Learn How To Play Guitar - Palm Muting And Change Chords

Here are a few lessons for beginning guitarists. You'll learn how to change chords smoothly - it is important to playing any song. Palm muting is a special technique that can add a lot of character to a song.

If you want to learn all of these special techniques, the best way to learn IMHO is from online guitar lessons because they are cheap and from professionals. Find out more at this link.

Something that comes as difficult to beginners is changing chords fluidly. This is, of course, very important to playing guitar so it is important that you practice being able to do this with some chord practice routines.

Practice develops ‘muscle memory’

Practice will develop your ‘muscle memory’ for your hands. ‘Muscle memory’ a process in your brain that allows precise repetitive movements to be engrained into your memory and called upon whenever needed, without the use for conscious effort. The memory of specific nerve signals is written into your brain – and then your muscles can be fired correctly without thinking about it. This is how musicians become so good at their instruments.

I’m telling you this because I always find that I learn better when I know exactly how I am learning – so I’d also encourage you to read the Wikipedia article on muscle memory (especially the sections on fine muscle memory and motor memory):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory

Here is a good practice routine that you can go through whenever you pick up your guitar. You can use it for practice as well as for warm up. Strum down/up/down/up for each chord, then practice strumming once per chord and also playing down/up/down/up.

Here is the practice progression:
G C Am G Em G A G F C F G G C Am G Em G A G F C F G

Make sure you switch between each chord fluidly and play only the chord when you strum. If you can’t do it quickly at first – don’t! Remember, you have to develop the muscle memory over time.

If you don’t have it, your hands and nerves will become tired after a while of practicing very easily... so put your guitar down for the night. I’ll bet you that the next day you’ll be able to play what you tried the day before much easier, even without warming up too much. This is due to the beginning of muscle memory formation.

So just keep it up. Make up your own chord progressions and strumming patterns to practice if you like. Just make sure you do it smooth and steady – to make sure the correct muscle memory patterns are formed! And you’ll get it down in no time.

Palm muting is usually used to achieve a percussive sound. You can do it by simply holding your pick hand palm on the guitar strings (the fleshy side of your hand, small finger side), then strumming all of the strings. They produce a slapping sound. That’s pretty much it.

You can position your palm in different places along the strings and experiment with the types of sounds you can generate in this way. If you hold your palm very near the bridge, you can still hear much of the note generated. This is more pronounced on an electric guitar.

Now, check out this guitar song lesson that will show you how to play Lightning Crashes by Live.

It uses Barre chords, palm muting and an interesting strumming pattern – but is overall a very simple song, using only 3 chords. It is good barre chord, palm muting and strumming practice, and is also a great song in my opinion. So check out the lesson below and learn how to play Lightning Crashes right now.

If you want to learn more songs and cool techniques learn how to play guitar with these online guitar lessons.