The 6 WORST Guitar Technique Mistakes (and 6 exercises to FIX them!)

Let's talk about guitar technique today!  I'd like to talk about the top 6 worst   guitar technique mistakes that I encountered  both with my own playing and with my students   so far - eliminating those roadblocks will  greatly help you out on your guitar journey   and in today's video, I'd like to show  you some very effective exercises that   will help you with overcoming them  as fast as possible - let's do this So first of all yes technique is not everything  and there are many roads to success when it comes   to playing the music that you love but once I  corrected those right and left and technique   mistakes myself, my progress basically skyrocketed  It's much easier to achieve your personal guitar   goals when you're not constantly fighting your  hands and your fingers - the first topic I'd like   to address today is not using your left hand thumb  correctly! As I'm quite sure you know already your   hands are built to grab things and your thumb  is basically the most important tool for that   It gives you the optimal support for your left  hand fingers when it comes to guitar playing   and amongst many other things it will help  you with building a very efficient legato   technique for example but all of that won't be  possible if you're playing like this for example... This is actually really really hard to do as  you can see I didn't use my thumb at all it's   right here - I've actually seen this way of  playing with some beginner students in the   past and once this big mistake was corrected it  was obviously much much easier for them to play One less severe and actually quite  divisive topic is if your thumb is   allowed to stick out from behind the  neck like that when you're playing... or if it always should be positioned  behind your fingers to support them... So you definitely need the support  of your thumb behind your fingers for   fast and technical playing like that but  for me, it's perfectly fine to focus less   on perfect technique and more on the sound  when it comes to string bending and vibrato in my experience, you can't get that really  expressive and emotional sound if you just   work with your thumb behind the neck all the time... It also works but it sounds and feels completely  different so I personally find myself switching   between those two different styles - I place my  thumb in the area around my middle finger for   the fast crazy and shreddy stuff and it's  okay for me to neglect that kind of perfect   technique mindset when it comes to that kind of  expressive stuff - now here's an exercise for you   that will really help you with developing that  supporting thumb for your left hand fingers! By the way, you can download the tabs,  guitar pro files, practice backing   tracks and all the other files for all  the upcoming exercises on patreon.com/bernth I upload these really helpful files for every  single video that I post here on youtube so   you definitely want to make sure to join  us over there if you want to make the most   amount of progress in the shortest amount of  time possible - let's move to the next topic now! So this is obviously all about picking technique  and it was one of my personal biggest roadblocks   if you're working with your entire arm when you're  picking and you completely lock up your wrist you   will encounter multiple problems - you will have  issues with mastering clean string transitions   you won't really be able to feel the individual  notes that you're playing or the subdivisions   when things get faster and of course it will  also be close to impossible to work with   interesting dynamics if this is your default  motion - it might feel like a shortcut to faster   tempos in the beginning because it's easier  to gain momentum when you rely on brute force   It sounds quite terrible and I'm already a  bit exhausted and I'm beginning to sweat - I   obviously got much better and more controlled  results as soon as I started working with my   wrist for slower tempos and with a mix of my arm  and wrist for the really fast and crazy stuff... but I never lock up my wrist completely and use a  full arm motion like that - I don't think that this   will get you the results that you're looking for  in case you still have some work to do when it   comes to unlocking and using your wrist for faster  tempos I have some really really cool exercises   for you - make sure to work with these really  cool rhythm exercises in your next practice routine! So aside from being really effective exercises  they are also really really fun to play   I actually shared these workouts a couple of  months ago already and I'm quite sure that a   lot of you guys and girls missed that - if that's  the case make sure to subscribe to the channel   right now so that you stay on track from now  on - you might have actually missed the exercise   or tip that would have helped you out greatly with  your biggest guitar frustration and by subscribing   today that won't happen anymore and you will stay  up to date from now on - time for the next topic! So this is also something I personally struggle  with for quite a long time, it actually took quite   a while for me to realize that it's difficult for  me to stretch because of the way that I'm angling   my hands when I'm playing and not because of the  size of my hands or fingers so I'm talking about   really extreme angles like that for example  or like that - that really stands in the way of   stretching and of using your fingers effectively  A lot of my students complained that their fingers   are not long enough or that their hands are  not big enough to make certain stretches and   to play certain shapes and it turned out that it  was actually their technique and those extreme   angles that prevented them from covering more  ground on the fretboard like that for example   When I was playing that classic 2 note per string  pentatonic shape in the beginning, my hand always   