Doghouse Guitar

Doin' Some Chords Around The House [Intermediate] [Theory]

2011-05-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

Ok, who is ready for some modes?
Only kidding, but what we learn today will be instrumental in our building blocks for getting to the big, scary modes. Ready to build some chords? Let's jump in.

This lesson isn't really a pick up and play the guitar kind of lesson, but I believe it is something that every guitarist, and musician really, should know. We are going to be focusing on how chords are built and why they are built like they are.

If you remember when we built our scales, we gave each 'note' in the sequence a number. It was a pretty easy system, the first note is referred to as the first note, second as the second, so on and so forth. In keeping with that, I want to introduce (or re-introduce, honestly can't remember if I mentioned them or not) intervals. Intervals are simply the distance between notes in a scale. Let's refer to the C Major Scale for a visual.

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8

So by looking at this, we could say that an A is the 6th note, or tone, in the scale. This shows that there are six steps (notes) distance from the first note (C) to the sixth note (A). Be sure to remember when counting intervals that the first note is counted, or in this case; the distance from C to C is 1, as C to D is 2, etc. This rule applies to all scales.

A few things of note about major intervals:
1. The intervals in the major scale are referred to as Major Intervals (I know, right?), except
2. The 1, 4, 5 and 8 notes are referred to as Perfect Intervals..

What this means is that if I were to say "Key of C, play the Major Scale starting on the Major 2nd", you would play the scale just starting on the 2nd note, which in this example would be a D. We will discuss perfect intervals at a later time when we explore other scales, I just wanted to clarify.

Ok, so we've got a basis of intervals down and now we want to start building some chords for our song, where do we start? Well you go back to the scale/interval chart. If we wanted to start off with a root/tonic/Major 1st chord we would start off with the first note in our scale. In our example, this note is a C. So we grab our friend Mr. C and sit him in the forefront. He sounds pretty good, but he also sounds a little monotonous so we would go grab the 3rd note, E. Alright, sounds better...let's finish him off. Throw in a 5th on top, a G. Now we're talking. We've got ourselves a good solid sounding chord to get this tune started with. The highlighted notes are the ones that build our chord, and the easiest way to explain it is simply, every other note.

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8

This is what it looks on the guitar:

---0---                                         --E---                                          --3----
---1---                                         --C---                                          --1---
---0--- the notes in the chord ---G-- the interval in the scale ---5---
---2---                                        ---E--                                          ---3---
---3---                                        ---C--                                          ---1---
--------                                       --------                                         --------

This chord is called a Major Triad (1-3-5), meaning it is a Major chord with 3 notes in it. You'll notice that we only do "the every other note" for three notes and then stop. I want you to grab your guitar, if you already haven't and find and play this tab:

--------
---1----
---4----
--------
--------
--------

Sounds pretty horrible doesn't it? But then again, William Hung made a career out of it. What this is called is dissonance, and we don't want that. If you were to go past the three notes that make up the triad and add in the next "every other note", you would get these two notes that fall by each other and that would create this dissonance.

Now, let's try to build a Perfect Fourth chord in the key of C, using the same formula for a major triad but starting on the fourth note of the scale.

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C
1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8

Same deal, every other note with the only difference being we started at the 4th note of the scale instead of the first.

Things are about to get a little confusing, so I'm gonna cut off this lesson here and let this sink in before moving on. As always, thanks for reading.

Through All The Ups and Downs [Intermediate]

2011-05-03T16:04:00.001-05:00

Ok, I'm not a salesman or one to usually try to persuade people towards a certain product one way or another, but there is a tool out that would be very beneficial to us learning on this path together. This tool is called TuxGuitar. Some of you may have heard of GuitarPro, or even TuxGuitar; but whether you have or not, they both are tab input/reading software that plays back what is put in to the program. I highly recommend you go download this program here.

Before we jump into the lesson, let's talk about how this program will help us.

NOTE: Before going any further, I can guarantee that this program is virus-free and will not damage your computer in any way. I currently have this program on all of my computers and use it all of the time.

I believe this program will help us because I will be able to load the files of the tabs demonstrating each exercise that we will be using in each lesson. You will be able to both see the tabs and hear the exercises that are presented in each lesson which will be beneficial to know if you are playing the exercise correctly. And the best thing about this program: IT'S FREE!!!! I love me some freeware. If you don't want to d/l the program you will not be left out in the cold in any way, but I would highly suggest picking up this tool to further your development.

With all that being said, ready for a lesson?

So far we've learned how to fret chords and a few basic rhythms to go along with it and if you've noticed by now, you might have already picked up on what I am going to be teaching about in this lesson. "So Mike, should I, like, not read this lesson dude?" Of course you should!

What we are going to be focusing on today is strumming hand directions. Luckily, there are only two directions to go so this lesson won't be too hard. Almost instinctively, when people pick up a guitar and learn their first chord, the first way they learn to play is by using downstrokes. The other way to play, if there are only two and we've already mentioned downstrokes would be? Well upstrokes of course. I don't know why it's instinctive to play downstrokes first, but that's the way it is.

When you are using the downstroke, that means that you are starting at the large E string and picking accross the strings down towards the floor. The opposite being an upstroke where you start at the little E string and pick up towards the ceiling. When both are incorporated into your right hand movements, we call this strumming. Simple enough, right? Yeh...it pretty much is. With that being said, let's look at how we would notate this.

Once again, I disagree with the way something is done in the guitar/music world and I think that it is unneccisarily confusing, so we are going to make up our own system to use. Our system will be easy to use and understand, just don't expect it to be used anywhere outside of this site. Here is the legend for our system:

Downstroke - v
Upstroke    - ^

I don't think it needs much explination.

This can also be applied to individual strings and when done so is called alternate picking. Let's jump on some exercises.

Exercise 1

      v     ^     v    ^    v     ^     v    ^     v     ^
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
-----5----7----5----4---5----4----2---0---2---0-----
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------

Be sure to crack out the metronome and practice in time, and I would suggest setting the tempo to about 75-85 starting on quarter-notes then to eigth-notes. Once you become comfortable with playing the exercise at your starter tempo, begin to increase the tempo by 5 bpm until you get to where you can't keep up anymore. Don't expect to get up to 180 bpm and start just shredding through the exercise, it's going to take some time and dedicated practice to really get the technique down. Focus on making your down-strokes and up-strokes equal in force and tone to achieve the most out of this technique.

Let's keep things interesting by getting a few more exercises to work with.

