Beginner Guitar Lessons Crash Course

We'll begin by learning the names of the guitar strings with an easy way to memorize them.

We'll learn how to read tab (short for tablature) which is an easy way to read and write guitar music, chords, notes, scales, and songs.

It's important to know how to tune your guitar by ear.  Here, I'll show you the traditional way of tuning your guitar by ear.

Here, we'll learn the chromatic scale, which is the musical alphabet.  This will allow us to find every note on every string quickly and easily.

We'll learn the most common open chords that are used to play thousands (and thousands and thousands) of songs. 

Here, we'll discuss the nuances of holding your pick along with the posture & motion used when picking and strumming.

This is a classic warm up used by guitarists since the early days of the guitar.  It is musical nonsense, but also a comprehensive physical workout that will make you strong, accurate, and fast.

Here, we will learn how to count note rhythms from four beats to half a beat (whole notes to eighth notes) and how to apply that to our strumming & picking.

Here we'll learn our first scale for soloing.  While this is an easy scale to learn right away, it is used by guitar masters on a regular basis because it sounds so good.

Here we'll learn guitar techniques like hammer ons, pulloffs, slides, bending, and vibrato.  These special skills add flair to our music and make our playing unique and personalized.  

Here, we'll learn the basic barre chord forms for major & minor chords.  While barre chords are challenging for your hand in the beginning, you will need to know how to play them (at least a little) as you start learning different songs.

Here, we'll learn a trick for using our same pentatonic minor scale (which you recently learned) to be used to solo over songs in a major key.

Here, we will discuss arpeggios - what they are and how they are used.  This is a primer for your future guitar studies and I am positive that you'll be glad that you were exposed to arpeggios in the near future.  

This is a form of Latin music which is perfect for practicing chords, rhythm, and soloing.  You can use the Rumba to play & practice on your own, or as a form to jam through with other music friends.

We'll learn how to use backing tracks to practice soloing with our scales.

You made it to the end of the course - congratulations!  Here, we'll discuss what to do next with your guitar playing.