My friend Tatiana Regan is one of the best guitarists that I know and she has been playing since she was just 6 years old. Tatiana was fortunate in some respects that both of her parents were musicians and so you could say that she was born with rhythm in the blood. This is of course not to take anything away from Tatiana who has spent a great number of hours honing her skills. Tatiana is classically trained and she can turn her hand to any type of music. Tatiana has helped me out a huge amount with my own guitar playing and so I wanted to pass on some tips which she gave me during our classes together.
Practice
Something which Tatiana drilled into me from the very beginning was the importance of practice and she gave me a very good example of why this is so important. Tatiana told me that Slash of Guns n’ Roses fame will practice every day because he is petrified that he will forget how to play. As Tatiana rightfully said, if Slash can practice everyday after writing some of the greatest riffs of all time, someone at the bottom of the ladder should be able to at least give some hours to practicing.
Scales
Scales are a wonderful way to make sure that you are adding dexterity to your fingers and they can be played either fast or slow. Tatiana would often bring me small chord scales for me to practice and she would always walk me through them step by step. More often than not these scales would be very simple, more complex of course when played at speed, and they really helped to add flexibility to my fingers. Tatiana of course was able to fly through these scales and it reminded me just what kind of level I could achieve if I practiced hard.
Acoustic
I was playing, or at least trying to play, an electric guitar when I first asked Tatiana for her help and in our first class she told me that it would be far better if I were to play the acoustic guitar. Tatiana says that her favorite instrument to play is the acoustic guitar but beyond that Tatiana says that this is the best instrument to get started with because it helps you to then go on to play the electric guitar. Tatiana was absolutely right here and once I had practiced for many months on the acoustic guitar, I picked up the electric and found that my fingers were easily flying all over the place. This was a great idea from Tatiana and it really helped me to improve my electric guitar playing, without really going through too much pain. The reason for this is just that the acoustic is slightly trickier to play and you need to add more pressure on the strings.
Tatiana was a great teacher for me and her tips greatly helped me to improve.
Leave a Reply