Exercise 2
    v  ^   v   ^    v    ^ v   ^   v   ^   v   ^                    v   ^   v   ^ v   ^   v   ^   v   ^  v   ^   v
-------------------------------------------               --1--2--3--4--5--4--3--2--1--------------
-------------------------------------------               --------------------------------4--3--2--1--
-------------------------------------------   (etc.)    --------------------------------------------- (etc.)
------------------------------1--2--3--4--              ---------------------------------------------
-----------------1--2--3--4---------------              ---------------------------------------------
---1--2--3--4-----------------------------              --------------------------------------------

With this exercise you will want to go through all the strings and when you get to the top string do the turnaround and then you will notice that you are using the up-stroke on the first beat instead of a down-stroke. Also do this exercise with a metronome going from quarter-notes (QN hereafter) to eigth-notes (EN hereafter.)

The last exercise I'm going to leave you with is to do alternate picking using the G-Major scale which can be found on the resources page if you need a refresher.

Thanks for reading.

The Space In-Between Us [Intermediate] [Theory]

2011-04-28T17:02:00.000-05:00

Now that your hands are throbbing from all of the clapping that surely ensued once we figured out our first time signature, I guess it's time to pick the ole axe back up. (Tangent: How many times in the English language do you have back-to-back words that end in 'e'?) We will get a chance to strum our hearts away at the end of the lesson, but we need to take the details of the notes a bit further. So, more clapping...

Today we're going to try to start putting it all together. Concentrating on playing notes correctly and in a manner that wont make the neighbors think you're "in one of them dag-blasted punk bands!" This is what separates the men from the boys, the alpha from the pack, or as I like to say, the musicians from the drummers.

In the last lesson, we described a song as a mile (entire musical piece) which is marked by feet (measures) and then are broken up into inches (beats). To take that a step further, there are many different ways to split up a beat. You can split it in half, thirds, quartets, etc. Then you could split the smaller notes even further if you're into some speed metal or something crazy like that. But today, we're just going to hit the basics.

Something I ~~forgot to mention~~ left out intentionally in the last lesson is what we would call those beats. One specific beat in a 4/4 time signature would be called a quarter note, which means that there are four equally spaced (quarterly divide) notes in one measure. If you have one note that stays constant throughout the entire measure it's a whole note. Two notes equally divided would be half notes. Bascially you would start with a whole note and any time it is broken down after that, the name will indicate how many equally spaced notes will be given in that specific amount of time.

Ok, my heads spinning now...let's look at a table. We know that there are 4 beats per measure in a 4/4 time signature, so we will indicate 4 beats at the top of the table. For each type of note, I will put a corresponding '|' under where the note begins for each type.

               1     &      2   &   3   &   4   &
Whole:   |--------------------------------------

Half:       |---------------------|----------------

Quarter: |------------|---------|---------|-------

Eigth:     |-----|------|-----|----|----|----|----|---

(Alright, here is me wishing that these fonts would have an equal width so my tables and tabs don't all look like crap. *wishing*)

Moving on. You will notice that once we get past the quarter notes, we have to start sub-dividing the notes. Keeping with simplicity, we will only be sub-dividing the notes by halves in this lesson. If we take a whole note and divide it into half we would have half notes. Divide them in half, we have quarter notes. Divide those in half and we have eigth notes. Then you have 8th to 16th notes and finally 16th to 32nd notes. (I'm assuming that theoretically you can continue to sub-divide the notes infinium, but there comes a point to where our brains can't keep up and differentiate between the start and stop of a note past 32nd notes at most tempos.)

If you were to count and clap along with eigth notes you would do so, like so:

1   &   2   &   3   &   4   &
c    c    c   c    c    c    c   c
When you tap your foot along to a song in 4/4, you notice that your foot has to come up for it to go down. When your foot is in the air, this is the moment where the '&' comes in. Try clapping all 8 beats in the measure while counting "One and Two and Three and Four and One and Two and Three and Four and etc"
Be sure to say the 'ands' while counting. Once you feel comfortable, just say the numbers while leaving out the 'ands', but continue to clap all 8 notes.

Feeling good? Feeling loose? Wanna go for 16th notes? Let's go for it!

To count 16th notes out loud we say that following sentence.

" 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a "

Start off slow saying that sentence and clapping all the notes, then decrease your "voice count" to eigth notes, then again to just quarter notes, all while continually clapping all 16 notes.

If you haven't gotten a metronome yet, I highly encourage you invest in one quickly. You can buy a pocket metronome for fairly cheap at a local music store and I think even wal-mart may have one in their 'music section'. If not yet though, find a website that plays clicks for you.

Set the metronome at a fairly decent speed (I'd suggest starting off about 70, to where things don't drag but are still fairly slow). Then get your foot to tapping along with each beat and start clapping this pattern: whole note, half notes, quarter notes, eigth notes, and sixteenth notes. Repeat this until you are comfortable with it. Once you have clapped your way through, pick up your guitar and strum your way through the pattern, going whole > half > quarter > eigth > sixteenth. First few times through, use only the G chord. Once you get comfortable add in another chords and switch every other measure. Progress from there at your own pace but please ensure that you are totally comfortable with each step of imporvement before reaching for higher goals. Feel free, once comfortable with the given progression to mix it up, or play it backwards just to keep things fresh.

That'll do it for this lesson, thanks for reading along. We will probably have one more theory lesson before we jump back into a technique lesson. I'm never sure until I begin to write them so don't quote me on that, but that is the plan. Thanks for reading.

Time Marches On...[Intermediate][Theory]

2011-04-25T09:15:00.002-05:00

Well...Ok...That week of inactivity was a downer, right? Had to spend a whole week playing chords and a scale without any structure, and we all know that can get pretty boring. So let's get a little rhythm under our belt.

Did you know I have been involved in music since jr. high but it wasn't until I had to write a college paper that I knew how to correctly spell rhythm? I say that to say...if I spell it incorrectly later on, forgive me.

Alright, so we've got our system that tells us what note to play and now we need system that tells us -how- to play those notes. What I mean by that is "how long do we hold out the note" or "what feel does this passage of music have". In music we distinguish how a song is played by multiple factors and it all starts with the time signature.

The time signature indicates two things: how many beats are in each measure and what note length constitutes a single beat in a measure.

"Ok, ok...what's all this measure and beats and junk?" For the sake of simplicity, let's just get their generalizations so we can have our working vocabulary up. A measure is like the name entails it to be, a "distance" so to speak, that allows a musical piece to be broken down into small sections to ensure the musician can keep in the correct place. Let's pretend that a musical piece is the "distance" of a mile. We know that a mile consists of 5,280 feet, so for the purpose of this illustration, our musical piece contains 5,280 measures. This means that they are all of equal length and together make up the whole mile (song).

Let's take it a step further. Within a foot we have inches, all of the same length (distance). These are what we would designate notes as. Measures and notes are just a way of taking a large sampling (the musical piece) and putting it down to details.

