Worship Guitar Class Blog

Christian Guitar Lessons Blog

Playing with Confidence

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In the recent survey there were two related questions:  “How to control stage fright?” and “Tips on playing in front of an audience.”

In looking at the questions it occurred to me a better question is “How to play with confidence.”

Years ago I learned that even when the poles are far apart, there were a lot of people hitting telephone or electrical poles in accidents. Before the accident, turns out their predominant thought was ‘I can’t hit that pole!’ You naturally head towards what you’re focused on.

“How to control stage fright” presupposes you will have stage fright. When I first started playing the guitar, I was very nervous playing in front of people, so I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I does. You can experience stage fright, but you don’t have to stay there. Stage fright can become a distant memory. Yes, every one of you can learn to play with full confidence.

Here are my suggestions for playing with full confidence: [Read more…]

Tips On Practicing Music

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In the last survey, quite a few people requested help with finding time to practice and tips on how to practice. Here are a few ideas that you may find helpful.

1. Make Time To Practice.
We each have the same 24 hours a day. Only God is omnipresent so we need to be making choices of how to spent this gift of time we each have.

It’s a good idea to think about where you could cut back to open up a half an hour, or more, to spending on playing. I have a good friend who decided to cut out 2 hours of TV in the evenings. I also know a number of famlies that use their family devotional time for a perfect opportunity to add worship songs played on the guitar.

2. Make It Easy To Practice.
Set up a ‘practice area.’ Get a music stand to hold your music, a chair without arms and a convenient place for your guitar. I used to recommend leaving your guitar on a guitar stand, but in earthquake areas like California that wasn’t the best idea. A nearby case can keep it more protected. (I keep my good instrument in a case but still leave out an inexpensive one on a guitar stand just because it’s so convenient to get to.)

3.. Start With Prayer.
Our minds can be full of distractions. It’s good to get them quieted and focused on the task at thand, plus, as a Christian we can ask for resources beyond our own for help in all areas of our lives. This definitely includes help with learning to play the guitar.

For more ideas check out – How to Practice the Guitar

If you have some more tips on practicing, just add them to the comments.

New Headstock Tuner

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I heard about a new headstock tuner and just got an opportunity to try one yesterday. Wow… it’s so easy to use. It just clips on the head of you guitar and can tell what the note is by the vibration of your guitar.

These also work for pretty much any stringed instrument. It’s a chromatic tuner, meaning it can sense any note of the scale. It also has an option to tune to other pitches besides the standard 440. Another feature I really like is that the tuner doesn’t flucuate like most of the regular guitar tuners.

Since it tunes by vibrations, it doesn’t matter how noisy the room is or even how dark. There is a backlight to see it clearly in any lighting. You can get these from your local music store and I’ve also picked up some for the website. It’s at the bottom of the main products page here. Headstock Chromatic Guitar Tuner