looked like that and that made it impossible for  me to stretch farther than that so that's the   maximum stretching that I can do right now  and in order to extend this shape to a 3 note   per string pentatonic shape I would actually  have to stretch this far and now that I position   my hand like that it's actually easy to do  that if I would position my hand like that   I couldn't, I really couldn't make that stretch  I can't stretch farther than that - here's a great   exercise for you in case you want to improve  your flexibility and the angle of your left hand! The next topic also concerns your left  hand and this one is all about finger positioning - so, first of all, you want to make  sure to position your finger in this area   of each fret to make the notes ring out nicely  watch what happens when I move further back... that doesn't sound too good - so generally your  notes will sound best when you position your   finger close to the end of each fret but what  might be actually more important than that   is the angle in which your finger comes in  contact with the string and with the fretboard   A huge progress killer is what  I like to call flat fingers... So if your fingers are not curled like  that they might block the next string   and that of course will make it impossible  to play really cool and interesting chord   shapes because you're constantly blocking  the strings with your fingers and amongst   many other topics you also won't be  able to develop an efficient hammer on   and pull off motion because you need that  nice snapping motion in order to do that... so effectively working with hammer ons pull-offs   and tapping won't really work  with that flat finger approach... so make sure to focus on finger  positioning and developing that   nice curl in your practice routine - this is the  perfect and really famous exercise for that! Now let's talk about one of the  biggest cliches when it comes to   technical players: emotion and feel in  the form of vibrato and string bending Of course, it's extremely important to focus  on hitting the right pitches with your string   bending licks and it's a very common stereotype  that technical and fast players can't really   do that because they don't work on it in  their practice routines - so please help me   with proving the world wrong with this by  including this in your practice sessions   A very simple exercise that you can do  in order to improve that is just playing   those two individual pitches before you're  bending the lower one to the higher one! So that way you can easily check if you're  hitting the correct pitches with your bendings   of course it also really helps to practice this to  a backing track because you will immediately hear   if your bendings are out of tune... the same goes  for vibrato, it's very common to see very excessive   vibrato or barely audible vibrato and not really  different dynamic levels in between and that makes   it impossible or very hard to articulate your  playing accordingly to the music that you're   playing over so this probably won't be the right  level of intensity for every single situation... that kind of expressive rock vibrato is awesome of course but it probably won't   be the right choice for an acoustic guitar  ballad or anything like that - so please also   make sure to focus on string bending  and vibrato in your practice routines! Those are actually the perfect topics to focus on  when it comes to your daily improvisation sessions   Now let's move to the last topic, probably one  of the most important ones - hand synchronization   If you're not familiar with this topic  yet this is all about syncing up every   single picking stroke of your right hand  with the correct notes that your left   hand is playing - to give you a bad example  it's very common to see stuff like that... So here I was obviously just picking kind of  fast with my right hand and I was trying to   match that movement with my left hand and I was  hoping that it would align somehow and it also   didn't help that I was actually not playing a  scale at all, I was just playing random notes so   this might fool an inexperienced listener but you  won't get away with it forever I learned that the   hard way at my first professional touring and  live job when the drummer called me out and said   that I wasn't really playing any actual note  values so I wasn't playing 16th notes or 16th   note triplets, I wasn't really locking in with the  band at all, I was just going as fast as I could   and now there's pretty much nothing more  satisfying for me than hearing perfectly   synchronized hands when it comes to fast licks  and when the note spacing is also accurate... Here's the perfect exercise  for you in case you want to   work more on your hand synchronization skills! I hope that you had a lot of fun checking out  these common technique mistakes with me today   and as always I hope that I could help you out  on your personal guitar journey! Don't forget to   download your tabs, guitar pro files, backing tracks  and all the other files for the youtube lessons on   patreon.com/bernth by joining our community over there  today - also make sure to subscribe so that you   never miss another video again, leave a like in  case you learned something new today and I will   hopefully see you again very very soon - all the  best and have a lot of fun practicing until then!

Channel: BERNTH

Views: 1,384,264

Rating: 4.9478965 out of 5

Keywords: guitar techniques, guitar technique exercises, guitar technique practice, guitar lesson, modern rock guitar techniques, guitar, guitar lessons, guitar technique, guitar tutorial, beginner guitar, alternate picking lesson, how to play guitar, electric guitar, guitar for beginners, beginner guitar lessons, guitar finger exercises, beginner guitar lesson, electric guitar lessons, lead guitar, guitar solo, shred guitar, guitar exercise, guitar exercises

Id: oDvut9G_3Yw

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021