Make sense? I hope so. Analogies aren't my strong suit.

Moving back to the time signature, let's build our first one. The most common of time signatures is 4/4. (In some 4/4 musical pieces, the time signature is indicated by a "C", which stands for common time) By our definition of time signatures, there should be 4 equally spaced beats in a measure in the 4/4 time signature.

Ready to clap?

Let's start off by clapping in equally spaced beats. This should come fairly naturally, just remember to clap equally spaced and not like you're giving Skynyrd a reason to come back out and play Free Bird again. Now that we've got to clapping and got a little beat going, start counting in fours. Example: Using 'c' as an indication to clap.

[c - c - c - c ]-[ c - c - c - c ]-[ c - c - c - c]
[1 - 2 - 3 - 4 ]-[ 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 ]-[ 1 - 2 - 3 - 4] etc.

You will notice that there are 4 claps in each set of brackets; the brackets indicate a measure and since our time signature indicates that there are 4 beats per measure, there will be 4 equally spaced claps (beats) per measure. Go grab a cd or go to youtube and type in a popular song. In fact let's try some AC/DC - Back in Black. Try clapping in our system in time with the song. You should be able to pick up on this very quickly and one quick way to help is to notice the drum beats. When you hear the bass drum those will be counts 1 and 3, and these are also called the downbeats. When you hear the snare drum, those will be counts 2 and 4, and these are called the upbeats. Try clapping through the whole song.

Tired of Back in Black? Well then let's move on to something else. Go find Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N Roses and clap along to it. You will still be in 4/4 time, but you will notice that you're clapping a bit faster. This is where tempo comes into play. (You can finish clapping along to SCOM if you want the practice before moving on, or not...it won't hurt my feelings).

Tempo simply determines how quickly (or slowly, depending on your view of things) a beat or note is played within a piece of music. The tempo of a song is measured in beats per minute. If the song had a tempo of 60, that would mean that there are 60 equally spaced beats within one minute (or 1 per second). If the tempo was 120, there would be 120 equally spaced beats within one minnute (or 2 per second).

Ok, we can let this settle in for a bit before moving on. Next time we will try to implement timing into our playing. Thanks for reading and for your patience between lessons. Please leave me a comment or shoot me an email at Doghouse Guitar if you have any questions. Thanks

A Major Scale To Climb [Intermediate] [Theory]

2011-04-14T12:00:00.021-05:00

Have we got all of those major scales figured out yet? "Yeh Mike, now let's get back to playing something!" Ok, ok. We'll jump back into playing today and learn how to play the major scale in any key. That's right, in one lesson we will learn how to play the major scale in any key. Grab your guitar and let's go.

If you noticed in the last lesson, if you follow the 2-2-1-2-2-2-1 pattern through any key, you end up back at your octave and then the scale just repeats over and over. So by that logic we have the same 7 notes repeating over and over just at higher/lower ocatves in a given key. Once we have those notes figured for the key we want to play in, we begin to apply them to the fretboard and they are used for many different functions. These 7 notes are the notes used to build the chords, create the melody, and determine where on the fretboard you are playing. This is the very basic model of how music is formed and music does not always follow these "rules" (ex. using extra chromatic tones), but we're still laying the foundation for all of that.

We have heard the major scale hundreds of times in our life, we just didn't know that was what we were hearing. Anyone ever have to sing "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do"? You may not have realized but that is what the major scale sounds like.

Before we go any further I would like to show you how we will be referring to the notes of a scale from now on. This, once again, holds true accross all keys and is vital to upcoming lessons. In the last lesson we referred to the first note of the scale as the root or tonic, so that is how we will refer to it's place on the scale. (We will be using the G major scale for the example)

G   - 1st (Root/Tonic)
A - 2nd
B   - 3rd
C   - 4th
D   - 5th
E   - 6th
F# - 7th
G  - 8th (Octave/Root/Tonic)

Since we have our note names and numbers in place, let's figure this out on the freboard and look at our first scale shape.

|---x---|---x---|--------|-------|
|--------|---x---|-------|---x---|
|---x---|--------|---x--|---x---|
|---x---|--------|---x--|---x---|
|---x---|---x---|-------|---x---|
|--------|---x---|------|----x---|

Let's look at this with our singing line "Do Re Mi etc..."

|---Ti---|---Do---|--------|---------|
|---------|---So---|--------|---La---|
|---Re--|---------|--Mi--|---Fa---|
|---La--|---------|---Ti--|---Do---|
|---Mi-|---Fa---|--------|---So----|
|--------|---Do---|-------|----Re---|

So if we were to start on a G note on the low E string and go up the scale, we would be able to sing along with the scale. That way, if you hit a note and it doesn't correspond with the note you're playing then you will know that it is wrong. Or it means that you are like me and can't sing or hold a tune in a bucket.

Let's look at the scale in G.

|---2---|---3---|--------|-------|
|--------|---3---|-------|---5---|
|---2---|--------|---4--|---5---|
|---2---|--------|---4--|---5---|
|---2---|---3---|-------|---5---|
|--------|---3---|------|----5---|

Something to pay attention to here is that this is just a collapsed view of the scale. When viewing it this way, it almost looks like a weird (and very complex) chord. But this is just a shortened way of showing all the notes within the scale. If the scale were to be written out uncollapsed, it would look like so:

------------------------------------------------2--3---
-----------------------------------------3--5----------
------------------------------2--4--5------------------
-------------------2--4--5-----------------------------
---------2--3--5---------------------------------------
--3--5-------------------------------------------------

This is the most common major scale shape that we will learn and the one that we will focus on for this lesson. When playing the scale we should focus on left-hand econonomy (or right, depending on dexterity). What I mean by this is that we need to remove any wasteful hand motion that is going to slow us down and removing that uneeded motion reduces hand fatigue when your throwing down some Stevie Ray Vaughun or something like that. With that being said, let's look at the hand position most commonly associated with this scale by using our finger codes.

|---i----|---m---|------|---------|
|--------|---m---|------|----p---|
|---i----|--------|---r--|----p---|
|---i----|--------|---r--|----p---|
|---i----|---m---|------|----p---|
|--------|---m---|------|----p---|

As you have probably noticed, we dedicate a finger to each fret since there are 4 frets being used and we have 4 fingers available for play. When the scale is played this way your fingers stay relatively in one position and just move accross strings instead of accross strings -and- frets. When I co-instructed a guitar class in high school with the band director we got to the point where we were focusing on scales and how to play them, and we had this one guy who was learning on the bass. He learned the scale patterns correctly but could not nail down the concept of using more than his index finger. So he went up and down the scales, one note at a time, with just one finger and it sounded both correct and horrible (haha). I thought it was funny but after typing it, this was definitely one of those "you had to be there" kind of stories....

