On the guitar there are a number of techniques that are fundamental to playing the instrument. Slides are one of those techniques. While it’s a basic technique, there’s nuance to getting it clean and crisp as you move between notes. In this lesson we cover some basic guitar sliding exercises that will level up your technique.

While I typically like to make use of scale exercises for finger dexterity, sometimes I enjoy the pure mechanics and challenging nature of non-musical finger exercises. They’re great for situations where you feel mentally burnt out and just want the physicality of playing the guitar. Exercises that make a great option for this style of practice are spider exercises.

If you’ve been a reader of this site for any length of time, you know I’m a huge advocate of the CAGED system. It’s so valuable for learning guitar and it makes navigating the fretboard so much easier. For that reason, I’ve put a lot of time into putting all of the pieces of the CAGED system together. In this lesson, we’re going to go through one of my favorite CAGED system soloing exercises that helps you map the CAGED system to the fretboard in a fun and musical way.

Legato is a guitar technique in which notes are connected together in a smooth manner. On the guitar, this is achieved with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides while minimizing picking of the strings. At face value, it might seem like a simple technique to pick up. However, it can be quite challenging as it requires ample finger strength and exceptional timing.

Learning scales is quite a task and how you go about practicing guitar scales makes all the difference. No doubt it’s challenging, but learning to play them fluidly up and down the fretboard is so rewarding. While it takes time and effort to achieve, it can be simplified with a four step process that can make your practice much more effective.

If you started learning guitar with a pick, fingerpicking can seem a bit daunting as your picking hand will likely be a bit stiff and uncoordinated. Not to worry though. In this lesson we’ll go through some fingerpicking exercises that’ll help get your fingers in shape and moving smoothly across the strings.

The pentatonic scale may be the most versatile scale in music. If there’s one scale guitar players must master, this is the one. In this lesson we’re going to look at some pentatonic scale exercises to help you thoroughly learn the scale patterns and play through them fluidly with flawless technique.

To me, there’s no guitar technique that’s more satisfying to the ear than bends, which explains why I gravitate to guitar players like David Gilmour, Slash, and Warren Haynes. The subtle nuances of a player’s bending technique capture more emotion and feeling than any other technique by far.

In this lesson we’re going to take a look at some guitar scale exercises that will not only help you get the patterns under your fingers, but also improve both picking and fretting hand technique.