Video transcript:

Hey everybody, in this video I want to talk a bit about being interesting on the guitar. Not a subject people approach much, I know. That’s probably why so few musicians are interesting in their music. They are taught to play the same style that others have played and so only innovate a small amount at the most. So I want to talk to you about what to do to be interesting, and how to avoid the traps of commonplace music.

First of all, I would not recommend getting a teacher. When you limit yourself to a teacher, you learn to play just like your teacher. He or she shows you what they know and what they like, and your scope of knowledge isn’t broad. Instead, what I suggest is getting a guitar playing manual to teach you the fundamentals of playing. I have only ever used one, you can check it out here at this link. I’ll also put it in the description for you. You won’t have to spend a small fortune of private teachers which as getting expensive at 20-40$/hour, and you’ll be proud you taught yourself. It can take you from beginner to advanced guitarist. You don’t really need anything else except learning the correct way to practice, and actually practicing. So check it out.

Next, learn basic guitar theory as a basis for where to start. Music is not really as confusing as it appears to be. The problem with it is that it uses an arcane set of symbols that is not very easy to understand at first. We are stuck with it because so much music we have is written in the current method.

Music doesn’t exist on a page and in symbols and notation – it only exists in our heads and how we perceive it. It is purely psychological. It is like using the word ‘red’ to describe a color. The symbols we use are just an attempt to put to paper what we experience in our heads. Therefore, your feeling of what is right to play is more important than what you can write on paper.

But it is a good idea to learn music to be able to communicate with others about music. And rest assured, once you learn a bit about how it works, the rest will come easy. The manual I mentioned teaches you all of this, and scales and everything that you’ll need to know to play all popular music. Also, get yourself a map of the notes on the fretboard in standard tuning. I have placed a link to one in the description for you:

http://beginnersguitarlessons.net/fretboard.jpg

The strings are normally tuned to EADGBe, from thick to thin, and this is called standard tuning. What this does is change the lowest note each string plays, then each fret up is one semi-tone higher.

After you learn some basic theory and get yourself a map of all the notes, start playing them and seeing which sound good together, and which sound bad. Play two notes at the same time and see how they ring out. For example, if you play the 5th fret thick E string and the 5th fret A string at the same time, you are playing an A note on the E string and a D note on the A string (because you are holding down the frets at those notes). These notes sound good together because they are a certain distance apart – 5 semitones (this is an ‘interval’ and it is called the ‘perfect 4th’ – confusing, I know). Now, keep one finger on the 5th fret on the E string, but hold down the 6th fret on the A string. This interval is called the Tritone, and it is six semitones apart, which sounds what you might call ‘bad’. Of course, it has its musical uses. But due to its sound, it was actually outlawed by the Catholic Church in the middle ages because it was thought that the interval was evil. Pretty funny huh? It does sound evil, though.

Now to get to the point of all this:

What I want you to do is find out for yourself what sounds good together and what doesn’t, and create your own musical sound, rather than relying on something that already exists. Or at least, use something that already exists but alter it so that it is given new life. The idea behind music is to affect people emotionally in some way, and to surprise and excite them, never to bore them.

Don’t let musical standards get the best of you. Only learn songs if you are going to cover them and breathe new life into them (like, say, Jimi Henrix’s cover of All Along The Watchtower, originally by Bob Dylan. Both versions great songs in their own right, but different), and to practice your guitar technique.

Take Joni Mitchell as well. The reason why so much of her music sounds so unique is because she uses so many strange tunings and strange chords that people don’t usually use. She invented many of them herself. Bass players who would play with her wouldn’t know what to do, in many cases, because they were so focused on using standard scales. She would just tell them, ‘play what sounds good’.

There is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ piece of music, because music is so subjective and people experience it in so many different ways, so don’t ever strive to play somebody else’s music ‘perfectly’.

Anyway, if you want to learn more about how to play guitar properly, how to learn the fastest way and how to ultimately become a very interesting guitarist, see this video as well with way more important tips all beginners should know.

Hope you really like the video, and cheers!

How To Play Guitar: If Nothing Else, Be Interesting. is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

Video transcript:

Hey everybody in this video I want to talk to you about something that people have probably told you before when you learn guitar, but they might not have told you why you need to learn it. It’s something important, and I believe showing you how it works and why it is important will allow you to learn much better and help convince you to actually concentrate on it. Learning guitar simply has to do with two things – learning the correct methods to playing, and then practicing a lot – and that is pretty much it. If anybody tells you anything else they’re probably trying to scam you. If they tell you that you need to spend 20$/hour on a teacher that isn’t true either, because many of the greatest guitarists are self-taught, although it may work for some people who have lots of cash. In this video I want to talk about the mechanics of how your brain encodes tempo and how to keep tempo properly. After you watch this video you’ll understand why need to focus on keeping tempo and how you can learn to do it well.