But I do tell that story to emphasize fluidity and the control of the notes are what we are going for here, as well as memorization of the pattern. Speed is not an object at this point, we are just shooting for correct notes. So if you need to take 10 seconds on each note, take 10 seconds. Just aim to learn the pattern correctly. Once we have memorized the pattern, the scale is just like barre chords and can be moved up and down the fretboard. Say we wanted to play in the key of F major up at the 13th fret....easy, just move the pattern up. It would look like so:

|---12---|---13---|--------|---------|
|---------|---13---|--------|---15---|
|---2-----|--------|---14--|---15---|
|---12---|---------|--14--|---15----|
|---12---|---13---|-------|---15----|
|---------|----13--|-------|---15----|

Pretty cool, huh? (I think I have said that line everytime we learn that something is movable on the guitar, oh well...)

So, using any key you would like, go up and down the scale pattern until you learn it backwards and forwards. Remember to focus on fluidity, control and memorization and not on speed. The speed will come in time with building up chops and familiarity.

Our Major Leap Into The Unkown [Intermediate] [Theory]

2011-04-13T10:13:00.002-05:00

Did you see that new word in the title? That's right, we've graduated from Guitar 101 and it's time to move into the next level. Excited? I hope so. I know I am. It's time to get into the meat of music and really figure out what's going on. This will separate you from the average person who knows how to strum a few tunes to where you will really understand -why- things work, not just how. Today we will be focusing on the Major Scale.  So are you readyyyyyuuuugghghhhh? (Sorry, the Scott Stapp in me came out...) Let's get to it.

Let's first start off with a quick review from a few lessons ago. To effectively understand, well, anything in music...we have got to know the note names front and back so let's take another look at them:

A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/D - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab - A

Familiar? Now, the distance between each note (which is equal) is described as a half-step.

Note: When moving a half-step up, the way you would "count" it is like so; B to C is a half-step, C# to D is a half-step, Bb to B is a half-step, etc.

So if we wanted to move up 2 half-steps, we would say we are moving up a whole step. As my physics teacher used to say "It isn't rocket science, but we're getting there".

Now if we were to sit down and say, "I want to write a song in the key of G major", how would we determine which notes would be harmoncally pleasing to playing along with that G major chord? We would build G major scale and see what notes fit. A major scale (in any key) is built from the following pattern:

2 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 1

These numbers indicate the amount of half-steps needed from note to note to build the major scale. Since we are going with the G major scale so we know that G will be our first note, and this note is called the root (also known as the tonic, but we'll just go with root for now). The root note is the 1st note in any scale and determines both the scale notes and the name of the scale.

The distance from G to the second note in the G major scale is 2 half-steps, right? So jump back up to our note chart and start on the G and then move up 2 half-steps. You should have landed on an A. If so, let's try the next note moving from an A, while following our pattern, up 2 half-steps and you should land on the B. We would go on there so on and so forth to the point where you would end up back at G. Try to go through it yourself and see if you end up back at G. If not, look at the following chart and see if it makes more sense (I'm a visual kind-of-guy myself.)

G -     A -      B -       C - D - E     - F#     - G
   2 2              1 2 2 2 1

                                                     -OR-

G - G# -  A -   A#  - B - C - C# - D - D#  - E - F - F#  - G
         H      H      H      H      H     H      H      H      H     H     H      H
               2                2       1               2                2               2       1

That looks more like organic chemistry than music if you ask me. Do you think we've got this pattern thing down? Well let's try it on another root note and see what we can come up with for the C major scale.

What did you come up with? It should look like the following:

C - D - E - F - G - A - B - C

I really hate the notion of being like an elemntary school teacher and giving "homework", but it would be highly beneficial to sit down for about an hour and work out the notes for every key following the pattern that we have set up. You don't have to memorize it all before you can move on to the next lesson or anything like that, but just work out building your major scales from each root. Every note on the chromatic scale can be a root, not just a G, C, or any other common notes you hear about.

Hopefully this lesson will give you some more time to get the chords we looked at in a working manner while still feeding the appetite of getting a new, fresh lesson to look at.

Raising The Barre pt. 2 [Beginner]

2011-04-11T13:45:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like a weekend at the woodshed right? I hope you were able to jump headlong into all of the chords we've learned so far and get some serious practice in. If you're ready, I think it's time to push on to the next lesson. If you need some more time, that's no problem at all. It would be far more beneficial to go at your own pace in each lesson until you feel like you have mastered that particular lesson.

Today we are going to take a look at some other barre chords and how to implement them into our chord vocabulary.

Picking up right where we left off, let's jump right into some tabs for 5 string barre chord shapes. Note: We are going to change up our tabs just a bit. In the first lesson that I introduced tabs, we used an 'x' to indicate a string that was not being played. Now we are just going to leave that particualr string blank when we do not want a note to be played on that string.

This is a Bm chord.

----2----
----3----
----4----
----4----
----2----
---------

Once again, the index finger is used to barre the strings on the second fret and individual notes are fingered as normal. This is what the shape looks like accross the 3 frets used.

|--2--|-----|------|
|--2--|--3--|------|
|--2--|-----|--4---|
|--2--|-----|--4---|
|--2--|-----|------|
|-----|-----|------|

Just like our six string barre chords that we studied in the last lesson, the 5 string barre chords take the shape of an open chord (in this case Am) and allow you to move it up and down the fretboard to play any minor chord with this same shape. You will notice that this shape feels exactly like the 6 string major barre chord shape, just with every thing moved up one string. Well....that is all that it is. If you can play the 6 string major barre chords, then you can move them up one string and voila...you've got the 5 string minor barre chord.

Now let's pull up a 5 string major barre chord...here's the tab for a B major 5 string barre chord.

----2----
----4----
----4----
----4----
----2----
---------

That's a lot of repeating numbers. So how do we approach this? Well....you barre with two fingers. Now, I know someone will say, "Can't we just barre the second fret and finger the other notes individually?" Absolutely. We -could- do that. But honestly it doesn't help you in the long run.

When you start playing these kind of chords in the upper frets (past the 12th fret), fret space seems to get a little tight. You don't want to have to try and cleanly intonate 3 strings right beside each other on the same fret with 3 separate fingers. If you have large hands like me, it simply won't work. Another disadvantage is you tie up those 3 fingers when it only takes 1 to do the work. Why not work more efficiently and use 1 finger that will free up the other 2 to add embellishments?

As per usual, this chord shape can be moved up and down the fretboard to play any major chord. Let's try a chord progression with nothing but barre chords.

