This isn’t surprising. When King David was young he spent hours playing music as a shepherd boy. Later, it was his playing the calmed the spirit of King Saul. Have you experienced that too? That playing music can bring you such peace.

At the VA Hospital in the article, they used money donated to improve the hospital’s aesthetics to hire first a harpist, then later a classical guitar player. They discovered that they didn’t see this same benefit with recorded music. I wonder what that recorded music was and if it may have been different than the live.

It’s nice to see that guitar music was beneficial to these patients. At one of our Worship Parties, a dear friend told me later that God had healed her heart through the worship. Keep playing your guitars and worshiping our Amazing God!

A neuroscientist, Mr. Levitin, said that music can actually adjust and alter your brain chemistry. The whole article is here – Live Music At Fresno’s VA hospital makes a big difference.

As a Christian, I have always recommended starting any practice session with prayer. Paul says to do everything to God’s glory. I remember reading Brother Lawrence’s book years ago. He was a monk from the 1600’s who’s letters have become the book ‘Practicing The Presence of God.’ He talked about peeling potatoes to God’s glory.

The first tip in practicing your guitar is to start with a prayer. The Scriptures also say that you have not because you ask not. You can actually make your practice a time of worship. Thank God for His many wonderful attributes and ask Him for help with keeping focused on Him and with learning the guitar.

You can worship with instrumental music, too. I remember hearing Christopher Parkening, a classical guitarist, say that his motivation for playing the guitar had changed from playing to make money to playing for God’s glory, after he became a Christian.

Warm-up with Finger Exercises

Once your heart is focused on our loving God, then I suggest warming up with some finger exercises. This may be as simple as practicing changing between chords. Eventually I think it’s great to do some guitar scales or this little guitar exercise shown in a previous post.

Be Consistent

If you are going through a program like our worship guitar class program, I suggest staying on one lesson for about a week, or until it becomes easier. It does not need to be perfect because playing is cumulative. As you continue to play the guitar over time, your playing should improve.

Try to spend from 20 minutes to an hour as many days of the week as you can. I know people can be very busy, but the benefits to making time for these worship/practice sessions can make it worth the extra effort to find the time. Even if all you have is 5 or 10 minutes, it’s worth it!

Slow Down and Work on Small Sections

Prayer, warmup, then play the specific songs you want to learn to play. If there is a chord change that is difficult for you, slow it down to a snail’s pace. You can isolate the problem spots and as you are playing watch where your fingers will be moving to. You can also break a chord change down by shifting to on a few fingers of the new chord and add fingers as the change gets easier.

Get a Metronome

Down the road, it also quite a good idea to get a metronome to make sure you are playing in a good rhythm.

God bless!

To understand how it works, you should know what the I, IV, and V chords means. This is briefly explained in volume two of the Worship Guitar Class course and fully taught in our Music Theory course for Guitar. You can see a brief teaching on the plagal cadence in the following video. It starts at around the 1/3rd mark, in the video below.

Basically, the I, IV and V chords are chords built on the first, fourth, and fifth notes of any given scale, or key. In the key of ‘A’, the chords are ‘A’, ‘D’, and ‘E’, or ‘E7′. The V chord is often changed to V7.  The plagal cadence is ending with the IV to I chords. For example, ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands has just two chords, ‘A’ and ‘E7′. The song is based on the I and V7 chords. (A-1, B-2, C-3, D-4, E-5). With a plagal ending, the last line would change to:

(A) He’s got the (E7) whole world in His (D) hands.  … (A)

Instead of going straight to the ‘A’ chord, the chord ‘D’ is playing when singing the last word ‘hands’ and then ‘A’ comes one or two measures later. The music for the song is at the website, http://www.worshipguitarclass.com/guitar-video-dvd.html.

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‘It Is Well With My Soul’ is one of the songs in the New Reading and Music Theory Guitar Course. The story is so touching, I decided to make a short video about it to share with you. God is FAITHFUL in all of our trials and helps us through them when we have an eternal perspective. I hope you enjoy this short video and are maybe even inspired to write your own songs or poems of His Unfathomable Love and Faithfulness.

It’s common for a song to end with a chord called the V, or V7,  to a chord called the I. There isn’t space here to talk about the various chord structures and keys, but the I chord is the root chord of a key. For example in the key of ‘G’ the I is the ‘G’ chord. The V in the key of ‘G’  is the chord ‘D.’

A ‘D’ or ‘D7′ chord resolves nicely to the chord ‘G.’ A deceptive cadence is when you change to the VI chord at the end of a song instead of the I.

A good example is the song ‘Lord I Lift Your Name On High.’ I know many of you have our ‘Worship Guitar Class’ course and this song is in the first volume. The chords are predominately ‘G C D C.’ It ends with the chords ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ G…..

The deceptive cadence for the key of ‘G’ is the VI chord which is the chord ‘Em.’ Instead of playing ‘D,’ Dsus,’ ‘G’ … you can play ‘D,’ ‘Dsus,’ Em.’ The ‘Em’ is on the last word ‘high.’ Play it for a measure then half a measure on ‘Am’ and ‘D’ ‘Dsus’ for the 2nd half of the measure and ending on G. The ending is below…

|    Em     |  Am              Dsus       D           | G  C | D C | G
… high.             Lord I lift your name on high.

We often repeat the deceptive cadence 2 or 3 times before finally ending on G.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn to read music or to understand music theory, would love to have you join our music theory class.