Guitar lessons, music theory, improvisation, creativity and essential listening.
Major 9 chords have a lovely open and spacious sound to them. The 6/9 chord is also spacious but has a more resolved feel to it. These shapes are very similar with only the 4th finger being the difference between them. They can both be a little tricky. Notice the ellipse around the 1st finger in the chord diagram. It should be laying flat on the neck playing those 2 notes as a bar. Practice shifting from the G Maj 7 shape to the G Maj 9 shape to the … [Read more...]
Here are 2 very commonly used chord shapes. The Am7 shape can be a little tricky. Notice the ellipse around the 3rd finger in the chord diagram. It should be laying flat on the neck playing those 3 notes as a bar. If you move this chord down 2 frets (towards the tuning pegs) , it becomes a Gm7. Practice shifting from the GMaj7 shape to the Gm7 shape. Do this slowly remembering that clean tones are what you want to hear. Click on … [Read more...]
Literally, volumes have been written on the subject of improvisation. These are some of my thoughts on what I find to be one of the most pleasurable and satisfying aspects of playing music. Be Musical: Being musical is a very difficult statement to try to quantify for everyone. The reason of course is that there are so many different types and styles of music that it is almost impossible to make a definitive statement about what being musical means. But … [Read more...]
This lesson will show you how to play a walking bass line accompanied by little chords. This is a 12 bar blues progression in Bb with a swing feel to it. To play this, you will use your thumb (P) to play the bass line and your index (I) and middle (M) fingers to pluck the chords. Work on this slowly. Once you have learned it, work on speed and also try to interpret it differently. The fingerings indicated above and below the tab represents how I feel … [Read more...]
In part 1, you learned how to play the picking pattern that is used in the song Dust in the Wind. Did you notice that all of the picking was done on the middle four strings. In part 2, we will add the remaining chords for the song. You will use the same picking pattern but this time, you will be playing it on different sets of strings. For reference, I have recopied the pattern here. Click on the diagram for an MP3 audio example. Play this pattern over an open C chord. Ok, this time, I … [Read more...]
Our first finger picking lesson features a picking pattern that has been used in a great many songs. This pattern has no name that I am aware of. To play this picking pattern, you will use your thumb (P), index (I) and middle (M) fingers on your picking hand. ( Hand diagrams coming soon ) Look at the first tab example below. While playing an open C chord, pluck the strings using your thumb and fingers as indicated by the P's, I's and M's. Notice that the first notes in each bar are plucked … [Read more...]
They say that a picture is worth a 1000 words. Well, have a look at this picture. This is an exercise called the spider. There is no picking required in this exercise. Just place four fingers on your neck on the E string and do exactly what I do in the the animation below. Move your 1st and 3rd fingers up one string. Now move your 2nd and 4th fingers up 2 strings. Now move your 1st and 3rd fingers up 2 strings and continue till your hand is walking like a spider up and down that neck. … [Read more...]
Like in part 1, in this lesson we will work on shifting between chords. These shifts are a little trickier but with some practice you will be playing these chords in no time at all. Click here if you're not sure how to read the chord blocks. Click on the diagrams for an MP3 audio example. 1) We'll start by playing the A Major, A Major7 and A7 chords. Play the A Major chord. Strum it trying to have each string ring cleanly. Now … [Read more...]
Learning the open chords need not be a difficult task. In fact, if you look at the similarities between some of these chords you will see that often only one finger needs to be moved to play a different chord. These lessons are designed to help you see these similarities and get you playing the open chords cleanly and help you to memorize them. Click here if you're not sure how to read the chord blocks. Click on the diagrams for an MP3 audio … [Read more...]
Just like we did in lesson 6, we are again going to harmonize the C major scale except this time, rather than just using triads (3 notes) we are going to use 4 notes. To harmonize the scale, we simply take the 1st 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the C scale and spell them out. C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C C E G B Then we start again from the 2nd note in the scale and count the 1st, 3rd , 5th and 7th notes from that point. C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C D … [Read more...]
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