What makes an intermediate guitarist

Once you feel confident in your basic abilities as a guitar player, what actions should you take to continue developing your skills? Keep reading and I will tell you. A lot of guitar players will often find that their playing comes to a bit of a standstill once they pass the beginner phase.

The people who have learned a couple chord progressions and a few scales? Its not surprising that these directionless moments are generally the stage that most people will give up on their instrument.

The issue here is usually not with the students, but with the teachers. There are many teachers out there who are not equipped to take a guitarist from the early to advanced levels. This is apparent in the number of teachers you can find who will specifically only teach beginning players, or only advanced players. But do not worry. You who are in the middle ground are not forgotten. Continue reading for some very useful tips on furthering your skill set as a guitar player. See for yourself!

In music as in anything natural talent is not enough to take you far. What really counts is practicing and practicing well. Any time spent with your guitar is good, however, knowing HOW to practice is whats important. Since we can agree that practice is an integral part to playing well, it makes sense to sit down and really examine your routine. The following are a few helpful tools that will help better your practice time. As we know, music is an auditory art.

So when it comes to learning music, listening is key. One thing is for certain, if you have reached an intermediate level of playing, you are demonstrating a passion for the instrument.

That is essential to having momentum and moving forward. How do you know what an intermediate guitar player is? An intermediate guitar player will know where all the notes are on their guitar, they will have a good chord vocabulary, they will know a few scales and be able to play simple solos, and know how to play a few complete songs.

Begin by getting your chord vocabulary built up to include Major Chords, minor chords, Dominant 7 chords, and Major 7 chords. Obviously, there are many more chords than that, but you can do a tremendous amount with just those. There is no short cut to learning these. Drill them and commit them to memory. The minor Pentatonic Scale and the Major Scale are perhaps the two most widely used scales. These are the scales that most players learn first. The minor pentatonic scale is the workhorse in the sense that it is a scale that guitar players love to jam in.

There are tons of classic licks built around these notes and the scale fits comfortably in your hand. The Major Scale is where we get all of our music theory. So, not only is it a great scale to solo in, but it is also where we learn how notes, and chords, and scales work together. An intermediate guitar player will be able to perform complete songs.

It is not unusual to run across guitarists that know only the beginning of a song, or maybe the main riff, but they have never put the whole thing together. In other words, they are starting to get it. Learn slash chords to create smooth transitions between chords.

Work on a vocabulary of jazz chords that are also often used in pop, rock and blues music like Maj7 , Maj6 , mMaj7 , Min6 , m7b5 , augmented and dim7 chords. Apply the chords to songs and keep using them so they are fully integrated into your playing. Learn the chords you already know and new chord types in different positions on the neck to become more versatile and free in your playing.

This means combining your rhythm playing with mute strumming techniques. The best way to learn this, is to listen to songs with this kind of rhythm playing and trying to figure them out by ear. Transcribing songs and learning these techniques by ear, listening carefully, trying, struggling, ploughing, listening and trying again. Play and practice the right songs As you improve your playing you need to keep challenging yourself.

Look for new songs that kick it up a notch! Get out of that comfortable chair, get back in the ring and start working on songs that move you to a better place. Fingerstyle As you go from basic fingerstyle patterns to more intermediate level, you will need to a invest a little more time and effort to get to the next step. Depending on your intermediate level start with songs like Blackbird by Paul McCartney, Dust in the wind by Kansas, Tears in heaven by Eric Clapton, then move up to Queen of California and Speak for me by John Mayer song and Never going back again by Fleetwoodmac just to give some examples.

Another challenging and beautiful classical guitar masterpiece is Asturias by Isaac Albeniz, which starts from an intermediate level to a more advanced level. Riffs Intermediate guitar riffs will demand some more speed and flexibility, but will definitely upgrade the fun in your playing. Check out The 50 Greatest Riffs of all Times for more riff inspiration.

Your finger muscles need to be exercised and put in shape. Practicing scales and exercises 30 minutes a day with a metronome will really speed up your skills.

Also work on your different flat picking techniques like alternate picking and economy picking. They are the fundamental techniques to increase your picking speed. Intermediate blues rhythm You also want to level up your blues playing skills by learning some more challenging blues shuffles like Pride and Joy or Travis Walk by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Of course there are many others to choose from. Intermediate blues playing also means learning more juicy sounding blues chord progression to spice up your progression to old school blues turnarounds.

Music Theory Learn to grasp as much music theory as you can and put it to practice. It has the answer to all your questions. Why is a chord named this way? How do I know which chords to play? In what key is this song? What scale do I need to improvise over these chords?

What chords fit this progression? Music theory makes you understand the guitar and music as a whole. Scales and Improvisation As a beginner you want to learn the pentatonic and major scale, but even as an intermediate guitar player you can keep expanding your pentatonic scale to a whole new level.

That becomes a real game changer. A guitar course like 50CoolBluesLicksImprovisation will take you to that next level. You could also learn to play and use the major scale and natural minor scale for soloing, practice other scales like major pentatonic , dorian , mixolydian and the harmonic minor scale.