Guitar Tricks Blog

Posted March 20, 2020

B.B. King is considered to be one of the greatest blues artists of all-time and certainly one of the most influential guitar players ever. His signature guitar tone can be replicated via what guitar players call the “B.B. King Box” or the “B.B. Box.” This box refers to a box pattern on the fretboard that players can utilize to play B.B. King’s signature licks. This box pattern is also great to incorporate into any guitar player’s repertoire as it’s always helpful to know a few licks that c

Posted March 12, 2020

Practice is really important to improving as a guitar player. If you’re having trouble playing at faster tempos, or holding a barre chord, then it’s definitely a no-brainer to practice. Take time to really analyze what you’re doing and how to fix it. Here are three super easy, super simple practice exercises you can do every day to improve all facets of your playing.

Posted March 5, 2020

Advanced guitar techniques like sweep picking, travis picking, two-hand tapping open up a myriad of expression and creativity to playing. More than anything, the mastery of these techniques elevate the guitar into an instrument that is richer and fuller.

Posted February 27, 2020

Posted February 13, 2020

Posted February 2, 2020

Posted January 23, 2020

Country guitar licks are like musical sentences strung together by different words, or musical notes. Guitar licks are a handful of notes that create short phrases and you can use these licks to help with your lead guitar playing and improvisation. 

Posted January 14, 2020

Posted December 27, 2019

The guitar pedal order is important because having effects in your signal chain can potentially degrade your guitar’s tone. As a basic rule of thumb is to put the volume and non-destructive effects up front, or closest to your guitar while the modulation and time effects like delay go at the end. 

Thankfully, there’s a nifty graphic in this blog post for you so you don’t have to remember which types of pedals go first or last in your signal chain.

Posted December 18, 2019

What key is this song in? That's a regularly-asked question when a guitarist wants to jam or play by ear. Guitarists can figure out how to find the key of a song with a few super easy methods. In this blog post we’ll go over a very simple way of playing the correct notes, even if you don’t know what key the song is in. 

Posted December 5, 2019

The pentatonic scale is the first scale any beginer guitar player should learn. It’s easy, it sounds great, and can be applied to almost any genera or song. The pentatonic scale is made up of 5 notes (‘penta’ is Greek for ‘five’) derived from the standard major scale or minor scale. This pattern creates a ‘box’ on the fretboard which is easily movable and playable all over the neck.

Posted November 27, 2019

Christmas songs are fun classics like “Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” and others. Make sure to brush up on these numbers in time for the holidays! Thankfully, a lot of these songs are fairly simple to play and you can learn all of them right here on Guitartricks! 

Posted November 21, 2019

Guitar tone can be tricky to nail down, especially when gear can cost an arm and a leg. Luckily, playing music is not all about the equipment. As long as you have a decent, completely working instrument, you will be able to extract great tones and sounds from it. Here is a list of super-easy-to-implement tone improvements you can complete right now.

Posted November 14, 2019

Ghost notes are notes that are muted by a single fretting hand and are displayed by an “X” on guitar tabs. According to our guitar glossary, they “create a percussive effect with a slight underlying hint of a specific note.” But ghost notes may also carry another meaning. Some ghost notes are muted, but other times, a ghost note is a note that can be optionally played, that is, they’re notes that are not required but are there to embellish a piece if the performer choose

Posted November 7, 2019

You asked for it, and now here it is. Guitartricks is happy to announce the Acoustic Level 1 and Level 2 courses, the latest additions to our award-winning lessons. If you haven’t already, feel free to check out the new course here.