Chord melody to the rescue! Guitar Noise has two most excellent articles about chord melody: Arranging Things by David Hodge and The Birth of a Chord Melody by Graham Merry.

You can use a pencil and paper to work on songs but using a software package like Guitar Pro is a lot easier. Guitar Pro lets you enter songs and play them back. It also does hundreds of other things – it would probably take years to explore all the functions – but fortunately it’s also easy to get started.

A software package like this can be an invaluable tool for learning the guitar. For example, I had a hard time figuring out how to play Going to Kansas City just from reading the lesson on this site. So I entered the song into Guitar Pro and, when I played it back, it became clear how the tricky looking triplets should sound.

I entered the “Easy Guitar” version of the song into Guitar Pro and went to work. Lots of decisions had to be made, such as in which key should the song be played. Both Guitar Noise articles mention that the melody should be on the high strings in order to make the melody notes stand out above the accompanying chord and bass notes.

Another decision – what style should be used? The article, Arranging Things, lists three styles of arranging a song:

1. chords
2. double stops
3. fingerstyle

An important decision came next – what notes to use. I tried several times to come up with an arrangement something that sounded good but found that I eventually lost interest because there were just too many decisions to make.

I revisited the project some time later and decided to “keep it simple”. The “Easy Guitar” arrangement was in the key of G so that’s how I left it. I wanted something relatively simple to play so I decided to use double stops, adding just one note of harmony to each melody note. The most important decision was what this note should be. I had been approaching the song as a mathematical exercise – like doing the entire song in intervals of fourths or sixths or always using the first or third of the chord as the base note. Life became easier when I decided to just choose the note that sounded best. If a particular bar was using a G chord, I added the note from the G chord that sounded best. Sometimes I didn’t like any of the chord notes so I then picked the note from the G major scale that sounded best. This certainly forced me into listening to what I was playing.

This is what I’ve done to the first part of the song. Here are the first four bars. I had a hard time picking the best notes from the Dm6 chord but after much discussion with myself, I finally decided on this:

Bars 5 to 8 are a repeat of the first four bars with a small change in bar 7:

My favorite part of the song starts in bar 9. The song slowly ascends until the start of bar 12. It sounds so powerful:

Bar 13 starts with a three-note chord and ends the ascending phrase that started in bar 9. I picked the three best notes to play and discovered that the three notes form a G chord. I tried a D chord here but it didn’t sound right so I stayed with the G chord. Bar 15 starts another ascending phrase. The first note in Bar 15 uses an F for the bass note. An F doesn’t belong in a G chord but it sounds a lot better that an F# here.

Bars 17 –21 finish off the first part of the song: Bar 20 starts with a three-note chord to end the phrase that started in bar 15. I ended this section with two bars of single notes. The single notes sound sad here and fit the mood of the song.

I hope that you enjoy my arrangement of this song and I would be happy to hear any suggestions on how to make it even better.

Power Chords and Double Stops

Doesn’t the term “power chords” sound impressive? Power chords and double stops are a simple idea – play 2 strings at the same time. They are also one of the best ways for a beginning player to make a powerful sound. Here are 3 examples – the good, the bad, and the peculiar:

When I started learning guitar, I spent weeks practicing single note scales. One fateful night, I decided to play 2 strings at once (the “good” one from above). The resulting sound convinced me that playing the guitar was for me – it sounded so powerful and I did it by accident. The “bad” one sounds really dreadful. If you want to know why, you should check out this article, A Study On Intervals , by Jimmy Hudson. The “peculiar” one is actually playing an “A” note on two different strings. If you want something extra peculiar, try adding another “A” note on the 4th string (D) at the 7th fret and then give all 3 strings a good yank. This sound has been known to give small children nightmares so be careful where you play it.

This series of double stops tells the whole world that you are ending whatever you were playing:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

Before You Accuse Me by David Hodge shows how to use double stops in a blues shuffle.

Scales can be fun

Some people have the idea that scales are no fun. As I mentioned in my first article, I started to learn guitar by practicing scales. It was a thrill to hear pleasant sounds coming from the guitar so I spend a lot of time investigating what I can do with scales. I read that lots of blues and rock songs use minor pentatonic scales and that the mixolydian scale is a very “bluesy” scale so I started off with these two. This is what they look like:

Let’s see what we can do with the minor pentatonic scale. I like to play around the 5th Fret but you can do this anywhere on the guitar. Look at the minor pentatonic scale picture, above, and fret any two notes on adjacent strings and play both strings with your pick. Then, find another two notes and play them. Remember the ones that sound good and in no time at all, you’ll have something like this:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

I have been fooling with this scale for 10 months and I’m still discovering new things.

