Music Guide

Playing quarter note triplets – dividing two beats into three equal parts – is tricky. David demonstrates how you can do it easily.

Learn to add percussive strumming to your rhythm playing. David walks you through the basic technique, step by step, with audio examples.

How you hold your guitar can make a big difference on how quickly you make progress learning to play. David Hodge gives you a few tips to help you out.

Knowing four simple basic chords allows you to play forty-eight barre chords. This article teaches you to play two versions of any basic chord you know.

Learn how to play barre chords by taking them one step at a time. David Hodge walks you through playing your first barre chord making them as easy as possible.

Hammer-ons are one of the four basic slurring techniques of playing guitar. While many guitarists think of them as just a technique of the lead guitarist, they are essential to rhythm playing as well.

Chord melody is a way of arranging songs so that a single guitar does all the work of providing melody and harmony, and usually includes a bass part as well.

Knowing how songs are structured can help you with learning songs and with communicating with other musicians. Here’s a brief run down of the basic parts of songs.

Alternate tuning involves changing any or all of a guitar’s strings to a different note than in standard tuning. “Drop D” and DADGAD tunings are frequent choices of alternate tuning but there are many to choose from.

In open tuning, the guitar’s six strings are tuned to the notes of a single, easily identified chord. Open tuning is used a lot by slide guitar players. It’s also a favorite of Keith Richards.

Standard tuning is tuning each string of your guitar to a specific note. It makes learning the guitar easier by allowing you to play the various chords in the same way that other people do.

The melody of a song is what we carry around in our heads. Along with harmony and rhythm, melody is one of the three essential elements of any song.

The Circle of Fifths can be a very useful tool for guitarist for things from learning the fretboard to making highly educated guesses about upcoming chords in a progression.

Knowing the basic structure of the twelve bar blues will help you immensely as both a guitarist and a musician, particularly if you want to play and jam with other musicians. Here’s a guide to explain how it works.

Diatonic Chords are chords formed using only the notes in a single major scale. Knowing the diatonic chords of whatever key in which you’re playing a song can help you in more ways than you might dream possible!

Suspended chords, or “sus chords” for short, such as Dsus4, Asus2 or just Gsus, can be a guitarist’s best friend. These easy-to-play chords can make your strumming a lot more interesting.

The only place where speed actually means something is in the case of grace notes. In music notation, grace notes are smaller than regular notes and are often tied to the “regular” note that comes after it.

Learn how to recognize and play swing eighth rhythm in less time than you’d imagine! David walks you step by step on this vital part blues and jazz rhythm that you will find in almost all genres of music.