Guitar Noise

Welcome back to the One Finger chord method. We’re going to learn the one foundation chord shape that will get us making music as fast as possible. That one shape will make it easier to learn more complex shapes later on.
To make this lesson as easy to read as it is to do, I think [...]

We’re going to take a little break from the Playing By Ear series to get into some very basic basics. This is going to be for newbies, total guitar neophytes just starting out. Let’s call this the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer series. Here’s a tentative outline of the start of this series:

the One shape
tuning [...]

Welcome back to the playing by ear lesson series. We continue learning melodies in C major — and take it a little further.
Besides the approach we took last time to learn melodies in C major, here’s another way: an online program. This program plays melodies in C major, which you play back on a simulated [...]

Welcome back to the playing by ear lesson series. We’re going to continue playing simple melodies by ear this lesson, and we’re going to do it on the guitar.
In the last lesson we learned how to play the familiar Noel Christmas tune by ear on the piano, and saw that it only needed eight different [...]

We’re continuing our lesson series Playing Guitar by Ear, which is geared to newbies.
Last time out we talked about the helpfulness of learning at least on major scale pattern when you learn melodies by ear. Now let’s talk a bit about major scale patterns in reference to the instrument that’s best suited to learning to [...]

We’re continuing our lesson series Playing Guitar by Ear. We started looking at near-rules that help you massively in learning to play guitar by ear, in the last installment. This time, more near-rules.
Almost rule number next: sing. After you listen, and believe you have the melody in your head, sing. You don’t need any instructions [...]

We’re continuing our lesson series Playing Guitar by Ear, which is geared to newbies. Newbies to both guitar and playing by ear. We’re getting ready to actually play a melody by ear – on a piano. Remember from the last issue (Portable Music Maker) that learning to play by ear on the piano is a [...]

We’re continuing the series of lessons that gets us started playing guitar by ear. Last time, we started talking about why the guitar is not the best instrument to begin learning to play by ear with. And the point of illustrating that is to help you understand that, when you’re struggling to play guitar by [...]

We’re continuing the series of lessons that get us started playing guitar by ear. We’re going to begin looking at playing melodies first.
Before we learn a melody by ear, you’ll want to make an observation for yourself about playing by ear on the guitar. As much as I love the guitar, I realize that it [...]

We continue our exploration of playing guitar by ear. This time out we’re going to look at reasons for playing by ear.
You want to play by ear for this reason above all others: it just feels good. That’s it! That’s why you began playing in the first place, isn’t it? You play because you dig [...]

Let’s go into playing guitar by ear. I’ll base the content on the series found on Maximum Musician, but it will be revised here and there as inspiration strikes.
Just what exactly does it mean to play by ear?
When you hear someone say, “He plays by ear” it’s often said with awe, in the same way [...]

Some quick tips on learning melodies by ear in this issue.
First off, learn scales and play them regularly. Most important: the major scale. Learn at least the five CAGED forms. (Get Fretboard Logic is this term confuses you). But the more forms you know, the more insights you get into how melodies work – when [...]

We’re going to continue doing what we call “modeling a melody” in this issue. And that just means figuring out some interesting things our favorite melodies do so *we* can do them, to craft our own melodies. We can use this information in improvisation and in composition.
We explored the idea of SAMES and DIFFERENTS last [...]

Here is a draft of a method I wrote to understand a nifty melody and produce your own nifty melodies. I hope you find it useful.
What does “modeling a melody” mean? It means “doing what a particular melody does without duplicating the melody.” So we explore a melody, find out why it goes where it [...]

Here’s a letter from a player who’s feeling a bit stuck.
I’ve been playing guitar off and on for several years, but I feel stuck; I keep playing the same chords to the same songs every time I play.
If you were me and could play only a few chords, what would you choose to learn? Riffs? [...]

I got the following letter not too long ago. Maybe you can identify yourself in here:
Darrin: I can plan out solos just fine but when it comes to improvising I am totally in the dark. What can I do about this?
Sincerely,
D
Hi, D. Thanks for your message. This is a common problem. And it’s great that [...]

This is much more accurately entitled, “the seven-note pattern.” We showed such a pattern in the last issue, toward making scale-playing more interesting.
Let’s go over some comments about this 7-note pattern. First, describing it without notation, it goes like this:
Play 4 notes of an ascending major scale(*). Descend two notes, then ascend again for one [...]

Okay, that title is a bit of over kill. We’re not going to revolutionize scale practice with this tip…probably. But we may shed some light on your scale practice. To start with, practicing scale does not have to involve monotonously long strings of ascents and descents; it does not have to put your ear to [...]

Here’s a quick lick to play over these chords: Em, Am, Dm, G7 in C major. In other words, this is a turnaround: the last two bars before returning to the start of the first phrase. You can strum each chord once or twice; record that accompaniment and play this over it:
E E [...]

This tip is for players with small hands (or those who think they have small hands). We start off with a letter and then my response follows. I hope you get something from this.
Hello Darrin,
My name is C. and I am just beginning to play the guitar. I know some beginner chords but would like [...]