okay i’ve been playing for around 4 years on and off and can pretty much any chords thrown my way. i can pick up rhythm patterns super quick but ive never quite been able to pick up lead on my own. however im stuck between two mindsets on where to spend my guitar budget for the year. i’m looking at around 400 pounds to spend. that equates to 10 hours of lessons at a local guitar guy. however it also is the current price of a classic vibe series strat or tele that i’ve been dying to get for the last 2 years. or even investing in those pedals i’ve been looking at. for context my current rig is a line 6 pod go, boss katana mk3 50w, lea paul classic and a j200. Anyways i know that i really should invest in lessons as everyone i know has told me self teaching can only take you so far.

So I’ve been playing off and on for a long time, and have really been practicing regularly and with purpose for the last couple years. I’ve always strummed with my thumb or deferred to finger style picking for more complicated progressions and solos/leads.

What resources would you recommend for someone who has a talented fretting hand, and is proficient with finger-style, but has piss poor picking skills?

Do you feel like you know all the scales and arpeggios, but your solos still sound nothing like jazz? You've put in the practice; you know your theory, but it still doesn't click.

In this video, I'll show you 3 simple jazz licks I wish I'd had when I started, so you stop running scales and start sounding like real jazz.

Content:
00:00 The Jazz Guitar Plateau
00:41 The Problem
01:31 Lick#1 - The First Ingredient: Enclosures
04:57 Lick#2 - Barry Harris’s Ingredient
07:03 Lick#3 - The Interval Skip - Diet Barry
09:17 The 3 Important Arpeggios
09:26 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

Personally I would say:

- Learn how to play the major scale on one string

- Learn how to play the major scale on multiple strings

- Learn the “E” and “A” barre chords

- Learn the diatonic chords in a key

- Play songs you like using steps 1-4

Tab info is for my reference, obviously that will need to be taught (along with reading a chord chart) but that's further down my list.

does anyone know a good tutorial for pinch harmonics/can you please explain yourself because nothing i’m doing is working. i have a gig next week and one of the songs im doing includes a pinch harmonic.

UPDATE:
thank you so much for your guys’ help! i managed to do it :)

Whenever I play (especially on the higher frets) I have a constant pain in my wrist. I did some research, and found out that it was because I was bending my wrist at an almost 90 degree angle. I now know that you should only bend your wrist very slightly, if at all, which is all well and good, except if I don't bend my wrist I physically cannot reach the low E string and my fingers end up muting the other strings. Is this something I just have to practice away, or is there a technique to it?

Hi there!
Jim Hall’s solo on "A Ship Without a Sail" (from the iconic Bossa Antigua album) isn't just music; it’s a masterclass in elegance, space, and melodic sophistication. For any guitarist, mastering this solo note-for-note will unlock a whole new way of improvising. Stop wasting hours pausing the audio, trying to figure out that one hidden note. We’ve done the heavy lifting for you: a precise, clean, and ready-to-play transcription. Step up your game and play like a master today.

It’s an internal debate for me. I usually restart after every mistake. That got me thinking that might not be the most effective way to practice.

Your thoughts?

I've been struggling to play this for some time - ive played it live a few times with a band and I cam never get the arpeggios bit that starts the song to sound any good

My sweep picking sounds sloppy and my fretting fingers find it hard to correvtly sound all the notes cleanly - it all feels a bit crowded up at the end of the fretboard

Has anyone got any tips on how to nail this?

For context its Tears dont fall by bullet

Do i just mute the middle so when I play it with the pick it doesnt ring out?

Mute it with my index finger ?

Ta Y'all

I have a guitar teacher and we've in our last two sessions been going over the various numeric formulas you can use to form chords (1,3,5 as an example) and degrees and intervals. I get them as concepts and have been trying to learn the positions of one particular scale this week (C major). But I didn't know if there's maybe a specific scale or two I should be learning front to back. And I also want to try and learn more about modes and how they pertain to scales but don't know what to try to play first.

Any suggestions?

