58 Easy & Cool Guitar Riffs for Beginner Rock Stars

cool-guitar-riffs2

Quick question. If you had to choose between playing repetitive exercises on the guitar OR playing awesome guitar riffs taken from real songs, which would you chose?

Probably the later...

Here are 50+ songs that have easy guitar riffs for beginner and intermediate guitar players. Well, most are easy, some are a bit harder. These are some of the best guitar riffs of all time, so as a guitarist, you really need to know them.

Learn each riff, start out slow and practice diligently until you get them perfected, then play everything you learn to your family and friends. Read more

/0 Comments/by

51 easy guitar solos for beginner (and intermediate) guitarists

Easy Guitar Solos Beginner Intermediate

When you start learning to play guitar, you envision yourself shredding like a rock star in 2 weeks, only to realize that it's not as easy as it looks.

But fear not!

Once you have the basics down, there are plenty of easy to play guitar solos from famous songs you can learn. Songs by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, etc.

I absolutely recommend learning solos from early on, since each one gives you a chance to advance your technique and develop your unique playing style.

Learning how to play awesome guitar solos is much more fun than going up and down scales in my opinion (as a guitar teacher of 15+ years). Scales do have their place, but learning real songs is super important. It keeps you motivated and engaged.

As you learn each solo, you will want to pay attention to these 4 things:

  1. Keep it slow at first, concentrate on hitting the right notes. Speed will come with time and practice. You want to learn to play well, not sloppy-fast. The way to really advance is to push yourself to nail the solo before moving on to a new one.
  2. Learn chunks of the solo, not the entire thing all in one. Some of these solos are very long, so tackle just a few bars at a time, and put it all together when you can.
  3. Perfect your lead guitar technique as you learn. After all, that is why you are learning the solo in the first place, to get better. Make sure your bends are spot on target, your slides are smooth, and your trills are loud and clear.
  4. Tone counts a lot with many of these solos. You will see that even though you can play the solo, it just doesn't sound right without dialing in the tone used in the original track. Spend some time getting to know not just your amp, but also the tone of the different pickups on your guitar, and the volume & tone knobs. As for effects, you will usually want to add some reverb to create a sense of space (except for funk).

Now let's go through my list of the best guitar solos for beginner and intermediate guitar players. Read more

/0 Comments/by

51 Easy Guitar Chord Songs for Beginners

Easy Guitar Chord Songs Beginners

Learning to play easy songs with guitar chords is great for beginners who want to level up their guitar skills. It gives you a way to practice chords, chord changes and strumming in a fun way: through making real music by the songs you love.

As you advance to an intermediate level, you can learn songs with more chords (even barre chords) and more complex strumming patterns.

This post will give you a large list of beginner-intermediate songs with chords you can learn. You will need 3 things to go through them:

  1. Know how to read chord charts - You will be seeing a lot of guitar chord charts on this page, and of course, you need to know how to decipher them.
    Here is a great video on how to read guitar chord charts if you need to learn to do so.
  2. Know how to strum - Strumming is key when it comes to playing songs with chords. Luckily, beginners can use very simple strumming patterns, and as you advance, you can get more creative.
    My Beginners Guide to Learning Guitar has a chapter dedicated to strumming, have a look.
  3. Have a capo - Someone once said: "Life is too short to live without a capo". Using a capo makes playing a lot of songs much easier since you don't need to use as many barre chords. I'm not saying you should avoid barre chords, just know that even performing artists use capos on stage... so why shouldn't you?
    If you don't have a capo yet, I recommend the Kyser Quick Change capo. It is cheap, works on both acoustic & electric guitars, and will last forever.

Enough talk though. Grab your guitar and have a look at my list of the best easy songs with guitar chords for beginners and intermediate players.

Read more

/0 Comments/by

Eric Clapton guitar lessons

Eric Clapton is one of the best guitar players (#2 on Rolling Stones Magazine's list of the best guitarists), and an icon to many. He has had a very eventful life, you can read all about it in his bio.

eric-clapton-15

Clapton has been an active musician since 1962, so he's got several decades of song writing behind him, shaping contemporary music as we know it. During this time, he's stacked up hundreds of songs, dozens of which have become classic hits. All guitarists should have a few Eric Clapton songs in their repertoire, it is an absolute must.

List of Eric Clapton tutorials at TheGuitarLesson.com

TheGuitarLesson.com has several guitar lessons teaching covers of Eric Clapton songs. Here they are in no particular order.

Read more

/0 Comments/by

Why Playing Easy Guitar Songs Help You Advance

The other day I had a question from one of my online beginner students. The question was the following:

.....I love learning songs, but I noticed that a lot of other sites have you practicing just techniques, and play songs much later. How come your lessons are mainly songs and not just techniques?

Good question, so I think the answer deserves to be read by all.

Read more

/4 Comments/by

Learn Chord Progressions on Guitar

Learning chord progressions will be one of the first things beginner guitarists will want to do, since once you learn some chords and strumming, you'll be able to make real music, good sounding music by playing chord progressions. Once you learn the underlying theory behind chords and scales, you'll be able to make up literally thousands of chord progressions on your own, so it really is a worthwhile investment of your time.

The Chord Wheel

The Chord Wheel

Strictly speaking, chord progressions are a series of musical chords that aim to establish a tonality founded on a key (chord progressions can be played in any key). All scales contain 7 musical notes, and finding the right chord progression in a given key is just a matter of calculating the chords on a given scale. You can also add additional notes to the chords while playing chord progressions, allowing for a virtually unlimited number of possible progressions.

Read more

/0 Comments/by

When Can You Start Learning Guitar Songs?

The reason why 95% of people start learning the guitar, is because they want to be able to play songs. This is totally natural, since the point of playing an instrument is to make music. Only few people have set goals with the guitar, such as professional musicians or composers, but for most beginner guitarists, being able to play famous guitar songs will suffice.

Practice more songs!

Practice more songs!

Hence the big question, how long will it take before beginners can actually play the songs they like? The answer depends on several things, but mostly, how much practice time you can put into learning the guitar. The more you practice, the better you'll get, and the more you'll actually want to practice, since you'll have loads of fun playing new songs.

Read more

/1 Comment/by