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Firm up your time with these swinging metronomes

by Douglas Lichterman

Practicing with a metronome is the long-established method for learning to keep solid time. Playing scales and chord progressions with the metronome forces you to recognize any tendency you might have to speed up or slow down while you’re playing and helps you correct it. Metronome practice also allows you to gradually and effectively improve the speed of all your techniques.

Today there are many better options than the monotonous click-click-click of the traditional metronome. One is to replace it with a drum machine, which is a hundred times more fun to practice with than a metronome. In my guitar studio, I have a Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-3 Standard that I’m very happy with. [more…]

Try this easy practice tool

by Douglas Lichterman

For those about to jam, we salute you.

Playing along with recordings is an effective way to learn new techniques and to try out your musical ideas. It can be annoying, though, to try playing your own lead guitar part right over what the lead guitarist on the recording is playing. Luckily, this problem is neatly solved by playing along with “jam tracks”, which are recordings that purposely leave out the lead guitar and provide just the backing tracks of all the other instruments. [more…]