Guitar lessons for beginners and more

How to Play the 12 Bar Blues on Guitar

This is a guest post by Matt Warnock from Guitar Player Daily. Today, Matt will be talking with us about how to play the 12 bar blues on guitar.

The 12-bar blues is one of the most common chord progression in traditional blues music, jazz, country, rock, pop, funk and almost every other genre of modern music. The simplicity of the chords and the easy to follow form of the 12-bar blues have made it a favorite songwriting, and soloing, vehicle for guitarists as diverse as Buddy Holly, Muddy Waters, Pat Metheny and Slash. By learning to recognize the basic form of the 12-bar blues, and which chords make up this form, we will be well on our way to jamming along with some of our favorite songs and artists. [...]

How to Transpose or Change the Key of a Chord Chart

What do you do if you find a chord chart of your favorite song, but it’s not in the right key?

The term transpose simply refers to changing the key of a song. You can transpose a piece to either a lower pitch or a higher pitch. So for example, you find a chord chart is in the key of A but you want to play it in the key of G. Surprisingly, this isn’t very difficult to do if you know a small bit of the theory behind it.

Let’s look at this.

Scales and Roman Numerals

Each song is generally based upon a scale. Most popular songs that you play on the guitar are based on the major scale. There are seven notes in a scale. So in the key of C major, you have the notes: C D E F G A B.

The chords of that song are then built off of each note of the scale, which would give you seven chords for that key. However, each of these chords will have a different sound. Based upon a major scale, some chords will be major, others minor, and one chord will be diminished.

We don’t have time to look into how each of these chords are built, but a major scale has this structure, which can be represented by roman numerals:

I ii iii IV V vi vii^o

The uppercase roman numerals represent major chords. The lowercase roman numerals represent minor chords. The lowercase roman numeral with the superscript circle represents a diminished chord.

So let’s take a C major scale and use the above roman numerals. In a C major scale, you will have the following chords [...]

Major Triad Positions: One Way to Learn the Guitar Fretboard

Are you up for a challenge?

In a recent previous post, “Guitar Lessons: Scales & Learning the Guitar Fretboard,” I mentioned a few things you can put into practice to master the guitar fretboard. One of these suggestions was to learn your triads over the fretboard. Triads can help “connect the dots” for how individual notes across the fretboard interact and relate to one other.

Just a forewarning, this discussion needs some understanding of how guitar scales work. This might make more sense to more intermediate players. If you are just beginning, you will want to check out guitar scales explained.

What are triads?

A triad is a group of three notes played simultaneously. Triads are made up of one note with a major third and a perfect fifth above it. In plain speak, a triad is just a three note chord. There are different types of triads: major, minor, augmented, and diminished.

For now, we just want to talk about and focus on major triads. If we understand major triads, we can understand the other ones better. [...]

Guitar Lessons: Scales & Learning the Guitar Fretboard

It’s true that knowing guitar scales and learning the guitar fretboard is invaluable for taking your playing to the next level. A knowledge and understanding of your instrument opens up a wide variety of creative possibilities (e.g. soloing, improvising, etc.) for how you actually play your instrument.

In the past, we’ve explained the theory behind guitar scales and we’ve also took a more in depth look at how to build a major scale. This information is essential to your growth, but we’ve never really had any guitar lessons that look at the ways you can actually learn guitar scales and learn the guitar fretboard.

In this guitar lesson on scales, let’s look at a three ways you can learn guitar scales and learn the guitar fretboard [...]

A Great Way to Develop Better Rhythm and Time

When it comes to playing guitar, and playing it well, an unsteady rhythm and tempo just won’t fly.

Perhaps, you remember the video lessons on strumming patterns where I stressed over and over again (probably more than you had hoped for!) the importance of playing with consistent tempo and rhythm. You might know the sickest guitar riff or the most rockin’ strumming pattern, but if you’re timing is all off, then what good is that guitar riff or strumming pattern?

For some, a good sense of timing and rhythm comes very naturally to them. For others, this isn’t the case. However, no matter who are, we can all improve at keeping good time. Let’s look at some exercises we can do to improve our timing.

Meet the Metronome

First off, in case you don’t already know, a metronome is a nifty little device that sets a straight tempo to a click or a tick-tock. The picture on the left is an old-school metronome. Now days you can get an electronic metronome that looks just like guitar tuner. In fact, there are some guitars tuners that have built in metronomes.

