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More Free Guitar Lessons

Ricky — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:06:25 +0000

Guitar techniques lessons by Peter Vogl.
Peter Vogl started playing guitar in 2nd grade and very quickly realized his calling. He played in several bands through his years at Okemos High, and proceeded to study classical guitar in college at the University of Ga. under the tutelage of John Sutherland. In the 90’s Peter met Jan Smith and began to play with the Jan Smith Band performing on several of her CDs including nonstop Thrill, Surrender, and Resurrection. Peter has performed on stage with talents such as Michael Bolton, Cee-Lo, Kelly Price, Steve Vai, Earl Klugh, Sharon Isbon, and Sleepy Brown.The free lessons are generally 5-10 minute video lessons that discuss a technique that will add some flair to your guitar playing. The Premium Downloads are generally around 20 minutes and take a more in depth look at specific concepts. Learning these techniques will help your ability to play lead guitar parts featured in other lessons on the site.
Free Lessons include: Basic Guitar Harmonics, Harmonics: Chord Subs, Right Hand Harmonics, Vibrato, Whole Step Bends, Half Step Bends,
Bending with Other Fingers, Bending Drills, Hammer Ons and Pull Offs, More Hammer Ons and Pull Offs, Arpeggios, Intro to Sweep Picking, Short Sweep Picking, Whacky Sounds, Premium Downloads, Warm Ups and Drills, Complex Drills, More Complex Drills, Sweep Picking, Dorian Mode, Mixolydian Mode, Bends, Double Stops, Altered Licks.
Click here for the free lessons

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A minor pentatonic for improvising

Ricky — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:25:18 +0000

The A minor pentatonic scale has five notes: G A C D E

You can play it starting on the low E string at the fifth fret like this:
A C D E G A C D E G A C
Here’s the tab:
E———————————5–8—-
B————————–5–8———–
G——————-5–7——————
D————-5–7————————
A——5–7——————————-
E-5-8————————————-
For variety you can also begin this scale pattern at the seventeenth fret. There are other patterns in other positions on the neck, but now you know the names of the notes you can find them for yourself. Here’s a guitar fretboard diagram.
Learn the pattern above for a start. Try working out some licks using these notes. You’ll be surprised what you can do with five notes!
To go further with improvisation, start listening to your favorite guitar players with a new ear. Pay attention to what they are doing. Take note of how their solos are composed: are they scale passages? Are they questions and answers? What does the guitarist do to fill twelve beats (for instance)? Does he bend the strings, use hammer-ons, all downstrokes? Try and analyze some guitar solos a little bit and apply them to your own playing.
More pentatonic minor patterns here.

Technorati Tags: minor pentatonic scale, pentatonic minor patterns

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Your guitar is eating you!

Ricky — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:13:44 +0000

No matter what I do, I don’t give this poor old body the attention it deserves. And that goes double for when I sit with the guitar in my hands, leaning and grimacing, straining and nobraining. Athletes get told how to work with their equipment so that the partnership between man and machine generates optimum physical performance, cheers from the crowd and untold sponsorship wealth.
I was watching a movie about Modigliani the other day, and it seemed to me that the actors portraying painters working at their easels gave the impression that painting a picture involves getting to know how to stand, how to hold the brush, and so on. And they have to approach their art this way because they make marks on the canvas, and those marks don’t fade away like bum notes on the guitar. If a painter puts the paint on too heavily
he has to gather his forces and make a whole new start next time he touches the canvas. It’s harder for a musician to stand back and see exactly what direction he needs to take to make this strange process he’s involved in “art”.
So the first thing we gotta take care of is to not hurt ourselves. One resource for people who want to learn to play a guitar without becoming a cripple is Guitar Principles. Sign up for their newsletter, and you’ll have some valuable food for guitar playing in your in-box every week.
Another interesting resource is http://buildingtheergonomicguitar.com/ which is concerned with guitars that FEEL good to play. Here’s a good article on RSI and the gallery of ergonomic guitar designs has a bunch of nicely designed guitars that “range from slight departures from the norm to completely different approaches.”
Here’s an example of ergonomic thinking from the inventor of the Bardophone “A traditional guitar is structurally made in a way that it is impossible to play it in a correct position without using all kinds of awkward stratagems that can have bad physical effects on the guitarist:
- Using a guitar stool (like classical guitarists) warps your spine and alters the blood circulation in the leg on the stool !
- Folding your legs obstructs the blood stream in the higher leg!
- Using a strap puts weight on your shoulders and your spine!
If you try not to use any of these tricks, your right shoulder(for a right handed person)will stand too high and your left hand will play the guitar’s neck in a position that is too low to achieve a respectable velocity ! The ones who still try ,end up with a bent back!
The idea, granted that I play in a sitting position, was to find a new
shape of guitar that would allow me to have at the same time
- both my feet flat on the ground,
- my shoulders relaxed on a horizontal line,
- my spine straight and vertical (like a good position for a pianist), while having the neck of the instrument raised to the height and angle that would be the most natural ,the least straining ,for a comfortable and efficient playing position (the position advised by all classical teachers!)”
Maybe it’s not all about attracting the chicks.

