Learn how many chords you need to know The short answer is, you don’t need to know ten thousand chords to be able to play the guitar, so those books that have that many chords are sort of overkill. On the other hand, you shouldn’t stop after learning seven chords like Marc Bolan did, although he did manage to write …
Barre Chord Exercises for Beginners
Master the B major chord with these lessons! The chord that gives beginner guitar players the most problems is the B major chord which looks like this: A couple notes about this picture: I’m only pressing down on the strings with my first and third finger, and my third finger is sort of bent backwards. Though it may appear that …
Rondo Alla Turca by Mozart
Rondo Alla Turca arranged for lead guitar I arranged this for lead guitar, meaning I took out the bass clef part of the composition. I’ve only embedded the first page, as I’m still double-checking my work on the rest of it. What is on this page will get you through a great deal of the song, but not the “solo” …
Improvisation Tips For Beginners
Fundamentals of Improvisation Before you start trying to make up your own guitar solos, you need to have some basic skills mastered with a capital “M.” Ideally, you should be able to play all of the pentatonic scales in all 12 keys at 140 bpm in 8th notes, and should be able to do the advanced exercises I have in …
Finding Accurate Guitar Tabs
What Free Sites Have Good Guitar Tabs? It amazes me how quickly songs get transcribed these days. When students ask me to show them a song by a band I’ve never heard of, I can often find a guitar tab online no matter how new the song is. Whether or not that tab is accurate is another story . . …
String Bending Guitar Lesson
Learn the basics of bending strings Learning how to bend strings is one of the most important things you can do as a lead guitar player. You’ll encounter it in guitar solos in most styles of music, most commonly in rock, blues, and country. Before you try learning any guitar solos, you should spend a little time working on some …
Rhythm Guitar Lesson: Strumming
Tips for Beginners and Troubleshooting Strumming Problems Strumming Techniques for Beginners A lot of the concepts I’ll be talking about in this post are covered in the lessons I’ve done on other pages in the site, so I will be referencing those. The first thing many people want to do when they learn how to play guitar is to learn …
Guitar Lessons for Adults
It’s never too late to learn guitar! In the past few years, I’ve had a lot of new students sign up who are over 50 and are either retired or semi-retired. It’s never too late to start taking guitar lessons, or lessons on any instrument for that matter, so don’t let the fact that you’re not a kid stop you …
Beginner Fingerpicking Songs
Interested in fingerstyle guitar? Check out these easy songs! Different Styles of Fingerpicking Fingerpicking, or fingerstyle, is a guitar style where the player uses his or her fingers to strike the strings of the guitar instead of a pick. The standard way of doing this is to use the thumb and the index, middle, and ring finger, but not the …
How Beginners Should Practice, Part 2
Learn how to play guitar faster! Focus on chord changes Before trying to play the strumming patterns, make sure you can actually switch between all the chords in the song. I see this a lot with students in their first few months of guitar lessons when they’re learning their first easy guitar songs. Let’s use a song with the following …