Every so often, we decide to dive into a new aspect of playing guitar that many are either afraid of, or just simply have no idea what it's all about. Today, we're going to tackle one of the more feared issues evolving around guitar... Transposition.

Join us as we teach you the most simplistic and easy ways to transpose your music.

With transposition in the spotlight this week, we're also going to show you some handy sites that will give you some very quick transpositions in addition to some software programs that can help you transpose larger scores of music.

Getting That Riff In Your Favorite Key!

Where to get started.

How many times have we composed a riff that we absolutely love, or perhaps found a song that we really enjoy playing and wanted to put it into a new, original song and truly make it ours? Chances are that we've all wanted to at least try it out once or twice but always came across one roadblock... Keys.

As mentioned in our last article, the probability that two riffs will be in the same key is very low if you are writing a lot of songs or wish to link two well known songs together. This is where you need to transpose one of those riffs so you can connect them together and put them in that song.

Another scenario is that you just wrote an awesome riff that you envision going into one of your band's songs... The only problem is that it's in the wrong key! With transposing, you can still use that riff and play along with the rest of the band.

If you're a true band nerd, like myself, you have probably been around transposition since the days of Jr. High or Middle School. Now, if you're still like me, you didn't have two clicks on how to do it either. I was always amazed to see how my teacher would take a trumpet part and transpose it so I could play it on my sax and still be in the right key!

With guitar, this is invaluable. You can take a sax part and transpose it to your guitar. If you happen to have a sax player around, you can now play along with that sax and still be in the proper key.

One of the most unique things about playing guitar is that we have a number of tools available to us to use for easy transposition. Many other musicians envy us for this and call us cheaters in the game of music theory, however, if you can use it... Why not?

The tools that you can use.

One of the most common tools used to transpose music on the guitar is the capo. The capo is essentially a piece of rubber that is glued onto two pieces of metal with a spring placed in between. When clasped onto the neck of your guitar and placed behind a fret, it acts as a new nut (AKA the "zero" nut.) This new nut raises the pitch of your guitar, therefore changing the key.

Most guitarists use them so they can make really complicated chords into easy open chord shapes. This is where the whole joke about cheating comes in. Instead of actually practicing those really hard chords and getting your technique down, you can transpose that chord using the capo and turn it into an open chord shape such as an E Major or an A and still have the same chord.

While I don't recommend that you always do that because it's always good to know how to play a song if your capo breaks, it's great for live performances where you want to minimize the risk of messing up a complicated chord. If you're a lead guitarist, you can still use a capo but in all honesty, it's far easier to find the key that everyone else is playing in relative to the capo and just use the scale that suites the song best.

In most cases, it's actually quicker for a lead guitarist not to use a capo and just find a scale. Switching a capo around the neck of your guitar can cost valuable seconds between songs.

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Take a look with us now as we delve into tips and tricks for improving your guitar playing speed and for some practical knowledge on effectively using metronomes and other helps to improve your practice sessions.

Most aspiring guitar players today fill their heads with dreams about moving their fingers effortlessly across their fretboards with lightning quick speed and accuracy that leaves minds rocked and speakers blown. There have been a few guitarists throughout the ages of rock that have been born with an almost supernatural understanding and talent for the guitar, but that isn’t the case for most musicians. Learning to be a master of shred requires a lot of hard work, dedication, sweat, bloody fingertips, and patience.

There is a lot more to mastering speed than having a good sense of rhythm and a well-trained ear. You have to be willing to put in the time to practice, and to practice hard. If you want to learn how to blaze solos and belt out face melting guitar solos, you have to be dedicated to learning and putting into practice all you learn.

One method of improving your guitar playing speed is to use guitar backing tracks. Guitar backing tracks can help you improve your speed by playing along with other instruments in a set tempo. This can help you to take what you already know and work on perfecting those particular skills.

Another great tip for improving speed involves practicing with a metronome. It’s important to remember that before you can practice with a metronome to help you develop speed, you must first learn the technique or scale at your own speed. After you have mastered how to do the technique or how to play the scale, you can now move on to practicing to a metronome, set at whatever tempo you’d like.

It’s important to remember that a crucial aspect of developing speed is to first develop accuracy. Learning to play fast means nothing if you aren’t playing the right notes, and if you aren’t playing the right notes cleanly. If you can train yourself through much practice to be as flawless as possible in your accuracy, you will be able to easily improve your playing speed.

Many guitarists desire to be able to master the guitar and to shred along side some of the legends of rock music history. If you have the determination, the drive, and the willingness to dedicate yourself to practicing and learning, you will go pretty far, and may even accomplish your dream.

If you are thinking of going solo with your lead guitar then the one thing that you need to master is how to use the guitar fretboard to its maximum capacity. If you are well-versed with the fretboard, then you will be able play just about anything on your lead guitar.

The guitar fretboard is the most important area of an acoustic as well as electric guitar. The fretboard is where you play all the scales, the chords and use the various progressive scales and improvisation techniques for lead guitar.

When you buy a guitar, you will find dots all across the Fretboard. These dots represent the different frets. The first dot is usually on the 3rd fret and is followed by dots on the 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th and 19th frets.Mastering the fretboard will help you to play lead guitar compositions with ease. One important thing that you need to know is that when you move forward while playing on the fretboard, you are actually playing the various chords that will render a higher sound while moving forward and lower sound while moving backwards. For example: The 5th string also known as the open A will look like this:

FRET -----0-|-1-|-2-|-3-|-4-|-5-|-6-|-7-|-8-|-9-|-10|-

STRING---A-|---|-B-|-C-|---|-D-|---|-E-|-F-|---|-G--|-

If you compare the lead guitar fretboard to a piano, you will find that the frets that lie between the natural tones are also known as the flats (b) or Sharp (#) and represent the black keys on the piano. If you raise the natural tone on the lead guitar fretboard by half a step then it will become a sharp tone and whenever you lower it half a step, it will become a flat tone.

Those who are right handed will be using their left hand to play or pluck the various scales and chords on the guitar fretboard. You will need to use 4 fingers of your left hand to play all the various scales on your fretboard. The only way to master them is by practicing. Here’s a simple exercise that will help you practice better and let you hone your lead guitar skills:

E = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----
B = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----
G = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----
D = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----
A = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----
E = 0 |1----|2----|3----|4----

One thing that you need to remember is that the notes on the guitar fretboard move upwards chromatically. If you start with A then the notes will move like this:A, A#/Bb, B, C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A You will notice that there are no flats or sharp between B and C as well as E and F.