Archive for category Guitar Lessons for Beginners

Lesson Five – Guitar Lessons for Beginners – Metal Guitar Scale

Lesson five in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers a complete minor scale, and asks you to record a new guitar chord progression in a minor key which you will use to play over.  This is the typical pattern for a metal guitar scale.  This lesson covers the fingering positions of the new minor scale but does not get heavily into the theory behind the scale or why it sounds the way it does, nor does it get into other similar scales of different playing styles such as country or blues.  Advanced topics like that are covered completely in the DVD series (preview it here).

The scale chosen in this case was in A minor to help the beginner guitarist who has read this lesson series from the beginning more easily add the notes in the new scale to the pentatonic minor scale taught earlier.  Likewise this lesson draws on the beginner minor chords taught in lesson one – beginner guitar chords (but not used since).

Lesson five is the last “technical” lesson in the guitar lessons for beginner series.  The two bonus lessons cover two important warm up and dexterity exercises that the beginner guitarist can use to improve technique and neck hand dexterity.  This first of the lead guitar exercises covers a single string speed technique – a left hand / right hand coordination exercise. 

The second bonus lesson in the series covers a couple (ok… one exercise played in two directions) guitar scale exercises that will help the beginner guitarist really improve their left hand dexterity over multiple strings – which is a huge handicap for most beginner guitarists.

I hope everyone reading these lessons has found them helpful in learning to play guitar, and I also hope that your appetite for knowledge about learning to play & master the guitar has been fully engaged.  There is much more in depth information available (particularly when it comes to licks and tricks for your leads and solos – as well as chord progressions) on the DVD series.  We’ve taught in this series basically one chord progression (played a couple of ways), two scales (a pentatonic and a full tonic scale), and two chords (major and minor in one fingering positon) but obviously there is much more to learn.  Hopefully you’ve learned enough about playing the guitar to be a little successful and take the next step toward doing something really meaningful with your instrument.  You can preview the complete DVD set here, or buy it directly here.  I also highly recommend the guitar setup and repair course for those of you with electric guitars (you can save buku bucks doing your own guitar maintenance).

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No Comments updated July 26, 2013

Lesson Four – Guitar Lessons for Beginners – Lead Guitar Notes (Beginner Guitar Theory)

Lesson four in the guitar lessons for beginners series dips your toe in the waters of music theory.  While you aren’t going to understand music the way Mozart did, by the end of this lesson you should have an idea of why things sound the way they do and be able to begin thinking about how you want to chart your own course in learning to play the guitar.  Do you want to learn more ‘rock-ish’ sounding playing styles or would you rather learn a more ‘country’ sound… or maybe blues is your thing.  The lead guitar notes you play determine the mood.  All the tools your need to learn any playing style are covered in the DVD series (previewed here).

What we’ve done with this lesson is we’ve asked you to take the recording you made in lesson two (beginner chord progressions), and play a simple solo over it using the pentatonic minor scale we taught you in lesson three (guitar note charts – scales).  We then instruct you to play the same solo in a specific different position on the neck and compare the sound of the two solos.  Which solo do you like better?  Depending on your answer you’ll be better prepared as to where to focus your energies when looking at the complete basic guitar lesson DVD series to develop your own style.

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No Comments updated July 26, 2013

Guitar Lessons for Beginners – Lesson Three – Guitar Note Charts (Scales)

Lesson three in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers your first scale, the most simple guitar scale called the minor pentatonic scale.  The minor pentatonic is great to learn because it is very easy for most guitarists to play and is extremely adaptable to most any chord progression you’ll hear in a song or on the radio.  Guitar note charts organize notes into good sounding scales.

The scale covered in the lesson is A minor, which was chosen because of its relationship to the I-IV-V chord progression demonstrated in lesson two.  When you play the pentatonic (5 note) A minor scale over the I-IV-V progression A-D-E (major chords) you end up with a nice rock sounding chord progression with a kind of darker / edgier lead playing over it.  The other reason to choose the pentatonic minor scale is because of the simplicity and flexibility of the note pattern.  It’s easy to play yet many note combinations are possible and with some simple tricks, licks (note and trick combinations) and other tips (all available on the DVD lessons previewed here) it’s possible you may never need to learn anything else to play amazing sounding guitar.

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1 Comment updated July 26, 2013

Guitar Lessons for Beginners – Lesson Two Chord Progressions

Lesson two in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers chord progressions.  A chord progression is series of chords (which you learned in the mastering guitar chords for beginners lesson) played in succession (and typically is repeated).  There are a million potential chord progressions possible when you have a guitar or any other instrument at hand but we chose a simple, frequently used chord progression that you’re sure to have heard played in various forms on the radio or mp3 player.  Guitar chord riffs form the wall of sound in virtually every song.

We have chosen the I-IV-V chord progression for our lesson because it is used in practically every style of music you are likely to hear.  Sometimes you’ll see it played as a minor chord progression (which we demonstrate in the more advanced metal guitar scale lesson), most times as a major progression (country and rock tunes typically).  With this second step in the guitar lessons for beginners series we want you to be able to play this one chord progression very proficiently so that we can record it on tape, CD, or on your computer… then play it in the background while we learn scales and lead solos to play over it in the later lessons.  Like always, check out the guitar lessons for beginners DVD series previews.  The DVDs cover these topics much deeper but with the same philosophy.  Learn one thing, use it as a foundation for the next lesson.

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2 Comments updated July 26, 2013

Guitar Lessons for Beginners – Mastering Chords

So the first lesson in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers your first chords.  A chord is technically defined as a three tone (note) harmony – whether you play it on a guitar, a piano, or sing it acapella with some friends.  Our mastering chords lesson covers two barre chords – first a major barre chord, then a minor barre chord.  With just these two chords mastered you will be able to play about 90% of the songs you hear on the radio today, when you learn to train your ear to hear well enough.  Electric guitar chords begin your journey into a larger world.

It should be plainly obvious why the major and minor chords were chosen for this lesson, as they are prevalent in just about every piece of music you’ll ever hear.  Subsequent lessons build on this lesson, where we next take the major chord and play it in three spots on the neck to create a progression, then learn about scales and how to play them over the progression you’ve learned.  You can find links to all the other lessons here, and also see video sample demonstrations of the complete DVD guitar lessons for beginners series.

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1 Comment updated July 26, 2013