This is one of the reasons that first few of Guitar Noise’s easy songs for beginners lessons use songs that  involve just two or three chord changes, and relatively easy chord changes at that. It’s also why that songs have been of a moderate tempo, as well. The most fundamental thing you can learn when you start to play is how to make smooth, confident and correct switches between chords, and then to make sure you can perform those chord changes in rhytym while playing the song in question.

Liner Notes: The Wallflowers

Hailing from Los Angeles CA, The Wallflowers are fronted by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan. The song Three Marlenas is from their 1996 album Bringing Down The Horse.. The band is reportedly in the studio working on a new album as recently as January 2012.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

In this lesson, we’re going to up the ante a bit but not in a scary way. In fact, what we’re going to do is essentially let the guitar transform a two chord song into a three chord song for us! I know this sounds a bit weird, but I think you’ll catch on fairly quickly.

The song is Three Marlenas, written by Jakob Dylan. You can find it one the Wallflowers’ 1996 (man, was it that long ago?) CD, Bringing Down The Horse.

On the disc, the song is in the key of Eb Major and, before we go any further, let’s talk about that! If I happen to say a song is in, say Eb Major, for instance, this means that this is how I have worked it out on my guitar (standardly tuned) playing along with my CD player. I have seen this (and many other songs) tabbed out in various keys using various voicings of various chords. Please understand that I am showing you how I understand the song to be played and I am not in any way saying (in my best James Earl Jones’ voice), “THIS IS HOW IT IS DONE.” Those of you who have read my columns for any length of time know that (no pun intended) this is not my style. Not at all. If you have another interpretation of this or any song we go over that you like better than the one I demonstrate, then by all means, please use it. None of our lessons here at Guitar Noise is meant to be THE authorized of anything. These are just arrangements, ways to play the song as you would if you were performing by yourself or playing it with another person singing.

So, moving onward, by playing along with the CD, I’ve found Three Marlenas to be in the key of Eb major and also that the two prominent chords are Eb and Ab. Just reading that gives me the heebie jeebies! So, without a second thought about it, I decide to use my capo and find a better key in which to play this song, rather than to subject myself to these particular chords. If you’re not familiar with what a capo is and what it can be used for, I suggest you take a moment and read the column I wrote about a year ago (the one with the incredibly long title(The Underappreciated Art of Using a Capo)) on this subject. It also would be worth your while to check out our article on transposing, Turning Notes into Stone.

When I see the signature of Eb major, my usual choice is to think about playing in the key of D major instead. The key of D is simply a half-step lower in than Eb, so if I put my capo on the first fret of my guitar and strum a D major chord, I am actually playing an Eb major chord. Using the same logic, I realize that a G major chord, played with the capo on the first fret, is now an Ab chord. Our crisis, brought on by the prospect of playing Eb and Ab chords throughout the song, has been averted.

And for the sake of simplicity, we will now discuss this song in terms of the key of D Major. I know that this may be a bit confusing to some of you, especially those just starting out, and I apologize for that. Please feel free to write me and I’ll be happy to go over it in greater detail.

I’m sure that most of you know how to play both the D and the G chords, but I’m going to throw you off a bit here by introducing a different voicing for the G chord that some of you might not be familiar with:

My suggestions as to which fingers to use where on these chords are as follows:

Okay, now let’s take a quick moment and look at this “new” G chord.

As you can see, the only difference between the “standard” G and this particular voicing is the use of the D note (third fret on the B string) instead of the open B string itself. Since we know that the G chord is made up of the G (the root), B (the third) and D (the fifth) notes, you can see that all we’re really doing is changing the number of D notes we’re using in our chord. Some people like to call this a “G5″ or a “G add 5″ but neither of these names makes sense. “G5″ usually means playing what guitarists think of as a G “power chord,” namely, just using the G (root) and D (the fifth. or “5″ if you will) and “add 5″ makes even less sense since the normal G chord already has the D note in it. This new chord voicing is still just a G chord, pure and simple.

But why play this voicing of G in the first place? Well, if any of you have read the column I cowrote with Abel Petneki concerning sustained tones, you might already have a good idea. But I also have something a little more fun and practical in mind.

If you listen to the song on the CD, you could with me that it sounds like there are more than two chords in this song. And you would be right to do so. There is indeed another chord. You can hear it in between the D and G chords, both from D to G and then from G back to D again. It’s a rather peculiar chord at that, isn’t it? It sounds very vague.

What is going on here is we are letting the guitar do some of the chord changing work for us. If you look at the fingering of our D and G chords, you see that, because of this new voicing of the G chord, we don’t have to change the position of our ring finger when we change chords. It stays in one place. So, we’re going to start out with our D chord and then simply remove our index and middle fingers from the strings (all the while keeping the ring finger firmly in place) in preparation of placing them on their new positions on the G chord. And if we strum the strings while doing this, we end up with the following chord:

Do you hear and see what we’re doing? The D note, here being played on the third fret of the B string, is our sustained tone. It links all three of these chords together, serving as an anchor amidst all the changes. And this third chord, the “A7 sus4″ is nothing more than us strumming the guitar in the middle of a chord change! And the cool thing is that it works both ways – from D to G and from G to D. Because the notes involved not only form a chord, but a chord that perfectly fits in as part of the song, it carries us along these changes while creating a transition chord at the same time.

Now, I could call this chord by other names as well, but I am going with “A7 sus4″ because naming it so gives me, in essence, a variation of a I – V – IV chord progression. This is a fairly common progression and it easy to explain to someone playing along with me on an instrument other than a guitar. Now, having explained that, I’ll change my mind (and simply for a selfish reason!) From here on out, and simply to keep me from writing out “A7 sus4″ all the time, we’ll just call it A. But we all know it’s not really an A chord, okay? Here, then, are all the chords we are going to use:

When you play this progression back and forth, D to A to G to A to D, etc., you should note two things. First, it sounds very smooth and flowing. Second, the reason it sounds so smooth and flowing is not only because of the chord voicing (owing to the fingering), but also because you should be able to play it that way. By releasing your fingers (but not the ring finger!) to get the A chord, you are sort of giving you guitar and yourself some breathing space between the two main chords. And you should also find, even with a minimum of practice, that your changes will come very naturally. You should be able to play this along with the CD (or “at speed,” if you prefer) in no time at all!

Another thing I especially like about this song, from a beginner’s standpoint, anyway, is that it gives you a chance to work on the “range” of your strumming. Each chord has its bass note on a different string: the open D for the D, the open A for the “A” and the G note on the third fret of the low E string for the G chord. As you’re strumming the chords, it’s a good idea to work on concentrating on just how many strings you’re playing with each successive chord.

As for a strumming pattern, this is a fairly easy one to get you started. I also took the liberty of tossing in a percussive stroke (designated by the ” * “ ):

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A very important thing to notice here is that, after the initial first beat, we’re jumping the gun a bit – changing the next measure’s chord on the half beat before the one. This is called an “anticipation.” You can read all about those in the ”Music Guide Mini-Lesson” that will be up online in the next few weeks or,  if you’d like a head start on the subject, might I suggest reading Dan Lasley’s bass guitar lesson, Playing Along.

Remember that if this particular strumming pattern seems difficult at first, slow everything down and count it out as deliberately as possible. This song, like the others we’ve done up to this point is of a medium tempo. It really won’t take you long at all to get up to speed.

Oh, that strumming pattern and that chord progression is the entire song, music-wise. Here’s the lyrics:

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns,  or even a song, riff or lead you’d like to see covered in a future “Songs For Beginners” article. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next time…

Peace

Three Marlenas – The Wallflowers was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Indeed, you don’t have to talk to too many guitarists before you’ll hear the view expressed that there is actually something pretty uncool about being able to read music – almost as if gaining this particular skill will somehow strip you of your ability to play spontaneously or with feeling.

Yet, if you ask anyone who has taken up guitar after having cut their teeth on a different instrument; one that is usually taught using standard notation; then I guarantee you will never hear them complain that understanding standard notation is any kind of disadvantage when it comes to learning to play guitar.

There are of course several notable examples of truly great musicians who never learnt to read – the incomparable Django Reinhardt being, to my mind, the best of these. But there are also many great rock guitarists who were classically trained and most definitely can read music: Brian May of Queen being the first one who comes to mind.

What we may never know is: – could Django Reinhardt have been somehow even greater if he had learnt to read and write music? Or, would Brian May have played even better had he never learnt to read music?

Let’s get away from these imponderable questions a moment and also away from the sphere of the immortals and concentrate on the more familiar world of your average guitar player trying to improve their playing skills and their understanding of music.

In this world, I believe there is a better question to ask: When does it make sense to invest the necessary effort to learn to read and understand standard notation?

From my experience as a guitar teacher I would immediately say that the answer is different for each individual, depending on a variety of factors that I think are worth outlining. For beginners, I have to say there are only two circumstances where I have found it useful to introduce the reading of standard notation from day one:

• For some very young students (age 6 – 8) who have a leaning towards playing melody as      opposed to strumming chords
• Anyone wanting to learn classical guitar

I have to say that, for all other students (those with a preference for Blues, Rock, Country and even Jazz guitar) I have found only a disadvantage in introducing the learning of standard notation in the first year or so of their learning. However, it should be noted that other guitar teachers may have very differing views on this, largely depending, I think, on how they themselves learnt to play guitar.

For more advanced students the early introduction of standard notation is I think, definitely appropriate if they come for lessons with one or more of the following specific goals in mind:

• To play guitar in a big band or orchestra
• To pursue a career in mainstream music, particularly as a session musician
• To help with passing music exams
• To gain entry to a mainstream music course
• To be able to write parts for other instruments (saxophone, trumpet, keyboards, for example) in their band

But for most guitarists, I personally believe in a more gradual approach to coming to terms with the various ways of understanding music. I believe that to progress through the various stages of learning guitar in a way that is in itself, both rewarding and genuinely educational, I suggest the following path.

First, by being shown that there is nothing better than being able to physically see another, more experienced guitarist, hold down a chord shape or play a simple melodic or lead guitar phrase.

Next, by learning to understand grid-type chord diagrams. Most of us (but, I should stress, not all of us) think of chords as shapes, and grid diagrams are a great way to represent chords in this way. For those that don’t think in shapes, the various methods of showing chord grips numerically are well worth exploring. ‘X02220’ for an A major chord for example.

Then, I advocate learning to read basic guitar tab. By basic, I mean the style of guitar tab that doesn’t give you time values for notes – just fret numbers on strings. With the rapid rise in popularity of tab sites on the Internet, gaining confidence in reading tab is an essential step towards being able to access music in written form.

If you find yourself mystified by tab then don’t panic, you are not alone! Here is a short video lesson designed just for you:

How to Read Guitar Tab:

I think it is fair to say that, for a great many guitar players, this is as far as they feel they need to take the process of learning to read music. After all, what more is required? There are hundreds of publications, web sites and iphone apps that will produce grid diagrams for every chord under the sun. There are tabs available, both online and in book form, for practically every guitar solo or rhythm part ever recorded.

So what, if anything, is wrong with playing guitar from tabs and rhythm charts alone? The answer is that by restricting yourself to reading music in this way, you are limiting the growth of your understanding of music.  You are literally just following instructions. This may still result in your playing perfect sounding copies of other people’s music and if that is what you enjoy about playing guitar then personally, I think it’s fine to stop right there.

My teaching experience tells me though that it doesn’t matter whether you learn one piece of music from tab, or two hundred – because you are relying on someone else’s instructions you will never scratch below the surface and gain any real insight into what notes you are playing, nor why those notes work over those particular chords.

But now we come to the crunch. I think the heart of the issue lies in how you answer the following question:

What kind of guitarist do you want to be? 

We’ll go on to explore some of the answers to this question in “Part Two” and then look at how your own answer might determine when, if ever, you may best be advised to bite the bullet and expand your ability to read music to include standard notation.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion

Lots more lessons, articles and videos by Nick available at his main websites:

For guitar players: www.secretguitarteacher.com

For guitar teachers (or aspiring guitar teachers): www.teachguitar.com

To Read or Not to Read? Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But at some point, the individual personality of the fledgling guitarist starts to emerge. It may be in very minute details, like a favorite picking pattern or a fill that he or she does extremely well and (consequently throws in wherever the situation allows). From these basic riffs, fills and rhythm patterns will blossom leads and more complex techniques. We call this growth a musician’s style.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

So how and when does one start to develop a style? Well, personally (obviously), I think that one’s style starts at day one. When you learned your first song, did you copy the strumming pattern right off the recording? Maybe you followed your guitar teacher’s suggestions. Maybe you came up with something all your own. And maybe you did all of the above.

It’s like cooking or telling a joke. You get the basics from somewhere and then you add your own touches (or not) to make it fit your tastes (or to cater to someone else’s tastes). Well, that’s essentially the same thing that happens with your playing.

In our lesson on “Horse With No Name,” you learned the basics of the song along with some simple strumming patterns. Today we’re going to work on adding a bit of accessories to the basic model. Feel free to use any of the ideas, riffs or leads we develop here or use them as a foundation on which to create your own musical ideas.

Picking And Choosing

It amy seem that I probably never play the guitar ’cause I seem to spend so much time thinking about things. The reality is that there are a lot of things to think about before (and while) playing. Most of it takes less time to deal with then you will spend in reading this sentence. Do I know the song? How well do I know this song? How many people are playing the song? What instruments are they going to play? What sort of role should I play? What role do I want to play? Do I intend to sing? What key is the song in? Do I want to play it in that key or use a capo? What chords changes are there going to be? Will those chord changes affect the scales I plan to use? Do I need to rethink my fills or leads? What sort of tone or effects do I think will work? All this (and more) passes through my head when I’m getting ready to strum the first chord or join in with a fill or sing a harmony part or whatever.

Let’s start with the obvious things first. As we discussed last time, the song is in the key of E minor and consists entirely of two chords: the aforementioned Em and the mysterious Dadd6add9. Each chord lasts for four beats; there is no variations to the pattern. It truly doesn’t get much simpler than this.

You’ll also recall that last time, we came up with this simple strumming pattern:

Listening or playing the song again, I realize that virtually all the singing takes place in the Em measures of any given verse. The last two beats of an Dadd6add9 measure, except during the chorus, are usually free of vocal traffic. This makes those spaces particularly attractive spots to throw in a fill. I don’t have to worry about stepping on the vocal line (which could be bad) or trying to sing and play something a little complex at the same time (which, in my case, could be really bad!).

Now a fill, as we discussed in Tricks Of The Trade, need not be some flash of technical wizardry. It can be something as simple as a well placed hammer-on:

I could easily use either of these fills while playing the song by myself or while playing with someone else. If I trust my fellow guitarist(s) with the rhythm, and if someone else were singing the lead, I might attempt something slightly more complicated, like any of these:

Again, there’s nothing phenomenally complicated here. Fill A is an “expanded” version of our first fill. Fill B utilizes a slide from the A note to the B and then some pick-offs to get us back again. More (and simpler) pick-offs are used in Fill C while, a combination of slides, pick-off and hammer-ons is used for Fill D. Fill E is something I might use if there is no bass player and I want to give a bit more interesting bottom to the song.

Mood is important, too. If I think it’s important to have something to steady the beat, then I will not only play something simple, but play the same one over and over again. If I’m being a bit playful, then who knows what fill might pop up at its designated place.

Let me stress that these are not “be all and end all” transcriptions. Any riff or fill you learn is meant to be played with, to be tinkered with so that you can use it when and where you think it might add a bit of zest to a song. Add an additional note or two here or there. Stretch or shrink the timing to your liking. Think of a fill as silly putty, if you will. But above all, have fun.

The Origin Of The Species

Ah, but I hear someone asking the age-old question, “Where do they come from? If I only have notes, how do I turn them into a fill or a lead?” This answer is going to really disappoint some of you (and really excite others). There is no “formula.” You simply arrange the notes into a way that (A) you can play, (B) that sounds good, to you at least, and (hopefully) (C) that fits the song.

Points A and B are almost constantly evolving as you learn to play. By starting out with riffs and fills, you subconsciously develop playing patterns, just as you do with strumming patterns. As a consequence, certain things might be easier for you to play than others. Some people learn “the box” and work it to death. Eric Clapton has mentioned in interviews that he tried to learn as many riffs and leads as he could off records and then worked on incorporating them (or altered versions of them) into the music he was playing.

