Terrifying Guitar Tricks - A Guide for Beginners

It's easy for your guitar playing to get stuck in a rut. It's inevitable that when you really work on a style and sound of your own you can find yourself repeating the same things over and over, eventually boring yourself with your own playing. It can be hard to break out of this feeling, and it's a major contributor to the dreaded writer's block.

The beauty of playing rock music is that the electric guitar is such an expressive instrument and can offer you so many different sounds that with a little creativity you should be able to work in something new to your playing on a weekly basis. Thinking outside the box is vital and sometimes trying something completely crazy and different with the guitar can really spur your creativity. In this article I'm going to look at a few of the tricks and strange sounds you can make with the electric guitar. While some aren't the most musical they're definitely fun to play and may even inspire you to write a new song.

Harmonics are perhaps the greatest source of unusual sounds from a guitar. Played by lightly touching the string without pushing the fret, harmonics can be twisted and bent into all kinds of new shapes to give you new sounds. Try playing harmonics around the fifth and seventh fret before pressing down on the tremolo arm. You can try pulling up or wildly shaking the bar to create some really strange sounds. A locking tremolo is a fantastic tool when manipulating harmonics as it allows some really crazy dive bombs and flutter effects.

Another way to play harmonics is to tap them. Just like playing them on open strings, a fretted note will have a harmonic 12 frets, seven frets and five frets above it. Try tapping the higher fret with your right hand to produce the harmonic. Combined with some arpeggios this can make a normally straight-foward piece come alive. Try playing tapped harmonics with heavy delay and chorus effects, it is great for giving a large, dreamy sound.

One of my favourite ways to play the guitar in a different way is to use an Ebow. Short for electronic bow, an Ebow is a handheld device that produces a magnetic field around the string, causing it to vibrate. What this gives you is infinite sustain, making your guitar sound more like a violin or a cello. Combining this sound with heavy amounts of delay and the harmonic mode on the Ebow can produce really haunting effects and is great for atmospheric playing. A similar effect can be achieved with feedback or the more modern Fernandes Sustainer pickup.

If you're still stuck for ideas and new sounds one of the most basic ways to kick-start innovation is just to try a different tuning. With my current band I tuned my guitars to a drop-C tuning, the change in sound of the guitar led me to write a whole load of songs and has really helped to carve out our sound. Tuning down can make those same boring chords suddenly seem much deeper and richer. In a similar vein using a capo can brighten up your playing and make everything seem fresh again.

Hopefully you don't get stuck being bored of your own guitar playing, but if you do just try to think outside the box a little and learn some crazy new tricks. Even if you never end up using them in a song they may spark an idea that does get used. And failing that, you can just make some cool sounds, which is what the electric guitar is all about.

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Wed, 19 Aug 2009 at 3:14 AM, by Margaret
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

http://guitarlearntoplay.net

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