Would you have an easier time learning to play guitar if you knew exactly what guitar practice exercises to focus your time on?  Are you being spread in many different directions by the vast number of guitar playing resources that all seem to offer a different way of learning guitar?  Do you feel overwhelmed by trying to sift through a seemingly infinite number of exercises to determine what you should practice on guitar?

From my experience of successfully helping hundreds of guitarists to reach their musical goals, I have found that most guitar players can easily find lots of general guitar practice materials on their own.  Where many guitarists struggle is in knowing how to make sense out of all those materials and organize them into an effective guitar practice schedule.  

If you can relate to the experiences above, then you are not alone.  Fortunately, the solution to this problem is very realistic and is easier than you think.  In this article I want to show you why so many guitarists don’t know what they should practice on guitar, and how you can begin making much more progress in your guitar playing. 
The first significant mistake that guitar players make with regards to guitar exercises is practicing “too many” of them.  As a result, too much energy is spent trying to decide (at random) what exercise to play next, instead of concentrating on getting the most benefit out of each exercise being practiced.  In reality, you can very often achieve a lot more by intelligently focusing on a smaller, targeted list of guitar practice materials than you can from a longer list of guitar exercises that are put together at random (more on this in a moment). 

Another mistake guitar players make is “putting the cart before the horse”, by looking for guitar exercises to practice before defining specifically what it is they want to achieve in their guitar playing.  Remember that guitar exercises are only useful when they are practiced with intention of achieving a specific result.  Going through dull repetitions of random guitar practice exercises (as most guitarists do) will have little to no impact on your guitar playing unless you become clear on the following:

1. The exact guitar playing challenge(s) you want to overcome by using a particular guitar practice exercise. 
2.  The long term guitar playing goals you want to reach and how a given exercise fits into the big picture of developing your musical skills. 
Above all, you must remember that the only reason why guitar exercises are needed in the first place is to help you solve various guitar playing problems.   As simple as this concept is, most guitar players do not practice with this understanding in mind.  The more specifically you can define your guitar playing problems, the easier it will be to find the most effective exercises to overcome them.  For instance, rather than saying: “I want to increase my speed with scale sequences”, you need to identify an exact problem such as: “I need to practice the picking hand motion that happens when my pick is caught inside the strings”. 
In order to determine whether or not a specific guitar exercise should be included into your practice schedule, ask this question: “what guitar playing challenge will I be able to overcome by working on this exercise and will this exercise move me closer to my guitar playing goals?” To help you with answering this question, here are 5 important points to follow that will make your guitar practicing a lot more productive:

Clearly define your long term guitar playing goals. 
Find out what musical skills you must develop in order to achieve the long term result that you want.  To see what steps you must go through to become the guitar player you want to be, check out this free resource on how to learn guitar.
With the clarity you have achieved from doing steps 1 and 2 above, it will now be much easier to narrow down your guitar practice exercises to those that are very specific to your guitar playing challenges.  Do this to prepare yourself for step 4. 
Design a highly effective guitar practice schedule containing the guitar exercises you have selected in the previous step.  Organizing your guitar practice time in the most efficient way possible will require some experience to be done correctly. This will help you to avoid wasting valuable practice time and will enable you to make faster progress.  If you have trouble doing this on your own, visit this page to get guitar playing help. 
Keep your mind actively engaged the entire time you are practicing.  You must always stay focused on the specific objective you are trying to achieve and never let your fingers go on autopilot while practicing.  As your guitar playing improves and you get more experience, you will find that very often you can use a single guitar exercise to develop multiple guitar playing skills at the same time (watch this video to learn more about this guitar practice method). 

Applying the advice above to your guitar practicing on a regular basis will help you to speed up the process of reaching your guitar playing goals. 

