guitar lessons with audio

It’s been ages it seems since we’ve had an intermediate song lesson. It also seems like it’s been ages since we’ve done something with an alternate tuning. And when was the last time we did a Neil Young song? And don’t let the intermediate label put you off – even beginners (with some practice, of course!) can make this song sound sweet…

We’ll be spending a lot of 2008 looking at song arrangements, so it’s best to start off with a discussion on strumming patterns and the trap that you can get into by letting a strumming (or picking) pattern be your major concern.

Here’s another Easy Song for Beginners’ Lesson, using our continued study of walking bass lines to help us create an arrangement where the bass line also helps us move the song along by shadowing the melody. Once the basics are in place, you can make the rest of the arrangement as simple or as complicated as you’d like.

Our arrangement for this moody piece uses many of the ideas from our O Tannenbaum! lesson. You’ll find yourself having a lot of fun even though you’re supposed to be blue!

Here’s a simple chord melody arrangement of this holiday classic. And, as a bonus, it’s a great exercise for practicing your chord changes in a timely manner.

We continue our study of walking bass lines, looking specifically at how the timing and distance become our guideposts, helping us to map out our journey from one target note to the next. Examples from many songs, including a little of Bob Dylan’s You Ain’t Going Nowhere and Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day will serve as demonstrations in our lesson.

Here’s an interesting twist – we’re going to use a walking bass line as a way to help us get faster and cleaner chord changes, specifically between the G and C chords. Sound implausible? Well, come along and join in the fun.

Walking bass lines are an easy way to spice up your playing and also learn a little about music in the process.

Also known as Are You Sleeping Brother John, this has to be one of the best known children’s songs in the world. Doug brings up a fun and thoughtful arrangement of this favorite song.

Doug has come up with a lesson featuring two children’s favorites: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and London Bridge. Enjoy sharing these with people of all ages!

There are seemingly limitless ways of playing any one song, so why should someone ever say I can’t play a song? Or worse, I’m waiting for someone to show me how to play a song… In this lesson, we’ll start out with a simple strumming arrangement, spice things up a bit with arpeggios, and then wind up with an arrangement that’s close to chord melody.

David returns to the pages of Guitar Noise with another Easy Song for Beginners lesson. Work on your chord changes and strumming with not one, but two great country classics.

Here’s a wonderful simple and sparse arrangement of this traditional song from the Outer Hebrides. It’s a beautiful song and, like Doug, you’ll be thrilled to add it to your holiday repertoire.

Doug brings us another beautiful Christmas carol, arranged in standard tuning. This one is quite catchy and Doug also gives us a fascinating bit of history concerning the history of Christmas carols in Britain.

Here is a beautiful Christmas hymn, wonderfully arranged in DADGAD tuning for us by Doug Sparling. What a great way to kick off the holiday season!

Here’s an original song from Peter Simms – Key West – a perfect song for lounging on a lazy summer afternoon. Peter wrote this specifically for those of you who want to play chord melodies with a pick, so enjoy!

GN’s favorite Celtic lesson writer returns with a jig in his step. Here’s a sprightly air in 6/8 time to challenge you and delight your ears!

In celebration of his hot selling book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar, David has put together a couple of bass lessons exclusively for the readers of Guitar Noise. Learn how to play this classic Pink Floyd song. It’s as easy as counting to seven (and occasionally eight)!

Our favorite arranger of Celtic music takes a short summer vacation and brings Guitar Noise readers a little bag of rock guitar riffs based on repeated phrases of notes. These are easy, fun and will add some spice to your soloing. Enjoy!

As you learn more and more techniques, you should start trying to incorporate them into the songs you already know. We’ll take a very easy song and come up with some interesting things we can do for arranging it for the single guitar.