Archive for category: Guitar Lessons

Learning the Notes on the Fretboard (Guitar Neck)

Being able to instantly identify, and move to different notes along the fretboard is a must know skill for anyone serious about learning to play the guitar. Knowing your way around the neck of the guitar is important for playing chords and chord progressions, for improvising, and an absolute must if you want to start writing your own songs as well.

Learn those notes!

Learning the notes on the fretboard is not really hard, it just takes some studying. Thankfully, the guitar is built in such a way, that allows us to easily identify the notes on 4 of the 6 strings, after learning the notes on the low E and A strings. This is due to the relationship between the notes on the strings. If you haven't done so yet, watch our video guitar lesson on learning guitar notes, I explain the following on video, which makes it even easier to digest.

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Too old to learn guitar at 30? 40? 50? 60? Think again!

Undoubtedly some of the most frequent letters I get here at TheGuitarLesson.com are from people asking whether they are too old to learn guitar. In fact, the "Am I too old to learn guitar" subject line letters come from people in all age groups.

It's funny because I've had 13-14 year old kids ask this question, adults of all ages of course, and even a 74 year old grandfather who wanted to jam along with his grandkids.

This topic seems to be on the mind of all adults considering guitar lessons, so let's talk about it for a second. Read more →

Minor Pentatonic Scale Positions

The minor pentatonic  scale is a much used scale by musicians in many genres, from blues to rock, and if you are just starting to learn soloing and how to improvise, learning the 5 positions of the minor pentatonic scale will be invaluable to your efforts.

Need a hand?

I always recommend that my students learn the minor pentatonic scale forms as a first step in learning improvisation. You probably know the first form already, which can, by itself, be used to make up nice sounding riffs and improvised solos. But learning the other 4, altogether 5 minor pentatonic scale positions will allow you to move along the fretboard to wherever you want, whenever you want, and produce some truly outstanding solos.

Don't take my word for it, listen to BB King albums, Clapton songs, and a bunch of other artists. They all use the various shapes of the minor pentatonic, so should you. Here are the positions of the minor pentatonic: Read more →

How to Sing and Play Guitar at the Same Time

One of my new students recently asked about singing and playing the guitar at the same time, and noticed that my beginner guitar lessons do not contain any video material on the subject. This is true, I'm sorry to say that I have no singing voice whatsoever, so this subject isn't addressed on the website at all, sorry about that.

Sing and play

I can't say that I will have anything of the sort in the future, since I sound like a seagull with a fever when I try to sing 🙂 I do know a bit about the technique though, and as I've heard from others and having tried myself, it's not the easiest form of making music. You need to be able to totally separate your singing from your guitar playing, a skill which is quite difficult to master. You could maybe compare it to playing the drums, where all 4 of your limbs need to be performing different tasks.

Here is a general guide to singing and playing the guitar simultaneously:

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Acoustic Guitar Lessons for Beginners

The online acoustic guitar lessons at TheGuitarLesson.com offer an effective way of learning to play the acoustic guitar. Our method of teaching focuses not on showing you some acoustic guitar chords and scales, since strumming some chords and playing scales all day will get boring, since it's not very musical.

Acoustic Guitar Lessons

Our method of teaching you to play the acoustic guitar focuses on teaching you acoustic guitar songs. Learning to play songs once you're comfortable with basic guitar techniques is great, since it will keep your practice sessions fun and motivating. There's nothing like being able to play one of your favorite songs for the first time, and our beginner guitar lessons will have you playing loads of beginner guitar songs in a relatively short amount of time. All of our video acoustic guitar lessons have animated tablature and chord charts right on the screen as you watch the tutorial, which makes learning those chords and riffs much easier.

Here are 3 of the most popular acoustic guitar songs from our website:
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