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Your guitar is eating you!

A treasure chest for guitar players

Ricky — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 12:01:13 +0000

Public access TV is a corner of the universe where people share genuinely valuable knowledge about subjects that interest them. A shining example of this art form is Tom’s Guitar Show, a video guitar lesson program hosted by multi-instrumentalist Tom Nothnagle, has informative video presentations about every genre of guitar playing. “It’s about an hour. It’s about guitars. Welcome to the online extension of Tom Nothnagle’s decade-long running weekly live cablecast from Iowa City, Iowa where you’ll find video, audio, photos and resources devoted to all things guitaristic.
It’s about guitar players and guitar playing. Flamenco-bomba, sure! Slack key, why not? Baroque, bottleneck, bossa nova… just name it! He’s called Guitar Tom because he plays guitars, he plays them well, and he plays them a lot in just about any style on just about anything with frets (and some without).”
Tom’s Guitar Show

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A treasure chest for guitar players

Pinch Harmonics

Ricky — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:50:24 +0000

The legendary guitar player, Roy Buchanan introduced the guitar playing public to the fascinating technique of pinch harmonics. This is a technique with a number of uses but is mainly used by metal guitarists to dress up the sound of a solo with a squealing sound. Steve Vai’s “Bad Horsie” is a well-known example of the use of pinch harmonics.

The way to prepare to play pinch harmonics is to hold your pick so that the pointy bit barely peeps out from between your thumb and your first finger. This sets your thumb up to brush against the plucked string right after the note is sounded. To produce the sound you are after you have to pick the note at a certain place along the length of the string. The exact spots that give good pinch harmonics are different for every guitar, so try the technique along the length of the strings, starting right near your pick-up, till you are comfortable with how you are holding your pick and the sound you are getting.

You need maximum distortion and maximum volume for effective pinch harmonics, and as with guitars, each amp will give you a different result.

Here is the ever-helpful Justin Sandercoe with a video guitar lesson showing you exactly how to play pich harmonics:

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Pinch Harmonics

Bluegrass Guitar Scales

Ricky — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 16:43:54 +0000

Today we will look at learning scales as an approach to learning bluegrass guitar. Bluegrass music is an offshoot of the country and western musical genre. As with country music, bluegrass has its foundation in the music of Ireland, Scotland and England. If bluegrass is centered on one area of the USA, it is Appalachia. The people are of Irish and Scottish descent and in their music instrumental virtuosity is not a poor relation of singing. In most forms of popular music the instruments back up the vocalist, but in bluegrass the vocals and the instruments are all just members of the team. In a bluegrass band everybody is expected to take a solo just as they do in a jazz band. The instruments associated with bluegrass music are acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle and bass.

If you want to learn to play bluegrass scales, learn some tunes. That is what music is made of. The scales are just the foundation of melodies and you need to be able to break out of the confinement of your scale as soon as possible. The other thing learning tunes is good for is developing right hand speed. As you can tell from listening to bluegrass music, speed flatpicking is essential.

If you are interested in learning bluegrass music and you would like to start by learning scales, start with the major scales in the open position. Do not bother with going up the neck of the guitar yet because learning your scales in the open position is crucial for playing bluegrass solos. Learn the scale in the key of G first, then C, D, F, A and E. Learn the keys one at a time so that you are comfortable with one before you go onto the next key. As with all musical learning, the more work you put into it at the beginning, the greater the rewards and the quicker your progress.

When you sit down each day to practice your scales, spend five or ten minutes going up and down the scale alternately. Then experiment a little. Try playing the scale by skipping some notes or playing the notes randomly. You need to become very familiar with the major scale because bluegrass solos rely on major keys. To get further into bluegrass guitar scales, find examples of the major pentatonic and the major diatonic scale.

Another basic scale that is important in bluegrass, blues, country and rock music is the minor pentatonic scale. It has five notes, should be learned in all positions on the guitar neck in all keys, and has been used for lead solos by every guitar player known to man. It is also popularly known as the blues scale. If you do not know much about modes, do an internet search to get some idea of the difference between a scale and a mode. If you have trouble understanding the theory, do not worry, just try playing.

The mixolydian mode is a good “scale” to practice on also:
E—————————————————————-0—–1—–3
B————————————————-0—–1—–3—————
G—————————————-0—-2——————————-
D————————0—–2—–3—————————————-
A——–0—–2—-3———————————————————
E–3————————————————————————–

To get more in-depth knowledge of bluegrass guitar scales, some great bluegrass guitar players to listen to are Vassar Clements, Doc Watson, Darol Anger, Clarence White, Norman Blake and Sam Bush.

