Practice is something you should try for every day.? Give it all you can.? If you have difficulty with any part, slow down, practice slowly.? Try introducing an interval of at least 1 second between each count until your playing accuracy has improved.? It isn't necessary for you to play any piece at the correct speed right from the start.? If you slow down a bit your accuracy will improve and then you will find it easy to speed up.

Practice should not be a chore and a bore but an interesting journey of discovery.? You should have no trouble getting motivated to practice because you should look forward to it as an enjoyable experience.? You should practice as often as you can and practice slowly and carefully.? You will be surprised at how quickly you can progress with? careful repetition.? What at first seems almost impossible suddenly becomes easy.

You see, playing music well happens when you cease making a conscious effort.?? A concert pianist, for example, doesn't sit at the keyboard and think;? "Right! I will now depress the C key with the 3rd finger of my left hand and at the same time depress the E with the 1st finger and the G with the Thumb and at the same time I must remember to play 5 keys with my right hand" etc. etc.? What happens is that he sits down, calmly and plays.? There is no conscious thought? commanding the muscles of his hand to move his fingers.? He relies on MUSCLE MEMORY.? This happens when something is practiced so often that conscious thought is no longer necessary.? It is subconscious and the muscles react automatically.? If you find this hard to believe then I suggest you suspend your disbelief until you have proven it to yourself and prove it you will.? It will surprise you to discover that you can pick up your guitar and attempt a piece that you haven't played for a year or so and find that your? hands produce the tune automatically.? There is no thought as to what is the next note, your fingers are there playing them.? Hard to believe?? Well any accomplished musician will tell you the same thing.?

It's the same with anything that requires muscle coordination.? Golf for instance.? If you had to repeat to yourself all of the things you had to remember regarding stance, eye on the ball, right arm straight etc etc, you would be a lousy golfer.? It is only when you stop thinking about these things and rely on muscle memory that your golf game takes off.

And what does all this boil down to?? Practice.? Constant, careful repetition.

Now, we all have varying degrees of talent.? Some people seem to pick new ideas up very quickly and some are a bit slow but the people who do the best are the people who do it the most.? Take a person with only average musical ability who makes a special effort and that person will become far more successful than the person with exceptional musical ability who, perhaps because they are gifted, make little or no effort.? Look at some of the most successful entertainers today.? It is not that they are particularly gifted.? They succeed because they try harder and believe in their success more.? Did you know that anybody can sing?? It isn't a special gift given only to a few.? The truth is that anybody with vocal chords can sing.? It's just that some like doing it and practice it to the point were they become outstanding at it.? It's the same with the guitar.? You can become an outstanding musician with patient, constant, careful repetition.

It is not just practice though.? It has to be meaningful practice and you are lucky to be learning with this course because it provides a step by step guide to keep you on the right track.? You see, if you practice the wrong way of doing something, you will become very good at doing something the wrong way.? For your practice to be worthwhile you have to be sure that you are practicing the right things.? Trying to play a guitar without the right guidance will severely limit your progress and you will eventually give up.? Stick with doing things the right way and your success is assured.? The old saying 'Practice makes perfect' is quite true.? The more you do, the better you will be and the quicker will be your progress.? Please realize that by regular practice your playing will be more enjoyable and you are paving the way to success, fun and friendship when your standard of playing improves and your talent becomes known to others.

You can improve your playing with mental practice, which might sound a bit odd to the uninitiated.? Creative visualization has now been proven as a technique for improving skill in a wide variety of areas.? Some years ago a test was carried out between two teams of people.? Both teams were asked to throw darts at a dart board and the results were recorded.? Team one was instructed to practice dart throwing for half an hour every day for a month.? Team two was instructed not to practice throwing darts but to relax for half an hour each day and vividly imagine throwing darts and hitting the bulls eye.? After a month the two teams were tested again and the remarkable thing was that both teams had improved dramatically.?

In every walk of life, creative visualization or IMAGINING has become a recognized technique for improving performance.

Now it is not my intention to teach you creative visualization techniques, there are books written on this subject for anybody who wishes to investigate this idea further.? What we are going to do is suggest that you can use some of these techniques to improve you playing and speed up your learning.