Notes (and the patterns in which we play them) are often dictated by scales. The scales are (again, usually) determined by the tonality and the modality of the song itself. This is where things can get a bit confusing. Take Horse With No Name, for example. The song is in E minor. E minor is the relative minor of G major. So if we were to look at the music for this song, it will undoubtedly be written with one sharp (F#) on the staff. And this is indeed the case.

But, as we’ve read in Scales Within Scales, there are many E minor scales and it is conceivable that we don’t want to even work with any of them. How do we choose what to use? In most cases, the music will initially do that for us. Since there are only two chords used in the song, let’s look at the make up of each:

Remember, too, that we do not play all the Dadd6add9 notes on the guitar. With the fingering used in the song, the G# and C# are eliminated from the chord.

Technically, we can make the case that a G could easily stand in place of the G#, especially if we call decide to call our Dadd6add0 an F#m (b)13. This would be much in keeping the center of the song in E minor and that is something that is not open to debate. Everything about the song – the chords, the melody and the harmonies – dictate that the tonality of this song is E minor. The Em chord (with its notes of E, G and B) is its tonal center.

But the “flavor,” or modality, is still up for grabs. Looking at all these notes (and eliminating the G# for the reasons we’ve discussed), I see that there are two sharps (F# and C#) to deal with. Two sharps dictates the key of D major. Again referring to Scales Within Scales (or to our soon to be new-and-improved scales and modes page), I know that in this scenario I can use an E Dorian scale in order to get the notes that I want.

Another question, though: Why can’t I simply use the D major scale? What is the difference between the D major scale and the E Dorian scale? And the answer to this is probably as close to Zen as any answer I’ve ever given you: There is no difference between the two and there is every difference. Here’s why:

Each note in the E dorian scale has an exact counterpart in the D major scale. But because you start (and end) one scale on D and the other on E changes the whole color of the scale. If you refuse to believe that, try singing each scale note for note (and use an instrument to accompany you). Sing “do, re, mi…” if you like or simply to phrases. By making E the focal point (the “I,” “do” or root) of the scale, by making E the “center” of tonality, you change how each and every note corresponds and interacts. Yes, for all intents and purposes, you are playing the notes of the D major scale but they no longer have anything to do with that particular tonality. This is a difficult concept to grasp and we will be devoting more time to it this winter, but I hope this gets you started to think in the right direction. You can check out any of our many articles on the subject here at Guitar Noise, such as Part 6 of our Turning Scales into Solos series.

Take a look at the lead from the original recording and you should see that it’s pretty much created from simply going up and down the E Dorian scale:

It’s important to point out here that this lead finishes with three different acoustic guitars playing lead in the final two measures. One trills away on the E note at the twelfth fret of the high E string (as shown in the last example) while the other two play a series of descending triplets like this:

It’s close to impossible to play all three of these guitar parts at once on a single guitar, which is one of the reasons why you shouldn’t worry a lot about playing everything according to the original recording. However, you can use the open high E string as a droning note and play one of the other two guitar sequences an octave lower as well, las in the first two of the following these examples:

The last line of the above example uses the original “3rd Soloing Guitar” line from Example 5 and pairs it with the open high E string. You might find this the easiest of the three to play.

Making adjustments of this nature is part of how you develop your own style. It’s also a perfect example of what I told you at the beginning of this section. Point A, being “what I can play,” will (hopefully) always be improving and, because of that, my leads will become more interesting (technically and musically) as I evolve as a guitarist. And as I expand my musical tastes (and abilities), “what sounds good” (Point B) will also change radically. It’s up to me to make sure that Point C (“fitting the lead to the song”) follows suit.

This is how your “style” develops. It is a natural process that will occur as fast or as slow as your musical abilities do. Let it happen.

Sharing The Wealth

And then share it with the world. I can tend to go on and on about things, but this will always bear repeating: music is meant to be shared. It is its nature. The high that you get from playing is amplified enormously when playing for and (more so) with others.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

More in this series

Learn the basic chords and strumming of this song in Part 1 – The Simplest Song.

A Horse With No Name – Adding Some Personal Touches was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Really and truly, you can learn to play a song in less time than it takes to talk about doing it. But the problem comes with trying to figure out what you have actually learned and whether or not you will be able to apply that knowledge down the road. In my mind, simply copying something rarely teaches anyone anything. Oh, there will always be exceptions, the geniuses who will take the time to figure things out for themselves, but most of us tend toward the lazy. Better to start in learning the “whys” along with the “hows” than to try to piece it all together later.

Liner Notes: America

A Horse With No Name by America is a classic folk-rock song written by Dewey Bunnell. This song bears some resemblance to Neil Young’s folky acoustic rock. Ironically, back in 1972 “A Horse With No Name” is the song that replaced Neil’s “Heart of Gold” as the number one single in America.

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

This lesson, our very first Guitar Noise “Easy Songs for Beginners” lesson is meant to help you do both – learn a song and learn about the music that goes into it so you can actually play it and use what you learn in other songs you play. After we pick up the basics of the song, then we’ll have some fun “really playing” it by adding some strumming variations (including a very basic bass part) and in the lesson, Adding Some Personal Touches, we’ll also add some rhythm riffs (fills) and some leads (ranging from easy to intermediate). You didn’t think I was going to let you get away and not learn something, did you? It should (hopefully) be harmless…

The Absolute Basic Model

Say you’ve never played the guitar before? Well, step right up here and I’ll make you a guitar god for only $49.99 or my name ain’t…

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gets really crazy sometimes, doesn’t it? Well, in order to proceed, I am going to (gasp) assume that you’ve held a guitar before and that you are somewhat familiar with the terminology. If not, then you need to start out with our Absolute Beginners Chords lesson. Just get to the E minor chord (it’s the first one) and you’ll be all set. No lie!

Because this lesson’s song is Horse With No Name, written by Dewey Bunnell of the group, America. The entire song consists of two chords, one of which (E minor)  you know and the other we can argue about almost forever:

The E minor chord is, as you’ve discovered, one of the simplest to learn, but how on earth did Mr. Bunnell come up with the second chord? Well, I certainly wasn’t there when he did it, but I think it’s a pretty fair guess that it was either the result of a mistake or just exploring the fretboard. Either way, I’m sure he looked up and said to himself, “Hey, this sounds pretty cool!”

Both chords are easy enough to do. An Em requires you to use the second fret on both the fourth and fifth (D and A) strings while the Dadd6add9 simply has you move your two fingers to the next outer strings, the third and sixth (or G and low E). It’s not a hard change and it requires little thinking. Use whatever finger is on the second fret of the A string (it will probably be the index or middle) to play the second fret of the low E. Likewise, simply shift whatever finger is on the second fret of the D string to the second fret of the G. It’s kind of like doing jumping jacks with your fingers!

(And yes, we’re going to discuss this “Dadd6add9″ later. If you can’t wait, just skip down to the section entitled, “What is that chord really?”)

The rhythm of the song is in 4 / 4 time (four beats per measure) and the chords change each and every measure. For starters, do a simple downstroke, either on all four beats or, if you’d like a little variation, on the first, second and fourth beats. Remember that this song is moderately paced – it’s not really fast and not really slow. When you’re first learning a song, go as slow as you have to in order to make comfortable chord changes while keeping the overall beat smooth and steady. This is where a metronome can come in very handy.

Here’s a cheat sheet of how verses and chorus should shape up:

Nothing to it, right? Okay, let’s move on, then…

Tinkering

Usually the first thing a beginner needs to work on is chord recognition and formation. You need to know the chords you want to play and how to finger them on the fretboard. Your next concern will be about being able to change from one chord to the next smoothly and cleanly. With this particular song, both of those concerns become almost minimal and, because of that, you can work instead on your strumming.

You might think I’m a bit nuts about this, but I really can’t stress enough how important it is to work on your rhythm. Not only the fundamental task of keeping a steady beat, but also creating patterns that make the song better, more fun to play and interesting to hear.

But hey, it’s just hitting the strings, so how hard can it be?

Well, not hard at all if you’re aware of it from the start. This is the suggested rhythm I gave you.

An symbol indicates an upstroke and a denotes a downstroke.

Now this will work but it’s hardly interesting except as a tool for helping us to keep time. A rhythm that would be closer to the original would involve working on our upstroke (coming up the strings, toward your head). It would also involve working on the beats in between the beats. The length of a note can be divided almost infinitely, but we’re going to just work with eighth notes for now. So instead of us counting, “1, 2, 3, 4,” we would want to count, “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and…” The four beats per measure have not speeded up in the slightest. You will probably think that they have, though, if you’re not familiar with this. Don’t worry. It’s not that hard to catch on.

So here is an alternative strumming pattern, complete with the appropriate chords:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Again, start out very slowly if this is new to you. As slowly as you need to in order to count out each beat and to get each stroke in its proper place. You’ll be surprised how easily it will come to you, even if you’ve never tried an upstroke before.

Filling In The Bottom (and sides!)

Once you’re feeling up to speed we can tinker a bit more and add a bass part. Granted, it will not be the most exciting bass line in the world, but if you’re a beginner, it should impress you with how easy it is to add a lot more texture to your playing with such a simple technique.

Here’s how we’ll do it. Whenever we hit the first beat of any given measure, we will strike only the sixth string (which will be the lowest tone on either chord). Just that string and nothing more. When you add in the chords (upstrokes and downstrokes), it should be something like the following example. With this Finale software notation, I indicated downstrokes with “D” and upstrokes with “U” just to make things a little easier:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Using this pattern as a starting point, you can then start to really have fun. One thing I like to do is to play an upstroke on the second beat of the E minor as close to the bridge (as far from the neck as the strings allow) as possible and let it ring through the remaining three beats of the measure, like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

You can also pick out individual strings instead of strumming. In the following example, the three highest strings are all picked as upstrokes on the last beat and a half of the measure:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Once you have a couple of patterns that you like and can do without thinking, you’ll find yourself playing “mix and match,” throwing “E minor pattern 1″ with “Dadd6add9 pattern 4″ and what have you. It can become a lot of fun as well as a challenge to see what you can come up with next.

You see, even the simplest of songs can provide you with a lot of interesting opportunities if you are willing to put the time and effort into finding what can be done with it. Or you can simply learn the chords and then move on to your next song. As always, the choice is yours.

What Is That Chord Really?

Okay, let’s look at that second chord. If we examine the notes on each string, this is what we would find:

Last time out (Building Additions and Suspensions) we learned that we could, if we so desired, call this chord by a lot of different names. Who wants to start? Bm7 (add 4)? D6 (add 9)? Hey, how about E9 (sus4)? Those are all viable answers, given the notes of the chord.

We also touched on the fact that the context of the chord (how it is used in a progression) can be vital in helping to determine which chord name we will give it. An important factor in determining the context is the voicing of the chord, meaning not only which notes of a chord we use but where we play them on the guitar. Let’s take another look at both of our chords in this song:

Okay, first let’s establish the key of the song. Now we could do this the easy way: “Gee, David, it starts with an E minor chord and it ends with an E minor chord. Why don’t we just say it’s in E minor?” And I could live with this approach. But take a listen to both chords. Another reason for coming up with the same answer is simply by hearing how much more at ease the Em chord makes us feel. In contrast, the Dadd6add9 sounds unsettled, like it’s got to be going somewhere. Play the chords in reverse order and the Dadd6add9 still doesn’t sound like a resting point, like “home.” It’s just begging for a resolution.

Now, having just played the song to death, one thing that I can tell you is that I like the F# in the bass. It fits well, much better than having a D or E or even an A serving as the root. This, more than anything else, is what makes me decide that F# is going to be the root note on which to build my chord. So if I build a stack of thirds on top of my F# and fill in the notes I have from the chord (using a “-” to indicate a missing note), this is what I get:

You can see that the fifth (C#) and the ninth (G#) are not among the six notes in the chord. Instead, we get a second A. So we can call it F#m13 if we want to stay reasonably simple. Or F#m7 (no 5)(add 4)(add 6) if we want to be absolutely looney about it. But there is a lot to be said for simplicity when trying to write something out. As I mentioned earlier, people can (and do) argue about this sort of thing for ages.

But it does bring up an interesting thought – if you’ve got a chord that has seven notes what do you do? After all, you can only get six notes out of your guitar at a time, which one goes?

Traditionally, the fifth would be the note left out  but, believe it or not, there are instances when the root is the “missing” note (and we’ll be examining chords like this in other Guitar Noise song lessons). But the real determining factor is what notes you are able to finger (or not finger) on your fretboard. For instance, if you strum your guitar (standard tuning) without putting any fingers on the fretboard at all you would have an A11. The notes, from low to high, would be E (fifth), A (root), D (eleventh), G (seventh), B (ninth) and E (fifth again). Here the third (C#) is the missing note. You could always add this by playing it on the 1st (or 6th) string but it sounds perfectly fine as it is. Generally a good rule of thumb with 9th, 11th, and 13th chords is to really try to include the seventh along with the root in order to give it some sense of identity.

Is any of this really that important? Like any knowledge, it all depends on what you want to do with it, and that’s what next week’s topic is all about. You’ll see that by giving our second chord an identity of Dadd6add9, we are helping to determine the modal centers of our harmonies. This is ultimately where our fills and leads will come from. And no, it’s nowhere near as complicated as it sounds!

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

More in this series

Spice up your strumming and learn the solo from the original recording in Part 2 – Adding Some Personal Touches.

A Horse With No Name – The Simplest Song was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

We’re going to work a bit of the same sort of magic with “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” written by American Episcopalian priest Phillips Brooks (inspired by his 1865 visit to the fabled city) and his church’s organist, Lewis Redner. For the most part, we’ll use either pairs of notes of chord arpeggios to create our arrangement of this beautiful carol.

The First Two Lines

I’ve chosen to write this arrangement in the key of D to make use of both the open D and A strings for bass notes and also the open B, G and D strings as part of the G chord. You get a taste of that right in the first line:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Even though the first set of notes is based on an open position D chord, it’s a good idea to fret the high E (first) string with your ring finger and the G string with your middle finger. In fact, you want to use your middle finger as a bit of an anchor during the most of the instances where you’re playing two notes at the same time. If you use your middle finger on the G or D string, that frees you up to use your ring finger whenever the high note is on the same fret and to use your index finger when the high note is one fret lower, as in the second pair of notes in the second full measure.

The third measure demonstrates why this use of the middle finger as anchor can be so helpful. If your first inclination is to use your index and middle fingers for the pair of notes on the second fret of the B and D strings, then you’d find it more than a little awkward making any sort of smooth transition to the two subsequent pairs. But keeping your middle finger on the D string allows you to quickly move from pair to pair.

By the bye, you definitely want to finger a “normal” open position D chord at the start of the last measure in this example!

As mentioned, playing this song in D is giving us a number of opportunities to use open strings, which in turn gives us a chance to reposition our fingers when the melody makes a bit of a leap to higher notes, as it does in the start of the second line:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The first two measures of Example 2 are the trickiest part of our song. Use your index finger to barre the first five strings at the fifth fret and your ring finger to barre the first four strings at the seventh. This will allow you to play the first two eighth notes and the following quarter note (where the B and G strings are played at the seventh fret).

Then stand your ring finger up on its tip on the seventh fret of the D string. Use your middle finger to play the sixth fret of the A string and your pinky to get the seventh fret of the high E (first) string. Lift up your pinky and your index finger will have the two notes at the fifth fret (on the high E and G strings) that you need to close the measure.

You’re still not out of the woods, though! You next need to make a bit of a leap to place your index finger on the second fret of the D string and to put your pinky on the fifth fret of the high E. This takes a bit of practice but it’s not as hard as it sounds. You could, as an alternative, play the E note (second fret of the D) at the seventh fret of the A string and the G note (third fret of the high E) at the eighth fret of the B string. That’s a lot fewer gymnastics for your fingers but you’re still going to have to jump down the neck for the G in the bass (third fret of the low E string) at some point. I’ve tried it both ways and find myself preferring the former. You may find otherwise, though, so be sure to experiment.

The final two measures in this example are more chances to use your middle finger anchor when playing. If you thought you were getting good at it earlier, now’s your chance to find out for sure! And, like the first line, you want to finish this section off with an open position D chord.

The Last Two Lines

That D chord kicks off the third line of the song:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

It’s a good idea here to use your ring finger to get the E note (second fret of the D string) when you play the third chord (Em) and then slide it up the D string for each of the following two chords. You should end up starting the second measure with your ring finger at the fourth fret of the D string, your middle finger on the third fret of the G and your index finger at the second fret of the B string. This is an F# chord, by the way. For the second F# Lay your index finger flat across the second fret to make a barre chord out of it and get you the F# in the bass (second fret of the low E string).  You’ll revisit this F# barre in the last measure of this example.

