Advanced Guitar Playing must include chords, scales, arpeggios, lead playing, guitar theory, fretboard study and more to a level of high proficiency. The advanced guitar player must have a number of concepts and skills as well as a level of comprehension that will provide him or her with an ability to perform on the instrument to an advanced level. Students of all levels whether they are starting out, or have been playing for years, need to know the essential concepts that will make them advanced like the players they admire. There are a variety of teaching tools, methods and practice suggestions available for advanced guitar playing but they generally fall short in ever leading the guitar playing there.

Most guitarist who have spent time trying to learn the guitar have heard repeatedly the importance of practicing to achieve advanced guitar playing ability. But this is often so misunderstood and unapproachable due to lack guidance and training tools available in the “get rich quick” idea, that have been transposed to the guitar in the form of “become a guitar master fast”, mass information dump throughout the web, that guitar students are at a loss for any real substance in the practice area. You must practice on a regular schedule and often. You must practice various skills and music applications. There is much to the subject of practice that is critical to your success.

The degree to which you understand guitar chords, arpeggios and scales is absolutely a main ingredient that you can not take lightly if you want to raise your playing stature to the advanced level. So often the guitarist does not understand the true nature of the guitar chord, it’s makeup and composition. How to musically apply the chord in the musical styles and at least the proper musical structure that allows one to play with other musicians, write music, or record in a studio as a contributor to the music, is essential to advanced guitar playing. Applying the chords on the fretboard, understanding the variety of ways to view them and the underlying methods to morphing them and expanding or “tightening them up” is a part of advanced guitar playing.

How about guitar scales? Well, surely those are covered pretty easily with a few online diagrams and explanations. If you think that is of any value for the advanced player to make use of guitar scales and apply them in significant tonal and functional ways on the fretboard, then you have no understanding of these. The musical foundations, applications, structures, and adaptations of scale theory and the implications on music usage, fretboard application and modifications are far beyond what a scale is or for example, “how to play a minor pentatonic solo”. Guitar arpeggios are a whole other area of study and comprehension that again is far more than the typical arpeggiation of a chord. Various simple patterns and cool riffs in no way constitute the melodic reasons, musical theory, and fretboard structure that reflect the world of arpeggios for advanced usage. The advanced guitar player must be able to use the guitar fretboard, to a degree that makes them in charge of the instrument as opposed to the instrument being so available yet so inaccessible.

Any guitar player who can play some chords and some scales, even in the open position make think this isn’t so important, as some great song writers and guitar songs have the music played in one area of the fretboard. And that can be true in regards to song writing and band success, but also this more limited playing is in no way any guarantee at all of success either. In fact advanced guitar playing allows the guitarist to play more “intermediate or basic concepts” better and in more musical ways.