The first and most important thing to do is relax.? A good time is just before going to sleep at night or when you first wake up in the morning.? Form in your mind a mental picture of the music you are learning.? If you have practiced sufficiently you will be able to see the music in front of you in your mind.? Get a mental picture of you holding your guitar and mentally go over the notes that you need to play.? This will not be difficult if you have first practiced physically.? Hear the piece being played, in you mind, the way you want to play it.? Get a vivid picture of yourself playing the piece the way you want it to be played.? You subconscious mind will listen to what you tell it.? If you constantly tell yourself that something can't be done you will not be surprised to find that you can not do it.? Tell yourself that you can do it, often enough, and your subconscious? will try to achieve it.? It is important to maintain a positive attitude towards your music.? Don't defeat yourself by saying it's too tricky.? Instead tell yourself that you can beat it.? With careful, constant repetition and the right mental attitude you can succeed.? It's funny how people can believe that somebody else can do something but? they can't believe that they can do it themselves.? It's all to do with our own belief in our abilities.? If you believe you can do something then you will do it most of the time.? If you have a false belief about your musical ability the time to change is now.? Believe you can do it because with constant and careful practice you will.? Actually, if you follow this course and hold a positive attitude, there is no way you can fail.??????????????????????????????????

To further aid your learning remember to break the whole down into manageable sections.? One or two bars at a time or however much you can manage.? When you have learnt a couple of sections, join them together,? then add the next section until you are satisfied you have got the whole thing together.? This way you will spend more time practicing any difficult bits than you do the easy bits until the whole piece comes together smoothly.

Remember that, while you are learning, it is OK to write in the name of the notes if you still have trouble recognizing them.? You can write them in pencil above the note, then, when you know the piece you can erase them.? This is a helpful exercise in itself because the act of looking up the note from previous lessons and writing it down on the music will help you to remember it in future.

When you are a little bit more experienced you will be able to play with a very professional sound by simply reading ONE single note for the melody and ONE single chord symbol.? This saves you reading all the extra notes found in printed music.? It makes playing much easier than people? imagine and really speeds up your progress. You are? going to learn this technique in a future lesson.

For the time being it is best for you to learn the music as it is presented.? Only in this way will you learn to recognize the notes and the basic construction of music.?

Another new subject for you to learn in this lesson is the time signature.?

A time signature is written at the beginning of every piece and it's purpose is to indicate the number of beats or counts that are made in each bar.? The time signature does not indicate the speed or tempo of the piece but simply HOW MANY beats you are to make in each bar.? Speed is indicated by another simple device explained later.?

A time signature consists or TWO FIGURES, one written above the other with a little line separating them,? much like a fraction:

? ?

This one is called three-four time.

In modern music the time signature invariably remains the same throughout the entire piece.?

There are many time signatures but only a few are common to the popular pieces played today.? We will deal in detail with each one as we progress but for the meantime let us concentrate on the above three-four time.?

Three-four time is commonly known as Waltz Time and is used in pieces such? as Jazz Waltzes, Old time Waltzes, Swing and countless popular melodies.? You will no doubt play many popular three-four time pieces as you progress.

The top number in a time signature indicates the actual number of counts? that are made in each bar.?

The bottom number tells you the value of each count.

The figure 4 at the bottom of a time signature indicates to you that the counts are of CROTCHET value.? Therefore, this time signature:???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

? ?

Indicates that you are to play the equivalent of 3 crotchet beats in every bar.?

This does not mean that there will only ever be 3 notes in every bar.?

What it does mean is that whatever number of notes occur, the value of them in the time sense will always equal three crotchet beats.?

You can safely say that any piece written in three-four time will have three beats in every bar to be counted evenly as 1, 2, 3, in the manner learnt in your previous lessons.? Go back and revise your section on counting if you are still unsure because you must understand that your counts must be even and that there are no breaks or pauses between the last count in one bar and the first count in the following bar.?

Now you might be wondering to yourself why is the lower number 4 when it is indicating a crotchet, or one count.? Should it not be a 1 if all it is doing is indicating 1 count.? Well, strictly speaking, in musical theory, the SEMIBREVE is called a whole note and as the semibreve has a value of 4 beats the crotchet is regarded as a quarter note because 4 crotchets are needed to make up a semibreve.?

Looked at in this light you can see that the lower number - 4 in this case - represents the mathematical fraction of one quarter.? It relates to a crotchet note ( one quarter).? Place a 3 above it and the signature indicates that three crotchets are counted for each bar.

