Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free

Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free

Free Online Guitar Lessons, Tools And Resources
Join our quest for free guitar lessons, videos and info on guitar playing!


Guitar Tricks - The Learning Guitar Player's Resource

As a guitar player you have probably trawled the internet looking for guitar lessons. Whether or not you want to learn to play guitar for free, your vision probably involved learning songs form tabs as well as getting as much theory and technique exercises you can handle.
Ten years ago a guy named Jon Broderick went looking for websites featuring high quality guitar lessons and, the legend goes, he had so little success, he went and made his own. The outcome was Guitar Tricks, another site that gives you access to their lessons in return for a monthly subscription. Not unlike Jamplay, but Guitar Tricks has been collecting guitar lessons for ten years, plus they have a collection of twenty-four free guitar lessons that you can try. Your free lessons are of the same quality as the lessons you get with your monthly subscription, taught by the same teachers who conduct the lessons for subscribers to Guitar Tricks.
Your membership of Guitar Tricks gets you full access to a buttload of tutorials, sheet music, video lessons and backing tracks. Not only do you get the benefit of the Guitar Tricks guys' years of archiving guitar lessons but their content is updated every day.
Guitar Tricks has a forum that holds the records of questions and answers between thousands of guitarists. Would you believe there's over two-hundred thousand posts? And not only that, you can also have feedback from the Guitar Tricks teachers on any nagging question your brain can formulate.

Easy Guitar Lead

Posted on | | No Comments


To be a lead guitar player, you will need a knowledge of scales, arpeggios, riffs and licks. This short article is for the beginner guitar student who maybe knows some basic chords but wants to branch out to lead playing. Of course it is not always necessary for the lead guitar player to play solos. The lead and rhythm guitarists can work together to complement the singer’s vocals. For instance the lead guitarist could play the same chords as the rhythm guitar only in a different position on the fretboard.

The most obvious and also the most freely available guitar teaching resource on the internet is guitar tablature. You can start reading guitar tab in a matter of minutes, and the more esoteric symbols used in tabs can be learnt over time as your guitar technique improves. The guitar student who aspires to being a lead guitarist should augment their tab collection with some time spent trying to work on learning material by ear. If you find picking up lead guitar solos by ear heavy going, then work on whatever you can pick up from tabs but keep plugging away at learning lead guitar by ear.

One thing you should search for in tab archives is guitar scale patterns. You can usually start with a scale in one position and work out where to play in other positions for yourself. Again, supplement your tab learning with developing your ear. Arpeggio patterns can also be found in tab form. The most important scales to learn for a beginning lead guitar player are the five shapes of the pentatonic scales. The pentatonic scales are easy to learn and guitarists find that audiences love listening to improvisations on the pentatonic scales. The favorite pentatonic scale shape is the minor pentatonic at the fifth fret on the guitar’s neck:

Pattern One:

E—————————————5–8—-

B——————————–5–8———–

G————————-5–7——————

D——————-5–7————————

A————5–7——————————-

E——-5-8————————————-

Not quite so easy to play is this one:

Pattern Two:

E————————————-8—10—-

B——————————8—10———–

G————————-7–9——————

D——————-7–10———————–

A————-7–10—————————–

E——-8–10———————————–

But what you gain with this shape is the facility to move up the fretboard in a sneaky and guitaristic way.

The next three pentatonic shapes are a bit more challenging, but if you find yourself balking at the extra hard work remember how cool it looks playing way up the top of the neck.

Pattern Three:

E————————————-10–12—-

B——————————10–13———–

G————————-9–12—————–

D——————-10–12———————-

A————-10–12—————————-

E——-10–12———————————-

Pattern Four:

E————————————-12–15—-

B——————————13–15———–

G————————12–14—————–

D——————-12–14———————-

A————-12–15—————————-

E——-12–15———————————-

Pattern Five:

E————————————-15–17—-

B——————————15–17———–

G————————14–17—————–

D——————-14–17———————-

A————-15–17—————————-

E——-15–17———————————-

Some people find practicing lead guitar alone difficult because the presence of the other band members helps to get the creative juices flowing. Playing along with CDs is a great way to practice improvisation. You need to know when to put the metronome and scales away and do some good old bedroom grandstanding. You could also play along to drum machines. Or you could play along to some music that is not familiar to you. Take a moment to find what key you are playing in and start jamming. Practicing like this will help you stay out of the rut of playing the same material all the time.


Technorati Tags: ,

Category: Lead Guitar
Tags: >

Comments

Comments are closed.

Subscribe in a reader

  

Privacy Policy