Playing rock and roll is the reason a lot of beginners want to learn guitar. If this sounds like you then after reading this article you’ll know the 3 areas to focus your practicing on to become a great rock guitar player.

Becoming a great rock and roll guitar player isn’t tough but it does take work, practice and concentrating on the right areas. After reading this article you’ll have a great head start.

Musical Theory

This is the back bone of all styles of guitar. Whether you want to front a rock band or play finger style you need to understand the basics of musical keys, note spacing and progressions.

It will only take a week or two to learn the basics of musical theory then you can refresh your mind as needed.

Guitar Chords

All beginners learn guitar chords, but to become a great rock guitar player there’s a particular pattern on the guitar neck you should learn.

The CAGED system is a pattern that takes advantage of some musical theory and the basic chord shapes to help you navigate your way all over the guitar neck.

Once you memorize the CAGED guitar chord pattern you’ll easily be able to find any major or minor chord … chords all over the neck. This is an important skill to find chords quickly on the neck and when jamming with others.

The 5 Pentatonic Shapes

If you dream of being a rock guitar player then no doubt you love the solos by guitar greats like Slash, Eddie Van Halen and others. I don’t want to give away these great guitar players secrets but you can play a ton of cool guitar solos just with the pentatonic scales.

The pentatonic scale shapes are the most used rock guitar scales by every lead guitarist.

There are five different shapes for each key. The cool thing is you only need to learn the shapes once then move them around to the different keys you’re playing in.

If musical keys are a little over your head right now, not to worry that’s what the musical theory will teach you.

How Should You Learn Guitar??

Some people try to teach themselves from books, while others take private lessons. I like learning from home, but prefer videos, dvds and online lessons over books..

A great course I’ve used and suggested to many beginners is by Steve Krenz and Legacy Learning Systems. You can read about it in this learn and master guitar review.

Learn & Master is a 20 DVD, 5 CD and lesson book set that covers everything we’ve discussed here and more. After completing this self study program you’ll be sure to be a top notch rock guitarist.

What makes Jimi Hendrix’s sound easily recognizable from Carlos Santana? How can you easily tell metal from funk, even if let’s say the metal player and the funk player are playing the same song (very unlikely, but bear with me here)? The answer: guitarists use effects to color their sound and give it a kind of modification suited to the type of music involved.

Normally these effects can be housed separately in small effects pedals, or in multi-effects hardware, or built into amplifiers, or simulated in computer software. They can be used singly, or you can turn on combinations of effects to get a particular sound. Let’s try to identify the types of guitar effects available so you know which one is perfect for achieving the sound you want.

Distortion effects are popular in genres like rock, metal, etc. This is what produces the heavy, rough, raw sound you hear in these genres. Distortion effects can be divided into categories like overdrive/distortion (this is the well-known rough sound), fuzz (which is used to copy the sound of a vibrating torn speaker – thus being “fuzzy”), and high-gain (the thick, loud, “chugging” sound used in heavy metal). Almost all rock bands have these as a given, and is a good, basic investment.

Filtering effects are effects which shape the sound by enhancing or minimizing certain frequencies. Here you can find equalizers (similar to how normal equalizers work), and wahs (a foot-operated pedal that lets through increasingly higher or lower frequencies by rocking the pedal). The wah pedal is named because it sounds like a person saying a long “wah” when rocked (the low frequencies are the “w-“ and the high frequencies are the “-ah” part). You can hear this mostly in funky grooves.

Volume effects are just that, they modify the volume in different ways. Examples of these are volume pedals (these are just volume knobs in the shape of a pedal which you can rock back and forth), tremolos (which is used to copy the sound of a volume knob being turned up and down quickly, making the tone “fluctuate”), and compressors (used to preserve a certain volume level as the signal gets louder).

Time-based effects take a sound signal and copy it, making a kind of echoing sound. Delay pedals can change the delay time between the original sound and the copied sound, up to very long delay times, making a rolling echo-like sound (a notable user of delay effects is U2’s The Edge). Reverb pedals, however, copy the sound produced in a large space, where little echoes pile up and decay quickly. Aside from distortion effects, these are also popular, and may be an essential part of your rig.

Modulation effects are effects which actually change how the sound sounds. Examples of these are phase shifters (which makes a sort of whooshing sound by copying the original signal and then putting it out of phase regularly), flangers (which create a kind of speeding-up or slowing-down sound), chorus pedals (copying the sound of several guitarists playing at the same time), and rotary speakers (copying the sound of a signal going through spinning speakers, making a kind of wavy pitch-changing effect). These types of effects are used to create those experimental, space-age-sounds.

Pitch shifters change the pitch of a signal, then combines it with the original sound so that it sounds like two guitars blending together in harmony. It can even be used as a bass guitar if you set it one octave lower than normal, or produce a video-gamey sound if set one octave higher.

You can experiment with combinations of pedals and connect them in chains to figure out what type of sound you want to create. After a while you can tell which effects were used in your favorite songs, and I hope this introduction can help you on the road to creating your own sound, and adding new dimensions to your musical adventure.

Simple Video Guitar Lesson

It is not easy to learn an instrument. It is important to make sure you have solid self discipline and apply yourself. You must develop a good work ethic because much of your practice Will be away from your teacher. To help you in your journey of learning your instrument here are seven habits that will help you along the way.

• Don’t put it off. When you practice, there are always a set number of task you need to do. It is easy to put off playing until tomorrow, but you shouldn’t do this. Begin practicing as soon as possible because it is so important to practice.

• Stay in touch with other musicians. Contantly play with others as much a possible to keep yourself motivated to improve.

• Keep going. To develop your playing keep on learning new skills so you will not get stuck in a rut.

• Use what time you have properly. if you don’t have a regular practice time then it is just about impossible to be consistent. Make the time to practice on a constant level so you can become a good musician.

• Have a good work environment to practice in. It is important to have a good place for you to practice. An environment that is clean and quiet is essential to practice so you can fully concentrate on what you are doing.

• Be comprehensive. You should never stop striving to become a complete musician. This is why it is good to keep list of all that is required to be a complete musician.

• Know your own work habits. Everyone learns differently. In order to adjust your practice, this is the reason to maintain it.

These tips will help you in your practice I hope. Maintaining good self-discipline is a matter of good planning and goal setting.