The last line starts out the same as the first and ends a little like the second:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Try to get the G note in the bass in the second measure with your index finger. This will make the next pair of notes (seventh fret of the high E and the fourth fret of the low E) a lot easier to manage!

As always, here, is a full version for you to work with. And (again, as always) please forgive any of the numerous performance mistakes!

Download a PDF of the complete arrangement (Right-click and “Save as”)

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this arrangement of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and that you find it a great Christmas present for both you and your family and friends.

And let me take a moment to wish all our readers, their family and friends, a wonderful holiday season. We thank you for your continued support of Guitar Noise and look forward to bringing lots of great lessons in 2012!

Until the next lesson…

O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

In order to allow your musical feeling to emerge and give life to the notes you play, you must have the technique required to produce those notes in the first place. “Technique” is the conduit through which musical feeling flows.

People are often surprised when they learn that I have continued to practice and improve pieces of music that I have played for decades, including pieces I have often performed or recorded. “Don’t you know it by now?” they say!

Apparently, they are not aware of the dictum I have laid down in “The Principles of Correct Practice For Guitar” for students to follow if they wish to continue to improve and expand their abilities on guitar, and realize their highest potential as guitarists. It is this: always tell yourself “I don’t know how to play the guitar.” After forty years of playing, I tell myself everyday “I don’t know how to play the guitar.”

Why do I tell myself this? Do I just like to remind myself what a slow learner I am?

No, not really, although I know I have had to work a lot harder to get what others found easy. I tell myself “I don’t know how to play the guitar” so that my mind will constantly be open to new ideas and new intuitions about ways to improve my playing. I tell myself this so that I will not become complacent and stale in my ways of thinking and doing things. I tell myself this so that I will never fall into the common rut of operating from assumptions that have never been reexamined, and have actually outlived their usefulness. Because I tell myself this (and thus keep “Beginners Mind”), I now play light years better than I did at any time in my past.

This is why I counsel my students to think in this way – so that they can be the guitar player they are really capable of being.

What Is “Getting Better” And Do I Have To?

Now, someone may say, “well, do I have to keep getting better? Can’t I just stop getting better and enjoy myself? Anyway, what does “getting better mean?” Those are fair questions.

First of all, of course it is okay if you say “I don’t want to get any better, I am happy where I am and I just want to play my guitar.” That is fine. It is not fine for me, but it may be fine for you. I enjoy getting better and better on guitar, and I have discovered the interesting fact that the better I get at playing guitar, the more I enjoy playing guitar! And since I like to have as much fun as possible in my life, I keep working at getting better on guitar. If you don’t want to get better on guitar, I probably won’t run into you, since my job is to make people better and those are the people that come to Guitar Principles. If you are not looking to get better you probably won’t be reading this anyway, you’ll be busy playing your guitar, at whatever level you play it! How much you are actually enjoying it, though, is another question.

As far as what “getting better” means, it means two things:

1. Becoming able to do things that you could not do before
2. Being able to do things you can already do, but learning to do them much more easily

Both of these possibilities are very exciting for the guitar player who knows how to make “getting better” happen, and both lead to increased joy in playing guitar, and increased musical quality and power for the music we make.

Learning To Do What You Can Not Do

When someone begins to learn guitar, they, by definition, fall into the category of needing to learn to do things they cannot do, because they cannot yet do anything! So they are not ready to sit on their laurels and enjoy the fruit of their accomplishments. They need to set out on an effective path of learning to do what they cannot do. Some do actually learn the necessary new skills and continue on playing guitar, and many don’t, and stop trying.

Many of those that do get up and running as guitar players reach a particular point of ability and stay there. There are things they can do, and there are things they cannot do. This is fine if they do not want to do the things they cannot do. It is a problem if they want to do new things, but find they cannot learn to do them. Then, they go through a cycle that begins with struggle, leads to frustration, and finally resignation. But the frustration is always burning underneath, they feel a resentment that they cannot do what they see other, “better” players doing.

Anyone familiar with “The Principles” knows that the entire goal of my teaching work is to enable any guitar player to learn to do what they cannot yet do, and have not been able to learn to do. We have that one covered. We have saved thousands of guitar players who could not even get to first base with guitar from the horrible fate of continuing to live without being able to play the guitar. Because of “The Principles,” no one need any longer suffer silently with the torture of unrequited guitar love!

So, let us turn our attention to the other aspect of “getting better,” which is learning to do the things we can do already, but learning to do them more easily. Why is that important?

Learning To Do Things More Easily

I once saw a video of the legendary classical guitarist John Williams talking about practicing guitar. He remarked that guitar players needed to learn to enjoy practice and to understand what it is. He said “Practicing is sitting with your guitar and saying, ‘Now how can I find an easier way to do this?’” This statement contains a great truth, but unfortunately, for many players that truth will be useless, because they simply do not know how to make anything easier. Like most great truths spoken by great players you have to actually be in the same place they are in before you can see the truth of what they say.

Knowing how to make things easier is what all of my teaching work is about. I show you step by step how to do everything in the best possible way, and in a way that does not prevent continued development. “Skill” is the ability to reconcile opposing dynamics. When we can do something easily, it is because we have found a way to balance the opposing forces that must be applied to the guitar strings in a way that does not create excessive and uncontrolled muscle tension. When we struggle to play, we are suffering from this muscle tension during playing that is resulting from movements that do not apply force to the strings in precisely the correct way. This is always true.

When we are struggling to play, and our body is constantly tensed while trying to make the movements that will make the notes (and there are many, many players in this state even though they are only dimly aware of it) everything that makes music so wonderful begins to degrade. Our rhythm and smoothness in playing, our tone, even the notes themselves begin to be only a pale reflection of what they could and should be. It is no fun for either player or listener.

Now that we have looked at the “what” of playing easily, let’s look at the “why.”

The reason we should always strive to find easier ways of doing things on guitar is quite simple: the easier something is to do, the more our musical feeling can be poured into the music we make. The more developed, ergonomic, and optimized our technique is, the wider the pipeline though which musical feeling can be poured. We must still supply the musical feeling, but it is amazing how much easier it is to feel the music once the physical body is relaxed, comfortable and actually feeling pleasure in its movements to play, and the mind is concomitantly composed, quiet, and able to simply be aware, listen to and enjoy the music even as it creates it in each moment.

The easier something is to do, the more our musical feeling can be poured into the music we make.

Understanding this vital relationship between musicality and technique is extremely important. People often argue about which one is more “important,” musicality or technique. That is an absurd question, like asking which is more important, the chicken or the egg! One gives rise to the other, and each is the “reason” for the existence of the other. Technique is needed so that we can make the music, and without the music we would never need technique. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, and I don’t think we would ask “which is more “important,” heads or tails? Unless maybe we bet on heads!

The desire to express our musical feeling demands the need for technique with which to do that. The more refined our technique, the more refined our musical feeling is allowed to be. The size of the pipe through which our musical feeling can flow depends on the ease with which we perform the movement process called “playing the guitar.” I call this pipeline our “musical margin.” As we learn to continually surrender ourselves to the music, and increasingly intensify our emotional involvement with the dimension of “sound with meaning” that we call music I believe that we, as players, should be in continual search of widening our musical margin. There should always be as much room and freedom for the flow of musical feeling as possible, but when we struggle to play, the flow of feeling is strangled.

There is a direct relationship between technique and feeling in making music, the more there is of one, the more there can be of the other. We must keep in mind, however, that not all music is equal in its demands for technique. Some things are simply easier to do than other things, and some styles are more demanding of technique than others. People’s attitudes about technique are often fashioned by the particular style they play. The basic rule of thumb is to acquire the technique you need to give life, not death, to the music you wish to play.

One other important benefit of learning to do things more easily is that it increases our consistency during playing. Everyone who performs or records has had the experience of having things go really well in the practice room and fall apart on the stage or in front of the mic! We usually blame “chance” or any number of indeterminate factors for our playing breakdowns. The fact is that these breakdowns have a technical basis. Sure, on a good day when no one is watching we might make the notes three times out of five. But when the pressure is on, the power of every technical weakness is magnified a hundred times. As we learn to do things in better and better ways, using less effort and causing less tension, it is amazing how solid our playing becomes!

Hearing The Music

Another interesting fact is that the easier it is for us to make the music, the more we are able to actually hear the music as we make it. And the more we hear the music we make, the more we feel the music we make. As I have improved my playing over forty years, I have seen the notes themselves sink deeper and deeper into my bones. Every note is more alive, more vibrant, and carries more meaning to my inner ear. For the listener, who is on the other end of the notes I play, their experience with the music I make is primarily dependent on the experience I am having with the music I make.

This intensification of the musical experience is the primary reason for continuing to widen our musical margin. For those who desire to do so, it is an endless and ever deepening process. When you do it for a long time, you become known as someone who is “great” on guitar. All great players have a wide musical margin. All struggling players have a narrow musical margin. All “non-starters” on guitar have no musical margin, they have no ability to feel the music – because they cannot make music to begin with.

This is the situation of a player who wrote to me recently, wanting to know how to “feel” the music more………..

Hi Jamie

I want to know how I can play the guitar with more expression. My problem is that I can read and play the notes in the song but for some reason I can’t give the music the expression and passion needed to make a good performance. how can I overcome this brick wall ? My profesor tells me that I have the passion inside but I need to let it out. For some reason it hasn’t happened yet. I am very frustrated, I hope you can help me.

Thank you Jamie!!

Ed

I have never met this person, but I have met hundreds of students over the years who say the same things when they first come to me. In all these hundreds of cases I have seen one thing, and one thing only: there is no musical feeling because the person is struggling to play and does not know how to make the music without struggling. Many times, the person was studying with a teacher, often at the university level, and the teacher could do nothing to improve the situation either. I have no doubt this is the case here as well.

For those who wish to widen their musical margin, no matter where you are right now, Guitar Principles is the way to the deeper experience of making music you are seeking.

Copyright 2011 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Get solid results from your guitar practice….learn how to practice correctly!

Visit www.guitarprinciples.com

The Musical Margin: Why Technique Equals Musicality was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

And if you have read any of our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons here at Guitar Noise, you have hopefully learned (or at least strongly suspected) that we would like you to learn things besides the songs being taught in these lessons. The songs are usually, in fact, delivery vehicles for the use of music theory or various guitar techniques that you are encouraged to use in all your playing.

Liner Notes: Plain White T’s

Plain White T’s are a power pop band from Chicago. Their infectious punk-pop roots formed while the band was still playing cover songs in suburban basements. Since then they’ve played on the Warped Tour three times. They are best known for “Hey There Delilah”, an acoustic song performed by singer Tom Higgenson originally released in 2005 and later hit #1 in the US in 2007.

If you enjoyed this lesson you will also like learning some of the other songs from our Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons.

I guess the upshot of all this, big surprise, is that some things a beginner goes through are going to be harder than others. Some people pick up on some techniques and ideas faster than others; it stands to reason that some “Beginners” lessons will be harder for some people than others. And some that may seem beyond one’s grasp may come fairly quickly with a little bit of (gasp!) practice and work. There’s a cool flip side to this – when you start playing what some of you may consider to be “Intermediates” songs, they may prove to be nowhere near as difficult as you may have thought them to be.  This is one reason why I always encourage students to reach out and try songs and techniques that might be currently beyond their levels. As long as one doesn’t get frustrated in the attempt, it almost always yields positive results, although those results may be a bit down the road.

And that bring us to this Guitar Noise song lesson, Hey There Delilah by the Plain White T’s. As a song lesson, this tune gives us a chance to develop some picking techniques that will be very helpful to beginners whether they use fingers or picks. Plus there are a few tricky chord changes that, once you’ve gotten them into your fingers, can give you a lot of confidence for trickier ones that you’ll undoubtedly come across at some point in your guitar lives.

This might be a good time to mention that another reason this song is a good exercise is that the rhythm is constant throughout. Every measure, with one or two exceptions, will be filled with eight eighth notes that alternate between a bass note and a partial chord using just the G and B strings. That means it’s also a good way to work on your string-picking accuracy.

Hey There Delilah starts out with a short introduction and then has a fairly standard song structure of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, final verse and chorus. It’s in 4/4 timing and it’s played in the key of D major. The verses themselves are easily broken down into two sections of chord progressions. The first section, which is a measure of D and then one of F#m, is also used as the introduction:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

And, as you can hear in the first MP3 file, it sounds fine whether you use your fingers or a pick. Some people may like using both thumb and fingers on the partial chords, some may like the “one finger sweep,” that is, using one finger and striking both the B and G strings on the upstroke. In the following MP3 sound files I’ll be using the “two fingers” approach for the rest of this lesson, simply because I prefer the way it sounds.

Another thing to mention here is that, technically, we’re playing a D5 chord instead of a full D, so you don’t have to finger the entire open D chord and can leave the first (high E) string open.

Speaking of fingering, this simple progression might prove to be one of the more challenging parts of this song for some of you. And if you don’t mind a suggestion, try laying your index finger flat in a “mini-barre,” covering the first three strings at the second fret. This way you won’t have to move very much to make the change between these two chords. I usually use my ring finger to get the D note (third fret of the B string) on the D5 chord and then my pinky to get the F# note (fourth fret, D string) on the F#m. Those of you with larger hands may prefer to employ your middle and ring fingers, respectively, for those tasks, but since this progression lasts a while, I find it helps to have my middle finger help support the index finger in the barre by lying on top of it!

I really want to stress that even though this progression may seem hard at first, you will get it with practice, persistence and patience. And there’s every reason to get good at this as you’ll find this particular fingering shape used a lot, both in chording and lead guitar work, not to mention many chord melody arrangements. So please keep at it!

But if you want immediate gratification, then you can use the “alternate F#m choice” shown in Example 1A. Wrapping your thumb around to get the F# bass note at the second fret of the low E (sixth) string is probably the easiest way for most folks to get this.

The second section of the verse is four measures long and moves from Bm to G to A, and then back to Bm and A again. The good news here, because of this particular picking pattern, is that we don’t have to deal with any type of barring in regard to the Bm chord. Oh! There’s also a slight descending walking bass line at the end of the first measure, which most guitarists prefer to think of as Bm/A;

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

And it’s really interesting to wonder why we’d call it a Bm/A at all since we’re only playing the A note in the bass instead of playing both the bass note and then the rest of the chord! Of course, you’ll hear me make the mistake of playing the rest of the chord anyway on one of the MP3 files. That’s why it’s always a good idea to have your chord shapes in place even if you’re not planning on hitting those strings.

The trickiest part here is the final A5. Since you’re all into reading music and / or you know your fretboards fairly well, then you already have figured out that the E note on the fifth fret of the B string is the same E note as your open high E (first) string. So you can certainly just hit that note if you’d rather. But going with that mini-barre on the second fret will allow you to both get the fifth fret of the B string with your pinky and still be in great shape for when you get back to the D5 that starts the second half of the verse.

And speaking of the second half of the verse, why don’t we put an entire verse together so that you can see how they work:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

So far, so good! The chorus consists of a two chord progression of D5 to Bm and tosses in some bass movement to make things a little more interesting:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Using just the open A note in the bass for the D5/A is as convenient a gift for your fingering that you could ever hope for! Plus, it gives you a nice quiet moment in order to get your fingers set for the two upcoming Bm chords.

Here, I’d like to suggest not using the mini-barre on the D5. Fret the D note (third fret of the B string) with your middle finger and play the A (second fret of the G string) with your index. When you hit the open A string, reposition your index finger to play the B note in the bass (second fret of the A string) and also get your pinky set to play the B note on the fourth fret of the G string. This will free up your ring finger to get the C# note in the Bm/C# that’s coming along. There are certainly other ways to try this, but I think most of you will find this to be the easiest.

This two-measure chord progression is played four times in the chorus. The first time through the chorus ends with one last measure of D5 (along with the D5/A) before going back to the verse chords.

