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Quick advice, tips, and tricks for improving at fingerstyle guitar, ukulele, etc.

Selecting and maintaining a repertoire of tunes is critically important.  Whether you want to casually play for friends/family or you aspire to perform at a local bar/restaurant gig, you should intentionally choose repertoire tunes that suit your desired performance outlet.

Once you’ve built a repertoire, maintaining it can require a lot of work.  To stay performance-ready, you need to plan time for repertoire review into your practice schedule.  How often you review each tune depends on your own abilities.

In the video I discuss a couple options to ease the burden of gig preparation.  You can use sheet music or an iPad on stage, or you could split a gig with another musician.

Keep a notebook with your repertoire list so that you are efficient with your repertoire review and so that you never lose track of a tune.  If you perform for different types of gigs, you will need multiple repertoire lists.

Your repertoire will continually grow and evolve.  Some old arrangements will fall off of your list as you add new ones.

You can learn to play music by simultaneously using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

My eBook: Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook.  Learning to arrange melodies will also help your fingerstyle songwriting and your understanding of the inner workings of fingerstyle guitar.

My music is available on all streaming platforms – links on my Linktree page: linktr.ee/joemcmurray

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.