----1-------3-------5------1-----
----1-------5-------6------3-----
----2-------5-------7------3-----
----3-------5-------7------3-----
----3-------3-------5------1-----
----1------------------------------

Starting to all make sense? Now that we know these chords and the open chord shapes, we can now play thousands if not millions of songs. Remember that these barre shapes( any variation that we learned about) are movable to fit any key.

This lesson is short and sweet because we're going back into theory tomorrow. DON'T RUN!! We're going to jump into the cicrle of 5th's, intervals and establishing the key. Hope to see you back.

Our First Barre Gig [Beginner]

2011-04-08T12:23:00.001-05:00

I'm assuming that you've made it out of the saloon safely if you were able to join us again. You cut it pretty close by only knowing half of your chords and it's a good thing the guy didn't challenge you to a song in the key of F or Bb. If you'll notice, we didn't really mention these chords in the past two lessons. No, these bad boys have their own personalities and it's gonna take some fancy fingerwork. Let's get to it and jump right in to Barre Chords.

People hate barre chords. Beginners hate barre chords. I've been playing for 11 years and I hate barre chords. I've had countless people that were learning to play guitar come up to me and say "Do we really have to play these chords like this??" Unfortunately, yes. But, it is what it is and it will open up your eyes to something really cool about the guitar.

A barre chord is not any different tonal wise from any of the open chords. Your major chords are still formed by the 1 - 3 - 5 notes from the key you are playing in, and the minor chords are still formed by the 1 - b3 - 5 notes from the key you are playing in. The difference being in the chord shape or how you finger the chord.

When playing a barre chord, you will use a finger (usually the index) to span mutliple strings within the same fret. Then you will use your remaining fingers to fret individual notes the way we mentioned in the last lesson. All at one time. Nothing to fear, let's just jump into some tabs.

This is what the F chord looks like when tabbed out on all six strings:

----1----
----1----
----2----
----3----
----3----
----1----

Now obviously we don't have three separate index fingers to fret them as individual notes, so we will have to lay the finger flat accross the strings to fret all of the notes with one finger. This is how your fingers will lay accross the three frets used in the F major chord.

|---1---|--------|-------|
|---1---|--------|-------|
|---1---|---2---|-------|
|---1---|-------|---3---|
|---1---|-------|---3---|
|---1---|--------|-------|

or

|---i---|--------|-------|
|---i---|--------|-------|
|---i---|---m--|--------|
|---i---|--------|--p----| ( i=index, m=middle, r=ring, p=pinky)
|---i---|--------|--r----|
|---i---|--------|-------|

As you can see, the index finger lays flat accross all strings in the first fret.

Another way of looking at this. Do you remember the E chord that we learned in the cowboy chord lesson? If you will notice, the only difference between the E and the F is the E shape was moved up one fret, and you added the barred index finger in behind it.

Now this is where it get's interesting. You can take this chord shape and move it up and down the fretboard to play any major chord. Say you played this shape with the barred finger on the 5th fret, you would now be playing an A major. Move it up some more to the 10th fret; now you're playing a D major. This works for all notes on the fretboard, but remember it is only major if you use this shape exactly as it is written.

So what about minors? Do they have their own fancy, movable barre chord shape? Well of course they do. Let's take a look at one.

For the sake of simplicity and a good A/B test, let's go with F minor.

|---1---|--------|-------|
|---1---|--------|-------|
|---1---|--------|-------|
|---1---|--------|---3---|
|---1---|--------|---3---|
|---1---|--------|-------|

or

|---i---|--------|-------|
|---i---|--------|-------|
|---i---|--------|-------|
|---i---|--------|--p----| ( i=index, m=middle, r=ring, p=pinky)
|---i---|--------|--r----|
|---i---|--------|-------|

Looks oddly familiar, but there's something missing. Look closely and we will notice that there is only one note difference. It's that dang b3 we keep hearing about. Now that we've taken it out, this is the shape we get for 6 string barred minor chords. Yep...it's that simple.

Just for some further clarity, let's remember back to our use of E major to show the barre chord F major. The minor chords work just the same. If you were to take an E minor and shift if up one fret, then place your index finger to bar all six strings on the first fret, you would have an F minor. And you guessed it...if you were to move this barred shape up and down the fret board you could play any minor chord with the same shape.

The same principles that applied to open chords applies to barre chords as well. Even though you are using the palm side of your finger to fret the notes as opposed to the tips of your fingers, you should concentrate on pressing down firmly and creating equal pressure on all strings that are barred. This is the only way to ensure clean, controlled chords that will ring out beautifully.

Once you get the shape down, begin to implement changing from barred chords to open chords and vica versa. We're going for fluidity here and once you learn the shapes and where to place your fingers, the key is going to be practice, practice, practice. That is the only way to guaruntee improvement; you've got to build up your chops.

This chord shape will keep you at the woodshed for a while so that is all for this lesson. The next lesson will be another "pt. 2" style lesson where we will focus on 5 string barre chords. You'll have 6 strings down by then so 5 strings will be a breeze. The next lesson will be the last one of the week and I encourage you all to go through all of the chords and nail them down this weekend. Then when we resume at the beginning of next week we will begin to visualize the fretboard.

A Few Minor Adjustments, pt. 2 [Beginner]

2011-04-07T14:11:00.004-05:00

Fingers hurting yet? You should be building a few nice callouses at this point in the game. Those callouses will build up rather quickly if you practice and play every day. I hope you've been having fun implementing your first chords into your vocabulary. I bet you've even stumbled accross a Bob Dylan tune or two along the way.

All of the chords that we looked at in the last lesson were the Major Chords in the open position. Today, we're going to look at the other side of the spectrum and focus on Minor Chords in the open position.

When we have another theory lesson we will go in depth as to what makes a chord Major or Minor, but for now we will just recodnize them as happy and sad chords. I can't gaurantee that every lesson will have a simple analogy that you would likely see on Seasame Street, but I'm gonna try my darndest (is that a word? I don't know...).

The Major chords sound happy.
The Minor chords sound sad.

This is the easiest way to tell the difference between, just by hearing the chords, whether a chord is major or minor. The only difference in any given chords major and minor variations is just one note, the b3 (flatted 3rd). For example, a G Major chord has the notes G - B - D in it, whereas a G Minor chord consists of G - Bb- D. Without jumping ahead a few lessons, we will just use our happy and sad differentiation for the moment.

When writing out the chord name, we need to indicate whether the chord is a Major or Minor chord. The way that we show that difference is to place a lowercase 'm' after the chord name. For instance, sticking with our G chord, if we were to write a song that had a G Major chord in it, we would indicate it as so: G, but if that chord were a G Minor, then the chord would need to be written like this: Gm.

Here is a list of all the open minor chords we will be learning today: Am, Em, Dm. Remember, these chords are shown in standard tuning.