The second time through the chorus there is a slight change at the end of it, using Bm/A instead of Bm/C#. This leads us from B down to G, which happens to be the chord that starts out the bridge:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

The bridge of Hey There Delilah is an excellent example of the sort of simple bass lines you add to almost any song in the key of D major or B minor. Those of you who’ve read our articles on walking bass lines here at Guitar Noise (which you can find on our “Hot Lessons” page) probably recognize this as what I like to call “connecting the dots,” simply moving from one root note to the next. Be careful, though! Notice that while the first shift from D5 to Bm involves the same D5/A used in the chorus, the second time D5/C# comes into play. This might be another good time to use your mini-barre, which should give your pinky ample room to get that C# note in the bass.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should have made the mini-barre itself the focal point of the lesson! Especially since you’ll probably want to use it again at the end of the third verse. As mentioned earlier, the last verse is slightly different in structure than the others. It’s nothing you can’t handle, though, as long as you read it carefully:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here we go through pretty much the first half of the verse only to get caught in a Bm to Bm/A to G to A loop for a little bit. Finally, though, we get out to the Bm, A and A5 progression that ends the verse. Be sure to notice that both the last A and A5 get a full four beats each instead the two they had in the previous verses.

The final chorus is also longer. It starts out the same but continues on for an additional five times while the vocal is singing a lot of “ohs” and “whoas” and whatnot. In addition, occasionally the guitarist throws in a bit of a string mute on the last half of the fourth beat of the first measure, where the D5/A is played:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Not every one of the last five times, but a few of them. You truly don’t have to play them at all, but it’s also a cool little technique that you should get into practicing sooner rather than later. And the whole thing ends on your regular garden variety open position D chord.

I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. There is a bit to digest here and some of it is going to require some work and patience, not to mention practice! But these are the sort of techniques and little touches that you’re going to run into time and time again in your adventures with the guitar, so having a cheerful little pop song to work them out with isn’t all that bad of a thing, is it?

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Hey There Delilah – Plain White T’s was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Guitar players are actually the best people to have on your holiday gift list. The brother-in-law you don’t know all that well? The guy from your office whose name you pulled in the “Secret Santa” drawing? If they’re guitarists, they always need things, and most of those things that they need they would rarely think about getting themselves (as they are, like you were, more concerned about “big gear” purchases) and also are within the gift budget of most folks. And even if you don’t know all that much about guitar, your gifts will be enthusiastically appreciated.

And if you don’t know all that much about guitar, it does help to know a little something about the guitarist you are buying for. Does he own more than one guitar? Acoustic?  Electric? Classical? Does she perform a lot or is she more likely to be found at home writing and recording music? If you’ve got a performer, you must have seen a show or two. Does he stand or sit while playing? Don’t be afraid to chat up your guitarist about his or her likes and dislikes when it comes to guitar gear. Guitar players often enjoy talking shop and explaining the little details that go into playing and performing. They’ll often give you more gift ideas than you could possibly fufill for them.

That’s because there are a lot of things that guitarists always need, but rarely purchase, usually because they are obsessing over their next “big” buy (usually a guitar or amplifier). Guitar players go through stuff that needs to be replaced fairly often. And most guitarists have a wonderful sense of curiosity. So don’t worry about getting the “wrong” thing. There are no wrong things! But there are plenty of great little things you can surprise them with.

Gifts for Guitarists – around $10

Some guitar gifts make can’t-go-wrong stocking stuffers. For less than $10, you can buy something every guitarist always needs – strings! Almost any single set of strings costs less than $10. And you can usually get two full sets of just about any manufacturer’s strings for between $10 and $12. If you do a bit of shopping around, either at stores or online, you can even find deals on three sets for between $10 and $15, especially around the holidays. It’s a good idea to check beforehand if your guitarist has a favorite brand of string or a preferred thickness of pick, but most players appreciate having lots of spares of both.

Guitarists also always need guitar picks, which can cost anywhere from a quarter to a couple of dollars apiece depending on how exotic they might be.

And if you’re looking for something a little unusual, you can get a “gig drink holder,” which conveniently attaches to most microphone stands, allowing your performer to always have some water or other favorite beverage at hand when playing.

Of course, being in the digital / hi-tech age also has its advantages when it comes to gifts. If your guitar player owns a tablet and /or a fancy phone there are all sorts of apps you can him or her. Searching for “guitar” in Apple’s App Store turns up all sorts of free apps. Most of these free apps offer paid upgrades for less than $10. As an example, the Songsterr App, which shows tabs from their  extensive library, can be upgraded for $4.99. The upgraded version removes all ads, includes a playback feature and even lets you slow down the playback. Regular users of the free app might appreciate the upgrade.

Whether you’re purchasing something with your iOS device or in the iTunes Store, there is always an option to “Gift This App.” You just need the other person’s email address and name and you’ll get the bill. For users of Android devices there is no option to buy apps for someone else from the Market yet. But I’m sure there will be very soon! Maybe even in time for the holidays!

Gifts for Guitarists – under $30

A good guitar tuner will last a guitarist a lifetime, provided he doesn’t lose it! And you can get a tuner, plus a spare battery or two for less than $25.

If your guitarist uses a capo (a kind of clamp that goes on the neck of the guitar to raise the pitch of the strings), then think about getting him a spare. Capos do wear out and guitar players rarely even think about replacing them.

Most guitar straps and guitar stands range from $12 to $28, as do guitar cables that hook up a guitar to a PA or amplifier (and if your guitarist uses a lot of effects boxes, he can’t have enough cables!).

A music stand also makes a great gift.

A slide, whether of glass, metal, or other material, would be a great surprise for your guitarist, especially if he likes to experiment with playing in different styles.

And don’t forget you find get a lot of instructional book, CDs and DVDs, as well as sheet music and books of songs written out in guitar tablature. Your guitarist will have no excuse to not play your favorite song! By the way, you can find many places online where you can buy tablature for single individual songs. Depending on the song and the arrangement these are usually less than $6.

And if you do decide to buy sheet music or guitar tabs online, please remember that Guitar Noise has teamed up with Sheet Music Plus (link) and Amazon.com (link) to bring you the largest possible selection. Over the years we’ve sold thousands of books as an affiliate of these sites. Between the two, plus our new affiliation with Alfred music (link), you should be able to find authentic transcriptions for just about any song your guitarist wants to play. Buying through our affiliates does help us here at Guitar Noise so you’ll actually be giving two gifts at once. And if you take into account how many people learn guitar through Guitar Noise, you can think of yourself as helping thousands of people become musicians!

Regardless of what you may or may not buy the guitarist in your life, remember that above all most guitarists need an audience. And positive, encouraging (and honest) feedback. Best of all, it costs nothing to take part in the sharing of the music created by someone who means something to you. If you can do nothing else, find a chance to make time to put his or her music in your life. That will be a huge gift for the two of you that you can share forever.

Peace

A Practical Guide to Shopping for the Guitarists in Your Life – Gifts for Less than $30 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest edition of Guitar Noise’s ”Events Horizon.” Here we do our best to catch you up on upcoming shows featuring members and friends of the Guitar Noise community! As we have readers from all over the world, these shows take place all over the place!

As you know, we at Guitar Noise believe that the true power, wonder and beauty of music comes when it gets shared with the world. So whenever you’re out playing, we’d really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

Every Wednesday, we’ll post here about the gigs we know are coming up in the following ten days or so. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to attend a show should they happen to be in your corner of the world!

So, here are some upcoming shows we hope you’ll find of interest!

Tonight!!  Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Australian band The Wishing Well continues its American debut tour with a stop at Sue’s Coffee Roasting Company, at 7501 Monterey Street in Gilroy, California for a 4 PM evening gig.

Thursday, November 10, 2011:

Singer / songwriter, Marilyn Miller hosts a song circle-style open mic at The Parlor, located at 734 Warren Street in Hudson, New York from 7 until 9. It’s a very friendly atmosphere where people can play their own songs or play along with others. All ages welcome.

And on the West Coast, The Wishing Well  has a 6 PM evening show at Streetlight Records San Jose, located at 980 South Bascom Avenue in San Jose, California.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Life Is Drama, with Guitar Noise Community Member Tom McLaughlin on guitar, plays JW Holstein’s in Tinley Park, Illinois .Show goes from ? By the bye, you can also keep up with Life Is Drama on their Facebook page.

Australian band The Wishing Well has a gig at South First Billiards,  located at 420 South First Street in San Jose, California. It’s an 8 PM show.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Lee Hodge and Doesn’t Madder plays a return engagement at Horsefeathers Roadhouse, 3746 Mount Pleasant Road in Sherrills Ford, North Carolina. Show goes from 9:30PM until 12:30 Sunday morning.

Please feel free to email about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dates to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. As mentioned, we’ll be posting the latest schedule every Wednesday. We’d love to include you in our listing.

Also feel free to add upcoming dates in the “Comments” section of this thread. That way we’ll be able to add your next performance to our future updates.

We wish you the best with your shows as well as a great time at any show you can attend. Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends in person at long last!

Peace

Events Horizon – Wednesday, November 9, 2011 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Dealing With The Obvious Question

If you look up a tab or chord chart for Man on the Moon on the Internet, the first question that you usually ask comes very quickly. The second chord, depending on who wrote the tablature, is usually listed as “Dadd4add2.” Sometimes it’s listed as “Dsus2sus4.” Every once and awhile you may even see “D11 (no 7).” Any of these chords certainly deserves a cock of the eyebrow.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

The reality is that what we’re dealing with is what I consider a “guitar-centric” chord. Kind of like the second chord of Horse with no Name, the one that’s not Em. Basically, you’ve taken a familiar open chord guitar shape and simply shifted it someplace else on the neck of the guitar.

Do me a favor and participate in this demonstration: Play your standard open position C chord. Your ring finger is on the third fret of the A string, your middle finger sits on the second fret of the D and your index finger plays the first fret of the B. Are you with me so far? Good! Now slide each finger two frets up the neck. Should look like this:

Congratulations! You have just formed the “Dadd2add4″ chord. That’s all there is too it.

Well, there’s always more, if you want there to be! So let me add that some folks find this optional fingerings a bit more pleasant to their ears:

To get this voicing, start with your basic C chord, but use your pinky in place of the ring finger on the third fret of the A string. When you’ve done this, put your ring finger on the third fret of the low E (sixth) string. Technically, this is what most people would refer to as “C/G,” that is a C chord with the G note in the bass. Let’s not waste a lot, or any, time on this today, though, okay? To get the “bassier” Dadd2add4, slide all four fingers two frets higher.

For the sake of our lesson today, we’re going to call this pesky Dadd2add4 chord by the name of “D!” Is everyone okay with that? Good. Then here’s a cheat sheet for our song. I’ll meet up with you on the other side:

Strumming and Verses

You’ve probably already noticed that there’s nothing here you can’t handle, especially now that we’ve dealt with the whole “D!” chord thing. How about a nice strumming pattern and you can get going on things:

Of course, you’re probably already thinking that this hasn’t been all that much of a lesson. And you’re right. So let’s take a look at some of the things that we can do, incredibly simple, almost casual, touches that add magic to a song. Why not start with the verse strumming we just looked at?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This touch is so minor you may not have even seen it, but you can certainly hear it in the MP3 sound file. All we’re doing it lifted our middle finger off the D string for the fourth beat of the third measure. That’s the third “yeah” of the “yeah yeah yeah yeah” if you’re singing along. This creates a “Cadd9″ chord, which some folks will call “Cadd2″ or even “C2″ (for some reason, you see a lot of “C2″ and other “2″ chords in the sheet music of contemporary gospel music – not really sure why) and, while I’ve noted it as “Cadd9″ on the example, I’d like you to start getting in the habit of thinking of it as “keeping busy during a lengthy C chord.” Seriously. While it’s important to know music theory (and I hope to heaven that everyone who reads any lesson at Guitar Noise knows that this is a bit of an understatement, especially coming from me), it’s also important to start going beyond what you’re given in any chord sheet. Don’t always wait for direction when it comes to chords; don’t be afraid to try things. If you’ve not been listening to our Guitar Noise Podcasts, which deal a lot with this sort of thing, then you might want to give one a try.

Back to our Man on the Moon. The verses pretty much consist of this same chord change over and over again. And the first verse is six lines long, while the second and third are both four lines long. Michael Stipe, who sings lead for R.E.M. was smart and made small variations on the melody line in the verses, so why not take a cue from him:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here we’re playing a different voicing of our open C chord by adding our pinky to the third fret of the high E (first) string. That G note being prominent on the high string definitely gets a bit of notice. We follow that up with a regular open position D for the second measure. Because we’ve not used a regular D chord yet (they’ve all been “D!” chords up ‘til this point), it doesn’t sound the least bit mundane. If fact, it’s kind of downright refreshing!

We’re back to the regular C chord in the third measure, but we even change this by going with a “Cadd4″ during that last beat. Easiest way to finger this is to just add the pinky to the third fret of the D string. If you want to try something even wilder, might I suggest this:

In case you’re wondering why I didn’t just call this “Cadd4add6″ an Fmaj7, consider that I’m simply having a weird day.

Anticipation, Melody Lines and the Pre-Chorus

When we get to the gorgeous “pre-chorus” of our song, the part that starts, “…Andy did you hear about this one…” we get to do some fun, although slightly complicated things. First off, I should explain that I came up with this particular arrangement when I was performing this song solo. When I play it with other people, or when I hear it being played, my initial tendency is to sing (attempt to sing) a harmony part here. This section just demands harmony. But when you’re doing a solo act, there’s no harmony. Worse, if you start singing the harmony, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get back to where you want to be later.

So, rather than abandon the melody, why not reinforce it?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

There are a lot of things going on here, so let me try to tackle them one at a time. First and foremost, there’s the melody line. You’ll notice that even on the first chord of the pre-chorus, the Am, I only strum down to the B string, where my finger is sitting on the first fret. That C note is the melody note. I stop my strum there to emphasize the note and then also play the rest of the melody line on the B and G strings of the guitar.

This is certainly not something you have to do; you can just strum the whole song the way you’ve been doing during the verse. But it isn’t all that hard to do. It just requires taking a bit of care in your strumming. In fact, it’s very much like we did in our lesson on Silent Night. Take your time with it and remember two things: work within the chord shapes and take it as slowly as you need to start. Worry about speed once you’ve got the fingering and the notes down.

The thing that may truly take a little getting used to is the sense of timing. The first and third lines each hang on for a half-beat longer than you might think, while the second line ends a half-beat sooner. These are all forms of anticipation, a topic that we’ve covered in many a lesson here at Guitar Noise.

Also notice that in the second measure of the first and third lines we add a C note to the mix, in essence creating a “Gsus4″ chord. This is a tiny touch and (again) one you can certainly do without. But it does add more to the general strumming, as does the quick use of the G note (third fret, high E (first) string) on the D chord in the last measure. And yes, you can think of that as Dsus4 if you want to. As I mentioned earlier, these are little things that can help make normal strumming more interesting. It’s not so much a change of pattern as it is a subtle change of the chord itself. We’ll see more of this in the section ahead on the Interlude.

The “Quick Change” Chorus and The Interlude

The chorus provides us with the quickest chord changes of the song, coming at every two beats throughout most of this section. But it also provides with a “guitar-centric” way of dealing with them as well:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

This is a great example of how reading tablature can lure you into all sorts of traps. Could you tell, just with a glance at the first two measures, exactly what’s going on? It looks like a lot of movement. But look again after I tell you this: You’re going to play the chord twice. Downstroke on the first beat. Then downstroke on the second beat. When you come up on the second beat, just take your fingers off the strings and hit some of the open ones. Use that moment to change your chord for the next downstroke.

Okay, look at the tablature again. Can you see this? It certainly makes the quick changes a lot easier, especially for a beginner, doesn’t it? One of the reasons this works is because this song is in the key of G and if you hit the open B, G and D strings, well that’s a G chord. Those notes are also extensions of other chords in this particular progression.

But you’ll find this technique used by a lot of artists even in songs that aren’t in the key of G. Jack Johnson, just to name someone off the top of my head, does this sort of thing a lot in his music, even in keys that kind of sound weird when you rely on open strings to help you through a chord change.

In the second measure of the second line, you’ll find us using an “uncredited” Dsus4 right before the fourth beat. Then, in the second measure of the third line, we do a descending walking bass line from C to C/B to the Am which begins the fourth line. This might remind you of the same sort of short bass lines we worked on in the lesson on As Tears Go By.

That Am starting the fourth line, by the way, leads to another round of “follow the melody line.” When you start the Am chord at the third beat of that measure, leave your index finger off and then hammer it onto the first fret to go from the open B string to the C note. From that point, it’s just a matter of keeping the rest of the Am chord intact and opening up the G string at the right moment.

