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For the beginner and intermediate guitar player.

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Learn to play guitar - Accelerate your playing

Learning to play guitar can start out to be very rewarding and fun but can also be frustrating especially if you're expecting results too soon.

While everyone knows it takes time to become proficient (or get “good”) at anything, deep down we all just want to be awesome guitarists and we want it fast right?  There is one slick tip I can share with you that will accelerate your playing very quickly if you stick with it and incorporate it into your playing.  It will also set you apart from other players and enhance your own sound as you create totally new sounding riffs and licks that your friends and other players around you simply aren’t playing.

The secret tip is to play things backward.  That’s right…take every scale, mode and exercise that you play and play it backward.  It will seem difficult and unorthodox at first but trust me and give it a go.
Let’s say you we’re playing a warm up that started on the first fret of the 6th string and moved to the second then 3rd and then the 4th fret and then repeated on the 5th string , then the 4th, 3rd, 2nd and finally the first.

It would look kind of like this…

E|1234
B|1234
G|1234
D|1234
A|1234
E|1234

But instead, you are going to start on the 6th string and play it backward starting with the 4th fret on the 6th string or the G# and descend each string down to the 1st fret before moving onto the 5th string and so on.  It would look kind of like this…

E|4321
B|4321
G|4321
D|4321
A|4321
E|4321

Now a great exercise to do if you were doing the conventional 1234 warm up would be to carry on up the neck and on the 6th string play the next 4 ascending notes starting with the F# on the 6th string but we’re getting crazy here so you’re not only going backward, but also upside down!

After you play the 4321 run from the 6th string on up to the first string you’re going to end on the 1 which will be the 1st fret on the 1st string (or F for the keeners following along ?).  Rather than jumping back up to the 6th string on the guitar simply slide your index finger from the 1st fret, 1st string up to the 2nd fret on the first string (F#) and play the next ascending run which fret numbers would be 5432  so that is going to look like this…

E|5432
B|5432
G|5432
D|5432
A|5432
E|5432

Keep repeating this exercise until you’ve reached or passed the 12th fret.  How the heck is this supposed to accelerate your playing you ask?  It will teach your fingers to work way more independently and make it easier to play difficult runs with weird fingerings and I would bet most of the other local rock stars aren’t even thinking about going backward in order to move forward!