In the early stages of learning, it is vital that you make your counts slow and even.? Faster counts may be made as your playing improves and you gain more confidence.

Select a piece of music which you know well in three/four time and hum it to yourself without playing.? Tap a pencil to the correct value of each type of note as you hum it.? Point to each note with your left hand index finger as you hum and tap the pencil for it's beat value.? If you go through this piece several times on this basis you will get the idea of evenness and continuity that must apply to every piece written in three-four time.

If your are not progressing as well with this piece as you would like, try humming the melody again very slowly and follow each of the treble notes in turn as you do.? This will give you the idea that playing and reading the notes is? a quite straight forward matter for you.? As you hum along,? very, very slowly, tap a pencil to the 3 even beats.?

From a long range point of view your aim should be to play from music without having to constantly look at the fret board to see your fingers are in fact on the notes you wish to play.? It is necessary every now and then to keep your eyes on the music as much as possible.? Only look at your fingers when you have to.? Doing this, you are bound to make mistakes in the early stages but you will certainly benefit later on when, all of a sudden, you realize that you can play without looking at your fingers at all.? It will happen quite quickly if you try.

So far all your playing has been on naturals and as you know there is a range of sharps and flats to think about as well.? As your musical ability advances you will want to play these notes as they appear in popular music.?

Your fret board is set out in half tones or semitones as they are called

The sharp sign is written like this:?

?? ?

Whenever this appears, it tells you to play the fret position immediately up from the natural.

The note in the following diagram is C.? As it is written here it is the C one octave up from middle C.? It is the 2nd string, first fret.? If the note is to be sharpened to conform to the tune, it would be marked in the way shown and is now known as C sharp and is played on the fret position immediately up from C.? That is the 2nd string, second fret

? ? ?

Play the note C written in the first part of the diagram.? Then refer to the second part, where the appearance of the sharp sign tells you that the note is no longer C natural but has become C sharp.? To sharpen a note you play the next fret immediately up, ?Any note can be sharpened in this manner.?

When speaking of sharps and flats we say A sharp, or C sharp etc., not sharp A or sharp C.

In written music the sharp or flat sign is always shown before the note, not after it, as illustrated in the previous example.

There is nothing confusing about sharps if you simply remember that whenever the sharp sign occurs, you simply play the next fret immediately up from the note affected.?

If you were to see the note written on the 4th line of the treble stave, you would know that this was a D natural.? 3rd fret, 2nd string. If a sharp sign appeared before it, it would automatically become D sharp and if you look at your fret board chart you see that it is not indicated as D# but E flat. You would know that it was the next fret position separating? the notes D and E and whether it is referred to as D# or E flat makes no difference because the 2 are the same.? The use of a sharp sign or a flat sign is up to the composer and depends in the main what key the piece has been written in. Don't let this confuse you because it really is very simple. A half tone is one fret position up from the natural if it is indicated as a # and one fret position down from the natural if it is indicated as a flat.

The sharpened note is half a tone up from the natural note.? C sharp is half way between C natural and D natural in sound and is therefore called a SEMI-TONE.? A semi-tone is half of a full tone.? There will be a full explanation on semi-tones later, when you reach the stage of forming chords for a vast improvement in the sound of your playing.

A note can be flattened by the appearance of a flat sign before it.? A flat sign is always written like this.

?

? ?

To flatten a note, you play the fret position immediately down ( below) the natural note that it affects.???

From the diagram of your fret board in lesson 1 you can see where the flat notes are situated on the fret board.? If you follow the instructions just given,? you will see that D flat is exactly the same as C sharp.? If you check all the notes you will find the same thing.? B flat is exactly the same as A sharp.? These are known as 'Equivalent Sharps and Flats'.? Is this confusing ? ?? Well not really.? You see, it is very unusual for a piece of music to contain both sharps and flats.? It will contain either one or the other but seldom both.? It is all to do with the key that the music is written in and you will learn more about the key signature later. If you ever did find both a sharp and a flat sign in the same bar just treat them the way you have been taught.? Not wanting to sound repetitious but I'll say it again. If a sharp sign appears before a note you play the next fret position up and if a flat sign appears before a note you play the next fret position down.?

Remember that the flat sign, like the sharp sign is always written before the note even though we talk about the note being B flat etc.?

