiment with different combinations of upstrokes and downstrokes. Here is a video of ten strumming patterns to get you started.
31. Learn finger picking.
32. Learn how to read guitar tab.
33. Learn how to dampen the strings as you play. You can dampen them with the palm of your right (strumming) hand, or by relaxing your left hand – especially when playing barre chords.
34. Practice hammer-ons and pull-offs.
35. Practice bending notes. Learn to bend them a semitone or tone and incorporate them into your solos.
36. Practice sliding between two notes in a solo or two barre chords.
37. Manicure your fingernails. Keep your left (fretting) nails short. If you finger pick, try growing your right hand nails longer. If you’re serious about finger picking, clear nail polish will strengthen your fingernails. In fact, any color will do!
38. When learning chords, also learn which string sounds the root note of the chord.
39. When learning barre chords, start higher up the neck – the strings have less tension there, and the frets are closer together so you won’t have to stretch your fingers as much.
40. Learn every note on the fretboard. Advanced FretPro is a free download that will teach you every note in 60 minutes.  And Fretzilla has an online app that will test your fretboard knowledge.

Hungry for more? Here are 8 great sites for learning guitar:

1. My Guitar Solo
2. MusicRadar’s Guitar section
3. Guitar for Beginners and Beyond
4. How to Tune a Guitar
5. Hot Frets
6. Free Guitar Videos
7. Cyberfret
8. Guitarists.net