Finally, there are two “interludes,” if you will, in Man on the Moon, where there is an instrumental break. This is where the slide solo takes place between the second chorus and the third verse, as well as between the third chorus and a closing two repetitions of the chorus. The final chorus, by the bye, ends on a resounding Em chord. Make note of that.

For the solo guitarist, there’s not a lot of time to do very fancy playing, so going with some chordal variations seems to be a simple way of having something interesting to play during these sections:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Here we’re adding a D note to the Em chord, creating an Em7, and we’re also using the open high E (sixth) string in with the D chord to produce a Dadd9 or “Dsus2″ if you prefer. We’ve also done a slight variation on our strumming between these two chords so that the slight changes of the chords occur on different beats in their respective measures. Is that absolutely necessary? Of course not, but it does make things sound a little more interesting. And since we’ve an additional measure of D to deal with, it kind of made sense to use a totally different voicing than any of the others we’ve used up until this point. The easiest fingering for this is to use your index finger on the high E (sixth) string, your pinky on the B string and your ring finger on the G.

Another thing you can do to make this transition a little smoother, and this isn’t notated in the example, is to hit the open strings on the final beat of the D chord to give yourself the time to get further up the neck.

Okay, let’s hear all the different parts played together, shall we?

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

I hope you’ve had fun with this lesson. Some of it is going to require some work and patience, but I’m sure you can pull it off. We’ll be using this song in the future when we start looking at adding second (or third or fourth) guitar parts when playing in a group situation.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Man on the Moon – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Which is not to say that beginners won’t be able to play it. Au contraire! In many ways, this is a great song to further develop some of the arrangement ideas we continually touch upon many of our Guitar Noise song lessons. And I think you’ll find it’s been planned out in such a way to make things easy regardless of whether you consider yourself a beginner or an intermediate. The key is to go through it step by step, taking your time.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

When I listen to this song on the CD, I’m struck by a couple of things. First, the song is in A minor, a fact born out by (a) playing along with the recording with my guitar and (b) looking at a copy of the sheet music in a local store, not to mention all the TAB versions on the internet. Secondly, the guitar part (played by Peter Holsapple, one of the founders of the dBs, who played guitar and keyboards with R.E.M. on their Green Tour)  is fairly buried in the mix. The “highlighted” instrument is the mandolin, setting the tone of the introduction and also getting the focus of the short instrumental in the bridge (just before the last verse) and again at the very end of the song.

As a simple guitar song, you can probably already play it and it won’t sound all that bad. It’s just a simple here-are-the-chords-so-strum-along song in the key of A minor and the chords are Am, F, G, Em and Dm. But, truth be told, I find I’m not happy playing it as a “strum along.” It sounds way too bottom heavy and (again) truth be told, it’s because I’m still hearing mandolins in my head. After telling you time and again that I don’t think it’s important to sound like the recording, I definitely want this song to sound a little more like the recording than it does as a strum along number. I guess there is no pleasing some people!

So I look again at the chords I have and do some quick thinking: will it benefit me to transpose this song so I can move it up the neck? Playing higher up the fretboard will certainly give me more of a mandolin sound to start with. The fact that Losing My Religion is in A minor is a bit of a help, as there are not many minor keys in which I feel comfortable. I decide to take a stab at E minor, which means that I’ll need to put my capo on the fifth fret. Here are our transposed chords:

E minor turns out to have some unexpected plusses. Not only can I imitate the mandolin riff in the introduction with ease, I also discover that I can fashion the short instrumental sections (again, that also feature the mandolin on the original recording) in such a way that I can use my whole guitar instead of going with single notes. That pretty much clinches it for me. E minor it is!

One last thing before we get going: ideally, this would be a great song for two guitars, one with the capo and one without. Playing together, they will definitely cover much more of the nuances of the whole song. My decision to arrange it this way comes, in part, from knowing that this lesson is meant to be a single guitar arrangement. Therfore, I want to incorporate as many of the mandolin parts of Losing My Religion that I can into this arrangement. And, being a twelve string guitar player from day one, helps. There’s a lot of similarity between the two instruments and using a twelve-string to mimic the mandolin parts, especialy with the capo on the fifth fret, really makes a cool sounding arrangement. As always, you should feel free to play it in any manner you choose.

The Intro and Verses

As the song goes, “Let’s start at the very beginning…”

Losing My Religion kicks of on the third beat of the pick-up measure with a short riff from the mandolin. After listening to it, I’ve determined that these are the notes in the riff:

You’ll note (no pun intended) that I’ve mapped the TAB of this riff both in open position and also with the capo on the fifth fret. This is where I get my first “bonus” for playing this song with the capo. When I am playing an arrangement for one guitar, simplicity is vitally important, especially so if I am singing as well as strumming and playing a riff or two. Looking at the notes of the intro, I realize that I can finger this as an Asus2 chord (002200) and let the notes ring until I am ready to switch to the C that starts the first full measure. Let’s try the whole intro:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Can you see how easy this is going to be? Fret the Asus2 and let the first four notes ring out. Then switch to the C chord. You then go back to Asus2 to repeat the riff and follow that with Em. I find that anchoring my middle finger on the second fret of the D string (the E note) allows me to switch between these three chords. You’ll hear on the sound file that sometimes I’ll hit the bass note and then the chord instead simply playing the full chord. That’s just me.

Add a little flourish on the D chord that finished the intro and you’re on your way!

The verses are simply strumming the chords. You can hear my basic strumming pattern for the verses at the end of the introduction sound file, which is a lot like the strumming in the introduction. Essentially I’ve chose to play the verse strumming like this:

The only thing to note here is the Bm chord. Depending on your taste (and finger ability), there are numerous ways of playing this:

In the sample, I’m using the first voicing. To my ears, this gives me the mandolin feel I’ve been using as a guide to this arrangement. Sometimes though, I will switch to the Bm7 (the fourth voicing) in order to throw in a bass note or simply to give my fingers (and listeners) a change.

The Chorus

The chorus is the part of the song signaled by the line “I thought that I heard you laughing…”

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

As I get into the chorus, I bring back the mandolin riff from the intro. Essentially, it is the same as the intro – until we reach the Em chord. Here I decide that I’ve had enough of being the mandolin for a while. Now I want to be the bass. And the mandolin. I can be such a pain sometimes…

And, not to beat a dead horse or anything, once again my capo placement allows me to do this with ease. You can see that even though we are going to play an Em in the fourth measure, we don’t have to fret a single string! I hit the open sixth string hard on the downstroke and then pick the first three strings (all open!) on the upstroke. Then I walk the bass note up the scale – sixth string, second fret; sixth string third fret – alternating with my upstroke arpeggio on the open three strings.

In the last half of measure five, I have to quicken the pace of my walk. While the first three steps took two beats (four eighth notes) each, here they have to be one beat. That means throwing the arpeggio out the window and simply hitting a group of strings on the upstroke. As they say, “crude but effective.”

The Bridge and The Outro

It’s during the bridge section and again at the very end of the song that our choice of capo positioning will truly shine through. Here the mandolin takes center stage with a single note solo. But guess what? With our capo, we can play full and partial chords to totally flesh out our parts and not suddenly lose our “band” because we’re only playing one string. This is pretty important for the single-guitar performer.

We do this by use of creative chord voicing and strumming. Since the mandolin riff (on the recording) pretty much plays out over an Am chord (Em with our capo, remember), we can use the guitar’s tuning to play the melody of the riff and the rest of an Em or Em7 chord at the same time. Check it out:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Covering the first and fifth strings at the seventh fret, we make the first two eighth notes downstroke and upstroke. We hit the middle open strings on a down once again and slide our fingers from the seventh to the fifth fret for another full downstroke. The remaining strokes in the measure are short downs. Another added bonus, we find, is that the “seventh” fret (with the capo on) turns out to be the twelfth, so we don’t have to hunt around for it!

Using the same rhythm pattern, we then switch to a regular Em chord, adding the G note (first string, third fret) for the melody and then the open E (first) string. Play this twice through for the solo and then jump in with the lyrics. I like to jump on the final Em and D, making the chords sharp and staccato, before going back to the final verse.

The outro, or coda, if you will, is almost a combination of all the other parts we’ve learned. Take a look:

Coming out of the final chorus, we continue with the chorus progression, complete with the intro mandolin riff. Even though I didn’t do so, you can feel free to use the bass part of the chorus as well. Trust me, it will fit.

When you get done with the vocals, the first notes of the mandolin solo from the bridge reappear. We play this pattern seven times (a total of twenty-eight beats if you’re keeping count). Then we once again do the slide from the seventh fret to the fifth fret on the first and fifth strings and then, releasing the fifth string, slide on the first string from the fifth fret to the third fret and then release the first string. I do these four chords as a downstroke followed by three upstrokes.

Then, forming a D chord and using my pinky to fret the fifth fret of the first string, I again repeat the down, up, up, up pattern. With each stroke, I move my pinky – first from the fifth fret to the third, then removing it altogether and then fingering the third fret yet again.

All the while, I am gradually slowing down the tempo, making a grand finale out of the whole series of cascading, descending chords. I end with a long sweeping downstroke on an Emadd9 chord (024000), which, in case you’re interested, you won’t hear on the record. I just think it’s cool.

Okay, let’s do it. As always, remember that I am old and senile and probably don’t have all the words right! I’m sure you’re all capable of dealing with that:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

A few quick notes: this is the first time we’ve tried a “live” sound file on our lessons. Yes, that’s me playing. No, it’s NOT always precisely what I’ve written out. But it will (hopefully) give you a very good idea of what you should sound like. And if there’s too much derision, we can always go back to MIDI files. Not that I get hurt feelings or anything!

I hope you enjoyed this lesson and that you have fun with this song. Those of you who play twelve string guitars should find it a lot of fun as well. And, as I mentioned earlier, Losing My Religion sounds great with multiple guitars. Teach it to one (or more!) of your friends and have a great time working out your own arrangement.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next lesson…

Peace

Losing My Religion – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But even the simplest of songs can be made more interesting by spending a little thought and effort in arranging it. Conversely, a song that seems too hard to play can be made to sound perfectly suited for the single guitar. It doesn’t always work out that way, but more often than not it will. Also, even if you ultimately decide that you don’t like the arrangement you’ve come up with, you can learn a lot just by trying.

Liner Notes: R.E.M.

R.E.M. formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980. Following years of underground success, they entered the mainstream with the top ten hit “The One I Love” in 1987. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In September 2011, they announced they were breaking up after 31 years together. Their last album Collapse Into Now was released in 2011.

Beginners will enjoy learning the following songs by R.E.M. from our Easy Songs for Beginners lessons:

• Man on the Moon
• Losing My Religion
• Driver Eight

Complete artist information for R.E.M.

Today we’re going to look at an old REM song, Driver Eight, and come up with an arrangement that you’ll (hopefully) find both fun and easy to play. Oh yes, I suppose we’ll also have to learn a few things… How about incorporating a riff into the strumming and just generally switching our strumming around with different patterns for different parts of a song? Are you okay with that?

In terms of structure, Driver Eight is very formulaic. There’s an intro, then a verse, a chorus, a second verse and chorus, a bridge, a short instrumental break (which is a repeat of the intro) and then a final verse and chorus. The last chorus is slightly different than the others in that its length is expanded a bit. Let’s set to breaking it down, shall we?

The Verses

The intro and the verses use the same chord progression and the short instrumental, as mentioned earlier, is actually a replay of the intro, so you can get most of the song into your head very quickly. Here are the chords to these sections, as well as a basic strumming pattern to use as a template:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Let’s take a quick moment and note the third and fourth chords. When I first tried figuring this out (many years ago), I thought that the progression was Em, Am, G and Dsus4. I came to this conclusion by listening to the bass line which at that point was descending from G to F# to E for the Em at the start of the next phrase. Since I could also hear the G on the high E (first) string, I thought this was a reasonable guess.

Subsequent listenings led me to change my thinking to the chords I have here. The difference between the G/F# and the Dsus4/F$ is subtle, but I think it helps make the progression more interesting to listen to than the one I initially had.

For this strumming pattern, no matter which chord we’re playing, you hit bass note, which will be either on the low E (sixth) string or the A string and follow that with a stroke of the G string and then the D. We then finish up the measure with three upstrokes of the chord.

By now, it should go without saying that these strumming “patterns” (or any strumming patterns, for that matter) are merely suggestions. You can decide to strum straight chords throughout or do arpeggios or whatever. But whatever pattern you choose to use, it’s going to be vitally important to have the feel for the rhythm of this portion of the song down pat. So take however much time you need to do that before moving on. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll move on and tackle the intro.

The Introduction / Instrumental Break

While the chord progression for these parts of Driver Eight is the same as those in the verses, there’s something totally different going on. On the recording, you can hear the electric guitar come through with what we’ll call the “signature riff.” It looks and sounds like this:

Our problem with this riff is not in playing it – I’m sure you all can do that very well with a minimum of practice. We start out with a simple run of notes in the G major scale – beginning with the open E on the sixth string and ending with the C on the third fret of the A string. This takes up the first two measures, which are when we’d be strumming the Em and Am chords. The last two measures consist of a descending series of notes in the G major scale, alternating with the open G string (that old pedal point thing yet again!). Big bonus points if you recognize this as example #3A from the America lesson. You’ll find this technique used in a lot of songs. If you used an F (third fret of the D string) instead of the F#, you’d think you were playing Last Train to Clarksville.

Anyway, as I mentioned, playing the riff itself shouldn’t present much of a problem. But going from strumming into a string of single notes is going to sound pretty thin. We came across something like this in our lesson on Like a Hurricane. What we want to do is to add some depth to our riff, and we have to do it ourselves, since there’s no one else in the band!

Because this riff is a lot busier than the melody of Hurricane, we have to think a minute. Obviously, what we did with the Neil Young song won’t work as well here. For starters, this riff takes place in the bass and mid-range of our guitar, so it might get lost in the background if we tried a straight-chord approach.

The thing to do is to look again at the riff and fill in the space as it allows us to. What do I mean by that? Well, logic dictates that the fourth measure, as well as the last half of the first measure, will be hard to add to since they are already filled up with eighth notes. But the first half of the first measure is a single half note. That’s two beats of space. Likewise, the second and third measures have a lot of breathing room. This is where we’ll flesh things out:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Do I have to tell you to start slowly with this? I hope not! In the first measure, we’re simply going to add two eighth notes (down and then upstroke) of the Em chord. Then we continue with the rest of the riff until we reach the second measure. Here, we’ll switch to arpeggio strumming. The first set of three eighth notes is from your Am chord. The second set of three, as well as the final set of two, are the notes of the riff accompanied by some open string playing. Using the full Em chord and the open strings in measure two give us some ringing, resonating notes which will fill out the sound. We still will hear the riff very clearly, particularly since, for the most part, we’re accenting it with downstrokes.

I’m not even bothering to fret a chord in the last two measures. Our open G and B strings pretty much shout out “Hey! G major chord here!” without our help. For good measure, I add the open B string to the pedal point in the final bar of the intro.

Once you feel you have the intro under control, practice going from the intro to the strumming pattern of the verses. This will happen twice in the song: at the beginning (obviously!) and again between the bridge and the final verse. Sometimes when I play this I will start with the strumming the chords of the verse, maybe two lines, as the intro and then go into the riff before coming back to the verse with the singing.

Chorus

Driver Eight’s chorus gives us a chance to play around with the rhythm pattern even more. The majority of the chorus is a measure of D alternating with a measure of C. I tend to play it like this:

In the first measure, let’s use a very simple technique that carries a surprising amount of punch. We’re going to put our emphasis on the second beat! Play the open D string and then cut it short (you’re creating a rest of about an eighth note in duration) and then come crashing down with a full chord (downstroke) on the second beat. We’ll follow this up with three eighth notes (up, down, up) to complete the measure. This will work very well with the lyrics of the chorus and create some dynamic tension in your arrangement.

We’ll then switch to arpeggio and broken chord strumming for the measure of C. To make it even more interesting, I’m using the Cadd9 chord instead of our regular C. This voicing adds some dissonance (but of the pleasant kind!) to the proceedings.