Am:
----0----
----1---- (i)
----2---- (r)
----2---- (m)
----0----
----x----

Em:
----0----
----0----
----0----
----2---- (m)
----2---- (i)
----0----

Dm:
----1---- (i)
----3---- (r)
----2---- (m)
----0----
----x----
----x----

These are all of the (common) non-barred chords in open position. (You mean theres more kinds of chords??) There's actually hundreds of chord shapes once you begin putting in all of the variations and different ways to compose a chord, but let's pump the brakes. We've got to get these chords rolling smoothly before we can jump into all of that. I want you to o through these chords the same way we approached the chords in the last lesson, putting emphasis on proper fretting technique and making clean transitions.

So now we've got some more chords to practice with...what to do now? Well I guess we could play a song. Try this on for size.... G - C - Em - C - G - D - C - G Sounds pretty good, right? You can take those 4 chords, mix them up any way you want to and play thousands and thousands of songs. Granted, to play along with your favorite songs with just those chords, you would need a capo to change the key of the song. I love using capos so much that I want to dedicate an entire lesson to them, but I will give you the basics today real quickly so you can get to jamming along with some songs.

A capo is a device that is either spring loaded or uses a clamping (screw-based) to clamp down on the strings of a guitar at any fret. What this does is it takes your standard tuning and transposes the notes up, allowing you to use common open chords to play songs in any key. A guitar in standard tuning ( E, A, D, G, B, e ) with a capo on the 3rd fret would now be in the 'tuning' of ( G, C, F, Bb, D, g ). A capo moves the pitch up a half-step for every fret that you go up. It's a pretty cool device if you ask me. So we've made it through our first few lessons and it only took 5 to get to playing some acutal music. I know it took some patience but we made it this far. I am trying to pace things out and make the lessons easy to digest and not totally scare off anyone. If you have any comments or suggestions on the pace or length of the lessons, or if you like things just as they are, please visit the Feedback page and send me your thoughts and comments. Thanks for all the interest you all have shown in the blog and I hope to see you all back for our next lesson when we take a look at barre chords.

Hang 'Em High, Leave 'Em Open [Beginner]

2011-04-05T10:13:00.007-05:00

You walk into the saloon, dust off your boots and sit down at the table where the daily poker game is going on. Winning a hand or two you start to feel lucky. You throw down the ultimate bet, all or nothing plus $100. Laying it all on the line you wait with anticipation as the dealer flips out the card that is to be the river. A seven...well that doesn't help at all. Looks like you owe the fella who beat you all your chips and $100, but you don't have the extra $100. Your chance at the flush was foiled. So what do you do?

Well you challenge him to a guitar battle of course. Can't play any songs? Oh crap. Another foil in your plan and this isn't looking good for you. Looks like you need to learn a few chords to get you rolling right? Welcome to Open Chords/Cowboy Chords.

Cowboy chord is just another name for an open chord. I like calling them cowboy chords because if you can't play a country song without a G chord in there somewhere, then you aren't playing a country song. The definition of an open chord is simply a chord that is being played in the open position (the first 4 frets) and generally have an open string, or strings, within the chord structure. Let's look at the tab for our first chord, the mighty G chord. (If you missed the lesson on reading tabs, you can check it out here.) Also, as a reminder, we are in standard tuning.

----3---- (p)
----0----
----0----
----0----
----2---- (i)
----3----(m)

What are those random letters off to the side? I don't know, I'm your guitar teacher not Einstein. Ok, only joking. I really am Einstein, or at the very least, a distant relative. What those letters indicate is what finger you use to fret the chord. This is the system we're gonna go by. If you know the latin names, ignore those. We're going for simplicity here and we're gonna make our own system. There's no reason the thumb should be indicated by a p, in my opinion. So this is our secret code system. T stands for thumb, I stands for index, M for middle, R for ring, and P for pinkie. This system is our system...it makes us feel accomplished right?

Back to the chords. What you're going to really focus on when learning your first chords is really trying to make sure all notes within the chord are heard crisply and clearly. If you are just learning guitar for the very first time, you should put great importance on proper fret hand technique. This involves curving your fingers around the fret board and using the tips your fingers to fret the notes. Let's do an exercise. Hold your left hand out in front of your face, parallel to the floor with your palm down. (If you are a left handed guitar maestro, just use the opposite hand mentioned) Now with your right hand make a sideways "T" by placing the palm of your right hand on the tips of your left hand fingers. Now make a mental note, when fretting individual notes with one finger at a time, the tip of your left hand fingers that are touching your right hand palm should be the only part of your fingers that touch the fretboard when playing guitar. That sounds like a really complicated sentence when I read that back, but I cannot stress enough that as a new gutiarist, you need to form proper technique. It is much easier to correct this now than later. I myself had a problem of being apathetic towards my approach in the beginning and it took me 4 years to correct what I improperly learned in one. When you fret with the tip of your finger, you have complete control over the note. So really curve those fingers around and press firmly on the strings. When you fail to curve your fingers around for proper intonation, you also set yourself up for the muting of other strings and messy transitions to other chords. Speaking of other chords let's learn another one, the open "C" chord.

----0----
----1----(i)
----0----
----2----(m)
----3----(r)
----x----

So Mike, I've read your little write up about all the note names and how to read tabs...so did I really miss the part about the 'x' note? Fear not my friends, there is no 'x' note, you don't need an extra digit to fret it or anything like that. All the 'x' means is that the string marked will not be played when playing this chord. When strumming a chord like this one, you should focus on picking/strumming only the strings needed to play said chord. If you were to properly fret the chord on the neck, but pick all six strings, you would not be playing a 'C' chord anymore, but a 'C/E' chord. Take your time when learning to strum chords that do not require all six strings to be strummed. Your playing will gain clarity and structure if you can play without just going Sex Pistols on the guitar and beating the living out of the strings. If you're going for that sound though, then it was nice having you along for the ride, but after I give a list of chords at the end of the lesson, you'll more than likely be done with this series. Only joking, sort of....

Moving on, let's look at a few more chords and add to our weapon choices.

The D chord: A real finger twister. This one will take some time to get down.

----2----(m)
----3----(r)
----2----(i)

----0----

----x----

The A chord: Squeeze those fingers in.

----0----

----2----(r)

----2----(m)

----2----(i)

----0----

----x----

The E chord: Another twister rolling through the town.