If you want to know the correct methods to playing, I recommend this guitar course at this link here, you can go check it out if you want. It is a great way to learn guitar because it will take you from beginner to advanced guitarist. You’ll also be teaching yourself to learn, rather than wasting money on private lessons, which in my opinion also makes it less likely that you’ll get sick of it.

For now, let’s talk about keeping tempo in a way your brain understands.

Foot tapping is something you’ve probably heard people tell you before, in order to keep tempo. When you do this for the first time, it probably feels strange and is hard to do while you keep playing the notes or strumming. But practice this a lot, and try to place the notes onto the beat, instead of the other way around. Keep the beat as the base of the music and keep it constant, and them place the notes on top of it so that it sounds good and keeps in time.

The reason why this is important to practice is because music always has a beat (and the brain finds it stimulating that is has a constant beat, and often is irritated by it when the timing is even a little bit off), and you need to be able to keep the beat properly. It helps you to tap your foot because you have brain centers that control your movement, and coordinate it and in order to coordinate it, your brain centers need to be able to keep time. This timing is thought to occur within the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. They need to be able to move your muscles in the correct sequence, and with the precise correct timing in order to execute complicated muscular movements.

So moving a large part of your body in rhythm helps you to keep time, because you have brain centers that actually keep time for your muscles. So use your muscles to keep time, even if it just a head bob. Move a large part of your body to the beat, and it will seem much easier to keep it. Try the opposite and you’ll see what I mean – don’t move anything, even your eyes, and try to keep a beat. It will seem much harder and you will feel yourself ‘looking’ for the beat. You might start to rely on the beat of your heart. Cool, huh?

Anyway, if you want to learn more about how to play guitar properly, how to learn the fastest way and how to ultimately become a very interesting guitarist, see this next video I made as well with way more important tips all beginners should know. And if you want to learn the correct methods to playing the guitar that will take you from beginner to very advanced, check out the jamguitar.com link I mentioned earlier, it is a really great guitar manual. Take care and cheers!

How The Brain Keeps Tempo–Keep Time Easier is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

Video transcript:

Hey everybody in this video I want to talk to you about something that you have probably never been taught before when it comes to learning guitar. It’s something that I think should underlie your entire guitar career though because it has to do with the fundamentals of learning to play. Learning guitar simply has to do with two things – learning the correct methods to playing, and then practicing a lot – and that is pretty much it. If anybody tells you anything else they’re probably trying to scam you. If they tell you that you need to spend 20$/hour on a teacher that is a lie too, because many of the greatest guitarists are self-taught, although it may work for some people if they have money to burn. In this video I want to talk about the mechanics of how your brain learns, to make practicing more efficient for you. After you watch this video you’ll be able to spend much less time learning because you’ll understand how you learn and the best way to learn.

If you want to know the correct methods to playing, I recommend this guitar course at this link here, you can go check it out if you want. It is a great way to learn guitar because it will take you from beginner to advanced guitarist. It will show you how to play simple songs and it will also show you how artists like Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page and Tommy Emmanuel get the sounds out of their guitars that they do. You’ll also be teaching yourself to learn, rather than wasting money on private lessons, which in my opinion also makes it less likely that you’ll get sick of it.

For now, let’s talk about how you learn.

Guitar is all about imprinting your neural tissue with patterns that allow you to play guitar. When people who have played for a long time and are good at guitar play, they do not remember individual notes. For example, I know how to play the song Bron Yur Aur by Led Zeppelin. I only learned it once – and now it is imprinted in my muscle memory. When I play, I don’t think about the sheet music or tabs, I only just let my fingers play and make sure it ‘feels’ accurate and ‘looks’ correct when I am fretting. But I don’t really have a clue what I’m playing. I couldn’t just tell you what notes to play right now, without picking up a guitar and actually going through it slowly myself.

It comes automatically – it’s like my fingers know what to do somehow. Interesting thing that you’ll find – if you screw up or are interrupted at a point in a complicated song you’ve learned, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to resume from the exact same note you left off on. You’ll have to go to a major turning point or a point in the song you remember very well that your mind uses as a kind of reference point.

When you learn a song, your mind remembers it from certain reference points and then encodes the rest of the notes in relation to those already learned. This is how the brains of most people work. Unless you are some kind of autistic savant who can remember all the names in the phone book, your mind will have consciously at hand only the most important details, and you will not be able to access the rest of the information unless you use reference points that stimulate that point of your mind.

So the point of this whole discussion is to help you get to know your mind better and how you learn, so that you can learn to play much faster with better dexterity and timing.