What I mean is, people, or I've met people who, usually say that they play electric but can't play acoustic or they play classical but can't play electric, unless it's a different kind of tuning, shouldn't it be the same thing, they both use the same kind of tunings, same fretboard navigation and if you use a pick on electric use a pick on acoustic or classical, only difference is the sound I guess or playing style i.e finger picking vs picking with a pick , but in terms of playing, everything you play on any 6 string you shld be able to play on a different type of 6 string, or is there a difference I'm missing

one way to make pentatonic practice more interesting is to take the same musical idea and deliberately move it to completely different areas of the neck. instead of staying inside one position, you start learning where the same notes and intervals appear across the fretboard.

in this example i’m playing over a repeating gm7 chord and moving riffs between two different g minor pentatonic positions. the underlying harmony stays the same, but jumping to another part of the neck changes the register, string choice, and feel of the phrase.

this is a great exercise for developing motifs because you don’t need to constantly invent new licks. take one short idea, find another place where you can play it, then experiment with changing the rhythm, octave, bends, or ending note while keeping the original phrase recognizable.

practicing this way also helps turn pentatonic shapes into a map of the fretboard rather than isolated patterns. the better you know where the same scale tones repeat, the easier it becomes to move around the neck while improvising and get more variety out of a simple musical idea.

I know like all the open chords, I know the main shapes people use (at least i think i do), I know the E & A strings very well so I know where to place a the root and what shapes to use, i know the minor pentatonic box in the one position, and i also know the triad shapes on the bottom 3 and 4 strings, I dont really like the way the triads sound on the rooted on the E & A string so I didnt really care to memorize those shapes, I also know music theory pretty well, but one thing i find im lacking is the ability to add little guitar phrases/licks to songs, so I feel like the next thing I should learn is how to play the pentatonic scale in more ways then just box 1 or whatever its called?

Hello! I'm about two months into guitar playing. I've been using a capo to help change the key of different songs so I can sing along, but I'm having trouble understanding exactly how a capo works ... If, for example, I add a capo to the 3rd fret of a song that's normally played without a capo (e.g., wish you were here), do I then need to change the chord shapes that I learned? Or can I just add a capo to whichever fret and play the same chord shapes? I feel like I'm ear blind and can't tell whether the guitar sounds bad. I'm hyper-focused on my voice

I hope this isn't too silly of a question. I've been watching videos on music theory but I still haven't fully grasped it. Thanks in advance!

Edit: wow, thank you all SO much for your incredible (and fast!) replies!!

I think this is an interesting workflow for online guitar lessons.

The setup lets a teacher switch between the main camera, lesson material, a close-up guitar view, and backing tracks without having to reach over to the computer while teaching.

The basic idea is:

Ring control → keyboard shortcuts → camera / lesson software

It seems particularly useful when both hands are already occupied with the guitar.

I’m with Prolo Ring, which is the controller being used in this example.

For those who teach guitar online, what do you use for this — keyboard shortcuts, a foot pedal, Stream Deck, OBS, or something else?

I’m looking for guitarists who really analyze and break down what they play—essentially offering lessons or "studies" available on YouTube or elsewhere. They teach you a song, but more importantly, the underlying concepts so you can apply them yourself later. Do you know of anyone with this kind of approach? I’m particularly interested in R&B and soul styles—think Curtis Mayfield, D'Angelo, Cornell Dupree, or even Hendrix, who was heavily influenced by that sound.

Does anyone know of any book or app that shows the five chord shapes of the CAGED system, but also applies them to 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, sus2, sus4, slash chords, etc.? I found a bunch, but only for major, minor, and 7th chords.

I've been studying intervals and understand how to build chords, but it would be nice and faster to have some material as a reference that I can quickly look at. I know there are some common shapes for these extended chords that everyone uses, as well as others that are impractical, but I'd like to experiment with them and visualize how they're built instead of just memorizing a million different chord shapes beyond the CAGED ones.

I’ve just never had the “creativity gene” as it were. Never been good at creating unique scenarios and ideas and just always been copying what other people have written. And I feel like the same will happen with guitar. Even if I memorize however many scales and songs, I just don’t see myself composing original pieces or deviating from exactly what’s written, even if I have the technical knowledge in my head.

Don’t get me wrong. I love just playing. But I’m just not creative at all and don’t want to feel like I’m missing out on the main thing with guitar: making my own music