----0----

----1----(i)

----2----(r)

----2----(m)

----0----

You think you can take on the fella you owe $100 to now? You have five chords to do something with now. I would suggest taking all the chord shapes one at a time and nailing down your ability to effectively fret all the chords clean and clear (and under control). Then, and only then, start to switch chords. First try just two chords back and forth. Then throw in a third chord. Once you can cleanly switch through three at the time, go for the gold and do all five chords. Try to make it interesting by alternating your pattern of chords that you are using to practice with. Try G, C, D, A, E....and then go through the list backwards. Then completely mix up your list and practice the chord switching until you feel like you can, at the drop of a hat, play these chords. You need to get to the point where if I yell E at you, you should be able to instantly play an E. The chords played in this fashion will not sound like a song or viable chord progression, but it won't be long and you'll figure out a progression or two just by stumbling around with the chords.

Finally! We played something! Now we've got the ball rolling and we're on our way to impressing the oppostie sex with our campfire-strumming-while-your-friends-tell-lame-jokes mastery. The next lesson will be sort-of a part 2 to this lesson where we will learn about more open chord shapes, but of the minor variety and we will play our first chord progressions.

12 Things I Love About You (Music, That Is...) [Beginner]

2011-04-01T09:04:00.009-05:00

Alright, now that we've got our gear plugged in and no one has been electrocuted, burned, or otherwise injured, it's time to start playing right? Eh, not so fast. I know, I know...I said in the last post we would get to playing. But I jumped the gun. You're gonna forgive me right? Just this one time, I promise. No more mistakes.

The reason we can't just jump up and say "Let's go everyone, 12-bar blues shuffle in Emaj 1, 2, 3, 4..." is, well, some of you may have no clue in the world what Emaj is. In fact, Emaj sounds like the name of the would-be cousin to Rajesh Koothrapali on the Big Bang Theory, but I digress. Before we jump into playing and techniques, we need to have a system that allows us to communicate musical ideas through text. Luckily for us, we already have not one, but two systems that are accepted worldwide. Today we will be learning about musical notation and guitar tablature.

*If you come out of this lesson with more questions than answers, that is to be expected. Music is beautiful in the way that it all ties together and everything has a purpose, but because it is so encompassing there is no way we can cover -everything- in one lesson. I promise we will make sense of it all before it's said and done with. That being said, if you still just have no idea what went on in this lesson, contact me through e-mail and we can go further in-depth. (Note: There are many different styles/forms of musical notation that is applied in different cultures, but we will only be focusing on the western-culture style notation.) Alright, enough intro, let's get to it. Music in western culture is divided up into twelve notes or tones. The notes in parenthesis are the same notes as the note above it, they are just a different way of expressing the name.

A - A# - B - C - C# - D - D# - E - F - F# - G - G# - A
(Bb) (Db) (Eb) (Gb) (Ab)

(#) indicates a sharp note
(b) indicates flat note

I really can't tell you why they decided to put these (#) and (b) in between the letter notes, maybe it's easier to notate with only 7 separate letters than 12 seperate letters. Your guess is as good as mine on that one and maybe one of our readers knows the answer and would like to share in the comments. If so, they are more than welcome. But, it is what it is so we're gonna use it. These are all of the standard, accepted notes and this collection of notes forms what we like to call the chromatic scale.

Chromatic has the root word chroma, which means color. This means that there are 12 different colors, or tones, available for musical expression. The tonal differnce from note-to-note is the same distance. If you pick one string and played a note on each fret from 1 all the way to 24, you would be able to sing every note after the second or third time you do this. You can hear the "distance" between the notes when you do this, and when you play notes of the chromatic scale you are playing in intervals that we like to call half-steps. Meaning, the distance from 'A' to 'A#' is a half step. 'F' to 'F#' is a half step. 'B' to 'C' is a....you guessed it, a half step. "What you talking 'bout Willis?" Where's the B#? If you go back and look at our chromatic scale, you'll see that we never notated a B#. "Technically" it does exist, we just call it a C. The same principle applies to "E#" and F. Once you have half-stepped your way through the whole scale and you arrive at the note that you started on, you have now made it through a full octave.

Quick review: The chromatic scale contains all 12 equally distanced tones, seperated by half-steps. Once we have made it completely through the scale and the letters start to repeat we have made it through an octave.

Now that we know the note names and how they are divided, we need to figure out where they go. Musical notes are placed on what we call a staff, with a given location for each note. (Note: This specific sequence of notes only applies on a treble clef, more on that in a minute.)

The letters of each note stay fixed in their given space, regardless of the length of note and whether there is a # or b along with the letter. In other words, whether the note is F, F#, or Fb, it stays in the first space from the bottom. If the note is an F#, it will be noted as such within the piece, or in the key signature.

Treble Clef

Bass Clef

The musical staff will have one of the preceding symbols which indicate where the notes will placed. The picture shown above the clef symbols shows notes placed on the staff in accordance with the treble clef. You will also notice two "4" placed one above the other. This indicates the time signature of the piece. This time signature (4/4) is the most common time signature used in music, although a number of other signatures are prevalent in music as we know it.

This is all I'm going to present on musical notation at this time (believe me, there is plenty more to fill up other lessons), but this gives us a nice foundation to start building upon. I am not going to go further into details of musical notation right now because, honestly, other than a few theory lessons, we're never going to touch this stuff again. This system was made for pianos, organs and orchestras, not guitar folks like us. I don't have the time, nor the patience to write out musical scores for us when we have a system that is made specifically for guitar and translates better. Knowing this basic musical notation, though, will help us tremendously down the road.

So what is this better system you ask? Guitar tablature. Guitar tab (short for tablature, you'll never see me write out tablature after this time lol) is exponentially better suited for our endeavors on the fretboard. Here is a quick run down of guitar tab basics; there are six lines written in a similar fashion to a musical staff, the difference being the five lines on a staff are used as a guide for the placeholders of notes, and the six lines on a guitar tab represent the six strings of the guitar. When looking at a guitar tab, you approach as if you laid the guitar face up in your lap and are looking at the highest (smallest) string being on top, and the lowest (thickest) string being on bottom. It looks a little bit like this...

--e---------------------------- (smallest/thinnest string)

--B---------------------------

--G----------------------------

--D---------------------------

--A---------------------------

--E---------------------------- (largest/thickest string)

Some tabs have the notes written out for you like that, some don't. You can assume that if no notes are present on the strings, that the guitar tab is being presented in standard tuning (EADGBe).

To indicate a note on a tab, a number is placed on a "string". In this case, we want to play a G note on the low E string. The G note on the low E string is played at the 3rd fret, so this is how we would notate that.

----------------------

---------------------

--------3-----------

If we wanted to play an open note, it is notated with a 0 for the fret. Ex. An A note, played on the A string, in open position.