What you should take from this is if you come to a point in a song where a chord change is hard for you or switching to another note quickly is hard for you, simply practice it over and over until your muscle memory encodes it. Practice just the change first, over and over, then practice it with the surrounding notes, over and over. Sometimes it might be very hard and you might get tired after too much practice, but don’t worry.

If you get tired of practicing the same thing, let your hands and your mind rest. You’ll come to notice something that happens after you rest – the next time you pick up the guitar, you’ll very likely be able to play what you were practicing much better than you ever could. That is because your brain encodes the muscle memory patterns you want it to, then after you rest your mind, you are able to use them more effectively.

So find something to practice that you can’t do very well, and then practice it like I’ve described above.

Really, all you need to make sure is that you’re practicing correctly, and then practice. That is the secret to becoming great at guitar.

If you want to learn how to practice correctly from a real pro source, I’d recommend that guitar course I mentioned earlier, because it is cheap and it can take you from beginner to pro guitarist… You won’t have to waste 20$/hour or more on a guitar teacher. Click the jamguitar.com link in the description if you want to see more about the course… If you want to learn more tips like I’ve given you in this video to get an even better start on learning the guitar, check out the video link at the top of the video description. In that video I also talk more about the guitar course I mentioned apart from some more important tips for beginners guitarists. So cheers, and good luck!

How Your Mind Learns Guitar – Use it to learn guitar faster! is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

And here is the tabulature for the guitar chords you’ll need to play the song:

And I forgot to include D7 which you might not know so here it is:

D7
e|-----2--------l
B|-----1--------l
G|-----2--------l
D|-----0--------l
A|-----0--------l
E|-----X--------l

Don’t worry if its tough at first to sing at the same time as playing! It takes a lot of practice. Get the strumming pattern and rhythm down really well as well as the chord changes, and also learn the lyrics. Once you are more familiar with them, it will come a lot easier.

A good rule of thumb is to always start slow and take it in baby steps – just make sure you aren’t making any mistakes while practicing – so you don’t learn the wrong habits! For example, only strum a chord once instead of using the strumming pattern while you first start to sing with the song, just to get the timing right.

And the lyrics:

Lyrics: G Em C G
Come gather ’round people wherever you roam G Am C D
And admit that the waters around you have grown G Em C G
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone G Am D
If your time to you is worth savin’ D D7 G D
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, G C D G
For the times, they are a chang – in’

Come writers and critics who prophecize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide the chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you don’t understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend a hand
For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

Enjoy and leave any comments or questions below.

-Steve

Play: Bob Dylan – Times They Are A Changin’ is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

Like the classic guitar, the acoustic guitar is played without any electric amplification. When getting your first guitar, you must choose between steel or nylon strings. Naturally, you will need to get a guitar that was made specifically for nylon (classic guitar) or acoustic (acoustic guitar) strings. The difference between the two strings would be the sound that you make, as well as the effect on your fingers.

Acoustic guitar lessons for beginners must start with selecting your strings. Steel strings, being a tougher string, can make deep marks on your fingers, and if you are not used to this, it could hamper your lessons.  Nylon strings use less tension and so are not as tough to play with.

The reason you should never use nylon strings on a steel acoustic guitar is because the nut that holds down the strings at the end of the guitar are narrower and will not be able to hold the wider nylon strings. Furthermore, the angle of the guitar saddle is different for steel acoustic guitars.

Overall, this means that if you want to have a guitar that plays in perfect tune, you must never switch strings.

An important factor in acoustic guitar lessons for beginners is care for the guitar. After playing on your guitar or after each session, make sure to gently wipe the guitar strings to remove the dirt and oil. If left without proper care, your guitar strings will not last as long, and could produce flat sounds in the process.

It is possible to buy an acoustic guitar designed for nylon strings but you will not be able to get the sharp acoustic sound common to steel acoustic guitars. However, for comfort and for beginners, nylon strings might be the better alternative, especially for young teens.

Beginning guitar lessons must be conducted with care. Choosing your tutor or guitar teacher is very important especially for young children and teenagers. This is because an impatient and rough tutor would not be able to sustain the interest of the student long enough for him to learn even just the basics.

Assuming you have found a good teacher, beginning guitar lessons should start with familiarity with the instrument, the music sheets and how to read the notes, and then the basic chords. It is also important to focus on strengthening the fingers as well as stretching them to reach the right notes.

For acoustic guitar lessons for beginners, the tutor must be able to emphasis the different strokes and the sounds they create. The tendency for many young learners is to strum the strings hard. However, acoustic sound is gentle and tender, not just strong and loud.

As with learning anything new, beginning guitar lessons can get tedious because of the scales and repetition. If you are the tutor, why not spike up the lessons with a short tune they can learn after each lesson. As for the student, acoustic guitar lessons for beginners is very tempting to rush through. Except without the strong foundation of being able to blend chords and strum or pluck the strings, you will never be able to strike out on your own. You could try experimenting every time you learn a new chord, and creating short tunes. This will provide you with some creative leeway, and keep you interested in learning how to play the instrument.