An important rule to remember which traps a lot of newcomers is that the sharp and flat signs change ALL NOTES OF THE SAME NAME in the SAME BAR after the sharp or flat sign appears.? UNLESS A NATURAL SIGN is written in to alter it.?

?? ?

In the bar written above, the first note is F.? The second note is A but it has a flat sign in front of it so is played as A flat (Looking at your fret board chart it is the same as G#).? The third note in the bar is also played as A flat even though a flat sign is not written against it.? The reason is , to get back to the rule, a flat or a sharp sign changes? all notes of the same name that follow in the same bar.? Only the insertion of a natural sign can alter it back to a natural note.?

THE NATURAL SIGN.?

The natural sign looks like this:?
?? ?

When you find this sign before a note it indicates that the note is no longer a sharp or flat but has reverted to a natural note.?

?

?

In the preceding example the first note is F.? The second note is A flat.? The third note is also A flat.? The fourth note is A natural, (just called A).? This last note in the bar has changed from A flat to A because the natural sign is written before it.?

The 'Accidental'.?

The sign used to indicate a sharp, flat or natural is called an Accidental, so called because a composer used them to indicate what you might call an 'accidental' change in the melody.? In most popular music accidentals occur very rarely so it isn't necessary for you to worry about them too much but when they do appear you should know how to treat them.

C flat and E sharp.?

You will have noticed on your fret board chart that there are no sharps or flats between B & C or? between E & F.? In these unusual instances the sharp of flat can be played on the natural note.? (B is Cb).? These notes are very rarely sharpened or flattened so it is not necessary for you to concern yourself with them at this time.?? We will discuss this in more detail in a later lesson.

Playing sharpened notes.?

The best way to get acquainted with sharpened notes is to play them so let's have a go.???

It is a good idea to train yourself to be thorough and look at the music from the beginning.? If you started by looking at the first note the two important signs before the first note could escape your attention.?

The two signs in the following example are:

???????????

??????????? 1.???????? The TREBLE CLEF (Which indicates how the notes on the stave will be named).

??????????? 2.???????? The TIME SIGNATURE (Which tells you how many counts you are to make in each bar).?

If you still have trouble naming the notes, pencil them in lightly above each note after checking it's line or space position.? When you come to a SHARPENED note remember to play it one fret position above the equivalent natural.?

In the next example we will use the same notes as in the above example but now the sharps will be made flats.? Write out the note names again taking notice of where the flat and natural signs occur.?

Comparison of the sharp notes in the first example and the flat notes in the second example confirm what was mentioned earlier, that F sharp, for example, is the same as G flat and G sharp is the same as A flat and so on

We have not included a lot of printed music in this course as you will probably want to try out your own choices which is much more fun than being forced to learn something you are not particularly interested in.??

You can download lots of examples from Gilbert DeBenedetti's site and if you haven't had a look there yet click here.

Start off with something simple and a tune you know well.??

If you haven't made the progress you would like with your chosen tune, stick with it for another 10 minutes or so.? Try the first 4 bars only.? Practice the melody on it's own, then the chords, which we will cover shortly, on their own.

Take it slowly and just try that little bit a few times until you are happy with it then forget it and move on to the second 4 bars.

Music is so much easier than might first be imagined when you realize that much of it repeats itself, so when you have mastered one small section you have automatically mastered other sections.

If you are still having trouble the problem is that you are playing too fast.? Slow down.? Practice in easily managed sections - slowly - then put it all together.? Speed will come quite naturally once you have mastered the tune.

Play this first 8 bars several times.? If you have been a bit half hearted about it and are not making good progress please start again and really try.? This is important for your future progress.? Once you have got the first 8 bars off pat you will be able to manage the next 8 without too much difficulty as by now you will see a pattern emerging and you will be in the swing of things

spend time on your first piece and if you are having problems please revise.? It is surprising how a second reading can clear up points that at first seem a little hazy.

Once you are satisfied that you can play the piece well congratulate yourself on making considerable progress in such a short space of time.? Make sure you understand everything before proceeding so that you get the most benefit out of future lessons.

Make sure you understand the value of dotted notes.

Remember that slow and careful practice is the name of the game and allow yourself ample time to come to terms with new concepts as you learn them.? Don't be put off because it doesn't all come together for you first time round.? Have patience and perseverance and you can be confident of good results.