Do you think that using a metronome is important for improving your guitar playing?
On this issue, guitar players tend to fall into one of the following groups:
Some guitarists almost never use a metronome in their guitar playing.
Others always (or almost always) practice and play guitar with a metronome.
When asked about why they practice guitar the way they do (without a metronome), guitarists in the first group often say that they want to avoid having to stick to a rigid tempo while playing guitar. They claim that learning to play guitar without a metronome helps their guitar playing to be more expressive and musical. Others in this group just don’t think much about the metronome.
The guitarists in the second group (those who play guitar with a metronome almost all the time) argue that the metronome is key to improving their guitar playing. Therefore, the guitarists in this group believe it is essential to practice everything to a metronome to develop tight rhythm guitar playing skills, increase guitar speed and track guitar playing progress.
Which Group Of Guitar Players Are You In?
Fact is both of the above belief systems are incomplete and misleading ways to approach the process of learning to play guitar. Here is why:
You need to alternate between practicing and playing guitar both with and without the metronome, but to be effective you need to do this in a strategic way, not a random one. You must have a diverse set of targeted guitar practice techniques (and know when and how to apply each one) to successfully overcome every guitar playing challenge you face. When it comes to practicing guitar with a metronome, there are times when using it is necessary and there are other times when the metronome will distract you from improving in the areas you need to master.
There are multiple ways of using a metronome in your guitar practice routines.(Consciously choosing “not” to use a metronome “sometimes” is one type of such strategy.)  It is NOT enough to simply decide to practice guitar with a metronome a certain % of the practice time (such as 50% on and 50% off).  To get the most benefit from using a metronome, you need to know when, how and why to use it (or not use it) depending on what goals you are trying to achieve in a given practice session.
Although the complete list of strategies for using a metronome when learning to play guitar is beyond the scope of this article, I want to share with you several of the most important roles that the metronome should play in your guitar playing (and also explain when/why to avoid using it).  These ideas will help you to improve your guitar playing much faster.
How To Use A Metronome To “Test” Your Guitar Playing
Contrary to popular belief, practicing guitar with a metronome does NOT help you to “improve” your guitar technique or “increase” your guitar speed.  As I discuss in this free mini course on how to develop guitar speed, there are specific elements that go into guitar speed that must be trained and refined, often at super slow speeds without the metronome.  The metronome is then used mainly as a TEST to establish how well you have mastered these elements. The speed at which you can play will indicate whether or not you need to do additional practicing (without using the metronome) to overcome the technical flaws preventing you from playing guitar as fast as you want.

So, before you start using a metronome to “measure your improvement” in speed, you need to spend a substantial amount of time refining the fundamental technical components that make guitar speed possible (without using the metronome).  This goes totally against the conventional wisdom of practicing everything to a metronome in order to improve your guitar technique, but is a much more effective way of developing this skill (check out the free mini course above to fully understand why this is true and how you should practice to build guitar speed).In fact, it is this belief (that more work with the metronome is the key to overcoming one’s guitar speed/technique plateau) that keeps many guitarists frustrated with their lack of guitar playing progress.
How To Use A Metronome To Improve Your Rhythm Guitar Playing
The guitar players who never (or very rarely) practice guitar using a metronome say that they want to have the freedom of not having to stick to a rigid tempo in order to be more expressive with the music they are playing. Although this style of guitar playing has its place in music (more on this below), most people who only practice guitar without the metronome typically struggle whenever they do have to play in strict time. It is important to be able to play by varying the tempo, dynamics and other musical elements for expressive reasons, but it is equally as important to be able to lock perfectly in time with a particular tempo (for “different” expressive goals). If you have always stayed away from practicing playing guitar to a metronome for the reasons mentioned above, chances are that your timing needs improvement.
Unlike the concept of guitar speed, practicing guitar with a metronome is a very critical part of what actually “develops” your ability to play guitar tight (in time).  As you play, you can tell easily if your guitar playing is in time if you can make the sound of the metronome click “disappear” on most (or all) of the strong beats of the music.  If you are playing in perfect time, the notes you are playing will line up precisely on top of the metronome click, creating an illusion that the click has become silent (disappeared).  If you can achieve this goal, you are making excellent progress.
How (And Why) To Practice Guitar Without A Metronome To Improve Your Guitar Phrasing
One problem that guitarists who use a metronome often run into, is a tendency to come up with melodies and lead guitar phrases mostly in “straight” divisions of the beat (such as long streams of sixteenth notes, triplets and quarter notes).  Even though the playing may sound good and be in time, the phrasing can begin to sound somewhat robotic and predictable (even if you use different scales).  One solution to this problem is to practice a guitar phrasing technique known as “rubato”.  This soloing technique refers to intentionally playing lead guitar melodies without a clear rhythm by expanding and suddenly contracting the duration of pitches.  Note: there is a BIG (and easily noticeable) difference between playing in the style of rubato and the playing “not being in time” (one is a cool guitar phrasing technique and the other is a result of poor rhythmic control).  When you play using rubato, it is obvious that the notes of the phrase “intentionally” do not stick to any predetermined rhythm (and the phrasing sounds very cool and expressive as a result).  In contrast, if you attempt to play notes that ARE (or should be) in a strict rhythmic pattern but are not able to play in time, the music then has no sense of rubato and simply sounds “out of time”.
To learn more about rubato technique and hear exactly how you should practice it, watch this free guitar soloing lesson.
As you can see, always practicing guitar ‘with’ a metronome or always practicing ‘without’ a metronome will limit your ability to reach your full potential as a guitar player. You now know that there are specific times when you should be using it and other specific times when you shouldn’t.
Ultimately, the metronome is only one of many guitar practice tools that should be used “when necessary” to overcome specific guitar playing problems.  The way each tool is to be used depends on the musical goals you are trying to reach and the specific problems you are trying to overcome.  If you lack experience in knowing which guitar practice strategies and tools to use, work with a proven guitar teacher who can guide you towards making your guitar practicing more effective.
To learn more about how to practice guitar effectively, download this free 110 page eBook on how to become a better guitarist.

