Learning guitar can be much easier when you have the right guitar tools on hand and there’s been some guitar tools in my studio that are like staple foods for me, I couldn’t live without them. Some of these things are obvious, like you should always have a good collection of picks, but often overlooked, sometimes it’s easy to get attached to one pick when you might benefit from changing picks for different styles of music.

5. Heaps ‘o’ Picks

I use thicker picks (generally) for the acoustic, unless I listen to the song and it’s got a softer strum, then I’ll use my fingers or a thinner pick. And of course I change again to either fingers or a stronger pick when doing picking exercises and songs.

4. Spare Pack of Strings

I don’t often wait until my strings are about to break before I replace them, strings are cheap enough that you can replace any string as soon as it gets a bit worn, or starts underperforming compared to the rest of your strings.

Having said that it does only happen rarely so I just make sure I have a full set of strings on hand for my acoustic and electric guitars.

3. A Well Worn Strap

I hate new straps… grrr!

I like a nice well worn strap that feels comfortable, and is easy to put on.

2. QUALITY Guitar Leads

I used to play with cheap leads… in fact I got given a box of old leads from a music studio and I’d go through those until they got too crackly, but now that I’ve forked out some decent money (it was about $60 I think) I got a beautiful lead that never coils and it even has a circuit breaker at one end, so if you start getting some mad feedback through your amp you can just cut the signal… it’s also handy for unplugging quickly, you just hit the switch and rip it out, no need to turn it down on the mixing desk or amp.

1. Ring Binder Practice Book

I have a stack of these down the back of the studio, I’m a great one for hoarding things, and when it comes to my practice notes and study I can’t bear the thought of throwing them away.

I use the ring binders so I can quickly print pages off websites, punch a couple of holes in them and put them in the ring binder. I usually make a few notes as well. So if I’ve just printed off a new guitar lick that I liked the sound of, I might also make a couple of notes about how to improve it, like: “needs to be more moody at the end, notes are too far apart in the middle, etc…”

I also have a bunch of clear files for keeping tabs and sheet music in, I find them easy to flick through and if you get them with a matte finish they don’t reflect annoying light.

If you primarily have your guitar hooked up to your computer for practice and your chosen piece of software doesn’t come with a tuner (for whatever reason) then you should check out these free online guitar tuners, which often do more than the label says.

There are a bunch of free online guitar tuners out there, and for me, there are two types of tuners. There are those that play a note, or a sound file that you match with your guitar by ear and there are the tuners that ‘listen’ to the sound coming out of your guitar and tell you to either tune up or tune down.

Personally when it comes to online guitar tuners I’m a little miffed why they can’t be the second, more interactive type of guitar tuner. I think I might have to have a talk to some flash developers about that and see if I can get one put up on this website.

But for now, here are the best free online guitar tuners I have come across (ones that play a tone and you tune your guitar by ear).

Giesen Tuner
Chord Book Tuner
Hot Frets Tuner

Plus there’s a whole host of Guitar Tuners just like this that are available for download on the PC, Mac or Linux. You should be able to find a bunch of free guitar tuners, but if you get stuck just give me a yell and I’ll do a post with links to some of my faves.

Cheers!