Guitar lessons for beginners and more

Griffin GuitarConnect Cable Hands-On Review

I got my iPhone 4 a couple months ago, and now that I’ve had it, I can’t imagine life without it. With the app store, I’m almost convinced my iPhone can do anything. I was surprised when I found it could also act as a portable guitar effects unit as well.

A couple months ago Griffin Technology released their GuitarConnect cable for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. This cable plugs your guitar right into your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. The headphone output allows you to connect an auxiliary speakers or headphones.

Sanyo Eneloop Pedal Juice Hands-On Review

Sanyo just recently dropped a pretty interesting product called the Pedal Juice. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The Pedal Juice is a rechargeable 9V power supply for effects pedals, multi-effects units, and even portable recording devices. I just recently received a Pedal Juice to review, and here’s what I think.

In-depth Review of JamPlay Online Guitar Lessons

It’s quite possible you’ve seen some advertisements on Guitar Friendly for the online guitar lesson website called JamPlay. If you don’t know, JamPlay is an online guitar lesson service that teaches you how to play guitar through over 432+ hours of video lessons, live daily webcam lessons, all from over 40 instructors.

While I do gain a small commission to mention these products here (and ultimately support the development of Guitar Friendly), I can ensure you that I only mention these services because I genuinely believe in them and believe they are an excellent source for learning how to play the guitar. I was not paid or solicited to write this review. This review was written based on my first-hand experience with JamPlay.

With all that said, I want to take a bit more of an in-depth look at the service and see what it’s all about.

The Ultimate Acoustic Guitar Buying Guide

Not all acoustic guitars are the same. There are a lot of differences and characteristics that set each and every guitar apart from the other. Some of these characteristics are really obvious, but some are more nuanced and require a bit more attention.

When you make a serious financial investment, such as buying a guitar, it’s important to make an educated buying decision.

The purpose of this guide is to give you a comprehensive overview of the things you should consider when buying an acoustic guitar or determining the quality of one.

5 Tips for Buying Your First Guitar

So, you’ve decided you want to learn how to play guitar, but how do you go about choosing or buying your first guitar? You may have noticed already if you’ve been in any music store that there are hundreds of options before you. However, it’s not as overwhelming as it might seem.

1.) Consider Your Learning Goals

Before you drop some dough on a guitar, you need to think through what types of music you want to be able to play or the style of music you want to play. Somebody who wants to play jazz guitar isn’t going to get the same guitar as someone who wants to play metal. And somebody who wants to play folk music is going to stay far away from the guitars a metal guy/girl is going to look at (well, generally, anyways!).

Who are your favorite artists? Who do you want to sound like?

If you can start to answer these questions, it really starts eliminating the type of guitar you might consider buying. [...]

Blues Backing Tracks for Guitar: Five Free Tracks

One of the best ways to practice soloing is to use backing tracks for guitar. It’s hard to craft solos when you don’t have a band or another guitar player behind you. For those that don’t have this luxury, backing tracks are another really great substitute.

Professional guitarist and instructor Zack Roberts has complied over 50 professional backing tracks for guitar. He’s offering five of these for free to try out. I’ve taken a listen and they are of good quality and variety.

Here are some samples from his collection of blues backing tracks for guitar. Make sure you have Flash Player installed in order to hear them.

Backing Tracks for Guitar #1

12 Bar Blues Groove (E minor Pentatonic)

[view full article to hear the tracks]

Backing Tracks for Guitar #2

Jazzy Blues (G Pentatonic & G Mixolydian)

[view full article to hear the tracks]

In order to get the other three free backing tracks for guitar, go to his website here.

To get all 50 backing tracks it is $37, which means you get each for less than a buck. Zack is selling the tracks with a 100% money-back guarantee with some extras thrown in. It’s worth checking out. You can check it out here. [...]

Guitar Games Review: Learn Guitar & Fight Space Monsters

Lately, we’ve had some great lessons about guitar scales, learning the fretboard, and theory. If we’re really honest though, this stuff isn’t always very fun to digest. However, unbeknownst to me until just lately, there is a fun way to put all of this material into practice.

Just recently, I received an email from William Wilson, a classical guitarist from San Diego. William has put together a very fun and interactive resource created to help you learn the guitar fretboard, guitar scales, and theory called Guitar Games. I asked William if he would let me try it out and write up a review, and he gave me the okay.

Guitar Games Features
The goal of Guitar Games is to help you learn the guitar fretboard, guitar scales, theory, and how to read music. They’ve created a variety of interactive and fun games to help you learn all of this information that can often times be very boring.

I was pretty skeptical when I first received William’s email. I was honestly expecting the games to be cheesy and not very helpful. How can you possible make theory and learning the fretboard fun? It seems like a paradox.

However, I was pretty surprised once I took a look. [...]

How to Choose the Best Acoustic Guitar Strings

Choosing the right type of strings for your acoustic guitar can almost make or break the sound and playability of your guitar. It’s important that you select the right type of string, but with so many options, it can be hard to know what type of strings to get for your guitar.

Here are some important things to keep in mind that can help you with selecting strings for your guitar. For now, we’ll just look at choosing steel strings for the acoustic guitar. I’ll also give some recommendations of specific types of strings to try out.

What Type Of Acoustic Guitar Do You Have?

The body style of your acoustic guitar should play a role in what type of strings you choose. The most popular body styles are dreadnought and [...]

Taylor Solid Body: A Look at Taylor’s New Electric Guitar

Taylor Guitars has continued to push the envelope with their new electric guitar called the ‘Solid Body.’ It’s a fine looker. I’d be interested to see if it plays as nice as it looks!

Pickups

The Taylor Solid Body hails two different styles of pickups. The first style is a classic 3/4 humbucker. The second style is a full-size humbucker.

Bridge

The all-aluminum bridge was designed completely from scratch. You’re able to adjust the bridge height from front-to-back and side-to-side. Once you set the intonation, you can lock the saddles into place as well.

Five-Way Pickup Switch

The pick up switch is configured as follows:

Position 1: Full neck pickup

Position 2: Inside coils of the neck and bridge pickups in parallel

Position 3: Full neck pickup with

Guitar Tuner Reviews: Choosing the Best Guitar Tuner

If you are a guitarist, it’s a given that owning a guitar tuner can be quite handy, especially if you are just buying your first guitar. Did you know though that guitar tuners can range anywhere from $10 to $300 and upwards? You would almost think that any guitar tuner is the same, but apparently not!

Fortunately for the average guitar player (that’s you and me), we don’t need to come even close to spending that much. We still have a lot of options.

My Guitar Tuner Recommendations

Korg CA-30 Chromatic Tuner ($19.99)

Key Features

+ Highly sensitive internal mic

+ Tunes chromatically

+ Additional quarter inch input

If you need an acoustic guitar tuner, a highly sensitive mic is crucial so the tuner can pick up the string you are tuning with accuracy. Some tuners [...]