Blog — Judy's Guitar Lesson | Hong Kong Guitar Lesson

Musical improvisation is an immediate musical composition and is often done within the pre-existing chord progression.

Here is the chord progression in the track:

| Em7 | Am | D | Em |

Step 1: Consider what scale can be used in the chord progression, for example, in the key of E minor, use either E natural minor scale or E pentatonic scale is best fit to the chord progression because both scales harmonize to the chord tone.

Step 2: choose the position of the scale and choose the notes limited to 5-6 notes within an octave.

Step 3: Notice the chord tone notes have to emphasis.

For example, emphasis the E note and D note in Em7 chord, A note for A minor chord, D note for D major chord, E note for Em chord.

Step 4: Restrict the rhythms have to improvise, improvise the guitar solo making of the half, quarter, and eighth notes.

Step 5: Play with feeling, thinking of just like singing a vocal line.

Q1. What is the difference between electric guitar and acoustic guitar? Should I learn the acoustic guitar first?

A1. The main difference is that the various guitars are used for different types of performances: for example, the tone of acoustic guitar is softer, suitable for playing folk songs and some softer music. Meanwhile the electric guitar with distortion effect is more suitable for playing rock music and heavy metal music.

But no matter whether you learn to electric guitar or acoustic guitar ,there is no difference in the basic skills to learn at the beginning. But if you plan to learn rock songs, you need to play his unique skills in the long term, such as tapping, bending, and so on.

Q2. How long do I have to learn to learn to play a song?

A2. First of all, you need to clarify the definition of “playing a song”, for example: just playing the monophonic melody of the song, making the audience recognize what song, or just singing the chords is also a song, or even Chord Melody's guitar solo is a song. Everyone has a different goal, so the time each person can "play a song" is very different. In addition, it depends on the number of hours of exercise, the concentration of practice, and the frequency of practice. Practice makes perfect!

Q3.Which types of music notations do guitarists read? Numbered Notation? Chord Chart?

A3. The all music notations mentioned above can be read by guitarists, because guitar is a most popular instrument in the world that has been involved in different genres across the ages. Different composers or arrangers will have different ways of visualise music in terms of different creative purposes. So any types of music notations can be read by guitarists.

Q4. Why is F Chord so hard to play? How can I overcome it?

A4. The “F Chord” is usually a barre chord pressing by more than one strings with left index finger. For beginners, if the practice method is wrong, it will be quite painful and ineffective. In fact, try to understand the theory of chord composition and learn to play open chords (open chord: only one tone per finger), F Chord is not as difficult as we think, and there are many different finger placement (different Chord Voicing) ), suitable for students to enter different stages of playing.