Here are some interesting single note riffs I discovered while working with these scales. This one, played with the right rhythm, sounds like the guitar is actually talking to you (spooky!).

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

When I discovered the following riff, I had to eventually force my fingers to stop playing it – it sounds so sweet. It takes place entirely within the A Mixolydian scale:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

I accidentally discovered the main riff of the Fats Domino song, I Want to Walk you Home while playing the A Mixolydian scale – like this:

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You might notice that a lot of the notes have little dots. This was the only way I could figure out how to make the riff sound right. If you want to find out more about reading music, I found this article, Timing is Everything, by David Hodge quite helpful.

If you want more information about scales, check out this article by David Hodge, Scaling the Heights. A Mixolydian Scale Blues Guitar Riff, by Darrin Koltow, shows how to use the mixolydian scale to play a blues song.

Changing chords

When you’re struggling to smoothly change chords between a C, F, and G, its easy to forget that the reason you change chords is because it sounds nice. There are 3 chords that seem to be specially made so you can switch chords easily. Here they are:

One of my favourite things is to start strumming and changing chords to see where my fingers take me. Its not always necessary to play other people’s songs. Make up one of your own. If you make up your own song, you can build in dramatic pauses that give you time to change chords – like this:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

Remember, you don’t have to play all 6 strings. Try experimenting with a full chord alternating with single notes. The easy song for beginners, Fire shows a really cool way to do this. Many interesting articles about chords can be found at Guitar Noise. The Power of Three by David Hodge is a “must-read”.

Mannish Boy

I found a riff in the style of Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters that is really easy to play. This is the only thing that you need to learn:

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can perform the entire song by playing this riff, followed by a line of lyrics. You don’t even have to remember the lyrics because you can make up your own. For example,

I’m a man (play the riff)
A computer programming man (riff)
Way past 21 (riff)
Way past 41 (riff)
Uh huh, Uh huh (riff)

You could continue forever. By the way, Muddy Waters (and the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix) have way more complicated versions of this song.

Contest

To wrap things up, here is the intro from an obscure Canadian song from the early 1970’s. Its great fun to play. You can still get a good sound by just playing the notes on the 6th string (Low E). Anybody who emails me with the song title by December 31, 2005 will win a prize that will be delivered by return email.

Download midi (Right-click and “Save as”)

Thanks for listening
Allan Abbott

P.S. At the bottom of most Guitar Noise pages, you’ll find a link that lets you donate money to Guitar Noise. If you’re like me, a lot of your guitar knowledge came from this site so use the link. You’ll feel better – guaranteed.

Since I had now had a guitar, I needed lessons. One of my favorite places on the Internet is the auction site, eBay. Off I went and searched for “learn guitar”. A lot of people on eBay want to sell you CD’s or DVD’s to teach you to play the guitar. The two times I tried to learn guitar before involved spending three weeks trying to smoothly shift between C, F, and G chords and then giving up because it seemed like it would take forever to make pleasant sounds. I was looking for a way to learn guitar that was different than my previous efforts. Guitar Concept sells their course at eBay and it seemed to be the thing I was looking for. I downloaded the demo, liked what I saw, and then bought the CD.

Guitar Concept starts you off with pentatonic scales and learning different modes. I was finally able to make pleasant sounds with the guitar – a major breakthrough. I was learning the minor pentatonic scale, going up the scale and then down, and thought it might be easier to memorize the scale if I played the notes of the scale out of sequence. The result sounded like I had just made some music. I stopped, laughed out loud and thought, “Wow, this is so cool”. One of the best things about Guitar Concept is that there’s a real person behind it who answers your questions.

The Guitar Concept web site has a links section that started me looking for sites with good information for a new guitar player. I discovered Guitar Noise (just as you obviously have!) and spent quite a few weeks trying to digest everything. I used Guitar Noise initially to help me figure out music theory. The Power of Three, and Moving on Up, both by David Hodge, were particularly helpful in taking the mystery out of chords. I could make chords all over the fretboard – not just in the “standard” places.

Another useful link from the Guitar Concept site is to Guitar For Beginners And Beyond. This site has free fingerstyle lessons. Most of the lessons even come with a movie. Always On My Mind is my favorite lesson here.

One of the links on the Guitar Noise site is to Darrin Koltow’s Maximum Musician site. I found a book here, “Blues Grooves for Beginners” that changed my life (really, it did). I discovered how much fun it is to play the blues. One of the songs in the book, “Souped Up Shuffle” seemed to be way too hard for me ever to play. One five-note section of this song took me twenty seconds to play because my left hand just didn’t get it. I stuck with it and now use this song as a warm-up exercise that I can play without even thinking too much. An important lesson for me – things that look hard can often be made easy with lots of practice. My success with this book gave me confidence to tackle other things that looked too hard.

