While there is much pleasure to be had in owning guitars, which are undeniably beautiful things, nothing will enhance your enjoyment of the instrument more than learning how to play it a little better each day. The clue is in the name: it’s an instrument, designed to help you express your musical ideas with grace and precision, not sit gathering dust in its case. And improving is easier than you think – especially when you have expert advice to help you acquire new skills quickly and effectively. That’s exactly what we’ve set out to do here, in a one-stop power-up for your fretboard skills.

Working with our colleagues at Guitar Techniques, a fantastic mag for anyone seeking to hone their playing, we’ve selected no less than 200 powerful exercises and tips that will help you become a better player across the board. This guide also covers subjects that impact how good you sound and how frequently you’ll pick up gigs, ranging from setup and maintenance to working effectively with other musicians.

But the core of this guide concerns what happens on the fretboard, centring on how you can become a more musical, fluent and expressive player and realise your long-held dreams of being a well-rounded, confident and expressive guitar player. Getting good on guitar requires you to advance your knowledge on many fronts at once, from theory to dexterity. That’s why you’ll find tips, tactics and time-proven exercises to help to raise your game in nearly every important area of proficiency on guitar.

There’s a wealth of knowledge to soak up here, so we hope this guide will give you many hours of learning pleasure and take you further on up the road to being the kind of player you’ve always wanted to be.

1 LOOK AFTER YOUR HANDS Preparing and maintaining your hands is an obvious but regularly overlooked aspect of preparation. Keep the fretting nails short to help with easy fingering. Longer nails on the picking hand can be essential for certain styles, but rough edges will ruin your tone. Keep nail clippers and a file or emery board in your gigbag and wash your hands prior to playing. Clean hands will transmit less dirt to the strings giving them a longer life and better tone in the long run.

2 WATCH YOUR POSTURE It’s important for musicians to avoid any kind of injury. So don’t let yourself get away with bad posture: either stand or sit with a straight back and use a strap adjusted for your height. Angle the neck of your guitar towards the ceiling to help with stretches and fingering. Place your music and study materials on a music stand and adjust the height to eye level. Stretch all the muscles of the upper body, arms and neck prior to playing.

3 USE A LOOP PEDAL FOR PRACTICE Using a looping device that immediately plays back what has been performed at the touch of a foot pedal can be a great practice and performance tool. If you need to create a backing track – be it a one-chord vamp right through to the complicated changes in a jazz standard – the loop pedal is a very quick and easy option. The looper also gives you immediate feedback on your performance as you get to listen to what you played just seconds ago.

4 DON’T SCRIMP ON CABLES Investing in a quality guitar and pedal leads can make a big difference to your tone – it’s amazing how many players spend a grand or two on a guitar and amp then £10 or less on a cable. For long cables and true bypass setups, a good-quality buffer can also bring the tone back to life. Investing in a good power supply for your pedals is also money well spent, as is a dedicated pedalboard. By using Velcro on your pedalboard and pedals, it makes it easy to change your set-up and pedal order from gig to gig. Better tone equals better player!

5 PRACTISE SLOWLY Practising at a slower pace is great for developing consistent, accurate results. Practising a lick or riff slowly often gets overlooked, because it’s not the most exiting way to spend time on the instrument and requires focus and patience. By practising slowly, you’re programming your brain with the correct information and from this position it is easy to up the tempo. By practising too fast in the early stages, there is more chance that mistakes will be made and learned. A good way to set a slow-enough tempo is to take one that seems slow and then half it.

6 GET YOUR GUITAR SET UP The setup of your guitar can make a big difference to both tone and playability. Light-gauge strings and a low action is great for fast legato, while heavier strings and a higher action is better for picking resistance and bending. Many factors contribute to the setup of your instrument, so a professional setup is well worth the money. A good tech will adjust the truss rod, nut, pickup height, neck tilt, fretwork, bridge saddles for height and intonation and the vibrato arm action if your guitar has one. Remember, if you fancy experimenting with string gauges your guitar may well need to be adjusted to accommodate this.

7 BE STYLISTICALLY AWARE This tip is about playing for the song and ignoring the ego. A mature musician sticks to parts that complement the song, even if these are perceived to be easy to execute. One way that you can develop the skill of ‘playing the right thing’ is to listen to as many great players as possible. Virtuoso skill is a showstopper and can be great in the right place, but avoid inappropriate outbursts designed to draw all the attention on the guitarist. Less is more is a good way to go in most cases.

8 CREATE A DEDICATED PRACTICE SPACE One of the barriers to starting a practice period can be locating the relevant materials and setting up. A dedicated practice space that remains set up is a great way to make the most of your time when you feel the urge to get going. Here is a list of items that may prove to be handy when practising: music stand, slide, capo, picks, guitar stand, small amp, CD/mp3 player that slows down the music while maintaining pitch, metronome and tuner. A laptop, tablet or smartphone can be a great option for taking your practice materials on the move as many of the previous items can be purchased in the form of software applications.

9

“I don’t know which is harder and which is easier, playing all over the place or putting the right lick in the right hole. For me, it’s better to play in a groove than try to make people figure out what notes I’ve just played”

STEVE CROPPER

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“People sometimes need to be reminded that if you have a ‘tone’ then people won’t have a hard time listening to your story. Your tone is your face, and if you get a face that everybody else has got, where’s you?”

CARLOS SANTANA

In order to sound stylistically authentic, it is important to have the right sound. This is especially important in roots styles such as country, blues, jazz and rockabilly. Articulation and vocabulary also play a part in the overall aesthetic. Be sure to do plenty of listening, and research the