Why spend time slaving over learning the guitar when you can learn just enough to impress your friends?
Yes, you read it right. You don’t have to spend years perfecting the techniques to earn a reputation as a good guitarist.
This article is for people who have yet not started learning the guitar or people who started learning it but discarded it a few weeks later.
This is for people who are really lazy and have not done anything in life worth bragging about.
The techniques that I’m going to talk about here will just need two or three months to be mastered, and no one can ever tell that you are just a partial guitarist. Yes, it does take some practice, even to be a con man.
So, we will start with the first tip, that is –
Buying a guitar
There is a huge chance that you may not have a guitar. Even if you have one, it must be lying under the bed, collecting dust.
It is time to go out and buy a new guitar or blow off the dust from your old guitar and get started with the basics.
And if you’re very rich then you should buy a very expensive guitar. Not only the sound will mask your crappy playing but the looks will attract a lot of attention too.
And that way people will already start to consider you a guitarist. Just go in to any park for practice-come-show-off sessions and you will already begin to get famous.
I suggest buying a shiny and reflective case so that, people will need to shield their eyes and when they finally see what it is, they go like, “Omg!! Here comes the guitar god with his shiny new case. All hail.”
So you see, there are a lot of ways to be the center of attraction without actually playing the guitar.
Learn scales
We need to go step by step. So what if I am teaching you how to con people?. There’s a proper method to it.
The first thing you need to do is learn scales. A beginner can always start learning with scales. But, what is the difference between you and a serious guitarist? You only need to learn two scales. Go easy and learn the pentatonic scale. The scale is very easy to learn.
And you can practice it over and over again. Until you start playing very fast. Like, 8 notes/second.
Yep, there are guitarists who play over 15 notes/sec but they put their blood and sweat into it. No, you don’t want to do that. What’s the need? Non-guitarists cannot tell the difference.
But you need to apply certain tricks so that people can’t tell that you’re playing the same thing over and over again.
- Don’t play in front of the same set of people more than thrice.
- You don’t need to go top to bottom through the scale. Go center to bottom.
- Play with different speeds.
- Practice acceleration and deceleration.
- Play random notes in the scale
And that’s it. This is how you become the lead god. When your friends will see your fingers moving so fast, faster then the legs of a spider, they sure will be impressed.
Learn 4 chords
You only need to learn 4 chords to play thousands of songs. Yep, choose the 4 chords smartly and you will playing songs before you know it.
If you let me choose the chords for you, it will be Amin, Cmaj, Gmaj and Dmaj. These can be played using the first three frets of the guitar and you can master them in one or two months.
Just google ‘songs in the key of G’ and you will find lots and lots of songs that you can play using these 4 chords.
But what if your favourite new songs don’t use these chords? You can still play that song and if someone asks, just say that “Yes I know that, but I have transposed the scale to fit my vocal range.”
Did you notice how smart it sounds?
Learn 2 strumming patterns
Just 2 strumming patterns will do fine, alongside those 4 chords. Learn these two clichéd strumming patterns-
D D U || U D U D U
D U U || D U U D
This will more than suffice your needs.
If you want to make the patterns sound different add accents to the up and down strokes. Play really loud and then soften it. Use the 4 chords that you have learned in different order to fool people into believing that you know more than you actually do.
Play popular songs
Learn the songs that are popular in your squad. Convince the squad to sing along with you. This way you will not even need to bother with learning the whole lyrics of the song.
When the chorus comes. Stop the strumming and sing along, very loud. Then again start strumming and mumbling beneath the breath.
Another thing is that playing popular songs keeps you in demand. I have experienced this one myself. I’m not into popular songs because many of them are a waste. But my friend gets lots of attention and appreciation because he spends his time learning and practising those songs.
Talk a lot about your calluses
Calluses are the jewels that adorn the fingers on one hand of the guitarist. Developing calluses gives you something to brag about.
You should talk a lot about how your fingers used to hurt a lot before. And why and how they don’t hurt anymore.
Then touch the hands of your friend with the callused fingers and make them feel the roughness.
Make them see how the strings leave an impression on your fingertips after 15 min of playing.
Learn fancy terms
There are lot of fancy terms that you can be blabbering in front of your friends. A few good examples are-
“Hey, John! Did you hear the new song? I wonder what kind of Arpeggio he is playing.”
“Well fella, it’s Rasgueado.”
“Hey lady! Want to dance with me to the tunes of Rumba Flamenca?”
“Hey buddy, this Egyptian Scale really got me. Wanna hear it yourself?”
This again makes you look a lot smarter. Of course, you don’t need to learn the actual meaning as you can come up with anything yourself and your non-musician friend will not suspect anything.
Power chords
Powers chords really eliminate the need to learn the 4 chords or you can use it icing on the top.
You need to remember a few positions on the fretboard and need only 2 fingers to play it.
Power chords are the chords that the most unproductive and lazy people can learn without breaking a sweat. And you do not need to worry about where your fingers are going because you need to play 2 strings for these chords.
Muting the first 4 strings adds a touch of professionalism.
And by playing power chords you can feel like a true electric guitarist because power chords sound well, powerful.
And you can play them very fast also as they’re very easy to learn. You just need 2 fingers, hold the finger formation and slide them across the fretboard. It is that easy.
That’s how you become a partial guitarist and the most talented in your untalented squad.
More Guitar Lessons @ The Blogging Musician > https://adamharkus.com/category/guitar-lessons/
Leave a Reply