Harnessing the Power of the Metronome

This might seem obvious, but simply setting the metronome to the tempo of a song you want to practice, and then playing along with the metronome, will definitely help you [...]

Freshening Up Your Guitar Playing: How To Use a Guitar Capo

Guitar capos are a beautiful thing. Not only are guitar capos practical, but by using a guitar capo, you’re given a whole new palette of options in the realm of creativity. You can even get a certain characteristic of sound in the songs you play. Every guitarist should keep a capo in their guitar case.

What Is a Capo?

A capo is a small tool that “clamps” down all the strings on your guitar. In a certain sense, it bars all the strings on a particular fret. This allows a guitarist to transpose keys. The capo shown on the left is a Kyser Capo, which is a pretty popular style of capo.

How Does a Capo Work?

As I said, a capo allows a guitarist to [...]

Guitar Scale Anatomy: the Theory Behind a Major Scale

Note: This is Part 2 of “Guitar Scale Anatomy.” Guitar Scale Anatomy: Part 1 can be found here.

In Part 1 of Guitar Scale Anatomy, we started to look at how guitar scales function, so we can have a better understanding of how these scales relate to the songs we play. We provided a working definition of a scale and looked at how half steps and whole steps between notes contribute to the formation of a scale.

As you can recall, the way the half steps and whole steps are arranged between notes in a scale are one of the ways that give the scale a particular quality such as major or minor.

For this part, I’m going to reference back to our previous examples in which I gave you two “E” scales. While both were “E” scales, one was an “E” major scale and the other was [...]

Guitar Scale Anatomy: Theory Explained Behind Guitar Scales

I remember that when I was first beginning guitar I was hungry to learn the chords and lead lines of popular songs. While I learned a lot from this, after awhile, it left me feeling disappointed because I didn’t really know how to create and form my own cool lead lines, solos, licks, or whatever you want to call them.

I remember it being suggested to me that I learn guitar scales up and down the guitar neck so I could learn the guitar fretboard. I was told, if you know your guitar scales you can master the guitar fretboard. Maybe you too have been suggested or heard such a suggestion. So as a hungry beginner I started practicing different scale patterns.

The Main Problem

I practiced away, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to apply these scales I was learning into a song. I was learning a ton of patterns, but didn’t know what to do with them! In hindsight, I realize that in my attempt to learn the guitar fretboard, I was only learning guitar scale patterns, and I wasn’t learning how the notes, in those patterns, function together as a cohesive whole.

Perhaps you too have tried approaching learning the guitar fretboard by learning scale patterns, but quickly found that you didn’t have a clue as to how to piece those different patterns together. Guitar scale patterns are good, but not if [...]

How to Finger Pick: Guitar Fingerpicking Basics

So you want to learn how to finger pick guitar? Fingerpicking (or sometimes referred to as fingerstyle) guitar might feel a little bit tricky at first, but there are some easy to follow basics that can have you fingerpicking in no time!

Fingerpicking Hand Position

A correct fingerpicking hand position will use your thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers for picking. Your thumb will pluck the 6th (E), 5th (A), and 4th (D) strings (the top 3 strings). Your index finger will pluck the 3rd (G) string. Your middle finger will pluck the 2nd (B) string. Your ring finger will pluck the 1st (E) string.

Sometimes your fingers may pluck other strings (there are always exceptions) but this should be our default fingering position.

Here are pictures of correct [...]

How To Play Guitar Fast! 5 Tips to Increase Speed

In my post “Thoughts on Practice from a Wise, Old Guitarist,” I asked Bill, a well-aged retired, professional guitar player how to increase my guitar speed after hearing how fast he played on his old recordings. He just told me to “practice, practice, and practice.” But how do we practice when we want to learn how to play guitar fast?

1. Start slow, Speedy

This couldn’t be more important. Practice playing guitar scales slow at first with proper fingering, posture, and technique. Set a metronome at a slow speed then practice at faster speeds. It’s really boring at first (I won’t lie to you), but it’ll be harder to play guitar faster if you don’t have good technique. You must walk before you run.

2. Alternate Picking

As you pluck the individual strings with your pick, pluck each string alternately with a down pluck and an up pluck with the pick. When you play a guitar scale or [...]