All things done properly, like acoustic guitar lessons for beginners, will pay off handsomely in the end. Practice and see.

Beginning Guitar Lessons – Electric/Acoustic Guitar For Beginners is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

Every parent dreams of his child attaining success, and there are three main areas that a parent would consider while the child is still young. It would either be success in sports, academics, or music. One of the most popular music lessons would be guitar lessons for kids. The reason for its popularity would be because buying a guitar is relatively inexpensive compared to a wind instrument or a piano. In addition, children all seem to like the idea of playing guitar in the hopes of making it to a band one day. And the younger you start, the better.

If the school offers guitar lessons for beginners, it would be a good start. The cost would be minimal and your child would be part of a group, which will help motivate him to keep improving.

However, if the school is not open to guitar lessons for kids, you might have to invest in a guitar teacher. Of course, this can get a little expensive, and for this reason, online lessons, many of them free, are popping up all over the internet.  Should you consider signing up your child for online guitar lessons for beginners?

First of all, can your child work on his own? Will he have the discipline to see the guitar lessons for kids all the way through? Most children have a difficult time working on their own. It’s normal because they are not yet used to self-motivation. Vet few children can handle solo online guitar lessons for kids. Thus, why not get together with some other mothers, and find out whose child would be interested in guitar lessons for beginners? If you get at least 5 kids together, you could all afford to pitch and pay for a real tutor to come over and teach the children once a week.

Second, online guitar lessons for kids can be very impersonal – and for kids this means, boring. One way around this possible problem would be to find an online guitar course that would teach them songs to augment the lesson for the day. This will help reinforce the topic being taught as well as keep the interest high.

Third, why not consider taking the guitar lessons for beginners also? This will help your child when he gets confused with the lesson and diagrams. As an adult, you will be in a better position to figure out exactly what is being taught, and how to understand and apply it.

Finally, if you feel that the interest in waning, you might consider bringing him to some formal lessons. A child might be willing to shift to a regular class if he knows a little bit about the basics. It will give him ample opportunity to show what he has learned thus far, and somehow be ahead of the rest of class – which can be a great confidence booster.

Guitar lessons for kids must be geared for the young minds. If you see that the lessons if getting to complicated and drawn out, it might be better to look for another website. This is because it would be a shame to let it all go down the drain because of a poorly constructed course for guitar lessons for beginners.

Practical Guitar Lessons For Kids – Guitar Lessons For Beginners is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons

Learning to play the guitar will require a great deal of dedication if you want to do it properly. After all, what’s the use of learning to play the guitar if you quit after a few weeks.

Realistically, it will take at least a couple of months to play the guitar comfortably. To make the process go faster, it would be best if you could pinpoint the reason why you want to begin learning to play the guitar. This way, you can target specific goals. For instance, would you be interested in playing for a band? If so, then you should take lead guitar lessons.

In a band, there is the lead guitarist and the rhythm guitarist. They both use the same type of guitar – there is no difference. The difference lies in how the guitar is played. The rhythm guitarist is support to the vocals and provides the structure for the song. His role in the band is very important because a weak rhythm would not be able to draw out the crowd, and make the band seem like a backyard kiddie band.

The rhythm guitarist is also most often the person who composes the song, or helps compose the band’s music. If the lead singer is also a guitarist, most often he is the rhythm guitarist as well.

The lead guitarist is your rock star. He’s the guy with the solo, and has the freedom to do a lot of improvisations during a song. While he may be the “star”, he can never work as a solo because he needs the rhythm guitarist to give him the good foundation for a song.

If you can select between the rhythm and lead guitar, then you can decide if you want lead guitar lessons or not. The difference in the lessons for a lead guitarist would be the free-flowing style a guitar tutor would encourage. The opposite is true for the rhythm guitarist. He must stick to the rhythm because the band depends on him.

One idea that you might be interested in is to learn how to be a lead and rhythm guitarist. With this kind of skills, you can be both star and singer, and this is the stuff dreams are made of – when you become recognized for your talent and ability to carry a song, re-invent it, and bring it home.

Learning to play the guitar as a lead guitarist is an awesome experience, but only after you have mastered the basics. Just like anything else in this world, it starts with basics. Spend a lot of time learning these because it will dictate the kind of guitarist you will be.

If lead guitar lessons is your objective, then make sure that you get a good lead guitarist as a mentor. If you are a minor, make sure your parents support your dream, or at least one adult member in your family.

Lead Guitar Lessons – Learning To Play Lead and Rhythm Guitar is a post from: Beginners Guitar Lessons