Beginner Guitar Lessons: Guitar Lesson 10

1. Lesson 10 introduction: Welcome to beginner guitar lessons. Lesson Ted. My name is Chris Rope, and I'm the founder of the guitar training camp. If you've never played guitar before, or you're a beginner looking to improve your skills than my beginner guitar lessons are for you, this course is going to be 10 lessons in total. I will be releasing each lesson one at a time, so you have the time needed toe work on and learn the material in each lesson. If you like this 10th lesson, make sure you check out the 1st 9 lessons. Also, don't forget to sign up is one of my students. Here's some clips of what you'll be learning in Lesson number 10. - Some information about May I have a bachelors of music degree from Berklee College of Music, and I've been teaching guitar full time for more than 18 years. I've told more than 30,000 private guitar lessons, so I'm very experienced with what students need to get started on guitar. For more details about the course, check out the course description. I look forward to seeing you inside the course 2. Play a D on every string: thing in this lesson, We're going to find a D on every strength. Let's start with the D on the six string. Okay. To play a D on every string, we're gonna start on the six string on the 10th front right here. Ideas. Right? And if you remember the rule, it's you get down. Five frets down, five frets or up seven friends on the next string to fund the same letter. If I get down five, that's gonna be the same active. They're literally the same pitch. If I go up seven on the next string, it will be a no active higher. So we got start here and they're going to go to this D right here. And then it's my option on the fourth string. I can goto open D or I can go to this D right here. I'm gonna choose to go to this date just for fun. All right. And then you need to get down. I'm gonna get out. Five on the next string. 12345 And from this D right here. Now, when you go to the second string, the rule is you get down. Four frets 1234 You down for you go up 812345678 To find the same note I think I'm going to get down for So I'm gonna get out of this D right here. So when you go into the second string, it's down for upbeat. When you when you're going from the second string back to the first string, it's the same down five or up seven rule. So I'm going to start. I'm gonna go up seven and I'm gonna end up right here, So I'm gonna go ahead. Go ahead, play those again. Here's a day going down to this day. I'm going up to this day right here on the 12th. Fret on your d shrinking. Let me get down. Five. I'm gonna get down four and then only go up here. Teoh Tempt Fried on the first train. Now I will do that exercise again and I will choose different D's. So we'll start here and then we'll go here, which is the same. But then I'm gonna get opened and then I can go up here instead of playing this one. I'm gonna go up eight go up to this date, and then I'm gonna go up seven more and go to this one so it's not. You don't have to do the same exact pattern each time. That's how you find a D on every strength. What you want to do now is practice playing all 12 notes in the musical alphabet. I would just pick a random note on the six string and see how quickly you can find it on every strength. 3. Rhythm 8: in this lesson. We're going to be going over the eighth rhythm in this course. Let's take a look at that rhythm for this rhythm number eight. I thought it would be cool to do something a little different and arpeggio e eight the cord . So instead of just going from sea to a minor, I thought it would sound need Teoh. And when I say our Peggy eight, you're basically playing the notes in a chord except individually doing all moan once. So the two chords that in the first measure you have a C chord. Then in the second measure, we have an a minor chord. Ah, this rhythm number eight is in 68 That means there are six beats per measure, basically, but the eighth note gets the beat. So how I counted, I just go. 123456123456 Basically, I counted like it feels like two sets of triplets. All right, so this is what it sounds like. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and slow it down. We're gonna start. We're going to go on the six string and then 653 Teoh kind of going right in around. And that's why I picked them all down. Proper picking would be going down, down, down. But because we're kind of going down and coming back, it feels much more comfortable to me to go down, down, down. Since we're skipping a string on, we're doing this thing be here. We kind of walking down. Teoh back up. That's why I go down, down, down. Um, I think because I'm skipping strings, I find that easier to go down just easier. T hit that. Be going down. You can go up if you like. Then we'll get the second measure. I'm going down, down, down, on going down again because we're walking back, walking up from a to B and then getting to see right here. So if we take it and I would just take this nice and slow, Uh, that sounds familiar. It's probably because that that's how they do the main verse for a hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. Ah, just a cool sound. I a lot of my students, they really like the sound of chords being arpeggio hated instead of always strumming him. Just now, it's just something interesting and cool sounding that you can do