For the end of the chorus, I’m going to reintroduce to a chord I’ve only used in one other song, Horse With No Name. It’s one of those “guitar-centric” chords that are easy to finger on the guitar and sound perfectly fine but are simply just a means of “passing” from one chord to another. Most other musicians would think of it as a passing tone. Technically, you could call it E7sus4/F#, or D11/F# or even D6 9 /F# or something equally outrageous (which is why we just called it “F#m” in our first beginner’s lesson). But for the sake of this song we’re going with just D11/F# for the sake of simplicity. I should go back and just call it the “horse chord” but this software won’t let me do that!

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Anyway, this is probably the trickiest part of the song. What we want to do is to recreate the guitar riff on the recording without sacrificing any of the momentum of our strumming. I’ve seen a lot of different TABs for this particular part of Driver Eight and, as always, please feel free to go with whatever one pleases your ears most.

This particular strumming works for me. By using chord shapes as the basis for this riff (instead of arpeggios, as most TABs use), I can have a pulsing, driving riff on my single acoustic guitar without losing any steam. Yes, I know… “no pun intended!”

I find that a strict alternating picking pattern works well here. Another thing that plays well, for me anyway, is not hitting the high E (first string) in this sequence. Keeping things low and rumble-y adds to our whole “train” atmosphere.

It’s important to note here that the last chorus of this song differs from the first two in that there are more alternating measures of D and C. This section is twice as long in the third chorus, so please do remember that when you get there!

Bridge

In the bridge, I have thrown together almost all the strumming techniques we’ve used in our arrangement so far. Since each chord (Am, C, G and D) is played for two measures, I’ve created a kind of rhythmic “call and response” sort of thing:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Our “call” (the first measure of each chord change) is identical, rhythmically, to the D measures of the chorus. What can I say? I liked it so much that I had to use it again! And again and again and again!

The “responses” change with each chord. In the second measure of Am, we bring back an echo of the introduction with the walking bass line from the open A string leading to the C that starts measure three. This is strict arpeggio picking and, again, I find that straight alternating picking works very efficiently.

Our second response, in the second measure of C, probably requires the most attention. What I have here is a fairly standard fill, but you’re going to want to pay attention to the hammer-ons that act as grace notes before the second, third and fourth beats of the measure. I play these all with the middle finger of my fretting hand, moving it from the D string to the G string and then back again. If you keep the rest of your hand in the C chord shape (index finger on the first fret of the B string and ring finger on the third fret of the A), you’ll find that even if you mess up, you’ll only hit another note of the C chord. So it’s highly unlikely that anyone besides you will even notice that you’ve goofed!

For the G chord, I choose to slightly change the rhythm from the straight eighth notes we’ve been playing. But not all that much! We start with an arpeggio of three eighth notes, and then play a quarter note on the open B string and then three more eighth notes to round out the measure. It’s a subtle difference, to be sure, but your ears will definitely catch it. Picking, I use down, up, down for the first set of eighth notes, up on the quarter note and then up, down and up on the last set.

In the final measure, I use the time honored tradition of embellishing my D chord with the suspended fourth and suspended second. In other words, I play a regular D chord, then add my pinky to the third fret of the high E string (Dsus4), remove it (regular D again), play the D chord with an open high E (Dsus2) and then finish with a regular D again. I like to really play with the timing here as it creates a nice little “stagger” before barreling onward again. As far as the strokes, it’s down, up, up, up and down. You’ll see that I’ve included a D note (open D string) in parenthesis. I hit that sometimes in my haste to get my hand back in position for the upstroke on the Dsus2. Since it is part of the chord, it won’t stand out as a mistake.

And to prove that you don’t have to play everything letter perfect, let me give you this final MP3, which starts with the bridge and then goes into the intro (it would be the “instrumental break” at this point) and then into the verse and chorus:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you listen carefully, you’ll find quite a few mistakes here. I don’t catch the verse strumming immediately after the instrumental break and I practically drop it outright on the end of the second time through! I miss a couple of notes here and there. The point is that when you’re playing and you’re moving along, most people aren’t going to start pointing each time you make a mistake. It happens in the blink of an eye. As far as I know, there’s only one sure way to play a song totally free of mistakes – don’t play it. And I don’t know about you, but that’s not an option open to me.

Alright, then, let me give you the chart for the complete song. It goes without saying that since this is an early REM opus I am not going to vouch for the validity of any of the lyrics! If you like yours better, by all means use them and with my blessing! By the bye, I’ve also taken the liberty of calling our Dadd6add9 by the label “F#m” simply to save space on this chart.

I hope you had fun with this lesson and have fun with this song. Being able to switch from one rhythm pattern to another, even from one measure to the next, is, like everything we do, a matter of our “three P’s.” You may not think so, but with practice and patience and perseverance, you will start to incorporate this sort of playing (and thinking!) in all the music you do. Often without being conscious of the fact that you’re doing it! One day you’ll just take it for granted that this is how you’ve always played. Write me if this doesn’t happen!

Speaking of which, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or songs (and/or riffs and solos) you’d like to see discussed in future pieces. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Until our next lesson…

Peace

Driver Eight – R.E.M. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

But one major thing that you lack when teaching yourself is the feedback from either a teacher or your peers. You often have to rely on trial and error when it comes to basic things such as strumming or even holding a guitar. Truth be told, teaching yourself guitar runs the risk of developing some playing habits that can actually hinder your basic playing and make improving as a guitarist very difficult.

In order to help out those of you who are “going it alone,” I’ve listed ten common traps that newbie players fall into, plus some helpful tips (and links to articles here at Guitar Noise) to enable you to either avoid or get past them. And those of you who do have teachers, whether the lessons are in person or online, should feel free to make use of these tips as well!

Worry more about posture than looking cool

Playing well starts with paying attention to the basics. And nothing is more basic than how you hold the guitar, whether you’re sitting or standing while playing. Whenever you’re having trouble playing a chord cleanly or making a switch from one chord to another, you can often correct this by simply correcting your posture or position while holding your guitar.

Probably no on in the universe is more in tune with correct posture and position than Jamie Andreas. You should definitely check out any of her articles here at Guitar Noise, such as this one on correcting bad practice habits.

Don’t let your thumb boss your fingers around

The key to fretting notes quickly and cleanly is to keep your fingertips on the strings. Good posture and position will help you immensely when it comes to placing your fingers in an optimal playing position.

But you have to make sure that your thumb isn’t making your fingers’ job harder! Wrapping your thumb around the neck of the guitar, as you would a bat or a raquet, pulls the fingertips down and keeps them from making solid, clean-sounding notes. Let the pad of the thumb simply rest on the back of the neck and have your fingertips dictate where the thumb is positioned, not the other way around.

You’ll get a lot of helpful tips on both holding the guitar and placing your fingertips on the frets in our article called Holding Your Own (which will be out the first week of October).

Strum with the wrist, not the whole arm

Keeping the beat and playing steady, confident rhythms is essential for any guitarist, even those who only want to play leads and solos. But most beginners, especially those who’ve only seen guitarists on videos, think that strumming involves an incredible amount of energy and a wild flailing of the arms. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Strumming comes from the wrist and forearm and requires surprisingly little arm movement. Use the same wrist/forearm action you’d use to unscrew a light bulb to strum your guitar. We also call this the “sock puppet” approach, as you’ll read in many of our Strumming for Beginners articles, which you can find in our “Hot Lessons” section.

Learn to count out rhythms and stop worrying about “strumming patterns”

Many beginners use the idea of strumming patterns as a way to work on rhythm. But a strumming pattern is simply one of many ways of strumming any song, yet many newbies get to the point where they’ll obsess about the “down and up” strumming and, ironically, not learn how to play in a steady rhythm.  You’ll be amazed at how upstrokes and downstrokes simply fall into place once you’ve learned how to count out the rhythm of a song. For a basic eighth note strum, the downstrokes occur right on the beat. If you’re strumming sixteenth notes, then the  downstrokes happen on each half beat.

If you can get yourself to count to four (and occasionally three), there will be no strumming pattern that you can’t figure out. If you don’t believe me, check out this article on converting any rhythm into the “down and up” that beginners seem to favor.

And for help in strumming in general, you might find our Guitar Noise Podcasts to be incredibly useful. Not to brag, but they are one of the best rhythm aids you might find on the Internet. Why? Because they get you to:

Use your ears instead of your eyes

Music is aural, not visual. Professional musicians will invariably tell you that listening is the most important talent for any player to develop. Rhythm is something you feel and hear. Relying on your eyes to tell you when a chord change occurs will almost always put you behind and off the beat. Work on first using, and then trusting and developing your ears and leaving your eyes behind for a while. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you start to make more progress.

Get rid of your chord charts as soon as you can

The sooner you memorize your basic major and minor chords, the sooner you can dispense with chord charts and as soon as you do that you’ll find that you have more time to enjoy playing! There will always be new chords to learn, but do your best to memorize all the chords you’ve played as soon as possible. And the best way to do that is to practice making chord changes.

Use the correct finger (or fingers) to start off a chord change

Most beginners tend to go at chord changes one finger at a time. Take playing a C chord, for instance. Usually, many beginners will switch to C by first placing the index finger on the first fret of the B string, then the middle finger on the second fret of the D and then finally the ring finger on the third fret of the A. And only then, once all their fingers are in place, are they ready to strum the C chord.

This means that you won’t even begin your strum until after all your fingers are in place and you’ll be behind on the beat.

Try to build your chords from the “bottom up,” meaning that you want to get your fingers on the low strings first. In the case of the C, you want to lead with your ring finger and get your index finger down last. Connecting the Dots (Part 2)

Keep your fingers close to the strings

Often, a new player’s first reaction to an upcoming chord change is to move all his fingers as far from the fretboard as possible! That definitely makes it hard to get to the following chord in any appreciable amount of time. You want to try to keep your fingers close to the frets and you also want to learn to minimize the movement needed when changing chords.  Sometimes one or two fingers don’t need to move all that far (if at all) from their initial position.

Work on moving your fingers as a unit

Ultimately, you want your fingers to move from one chord to another as a unit, and two simple exercises can help you get started in that direction. First, form a chord you’re working on – say, E. When you have your fingers in place, relax them but don’t lose contact with the strings. Now press your fingers hard onto the strings simultaneously, harder than you normally would to play the chord.
You’re likely to hear the notes of the E chord as you press the strings onto the neck of the guitar. After you press hard, relax again but still keep in contact with the strings. Don’t lose the chord! Repeat this ten to twelve times.

The companion exercise is pretty much the same, but you want to start by having your fingers on the strings as if you were playing the chord. Then relax and raise your fingers, as a unit, just off the strings. Keep them close enough that you can put them back on the strings at the same time.

The object of these exercises is to get your fingers acclimated to working together on the chord. Eventually, they will learn to leave one chord and arrive at another as a team. That doesn’t necessarily mean all at the same time, but certainly very close to it.

Learn whole songs

What would you say about a cover band that only played the first few bars of every tune they started? Would you pay to see Neil Young play just the start of “Cinnamon Girl?” Or imagine going to see Metallica and having them play only the introduction of “Enter Sandman.”

People listen to musicians to hear songs, whole songs. So while it can certainly be satisfying to learn a particularly difficult introduction or guitar fill or solo, don’t settle for learning just one part of any song. The art of making music comes from playing the whole piece! And, in the long run, you’re going to learn a lot more – the importance of the timing of the guitar parts (not to mention keeping time in general!), the structure of the song as well as its harmonies and chord progressions (which you’ll be able to use in many other songs), and the skill of shaping both your sound and your guitar parts to fit the dynamics of the song. And what you learn is going to help you become a much better musician as you continue to grow and evolve.

I hope that these tips have been, or will be, of use to you. Please feel free to drop a comment or email with more! After all, we’re all here to learn and to grow.

Peace

Ten Ways for Beginner Guitar Players to Improve in a Hurry was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

From teaching hundreds of guitar players over the last twenty-five years, I have found that most musicians do not have a shortage of “things to practice” on guitar.  The problem that I see many guitar players run into is not knowing how to organize all of their guitar exercises into an effective guitar practice schedule that moves them towards becoming better musicians.  If this sounds like you, then I want to show you how to determine what you need to practice on guitar to improve your musical skills in the fastest way possible.

The first significant mistake that guitar players make with regards to guitar exercises is practicing “too many” of them.  As a result, too much energy is spent trying to decide (at random) what exercise to play next, instead of concentrating on getting the most benefit out of each exercise being practiced.  In reality, you can very often achieve a lot more by intelligently focusing on a smaller, targeted list of guitar practice materials than you can from a longer list of guitar exercises that are put together at random (more on this in a moment).

Another reason why guitar players struggle to make progress with all of their guitar practice materials is because they make the mistake of starting to look for “things to practice” before becoming clear on why they need to practice guitar exercises in the first place.  Keep in mind that guitar practice materials can only make your guitar playing better when they are practiced with a specific objective in mind.  Mindlessly playing through guitar finger exercises will not make your guitar playing any better until your mind is clear on several things:

1. The “precise” guitar playing skill (or problem) that you are attempting to improve by practicing a given guitar exercise.
2. Your long term guitar playing goals and how the exercise you are working on will help you to get closer to becoming the musician you want to be.

It is critical to keep in mind that guitar exercises are only important for you to practice if they help you to develop a specific guitar playing skill or to solve a specific problem. The more specific you can become about what you are trying to achieve, the easier it will be to determine the most effective guitar practice materials for reaching that goal.  For example, instead of saying: “I want to fix my sloppy guitar playing”, you need to pinpoint a problem precisely such as: “I need to learn how to mute unwanted string noise that comes from the strings I’m not playing when I play three-string arpeggios”.  Most guitar players never develop the level of clarity needed to benefit from their guitar practice materials and instead assume that the solution to their problem is to find “new and better” guitar exercises to practice.  This leads to a never ending cycle of frustration and slow progress.

If you are feeling frustrated from not knowing which guitar exercises to focus your practice time on, ask yourself the following question: “what skill is this exercise helping me develop or what specific guitar playing problem am I trying to solve by practicing this exercise?”  If you can’t answer this question, then here are five critical things you must do to get more from your guitar practicing:

1. Clearly define your long term guitar playing goals.
2. Find out what musical skills you must develop in order to achieve the long term result that you want.  To help you do this critically important step, study this free resource about how to learn to play guitar.
3. With the clarity you have achieved from doing Steps 1 and 2 above, it will now be much easier to narrow
   down your guitar practice exercises to those that are very specific to your guitar playing challenges.  Do this to prepare yourself for Step 4.
4. Design a highly effective guitar practice schedule containing the guitar exercises you have selected in the previous step.  Organizing your guitar practice time in the most efficient way possible will require some experience to be done correctly. If you need help with doing this, read this page on how to build a guitar practice schedule.
5. Keep your mind actively engaged the entire time you are practicing.  You must always stay focused on the specific objective you are trying to achieve and never let your fingers go on autopilot while practicing.  As your guitar playing improves and you get more experience, you will find that very often you can use a single guitar exercise to develop multiple guitar playing skills at the same time (check out this video on how to practice guitar for an explanation of this concept).

When you begin to implement the above steps into your guitar practicing, you will find that the process of reaching your musical goals will become a much easier and more enjoyable experience.

If you take guitar lessons with an experienced guitar teacher, you should already be familiar with how to structure your guitar practice sessions with these ideas in mind.

However, if you are struggling with knowing what to practice on guitar, implement the ideas from this article into your guitar playing and you will begin to see your guitar playing improve faster than you ever thought possible!

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a touring musician, composer and the guitar player for the metal band Rhapsody Of Fire.
He teaches electric guitar online lessons to guitarists around the world.  On his website tomhess.net,
you can find guitar playing tips, free guitar resources and more guitar articles.

How To Discover The Best Guitar Learning Materials was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The first two levels are where we use specific procedures for teaching the fingers how to make the movements required to produce the notes we need. All technical problems are worked out in these two levels, and the music is “input” into the mind and body, at least as far as the mechanical process of playing the music goes.

However, the goal of all our practice is to go beyond the mechanical aspect of playing, and to put our mastery of the physical aspect of playing our music at the service of the ultimate goal: making music, real music. That is the purpose of the third level of practice, Shaping.

Imagine you are in a play, and they hand you your lines. You have to read them, and memorize them, and practice saying them. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with some of the words, you would have to learn the pronunciation, and practice saying the word correctly (Microscopic Practice). Perhaps you had a problem remembering all the lines, and saying them at the right time. You would have to work that out as well (Assimilating). Finally, it would be rehearsal time. You would be expected to have your lines down, and as the opening night came nearer, the director would expect you to be pumping blood into that part, and delivering a real flesh and blood character to the audience. He or she would be trying to help you and guide you to an ultimate vision of that character’s essence. The greater the actor and director, the more powerful that final vision and product will be. That final process is Shaping.

