Category: Practice and Musicianship

Practice & Warm-Up Tips from Julian Lage

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These lessons explore what it means to be a more musical guitar player—including how to practice, learn, and have a healthy relationship with the guitar. You’ll find tips for developing your ear, playing with others, warming up, reading music, performing, and more of the foundational skills that will help you become a better and more confident musician.

Too Many Guitarists at the Jam Session? Play Bass on Your Guitar [Video Lesson]

In this Weekly Workout, you’ll practice some techniques for playing bass on guitar, from alternating roots/fifths and bass runs to octaves and the walking bass, using the chord progressions from some perennial jam-session favorites.

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
November 16, 2016

Video Lesson: 6 Steps to Playing Guitar More Musically

Playing musically is often confused with playing with emotion or feeling. If all you needed were feelings, everyone on the planet would be a musical genius!

Adam Rafferty
November 15, 2016

Reignite Your Love for Guitar: 6 Ways to Bust Out of Your Rut

From the October 2016 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY PAULINE FRANCE If you’re past the honeymoon phase with your guitar, chances are you’ve experienced a love-hate relationship with it at some point—and that’s OK. Maybe you’re frustrated because you can’t learn fast enough, or perhaps you’re just bored with playing the…

Acoustic Guitar Editors
August 17, 2016

Screwing up on Stage and Studio Musicians Tips Stringletter Performance Stage Practice

Screwing Up Onstage! Everyone Does it, Here’s How to Recover

Any player who’s put in a good amount of time onstage will most likely have a collection of train wrecks to tell about—

Adam Perlmutter
July 20, 2016

The Way You Approach Music in Practice Greatly Affects Your Success in Performance

Even if your playing in the practice room sounds good, you need to practice and learn the piece in a manner robust enough to withstand the pressure of onstage performance.

Louise Lee
May 10, 2016

Ron Jackson, seated and holding an acoustic guitar, performs the examples from this lesson on accompaniment

Weekly Workout: Be a Better Accompanist

Creating cool parts from scratch may seem to be a mysterious art form but it needn’t be an intimidating prospect

Adam Levy
January 26, 2016

Acoustic Guitar Notation Guide

The music in most guitar books and magazines is written in standard notation and tablature. Here's how to read standard guitar notation and guitar tabs.

Acoustic Guitar Editors
April 25, 2013