How Good Is *Your* Technique?

Paul Swanson Guitar Tuition

2 Greville Road, Warwick, CV34 5PB

Telephone (01926) 408211 Email: oldswanner@btinternet.com

Professional guitar tuition for all levels in Leamington Spa and Warwick

How Good
Is *Your*
Technique?

Novice or Guitar God?

Instant Grading

Fast TrackMethod for Beginners

How I
Learned to Play
in 6 Weeks

In One Easy

Interactive Lesson

Crash Course in
Guitar Theory

Beginner to Advanced

My background and approach to tuition

Children and the guitar

Learning the guitar - What does it take?

Failed/Frustrated Players

Advanced Players

Fast Progress

Guaranteed!

I Just Want

to Play Music

I’m not
Interested in
Technique

Demystifying

the Guitar Neck

The PSGT
Desktop Fretboard

Post Your

Progress

The PSGT
Online
Hall of Fame

Click for map

For Guitar Pro/

Tuxguitar

Guitar
Tablatures

This isWhat it’s

All About

Students’
Performances

Free Download

How Good is *Your* Technique?

(Instant Grading from Nursery School to Guitar God!)

Or click here ... I’m not Interested in Technique .. I just want to play music

Here’s a simple (looking) pattern of 4 repeating notes played in semiquavers.

It is the first 4 notes of an A minor scale .. A B C D.

Give it a try. The recommended fingering is shown in the circles underneath although you don’t have to use it to play the example. Similarly, the recommended technique for picking the notes is strict alternate picking (Down Up Down Up), but you can play it happily to a good speed using other methods.

Most students seeing this for the first time will play it using fingers 1,2 and 3, and will pick the notes using downstrokes only, which is all fine up to a point.

However you choose to play it, your top speed on this exercise is a pretty good indicator as to the level of your overall technique. If you can increase your top speed on this exercise, your technique will have improved, because you will have to improve your technique to increase the top speed.

If this sounds like stating the obvious .. it is, but hidden in plain sight from most guitarists!

What’s more, if you can improve your technique by studying and improving this

tiny building block, then ...

Everything else you play improves as well!

Now, to know if your top speed is improving, you have to know what your top speed is. If you haven’t got a metronome click here. Play 4 evenly spaced notes per click of the metronome and find the maximum metronome setting at which you can do this perfectly. When you find your top speed .. write it down and put a date on it. Now put that somewhere safe. You now have a concrete marker to return to, to find out whether the time you spend on your guitar is improving your technique. I call this your benchmark speed for this exercise.

If this is the first time you have tried this, you should be able to see quite a bit of improvement just by playing the example over and over, regularly for up to a month or so, and increasing your familiarity. Your measurements will show this as your benchmark increases.

You will likely however reach a point where progress stops .. Dead!

Again your measurements will show this without any doubt. You have hopefully proven to yourself that what you are doing by playing the example over and over no longer yields any improvement. If not keep wasting time by bashing away until this is the case.

You now need to approach the problem differently. Having proved that your current method of practice is not working, it should be clear that there is no merit in pursuing it. When you find something new that improves your technique, your benchmark speed will start to rise again.

Send me a link to a video of yourself playing the above exercise at your top speed,

and I’ll add it to my ONLINE HALL OF FAME. Use the form below to submit details.

This is the online version of the PSGT Hall of Fame which I keep in my teaching room, charting my students technical progress. Click the underlined links to see each of these.

Requirements to appear in the PSGT Online Hall of Fame are as follows.

1) You must include a link to a Youtube video of your playing at the stated speed.

2) The video title must take the form “PSGT Hall of Fame Technique Challenge xxxbpm”, where xxx is the maximum speed demonstrated in the video.

3) The playing must be of acceptable quality meaning clear and even notes.

4) The exercise must be sustained for a minimum of 4 bars

(16 repetitions of the 4 notes).

Learning the guitar is all about taking what seems impossible, getting it to a stage where it feels achievable, and steadily working toward making it feel easy. Anyone can do this, to any level they want, with a combination of desire, commitment, patience and naturally, good instruction.

Beats Per Minute	Grade
Under 25	Nursery School (Beginner)
25-50	Primary School (Novice)
50-75	Secondary School (Competent)
75-100	GSCE (Decent)
100-125	A’ Level (Good)
125-150	Degree (Very Good)
150-175	Masters Degree (Excellent)
175-200	PhD. (Outstanding)
200-250	Guitar Guru (Amazing)
250+	Guitar God! (Mindblowing,see below)

The table to the right gives a rough rating of your technique level in terms of the UK educational system and my estimate of how you compare to others.

It also gives an idea of how much work and/or natural talent will get you to a certain level/speed.

It takes not only a lot more work to get to degree standard than to get to GSCE standard, but also a lot more understanding.