Today’s YouTube video is a bluegrass lesson with an emphasis on having fun:

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Tips on learning how to play guitar

Ricky — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 14:45:34 +0000

Don’t Get Stale. Even at an early stage in your guitar playing progress you can be guilty of coasting on the progress you have made already. Shake things up a little.
For instance you could play by the clock for a week; no matter how you feel, put the guitar down when your allotted practice time is up. See how THAT feels! Or if you usually use a plectrum try going fingerstyle for a couple of days. Or vice versa. A change is as good as a breath of fresh air.
Listen To Yourself On Tape. Whether the surprise you get when you hear it is pleasant or otherwise, listening to a recording of yourself usually gives you something to work with!
Find New Exercises Scales, finger strength exercises, whatever. You can always find something new in this area on the internet. My guitar Solo is a good example – “Free site to learn guitar. It contains the most efficient method to learn scales, technique exercises, chops, licks, improvisation tips, midi files”.
Listen To Different Music. You might have to really force yourself to do this. If you usually listen to rock and blues, try some classical or Celtic music.
Exploring new avenues of interest might not turn up something you actually LIKE but what we all need is to give ourselves a little shake now and then.

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Happy Birthday Chords And Tabs

Ricky — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:32:20 +0000

Today we are going to behave more in keeping with a site devoted to free guitar lessons and present to you the chords and tabs for the Happy Birthday song.

All us creative types know that if you are going to compose music you are going to need to have a close relationship with a lawyer. You see, when you start composing songs, that’s your intellectual property and ain’t nobody goin’ to meddle with it. Nosiree Bob. If any other creative musical person publishes someting that distantly resembles your original composition, that is your cue to have their kneecaps removed by hired goons and then use the legal system to squeeze their money out of them until they look like those clergymen of days gone by in the catacombs of Rome.

Now, back in the 1800′s intellectual property was not recognized as the cash cow that it is today. So when two ladies named Mildred and Patty Hill wrote a pleasant little ditty called “Good Morning To All”, they stood by and watched as various random mangy varmints changed their song to “Happy Birthday To You”. They probably even thought it was a kind of sweet idea.

For those of you with a genuine thirst for music here are the tabs for a version of the Happy Birthday melody.

E ———|——|——–|——|———|3-0—|—-1-1-|0—–|—–

B ———|—-1-|0——-|—-3-|1——–|—-1-|0——-|–1-3-|1—-

G —–0-0-|2-0—|—-0-0-|2-0—|—–0-0-|——|–2—–|——|—–

D ———|——|——–|——|———|——|——–|——|—–

A ———|——|——–|——|———|——|——–|——|—–

E ———|——|——–|——|———|——|——–|——|—–

YouTube has many Happy Birthday videos, so here is one in more or less the same key as the one I posted. The language the guy in the video is speaking is a version of English spoken only in New Zealand.

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Happy Birthday Chords And Tabs

Learning The Blues On Guitar

Ricky — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:39:58 +0000

I read once that the reason the twelve bar form is regarded as the basic blues is that record companies in the USA thought it would be a good idea to have a standard blues style. I always thought that it was just a basic building block of blues music.

No matter where it came from, twelve bar blues is like a universal language among guitar players, so it’s best to learn a little of it.

Here is a representation of twelve bars in the key of A:

A A A A
D D D D
E D A E

. . . or you could play seventh chords instead:

A7 A7 A7 A7
D7 D7 D7 D7
E7 D7 A7 E7

. . . or you could play the basic chords up to the last bar and let the E7 chord lead into the next twelve bars.

You can make up your own variations on the basic twelve bar blues – play arpeggios, use barre chords instead of open chords, but along with practicing blues on your guitar you will get plenty of ideas on making the blues your own music by listening to other blues guitar players and imitating what you like.

Here is a video that will help you with the major pentatonic scale in blues guitar music:

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At Last! More Free Guitar Lessons

Ricky — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:22:38 +0000

After not listing a free guitar lessons site for some time I’m very glad to present e-chords.com which is another source of free tabs and guitar lessons. Nearly three hundred video lessons, a very nice chord dictionary where you can fool around building chords to your heart’s content. There is also an assortment of tutorials covering the basics of guitar playing, riffs, theory and keyboard playing. You can get quite a lot for free from e-chords but you can upgrade to premium level for more goodies. Related posts: Free Guitar Lessons At TheGuitarLesson.com I’ve just finished checking out a very impressive site which... How To Find Free Guitar Lessons On Google And YouTube If you want to learn how to play a guitar... More Free Guitar Lessons Guitar techniques lessons by Peter Vogl. Peter Vogl started playing... Link To Learn To Play A Guitar For Free Learn To Play A Guitar For Free contains a pile... Free Acoustic Guitar Lessons Learn-Acoustic-Guitar.com was started a couple of years ago by Ralph... Free Guitar PDFs You can download any or all of these free books.... Free Video Guitar Lessons On Playing Guitar Chords Today’s video guitar lesson is from Aaron of aaronsguitarlessons.com [...]

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