-----------------------

-----------------------
-----------------------
-----------------------
------------0----------
-----------------------

Tabs really shine through when used to present chords, because transcribing out a full, 6-string chord from the guitar onto a musical staff takes up quite a bit of room as their is quite a distance note-wise from the lowest to highest tone. In the case of this G chord, two octaves are being used! Here is an example of a G chord, written out in tab.

---3------

---0------
---0------
---0------
---2------
---3------

Alright folks, that should be enough content to tide us over for a moment or two. I hope that I've made more sense here than confuse you even further. The best part about all of this is that we've made it through the hardest part. It's equivalent to learning two knew languages, but once we get to where we can communicate to each other, then the fun begins. I know you've got the itch to actually play something, so next lesson, we -will- play something. We're going to jump right into Open/Cowboy Chords next lesson, so stay tuned! Trivia: We learned about the 12 accepted tones and what their names are, but did you know that one of the notes used to go by another name? In the comments section please post your answer and tell us what note that was, along with what the note used to be named.

How Do I Hold This Thing? [Beginner]

2011-03-29T18:46:00.005-05:00

OK, this is about as basic as it gets. This will be either the most boring post I ever post, or I'm gonna have a real bomb down the road and this will be the second lamest post I'll have to put on here. But with that being said, let's get this over with...

The parts of the guitar. I've made a nice and beautiful picture, complete with my dream guitar, with all of the parts labeled.

An acoustic guitar has about the same parts set-up, the main difference being the acoustic guitar body is built like a sound-box with a sound hole instead of a solid body with pickups routed into the guitar face. Modern acoustic guitars have the options of having a built-in pickups. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations between guitar wood, pickups, neck wood, fretboad wood, tuners, electronics, etc. I will address many of these options very in depth in a later post.

To play electric guitar, you will need, in addition to your guitar, an amp and a 1/4" instrument cable. Connect the cable from your input jack on the guitar, into your amp, then power up your amp. (Note: If you have a tube amp, LET THE TUBES WARM UP BEFORE PLAYING! This is very important. So many good tube amps get ruined because the player does not allow enough time for the vacuum tubes to get to a proper working temperature.) Once the amp is on, set your volume levels. Your volume levels should be set both for personal comfort (you gotta hear to be able to play music) and depending on your location (let's not get the cops involved and say "Mike from Doghouse Guitar said to crank it to 11!"). Setting up your guitar and amp for a certain tone is an art upon itself, and we'll discuss this as well in a later post. But for now, I'll tell you...most of your tone comes from your fingers.

What this means: practice with consistency, really hit each note, develop proper picking and fretting techniques, follow through with each note, and practice some more. Eddie Van Halen has a signature tone and has had his gear change through the years until he found what he thought was the perfect tone, but he would still sound like Eddie Van Halen on my guitar, amp and pedals, because of -how- he plays, not what he plays. So buying a quality instrument is very important, but at this stage, don't get caught up in buying things you don't need. A distortion pedal isn't going to make you sound any more powerful if you can't play anything right, it's going to make you sound like a semi with a knock in the engine. The point being, a $3000 guitar is not the answer to becoming better at the guitar, playing the guitar and mastering the techniques is the answer.

I've got one more topic to hit before we wrap up this post. TUNE THE GUITAR. This is one of the most vital things to learn from the start. A guitar that is properly tuned, and that will sound easy to the ear when played correctly, will help to push your drive to become better. If you're playing everything right and the guitar is out of tune, you won't know you're playing it right. It will sound like a Yoko Ono record. And believe me, that's a bad bad thing. The tuning that we will be dealing with 95% of the time will be what we call standard tuning. This tuning is E A D G B e. The large E string will be the thickest string on your guitar and from time to time, we will refer to this is the 6th string. The 5th string will be tuned to A, the 4th string to D, and so on. Tuning your guitar is simple and you have many choices these days to get your guitar in tune.

A) Tuning Fork: You strike the fork which produces a set tone (it will say what note the fork is tuned to on the fork usually) then you pluck the string that it is matched to (the most common forks used for guitar tuning is either an "E" or "A" ) and then adjust the corresponding tuning head until the pitch matches up. The pitch will go from sounding very wavy (out of tune) to having no waves (in-tune). A Tuning Fork - "A" 440 Hz with Soft Shell Case (Decent choice if you don't mind hitting something with the fork everytime you want to tune.)

B) Guitar Tuner: You can pick one up just about anywhere, and I suggest the Korg GA-30 Ultra Compact Guitar and Bass Tuner. I've personally used and abused this thing and never had any problems out of it. To use it, you simply plug-in your guitar to the tuner and tune it up one string at a time. The screen will show a needle the wavers left or right, then will rest upright when you get the string in tune. There are many different choices and brands for tuners, but don't skimp out and get the cheapest one you can. Remember, no Yoko Ono. (Best choice)

C) Listen to a song that you know the key of and tune according to the notes played in the song. (Worst choice, but I've done it a thousand times).

There won't be a long wait between this post and the next one, as this post doesn't really have you playing anything yet, and that's the reason you're here. So we'll let this sink in for a day or two, then we're going to jump into our first theory lesson. *insert evil laugh here* We will be covering the musical notes, how to read music, and how to read tablature.

The Beginning: I Completely Understand

2011-03-27T14:21:00.001-05:00

I get it. No one has time. You want to play guitar, you want to get better, you need a little guidance. But who in the world has time to schedule a lesson with everything else we got going on? Like I said, I understand. So hopefully you'll find something interesting here that will get you on the right track, and you can do it on your own time. Maybe this blog will help build up some steam and then you would want to take private lessons, I can do that too. I want to use this first post to give an outline of how I plan to use this site. Some of these ideas aren't feasible at the moment, but I plan to implement them as soon as I can. Mainly, I want to know what you want from this site. You can e-mail me here or leave a comment on this post and tell me what would keep you coming back. But let's jump into some of the plans I've already thought about. 1) I will tag each post by skill level and content. If you've been playing a while, you might want to skip over how to tune your guitar. But surely someone out there could use the information. Posts will be tagged with one of the following; Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. We will also cover Recording, Gear, and Theory. Don't be afraid of the Theory posts! It's not too hard, I promise. If we get into some really out there theory, I'll put Advanced Theory on the tag. 2) For the moment, I will only be posting text lessons with pictures and diagrams or tabs. Soon enough, I will be posting vlogs which leads me to my next point of interest. 3) The vlogs will be me answering direct questions that you send me. Don't be afraid to ask anything, if I don't know the answer, I will respond to you that I don't but hopefully will be able to direct you to a source with knowledge about your question. 4) I will also be posting videos of some really cool things that are guitar related as I get the chance, more to come on that! So, as I've said, start pouring in the questions. Who knows, your question may get blown up into a full blown lesson! Keep checking back often, first lesson is going up soon. "The Basics of The Guitar".