This is what we need to do with our music, to the best of our artistic skills, at any point in our development. Interestingly enough, many guitar students avoid this aspect of practice. They actually avoid putting everything together, and doing what guitar players are meant to do: “play” the guitar. This avoidance also prevents them from developing themselves into something that every guitar player should be, something that is actually more important than becoming a guitarist – becoming a musician.

Why do guitar students avoid this?

Many guitar students are afraid of putting everything together! They are always “trying” to learn a song, solo, or piece of music.  They do not know how to do the first  two levels of practice, and because of this they make many mistakes during
playing, and breakdown all over the place. If they were to try to put all the music together and play it from beginning to end, they would get so frustrated and depressed at their inability to get through the music that they would feel like they might as well stop fooling themselves, do the world a favor, and give up the guitar!

Every guitar student must learn the first two levels of practice before they are even capable of the third level. We must be able to actually teach our fingers to do what they have to do to make each note we need, and we need to be able to string all those movements together into one continuous flow, so that our music can be given birth.

But like everything other living entity, after being born, our music must be developed. It must “grow,” it must “mature,” and ultimately have a life of its own that nonetheless reflects where it came from. All those who are already musicians know this, and do this. And so must every guitar student  if they wish to become guitar players and musicians.

How do we develop the music we play after we have given it birth, or the possibility of existing? How do we turn the results of the mechanical process of learning new finger movements into the wonderful emotional phenomenon we call “music?”

Like so many other things in life, there is only one way to do it, and that is to do it!

We must sit down, or stand up with our guitar, and play the music as if we were on stage performing it, or as if we were recording it. We must play the whole thing through, and on top of that, enjoy the music we are making as we do it. We must develop a relationship to the music itself, as if it were a living being we are getting to know. We must let it soak into us and speak to us. We must discover its meaning, for us, and we must let the music tell us how it wishes to be played. I call this process “going for the music.”

You may be thinking, “Well, isn’t that obvious? Do you really have to tell guitar players that they need to play the guitar? You don’t have to tell tennis players they need to play tennis do you?” If you are thinking that, and you are a guitar teacher, I guarantee you have many students who are not doing this. To them, it is not obvious, they need to be told to do it, in fact, they often need to be forced to do it.

I require all may students to do this, perhaps not with everything we work on, but I want to see a “body of work” developing over time, a group of pieces that they can play well, from beginning to end, in other words, a repertoire. To help them do this, to learn the hard work of “refining” a piece to performance level, I have made the “Guitar Principles Guitar Improvement Workshop” open to everyone, my personal students as well as all interested parties.

Getting Started

It can be overwhelming to begin this new, improved relationship to music and the guitar if you are one of the many guitar players who has never really taken command of a group of songs, solos, or pieces, and put them together, refined
them, and brought them to “performance level.” Here is how to get started:

1) Pick 3 songs or pieces that you love, and feel are reasonable for you to expect to handle in a technical way.

2) Start with the first one, and begin to practice it with the intention of playing the whole thing from beginning to end.

3) Divide your song or piece into sections. Learn the first section. For a song, you might learn just the intro first, then add
the first verse, then the pre-chorus, then chorus. Divide it into sections that make sense to you.

4) Focus on that first section. Do the necessary technical work at the Level 1 & 2 practice. If you use “The
Principles,” you will know exactly how to do this. Use “The Basic Practice Approach” to bring the music to a slow but steady tempo.  Usually, half of the performance speed is a good first goal.

5) Video yourself playing it. It will probably have various problems and breakdowns. Do not get upset! Instead, make the
decision to find out what is wrong, by educating yourself about how to practice.

Go to my “Guitar Improvement Workshop”. Post the link to your video. You will then be told the nature of your problems and also exactly what you need to do to solve those problems and improve your playing.

You can be a good guitar player, and reach your guitar playing goals. But you have to do what all the rest of us who have become guitar players had to do. You have to “make it real” by going for the music, and when you find that you can’t quite get what you are going for, you have to learn how to remove whatever obstacle stands between you and your vision of the music.

For the ever-evolving guitarist/musician, technical understanding, technical work, and the achievement of greater musical intensity in our playing go hand in hand in each day’s practice.

Copyright 2011 Jamie Andreas. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.

Jamie Andreas is a world renown, highly respected guitar teacher and author. Visit her website, guitarprinciples.com, for a free copy of “The Power of 10,” a PDF download of ten essays that are essential reading for every student of the guitar as well as all guitarists.

Going for the Music: From Guitar Student to Guitar Player was written by Jamie Andreas for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Deciding to play guitar is as big a step as learning to play it. There’s a lot to consider and worry about, from getting a guitar to play to figuring out how you intend to learn to make music with it.  Then what happens if you buy a guitar and spend a lot of money on lessons only to find that guitar is not the instrument for you?

Well, despite all the Internet’s and digital game world’s best efforts to the contrary, there is fortunately no option out of needing a real, physical guitar in order to learn to play. That doesn’t always mean that you have to buy one, though. You probably have a friend or family member who can loan you an instrument for a little while, at least long enough for you to decide if you’re interested in pursuing your goal of playing.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that all guitars are not created equal. They come in different sizes and shapes and some of the initial difficulties you may face in your early stages of learning may possibly be easily fixed by having a guitar that is more suited to you, physically, as a person. You can find out more about that in our Guitar Noise article on different shapes of acoustic guitars.

Having a teacher or some experienced player help you out at the start may help you avoid or at least not get frustrated with problems that every beginning guitarist goes through. But, for whatever reasons, you may be hesitant to take on a teacher right off the bat. And if you’re being honest with yourself, the usual reason is either that you’re worried about the cost or you’re worried about making a fool of yourself. Or it may be that you just don’t feel comfortable dealing with a guitar instructor on a one-to-one basis at this stage of your learning.

In all honesty, none of these are truly good reasons, but they can all be dealt with by looking into taking group lessons. First, group lessons typically cost less than one-on-one lessons. Depending on where you live, not to mention who your teacher is, a thirty-minute lesson might range anywhere from $15 to $30 or possibly more. Group lessons, though (and again depending on where you live and who the teacher is), usually work out to be between $10 and $15 per hour. True, you usually have to pay the entire cost of the lessons upfront (and most beginners’ guitar group classes run anywhere from four to fourteen weeks), but if you go the private teacher route you typically pay each month in advance, so you’re essentially shelling out close to the same amount of money either way. And $145 for fourteen hour-long lessons is, by any way you look at the numbers, clearly a better deal and $120 for four thirty-minute lessons.

Put the issue of money aside, though, and examine some of the more important aspects of learning as taken through a group class. One of the first things you’ll learn in a group class is that you are far from alone! Virtually every beginning guitarist ends up going through the same learning process that you are. You can’t possibly make any mistake or have any difficulty that at least one other person who has taken up the guitar hasn’t dealt with as well. And, more often than not, that someone else in your class! Likewise, any question that you might have about playing is undoubtedly in the mind of at least one of your classmates.

Besides sharing in the “growing pains” of learning, you’ll also share in your class’s successes. Everyone learns at a different pace and some people will pick up on different aspects of playing faster than others, but usually everyone in class is constantly both learning from each other as well as being inspired by each other, not to mention being an inspiration to others as well.

Depending on your personality, you may at first look at group classes as competition, but ultimately they serve as the best example that treating learning how to play guitar (or any creative enterprise) as a competition will result in a lot of unnecessary frustration. The sooner you get less competitive and more cooperative in your learning and playing, the better musician (and person) you will eventually become.

When you find yourself both learning and encouraging others with whatever they happen to be stumbling with, you’ll find yourself looking forward to lessons as well as looking forward to playing and practicing on your own in order to keep up and help the group (and yourself) progress as players. You may not even notice that you’re actually playing and improving! Fortunately, others in your class will point it out to you and also give you a lot of encouragement and support. They’ll also ask for pointers!

If you’ve been a reader of our lessons here at Guitar Noise for any length of time, you probably know this mantra verbatim: Never turn down the chance to play. Playing with others is, as all the writers and contributing Forum members of Guitar Noise will attest to, probably the most fun way to get better quickly. The trouble for many is finding people with whom to play music. In this day and age where most of the relationships we have are online, it’s hard for many people to make contact with other musicians.

Well, how about the people you’ve met at your group guitar class?  Getting together outside of class for practicing or simply to jam and play some songs you all like is simply a matter of talking with one or more of your classmates before or after class one day. It really couldn’t be simpler!

Playing together is indeed one of the best ways to improve your fledgling guitar skills in a hurry. You can go over material from class or get some sheet music or tablature or chord sheets of songs you’re all interested in and work on those. Best yet is that you don’t have to worry that you’re not “good enough” yet because your new friends will be at the same level you are. And if you can turn your get-togethers into regularly scheduled events, you may have found yourself some people that you could be jamming with for the rest of your life!

Finding group classes is not always easy, but you usually have a number of options. Your local community college is one of your best bets to finding a good beginners’ guitar group. These classes are often offered as non-credit workshops or as part of a “continuing education” program. Your favorite guitar store or music shop may have some good leads for you as well. And if you have a group of people you know want to learn, you could always approach a guitar teacher with a proposal for teaching your group.

Whenever possible, try to check out any group program ahead of time, finding out things like how large a class typically is (from four to eight students is ideal), how long it runs, in terms of hours and weeks and also see if you might be able to talk with both the teacher (most community colleges will have the teacher call you) and with people who have taken the class. They should give you a good idea of what to expect. It’s a good idea, for example, to see whether or not a teacher expects you to know how to read music before taking the class. It’s rare that this happens with a group guitar class but it’s better to know ahead of time!

Given their individual timeframes, any group class can cover a wide range of material. Regardless of the length of the class, any good group beginners’ guitar program should teach you the basics of holding and tuning a guitar, how to play most open position chords (and how to work on changing from chord to chord), and the mechanics of strumming and teaching rhythm. Most teachers will use popular songs to help you learn these basics, so you’ll be playing real music before you know it! And, better yet, you’ll be making and sharing music with friends!

Peace

Strength in Numbers was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The majority of guitar players who try to make their guitar solos more creative by using the above approach usually end up frustrated with their slow rate of improvement and begin to lose hope in their potential to become really great lead guitarists. Very often they also start to believe in the common misconception that their ability to create great guitar solos is restricted by their amount of natural talent.

Fortunately, it is possible for anyone to greatly improve their lead guitar soloing skills with the right approach. If you haven’t reached this goal yet, I want to show you the most common reasons why guitar players struggle with creating truly great guitar solos and then give you the steps you can take right now to massively improve your lead guitar playing.

The truth is that most guitar players focus on entirely the wrong things when trying to improve their lead guitar soloing and improvising skills. Many guitarists assume that the solution to their guitar soloing challenges is in learning more “new” skills, such as innovative soloing concepts, new guitar licks/scales/arpeggios, and so on.

In reality, simply acquiring new musical skills will not, in and of itself, make your lead guitar playing better, just as having a lot of ingredients in the kitchen will not make you a “better” cook. While having a lot of musical skills will give you more options to choose from, these skills will not “increase your ability” to create great guitar solos until and unless you learn how to “integrate” them to make the best musical choices possible in any musical situation. For the vast majority of musicians, it is this lack of ability to fluently apply and integrate their existing skills that prevents them from mastering the art of guitar soloing.

If you are not clear on what the concepts of musical application and integration mean and how they play a critical role in helping you improve your lead guitar soloing skills, watch this free video about practicing guitar effectively before reading the rest of this article.

Now that you understand more about why the traditional ways of improving your guitar solos are ineffective, here are some specific steps you need to take to begin to integrate your existing lead guitar playing skills on a deeper level and greatly improve your guitar solos in the process.

• Learn The Guitar Fretboard Inside And Out – True mastery of the guitar neck goes much deeper than simply being able to identify a specific note/fret on the guitar. In order to really know your way around the guitar, you need to be able to play all the scales and chords used in your style of music everywhere on the neck, and be able to combine these shapes fluently. Guitar players – from Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix to Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai – all have/had this exceptional awareness of scales and chord shapes on the fretboard. This skill enabled them to improvise great guitar solos effortlessly in any key without “getting lost.” In contrast, guitarists who struggle with making their lead guitar solos sound like music, often do not have this skill well developed and become stuck with soloing in the same one or two positions every time they play lead guitar. Regardless of how many scales you actually know, if you cannot fluently play them all over the guitar neck, you will have a very hard time with using them creatively in your lead guitar soloing.
• Master Aural Skills (Train Your Ear To The Fullest) – Most guitar players (even the rare few who actually practice ear training exercises on a regular basis) do not have a clear understanding of what it really means to “have a good ear for music.” It is commonly believed that ear training is all about “being able to identify any interval, chord, or scale” after hearing it. Although this skill is “a part of” having a good ear, in reality, ear training plays a much deeper role for your lead guitar playing. At the highest level, aural skills are “the link” between all of your musical skills (guitar technique, music theory knowledge, phrasing, mastery of scales and chords and more) that enable them to work together to create the most expressive guitar solos possible. Master musicians use their ears to imagine the music they want to hear and direct their hands to produce that sound on the instrument as quickly and naturally as you speak your thoughts when holding a conversation. Without good aural skills, your musical skills can only work in isolation and your ability to create great guitar solos will forever remain limited (more on this below).
• Create Music With Your Mind Instead Of Your Hands – Most guitarists approach the process of lead guitar soloing in a mechanical way by “playing scales over chords”. After learning the key of the chord progression, most musicians simply begin to solo by running through familiar scale shapes and licks. Essentially their mind goes on autopilot and all of the “creating” is done with the hands.

Here is a visual demonstration of the most common process that most guitar players use to create guitar solos:

In contrast, great lead guitar players rely on their ears and their mind to imagine what they want to hear before playing a single note, and use their hands (guitar technique) as well as their music theory knowledge, mastery of the fretboard, and other musical skills to express what the mind wants to hear. Although they also end up “playing scales over chords”, the overall level of creativity and expression achieved is much greater because all of their musical tools/skills are integrated together as one “creative whole.”

Here is a breakdown of the process used to create great guitar solos:

Although the steps above happen very fast (and almost always occur on a subconscious level), this kind of thought process is key to creating truly great guitar solos.

The most important thing I want you to notice is that most of what actually “creates” a great guitar solo needs to be done with your mind and your ears. This is totally different from the thinking process of inexperienced guitarists, whose guitar solos are merely an attempt to “fill up space/silence with notes.”

• Continuously Work On Your Guitar Phrasing – Many lead guitar players continuously search for “notes to play” but neglect looking for better ways of how to play (phrase) those notes. Good guitar phrasing involves much more than applying an occasional bend or vibrato to a note. When I train my students how to master guitar phrasing, I show them how this skill consists of “macro” and “micro” level components. “Macro” level phrasing refers to how each phrase fits into the big picture of the lead guitar solo and the song itself (much like phrases flow in a conversation). “Micro” level phrasing deals with ornamentation applied to individual pitches of the phrase. It is important to understand the difference between the two components and to have effective strategies for training both of these areas of phrasing. If you want to find out more about what goes into great guitar phrasing and get some ideas on how to practice this skill on a “micro” level, download this free lesson about guitar phrasing .
• Get Regular Feedback On Your Lead Guitar Soloing From More Experienced Guitarists Or From A Guitar Teacher – Unlike improving your guitar speed, where you can measure your own progress in a tangible way, improving your lead guitar playing is a very “intangible” skill. This means two things:
  1. It is very hard to become aware of specific flaws in your lead guitar soloing when you don’t know what things you should be listening for.2. It is also challenging to determine whether or not your guitar solos are actually improving and what areas of your lead guitar playing still need work. You will make the fastest progress when you have your guitar solos analyzed by a guitar teacher who can not only point out specific flaws in your guitar playing but also can create an effective lesson strategy to help you overcome the specific challenges that are holding you back from creating truly great guitar solos.

Now that you understand more about what it takes to improve your lead guitar playing, you should become excited as you realize that all of your musical goals are entirely within your control to achieve. When you begin to implement the steps I have outlined above, your lead guitar soloing skills begin to improve rapidly.

If you haven’t already done so, watch this free guitar practicing lesson and download this free lesson about phrasing on guitar to get more specific advice on how to improve your guitar soloing.