While exploring the Maximum Musician site I stumbled across a link to Truefire. This was another life altering discovery. Truefire contains thousands of guitar lessons at a reasonable cost. A typical lesson costs $2.50 and comes with an MP3, PDF and often a Powertab file. Dave Rubin has an excellent lesson for a beginner called “Eight to the Bar”. Keith Wyatt has a blues primer that has lots of good bits. I thought that slides and hammers and pull-offs were too hard but I downloaded a David Blacker lesson called “Delta Blues Essentials” and can now slide and hammer all over the place. It sounds so cool doing a hammer on to the B string followed by a slide from the 2nd fret to the 4th fret on the high E string. If you can’t find what you’re looking for at Guitar Noise, head over to Truefire.

Mark Stefani is a major presence at Truefire. Some of his lessons are difficult but others, like, “Boogie Woogie Shuffle”, only look difficult and, with a lot of practice, are great fun to play. Mark has his own website that has many free lessons.

One of the lessons at Truefire contained a link to Acoustic Guitar Workshop. I thought that I would be happy to always use just a pick. After listening to some of the fingerstyle lessons here, I was hooked and purchased the course, “Fingerstyle Blues 1″. The last lesson in the course is a song called “Fishing Blues”. It sounds truly amazing when I get it right. I haven’t forgotten my pick but fingerstyle blues are a lot of fun to play.

One of my goals at the start of my guitar adventure was to learn my favorite song, If You Could Read My Mind. I got an “Easy Guitar” book from the library and managed to play the melody of the song without too much trouble but it was strangely unsatisfying. The song sounded too much like “plink, plink, plink”. Back to Guitar Noise I went and found Arranging Things by David Hodge and Birth of a Chord Melody by Graham Merry to teach me all about the wonderful world of chord melody. I now have a decent arrangement of the song. It still needs work but it no longer goes “plink, plink, plink”.

While I was looking for different versions of If You Could Read My Mind, I discovered GuitarPro and the GuitarPro archive. GuitarPro is a neat tool to let you edit music. MySongBook contains almost 40,000 songs in the GuitarPro format-something for everybody. One interesting use of GuitarPro is to change a song’s key. If a song appears difficult to play, you can try changing its key. Sometimes it becomes a lot easier in a different key.

During my never-ending search of places to help me learn guitar, I encountered Guitar Principles several times. The site’s main product is a book called The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar. I was always a bit afraid to visit the site because I might learn I was doing everything wrong and was a hopeless case. I took the plunge and bought the book and found it extremely useful. I was horrified to see how much my left hand fingers were flapping in the breeze and how much tension I had. The book helps a player to recognize tension and to avoid it. Before this book I wondered why bending strings was so hard. I realized, after reading the book, that it’s almost impossible to bend a string with a tense left hand.

I spend a lot of time at Guitar Noise looking for interesting things to learn. In the blues section, I found a lesson from Olav Torvund, a Norwegian lawyer who also has a passion for the blues. His site has hundreds of lessons about blues guitar and, for people like myself who don’t speak Norwegian, the site is also in English. Playing the “Hoochie Coochie Shuffle” from this site is just so much fun it should be illegal.

While poking around at torvund.net, I found an excellent site to buy sheet music and guitar instruction books called SheetMusicPlus.com. This site is easy to navigate and the company is very reliable. I have already bought several books from the web site. You can search for “easy guitar” at this site and get hundreds of books that have songs from your favourite artists arranged for the beginning to intermediate guitar player.

I’m eight months into becoming a guitar player so what’s next? I seem to have a fairly common guitar disease – “75 percentitis.” I learn 75% of a song and then get distracted and don’t learn the whole song. So lately, I’ve been re-visiting my favorites and learning the whole song. I’m also learning St Louis Blues from the Acoustic Guitar Workshop and have just bought a book at SheetMusicPlus called Classic Blues for Easy Guitar that has songs like, Boom Boom and Sweet Home Chicago arranged for easy guitar. This book is going to be a lot of fun. Hurt by David Hodge at Guitar Noise is also on my current list of things to practice. I think it’s impossible to see the Johnny Cash video of Hurt and not get a lump in your throat.

I have also started working on the dreaded C, F, G chord change but something mysterious has happened. It’s not as hard as I remembered. Amazing.

Learning guitar is hard work but it’s really important to have fun and have your guitar make cool sounds while you’re learning all the hard bits.

Thanks for listening!