A lot of people see a low-cost guitar as a cheap and poorly manufactured guitar. The truth is, a lot of folks are afraid of the point that it wasn’t a US made guitar. You might never have considered to buy Chinese or Korean made guitars until recently.Numerous major guitar manufacturers formerly began making their guitars in Korea, China and India to supply less expensive guitars to the normal guitarist. Not everybody are able to spend $2000 for a Fender or Gibson guitar. You can find a big niche for cheap guitars below $400.Almost all of the Epiphone inexpensive guitar models that are owned by Gibson now are manufactured in Korea. Kramer, another supplier owned and operated by Gibson makes the majority of its low-cost guitars in Korea too. Fender decided to buy Jackson recently, and today nearly all of the Jackson guitars are manufactured and designed in India and Korea. BC Rich cheap guitars and numerous Ibanez guitar models are produced in Korea too.The reduced specific tax of these countries helps manufacture less expensive guitars, but that alone cannot be the sole cause for lower guitar prices.So, why are several guitars truly dirt cheap and on the other hand some guitars are insanely high priced?You can find many reasons behind these cheap guitar manufacturing prices.The primary reason for manufacturing a guitar cheap or expensive will be the actual guitar production process. Was the guitar hand-made or was it manufactured from a highly automated modern guitar production line? Hand-made guitars tend to be higher priced, as the guitars produced from a computerized factory most of the times are cheaper for the reason that a highly automated manufacturing process doesn’t need much hard physical work for example employees for guitar building and quality control.

Another factor that could determine the cost of a guitar is the quality of materials that has been used for building the guitar. That may include the woods put to use for the guitar neck and body, the paints and finishes. Less expensive guitars use cheap woods such as plywood for creating the guitar body, while higher priced guitars use quality woods like mahogany, rosewood, alder.Another factor for producing a guitar cheap or expensive is the value of electronics and hardware built inside the guitar. Inexpensive guitars will often have cheap stock pickups, tuners, and bridges. High priced guitars are produced with excellent electronics and hardware. For instance the price of just one Seymour-Duncan pickup will be more expensive than the price of a cheap guitar produced in Korea.Inexpensive Guitars – Is it worth buying one?Only a few people will play a low priced guitar. Should you be a professional musician and the guitar is your tool to earn money with, then you probably won’t get a low cost guitar. Even though the majority of inexpensive guitars these days have a very good quality, professional musicians desire hand-made guitars manufactured by professional luthiers.If you are on a low budget and you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars for a Gibson Les Paul guitar, you certainly should check out cheaper guitars. Keep in mind that low cost guitars shall no longer be no-name guitars. It is possible to buy Squier, BC Rich, Fernandes, Epiphone, Jackson, Ibanez, and many other popular guitar brands cheaper than $200!I got myself an inexpensive guitar manufactured in China by Fernandes just for $150. The guitar includes a license from Floyd Rose tremolo, an excellent, easy-playable neck as well as a good sound. This guitar has the capacity to put “cheap” and “quality” in a single sentence. My cheap guitar will probably be worth far more than $150 and it’s really of a greater quality compared to several US made Fenders I had played.Do you rather choose the cheapest US made Gibson model for $550 or might you rather get hold of a Japanese no-name model with a super-fast neck, Floyd Rose Tremolo and pickups for $350? Nobody can make the decision for you.