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a very successful online guitar teacher, recording artist and a member of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He teaches guitar players around the world in his electric guitar lessons online. Visit tomhess.net to get free guitar playing resources and to read more guitar playing articles.

How To Create Great Guitar Solos was written by Tom Hess for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Easier said than done though isn’t it? Don’t worry! There are many guitar players who fall into a rather frustrating gap between learning their scale patterns and finding themselves spontaneously able to play great-sounding blues solos!

Guitar teachers often find that they have to devote a considerable amount of lesson time to helping their students bridge this gap. I think  there are actually several elements that need to be in place before this gap is successfully spanned and, although the mix of these elements will vary from student to student, I would list the following as being typical:

• Confidence to enter wholeheartedly into the ‘trial and error’ process that improvising necessarily entails.
• Development of good left/right hand coordination
• Mastery of basic technique (bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, vibrato etc…)
• A ’library’ of well-rehearsed licks (both original and er…borrowed!)
• An understanding of typical blues phrasing patterns (‘call and response’ or ‘question and answer’ for example)
• A good ear for tension and resolution as used in blues
• An intuitive sense of blues phrasing and timing

The first item on my list, confidence,– will of course vary from one individual to another at the outset, but proactively focusing on the other  items on the list will itself result in an increase in your level of confidence.

Good coordination, technique and a stock of licks comes from lots of practice, but the last three items on the list are probably best improved by simply listening to as much great blues guitar playing as you can.

Many years ago, I wrote a six-verse long Texas style blues instrumental specifically to help students bridge the gap between scales and solos.

This tune is designed to help you use the scale notes in simple phrases that resolve to the chords used in the twelve-bar sequence and to establish a feel for how the lead lines fit in with the chords (the ‘call and response’ pattern mentioned earlier).

The first verse, shown in detail in the video lessons below, starts by establishing a rhythmic pattern typical of the style most associated with Stevie Ray Vaughan and if you want to progress onto learning some of his tunes, this is a great primer!

These lessons are designed for beginners or near beginners, but I am sure that more experienced player will enjoy them too – they’ll just whiz through them quicker!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4oFM9MqIc

The trickiest part is the timing, shown here in standard notation:

Notice the one beat rest at the start. This is best dealt with by counting yourself in:  1 2 3 4 1 … and then playing the notes on beats: 2 & 3 & 4 & 1. In the ‘call and response’ pattern these notes are the ‘call’ and the response comes from the chords played on beats 2(&) 3& (4)& of the second bar.

This rhythmic pattern is repeated throughout the verse.

If that explanation leaves you wondering if this is a bit more complex than it claims – please check out the video lesson – hearing it will make a lot more sense than my attempts to convey the idea in text!

Hope you enjoy learning this – if you do, hop over to www.secretguitarteacher.com where you’ll find a whole course that goes over all six verses on videos and you can also download the tab and backing tracks.

Copyright © 2011 Nick Minnion, (used by permission)

Nick Minnion has recorded over 100 video guitar lessons that can be found at his new site, www.secretguitarteacher.com.

He also runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit TeachGuitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.

Putting the Rhythm in the Blues was written by Nick Minnion for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I’ve always been into solos myself.  While I have a history of being the sole guitar player in bands, more often than not, the solos are where I put the vast majority of my efforts. The result was rhythms that were not as strong as they could be. Luckily for me, I got the opportunity to work with one of the best rhythm players in metal, when I collaborated on the Knightfall CD with the Annihilator main man, Jeff Waters. He explained to me exactly what makes for superlative guitar tracks and this advice is great (not to mention essential!) for both rhythm and lead playing. Believe me, there’s a lot more to it that you probably ever imagined!  Today, I’m going to share with you what I learned from a bona fide master.

1. Impeccable Timing

This is probably the first thing that comes to mind when you think about rhythm tracking.  Ever since Les Paul invented multi-tracking some fifty plus years ago, the ability to overdub tracks has elevated the importance of being able to play tightly to a click. That seems like a no brainer, but all too often, people belittle the true amount of work and effort that’s required to be able to play tightly.

I used to play a song to a metronome a couple of times before recording and thought to myself that it sounded great. Had I actually recorded my playing and listened back to it, I would have seen just how uneven my parts were!

Contrast that to Mr. Waters’ obsession of playing everything to a click, including picking and scale exercises. In fact, his motto is: “if you don’t practice to a click, then it doesn’t count as practice.”

2. Clearly Accentuated Picking

Listen closely to any great player’s tracks and you’ll instantly notice how well how clearly defined every note is. These guys and gals have spent countless hours honing their picking technique until it runs like a well-oiled machine. When they play a passage, they don’t just concentrate on hitting the notes on time, they are thinking about making each note sound even and well defined.  It’s like speaking or, more accurately, singing. Wouldn’t you rather listen to somewhat who clearly enunciates each syllable, than someone who slurs them together like a sloppy drunk?

These players have put a lot of thought into the gauge and material of their picks as both make a lot of difference to your sound. Moreover, they tend to strike the strings at the optimal depth and at an angle that is as flush with the string as possible. Angling the pick a bit might make it easer to pass through the string, but it doesn’t sound as good.

3. String Muting

Just as proper accentuating of each note is essential to great rhythm tracks, it is equally critical to mute all unwanted string noise from one’s playing. Don’t count on drums hiding minor string noise. It’ll still be there to some degree, if only on some subliminal level.

To the average guitar player, suppressing string noise falls somewhere after timing, which comes after hitting the right notes, on the priorities list. While in a live situation, you can certainly get away with some string noise, it won’t fly on recordings. Especially when dealing with high gain settings, control over feedback on string noise is a prerequisite. Therefore, you have to train yourself to listen for it.

Common offenders are the fretting hand when switching between chords. The picking hand can also be at fault when your palm doesn’t come down between notes, misses one of the strings, or simply rubs against them while picking. All of these are flaws in technique than need to be worked on. If you can’t eliminate string noise when playing a part, then try changing it. There are a lot of ways to play the same thing on a guitar, so don’t get stuck on only one way.

4. Tuning and Pitch

Guitarists take it for granted that you have to tune your instrument before recording, but I am constantly shocked at just how nonchalant most people are about tuning. It’s not until they are faced with a professional engineer that they realize what’s actually involved in recording a pro-level CD. Not that, when I say professional engineer, I mean someone who has experience in recording CDs for major labels. Even in home recording situations, musicians always show up with a low end tuner. While those are fine for jamming and playing small bars, they are not adequate for any recording purposes. Strangely enough, even a lot of supposedly pro quality gear has very minimal tuning capabilities.

For recording, you need something that will go well within 2% deviation, which is where most people can detect out-of-tuneness. For that, you need something like a Korg rack tuner. All you need is about $250 to shell out!  If you want to go really precise, nothing beats a strobe tuner.  Some of which can go as high as five to six thousand dollars!

Thanks to the magic of digital recording, you don’t need to spend very much money at all to achieve pitch perfect tuning.  Peterson, who makes the best strobe tuners in the biz, also makes a software version of their coveted strobe tuners called Strobosoft.  It can get to 0.1% precision. That’s up to 30 times better than the average tuner. It’s what I use.

Unfortunately, using a high-precision tuner is not enough to achieve excellent pitch in your recordings. Alas, the guitar is a very temperamental beast and reacts to its surroundings.  Not only does the temperature and humidity of the room wreak havoc on the pitch, but even your fingers can throw off the pitch by a couple of percents, which is enough to go from extremely in tune to noticeably out of tune!

I’ll never forget how, in my early days of club playing, I would tune my guitar backstage (or in the bathroom, depending on the conditions), only to have it go way out of tune by the end of the first song! I eventually came to realize that the difference in temperature was making the guitar go flat.  At that point I started leaving the guitar on stage and then tuning it shortly before show time so that it would have time to acclimatize to the environment. I would warm up on a second guitar, backstage.

The best way to have your guitar stay in tune while you do your tracking is to begin by warming up the strings using your fingers. Play something or simply rub the strings with your hands. Once you’ve warmed up the strings, give each one of them a good pull. And I mean a good pull, almost hard enough that you try to break them! This is a crucial and necessary step as it will remove any stretching capacity that is left in the strings (you are using brand new strings right?) and helps wrap it as tightly as possible around the tuning peg. The idea is that the string won’t have any room left to fall. Even when you think that the string is taught and ready, a few good pulls will loosen it – and the pitch – way down! Keep doing this until pulling the string no longer has any effect on the pitch.

Now, after you’ve done the stretching and pulling, the enemy is sharpness. Every time that you stop to listen to your takes, the strings immediately start to get cold. And that means re-warming and retuning them.

You may be surprised to learn that in a professional recording session, guitar players spend more time tuning that playing their tracks! That’s one of the reasons that you have to be such a good player to record CDs. You have to be skilled enough to lay down high quality takes within a couple of minutes, which is about as long as you can go without a tuning break.  Because of the volatility of strings, it behooves you to become very quick at tuning. The faster the better!

5. Good Sound

Your sound has to bring out your ideas and expression, not hamper them. Too many guitar players use distortion as a crutch in an effort to hide weakness in technique. Have I done it? Duh, yeah!

Listen carefully to any great guitarist and you’ll notice that their tone enhances everything that they are doing. It’s no accident. They work hard on it. Even when you think that an artist is using lots of distortion, it is really their playing that is making the sound through aggressive playing (more on that in a moment). Universally, enhancing one’s expression means turning down the gain and bringing out the subtleties in one’s playing. Just be aware that this also makes it easier to hear weaknesses in technique!

6. Play Like You Mean It!

Closely related to #5 above, great players don’t play a part like the average person.  While the latter simply plays a passage, a true guitar expert will express it. And the way that she or he does that is to play every note with conviction. Most of us tend to concentrate on key notes – the ones that represent the main chord movements or lock in with other instruments. As a result, a lot of less important notes, like passing tones, and so on, will receive less attention, and suffer for it.

This issue goes a lot deeper than focusing on all of the notes and picking harder. The purpose of music is to express yourself, so when you doubt yourself and are unsure of what you’re playing, it will come out. Only by learning to entertain positive thoughts about yourself and realizing that you have just as much right as anyone to be on a stage in the studio, can you bring out your full potential in your playing.  I’m not saying that great artists don’t have issues, because they clearly do, but their playing is not one of them!

Knowing what makes a great rhythm player, or just a great player period, is not sufficient for achieving greatness. That takes dedication, sacrifice, and the ability to accurately gauge your playing. Neither blindly adhering to the belief that you are a great player or a lousy one will advance your cause. Ironically, some of what it takes to be a great guitar player has very little to do with guitar playing per se. But don’t take that as an invitation to go on a self-expanding voyage. You still need to focus a whole lot on guitar!

Rob Gravelle recently embarked on a solo music career, after playing since 2000 with Ivory Knight, a band rated as one Canada’s top bands by Brave Words magazine (issue #92) and who released two CDs. In 2007, Rob recorded the KNIGHTFALL CD in collaboration with the former Ivory Knight vocalist and legendary guitarist/producer, Jeff Waters of Annihilator fame.

You can click here to access Rob’s iTunes link

Secrets to Recording Wicked Guitar Parts was written by Rob Gravelle for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

She did seem slightly astonished, though, that I didn’t use a plectrum at all. For all those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term, a “plectrum” is a synonym for “pick,” the “pick” being a guitar pick, or mandolin or lute for that matter. I think I shrugged her query off at the time with something like “I just don’t like plecs.”

Couple of months later, one of the grandkids started to take guitar lessons at school – oh, how I wish I’d had that option at the age of eight! – and after a couple of lessons, asked me why I didn’t use a plectrum, because “Sir says you should always use a plectrum!” I tried to explain to him that there are no hard-and-fast rules to playing guitar, sometimes you have to do what feels right for you, rather than what you “must” do according to the book and that there is no single, definitive guitar Bible.

It got me thinking, though. Why don’t I use plecs? Well, here’s a few reasons why……

1 – When I was a beginning guitarist – a real newbie – I lost count of the number of times I lost control of the plec and it went between the strings and straight into the soundhole. I had to stop playing, turn the guitar upside down and shake it all about till I got the plec back.

2 - I hate “pick noise.” If there’s anything I can do anything to eradicate it – and if that means strumming with my fingers – I’ll do it.

3 – They get lost so easily. I can put one in my pocket, but when I want it it’s disappeared. I’m talking about the convenient little pocket on the right hand side of a pair of Levis or Wranglers – they’re the only jeans I can buy because I have a 36 inch inside leg – that’s just above the deep pocket. You’d think they’d be safe in there, right? Wrong! It’s a Bermuda triangle into which plecs might enter but will never be seen again, except in an episode of Torchwood or the X-Files. Or the lint filter of the washing machine.

4 - They might disappear for a while, but then they end up blocking the lint filter in the washing machine. Three hundred quid for a washing machine, seventy-odd quid to call a technician out, a hundred and twenty quid for repairs, for a 50p plec. Priceless…and that’s just the look on the wife’s face when she gets the bill.

5 – I like to play a lot of songs that are fingerpicked. Think “More Than a Feeling,” “Every Picture Tells a Story,” “All Or Nothing,” ”Ticket To Ride,” “Play With Fire” – it’s much easier to play those songs with your thumb and three fingers than playing bass notes, skipping strings, playing the treble strings then playing the bass notes with a plec and then fingerpicking the other three strings with two fingers. Why make something reasonably easy more complicated?

6 – Plecs are expensive. Well, no they aren’t really – but 50p for a little piece of plastic is taking the mickey. When I was a kid, that 50p would buy fish and chips for five and a large bottle of fizzy pop that’d last a week, and enough change left over to buy a local evening newspaper. Buy a plectrum from, say, the Cavern at Liverpool, and it’ll cost you three quid nowadays. Fish and chips for almost a week back then, or a banquet for thirty people!.

7 - Tone’s in your fingers, so I’m told. Why introduce an extra factor into the equation? Your fingers are far more sensitive than a plec – it only deadens the feeling, and adds ever-so-slightly to the reaction time between your brain and your fingers.

8 - They wear your strings out more quickly. You use a sharp, pointed thing on your strings, it’s bound to cause more wear and tear than a comparitively soft fingernail. Even if it is plastic, it’s still going to wear your strings out more quickly.

9 - There isn’t a guitar shop in my town. 30, 000 people and nowhere to buy picks, strings, sheet music, capos, etc etc etc. I am not going to pay £4 for bus fares – the price of 8 plecs – to go and buy a couple of plecs for 10% of the cost of the bus fares. I may not be a genius at Economics, but even I can recognise the real cost of an article as opposed to the cost price. They probably cost about a penny a unit to manufacture – that’s a 98% profit per unit. Like I said, I’m not very good at economics but I do know the difference between making a profit and profiteering. Feel free to correct the maths if I’m wrong…..

10 – I can always borrow one for five minutes if we’re playing “House of the Rising Sun” and I need to hit those strings hard and close to the bridge!

11 – And then I can give it back afterwards – some people are very possessive about their plecs. Some people are very possessive about my plecs, too – I’ve lost count of the number of them I’ve took to my local pub on a jam night and not taken home with me!

12 - I really don’t fancy the idea of going through all that over and over again and waiting for the 32nd re-incarnation…by which time you’ll probably pay as much for a plec as I paid for my Telecaster a couple of years or so back.

13 - Did I mention they get lost too easily?

14 – I’m superstitious so I didn’t want to end with #13.

15 - It’s better to play without a plectrum and get used to not needing one, than to play with one and get dependent on using one: think, “Oh my God! What am I going to do now! I lost my plectrum!” Of course, you know you haven’t really lost it – it’s either on the carpet or gone into the soundhole. Or it’s in the lint filter.

16 - Strings wear out faster than plecs. Strings wear out faster if you’re using plecs. Plecs cost 50p, strings cost £6. Or the cost of twelve plecs. You can play a guitar without a plec, but you can’t play without strings. Even if you own lots of plecs! Do the math – you know it makes sense!

17 - They’re not bio-degradable. You might lose one now and then, but it’ll still be around a thousand years from now. If you believe in reincarnation, approximately sixteen lives from now it’ll turn up again. For about thirty seconds, till you lose it, misplace it or drop it down the soundhole of your guitar or it ends up in that lint filter…..and that’s where I came in.

Looking forward to seventeen good reasons as to why you should use a plec. After all, an intelligent and civil discussion is always fun to read!

Why I Don’t Use a Plectrum was written by Vic Lewis for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise