Alternate picking and economy picking are constantly contrasted with each other and discussed. Most players want to know which one is better and which one they should focus on, but the answer may not be so simple.

Alternate picking is great for creating steady lines of notes at a firm pace and with the option to accent any one of them. With only alternate picking, you can achieve a nice and level single note output and choose to raise or lower the attack of any of the notes with great control.

The only downside to alternate picking might be that you cannot play as fast as with economy picking. Two things to consider with this though, is that you can get very fast lines with alternate picking, and economy picking may only have an advantage on rising lines.

With this in mind, you may find that the best solution is to use alternate picking as your main vehicle, while using other techniques such as economy and sweep picking when called for. There is little argument for not using alternate picking for most of your playing, as it allows the greatest possible range of sounds and with the most control.

Make sure that you can play a variety of ways with the pick in order to get the most out of it. Any one technique will not be able to play every possible sound that the pick can be used for.

What I mean by virtual sound for guitars can be taken as a few different things. There are patches that can be loaded on your computer that change the sound of an incoming guitar signal, and then there are also virtual instruments that will allow you to play a nice Spanish guitar through a keyboard. That’s not all though, a MIDI guitar played through a system can use virtual effects to change the sound of it just as well, even into something like a trumpet.

These new possibilities are clearly a good thing for music production in general. They mean that more people will be able to achieve more types of sound and make recordings with greater variety for a low cost. There is really no limit to what you can do with a guitar and the right software now.

The first parts of the instrument you should become familiar with are the tone and volume knobs. These will allow you to make basic changes to the sound of your guitar without even getting into the effects pedals or amp settings at all. The volume knobs may sound obvious but it’s important to notice that in addition to controlling the volume, they will also affect the basic tone of your guitar. You can use the volume knob to get a less treble heavy sound. The tone knobs will let you change the sound even more, from a harsh and high range emphasis, to a soft and warm tone.

The equalization controls on your amplifier can also be used to change your basic tone. Most amps will have a high, middle, and low control that will enable you to craft the sonic character of your sound. This will affect any of the effects that you have on your sound, so you have to be mindful of what changing any effects pedals will do to the sound.

The last part of controlling the tone on your guitar is the most dramatic: effects pedals. These can change any part of your sound that you can imagine. There are single pedals that can control everything from equalization to radical effects that make the guitar sound like something completely different. It would take an entire new article to accurately describe all of these. Suffice to say that these are the best way to find any sound you may desire on your instrument. Make sure to try a lot of them out and find the best one for your needs.

The nice thing about the guitar is that there are open strings that can easily be played. These strings can be used to create some simple chords and arpeggios that sound very musical, and even quite impressive, despite the fact that they only require one note to be fretted at once. For example, fretting the G on the high E string can produce a G major chord when the top three strings are played. As a teacher, you should look for ways to simplify all of the basic chords to make them easier for beginning students to play.

The open strings can also be used in combination with a single note line to create an arpeggio with some motion in it. These can sound very nice to everyone, but beginning students will be especially pleased with what they can easily create on the instrument, and this will inspire them to keep learning and practicing.

In general, the open strings of the guitar can be the easiest way to create complex and very rich sounding chords, with as little as one or two fretted notes. Playing some of the notes higher up on the fretboard will produce some interesting chords in both pitch and timbre, since the open strings have a different tonal characteristic than fretted notes being plucked.

It really helps people just starting out on the instrument when they see that they are capable of playing something that sounds good right off the bat, so as a teacher, you should look for things to teach them that are easy and enjoyable, rather than the standard single note lines and boring blues progressions that most people start out with.

No one will want to continue learning the instrument if they cannot make any music in the beginning, but if you can get a student playing something with little effort, and something that even someone with very little musical talent can play, you will find that they are more motivated and eager to keep learning, and not only is this a good thing in itself, but it will help you keep more paying students as a music teacher as well.

The first thing to understand is that the guitar is not an easy instrument. Anyone who has been playing for a while, and who may have started playing at an older age, may have forgotten how difficult it can be just to play a single note with proper technique. Spend just a few minutes teaching a young child how to play a single note and you will be reminded convincingly.

Kids have a hard time playing whole chords on the guitar, and many teachers may be used to starting out with the basic open chords. With children, you need to start out even simpler. This means teaching them whatever chords you can that only involve one fretted note. Even trying to get them to fret two notes at once may be pushing it with some students.

The same is true of scales. You will have a hard time getting some younger students to learn full scales, and it will be hard to convince them to practice scales at all. Instead, work on getting them to play simple melodies that they might be familiar with. A lot of beginning guitar books will have examples of these, but you may want to find some more contemporary tunes that the students will connect with.

One more thing to consider is that kids are likely to forget what you have told them to work on, so you should always have chord sheets to give to them or some type of handout that has their assignment recorded. Their parents will also be given some type of proof that they are being taught something just by seeing them with some papers, so it will help keep them enrolled, and prove that when a student refuses to practice something, it is not because you haven’t assigned anything.

Another challenging aspect of teaching kids is that some of them may have trouble expressing what types of music they want to learn about, or what specific songs they enjoy. This could be for a number of reasons, and it may just be that their parents are making them take lessons and they don’t have a burning desire to work on anything specific. In any case, children are going to be much less clear with the direction they want to go in their lessons and you are going to have to try to steer them yourself.

It can be challenging teaching kids guitar because of the physical limitations of their smaller hands and weaker coordination, but also because they are less prone to self motivation and will often avoid practicing anything that does not have instant gratification. To combat this, you are going to have to veil whatever you can with some type of instant gratification.

All of this being said, teaching children how to play any instrument can be very satisfying despite the different challenges it offers. You might be starting a great future musician or composer down their path, and at the very least, you are giving them something constructive to do with some of their time. Try to find ways to make the lessons interesting and fun for you and the student, and it should become an enjoyable experience.