with cords. That's how you play rhythm number eight 4. Strum this open chord progression 6: thing is the sixth open court progression you will be learning in this course. Let's see what you're up against. All right. For the strongest open chord progression six, We have four different measures here. It looks like we have five different chords. We're gonna start with an a minor chord to go. You're gonna wanna make sure you know those you have a d minor. Uh, you have a G major, then we have a c chord. Then we have what I call a C over B were basically I get rid of this finger and I just take my second finger and I move it over to play this be here, Thursby on the on the fifth string. And then what I do is I take this when I'm playing this be I make sure that this fingers meting out the fourth strength because I don't want to hear that. Open day e. I want to hear that walk down back to a minor. All right, so let's go ahead. Take a look at the first measure. In the first measure, we have a minor way. Have 1/4 note on one, and then for beats 23 and four, There's just eight notes. So we're gonna play like this 12 and three and four, and we're gonna go to D Minor. In the second measure, we're gonna exact same rhythm is the first mate measures. So we're gonna dio one, two and three and four, And then in the third measure, it's gonna be the exact same rhythm as well. We're going 12 and three and four, and And how charming. I'm going down on one, going down, on down on two, up on the hand of two. Down on three, up on the end of three, down on four and up on the end of four. And for the last measure, we're going toe. I split it up each court as two beats. So in the first measure were streaming down on seeing and then on beat number two, we're going to and in the sea again. Then we're going for being number three on 1/4. No, we're going to switch that C over B chord for 22 I'm sorry. Beat number three b three and then four. And so that measure is going to sound like 1234 So now go ahead and play through. It s so you can play along with me. 12 34 Ah, that's a nice core progression. I would put that. That's how you play strum this open chord progression. Six. Now that you've strung some open chord progressions, I would look up the cords to some easy songs and strum through them. What I usually recommend is try playing whole notes for each chord to start, then try and play the song with quarter notes. Once you can keep up with the song playing quarter notes than try and strum the correct strum pattern for the song or something close to it, it takes a while to be able to play chord progressions with the correct rhythm and not to miss any beats. Just be patient and have fun along the way. 5. Power chord exercise 5: in this lesson, you're going to be learning the fifth power cord exercise. Let's check it out. All right, this is power cord exercise number five. It sounds like this. Okay, for the first measure were playing. The 1st 2 beats were playing in a five power chord and we're coming in on beats one, and we're going one. And I'm doing him down just cause the power chords. I could get one and I could get down up and do proper strumming. That would be just Azizi, but I'm choosing to get down. So it's going one. And for beat number two, it is a scratch. That's what there's exes are. It's a muted strum. I'm going one and two. And you hear that? You know that noise there? You're going to get that Because right here on the fifth string, if I lightly touch the string, I get a harmonic. It's kind of hard not to hear that that noise, I just wouldn't worry about it. Just enjoy it. Let it part of your recording or you're part of part of your performance s 12 And when I do that me too strong. I'm just tryingto, uh basically just lifting my fingers on this hand. I'm playing the corn and I'm lifting up a little. Speed it out. If we were down here, they still get it a little. Uh, I was just gonna say you probably will get a smudge of a harmonic if you're not on the fifth of the seven Threat. But you saw there were just the same. All right, so you're going one and two, then we're going over. Then we're gonna move over and do a D d Power court. Thes exact same rhythm. We're just moving it over to the base off the fifth string. So we're going. One should say 34 So that measures gonna go? 1234 Time. 1234 Putting. If you see me like you wonder why my put my finger down? I find that if I do that, if I have that finger available, um, it helps. Just meet the strings. Just dead. Is it better? All right. So let's go ahead and take a look at the measure. Number two for the second measure. We're starting off with the G five power chords. We have to move down here to the six string third friend right here, and we're gonna g 01 And they were going to be commuted. Stroman 212 All right, so for beat number three, this is, um, kind of getting out of the beginner. Ah, little more into the intermediate kind of rhythms. I just thought it sounded cool. So I figured, Who cares? Always put it in. Anyways, um, so I came up with to count that what you're doing is you have to 16 followed by an eighth, and it goes, goes three. And for beat number four, it's kind of the opposite. It gives them the same rhythm. It's still Fourie end. It's kind of coming backwards for So we end up with one way. That's pretty cool. So here, I'll play through it one more time for this part here. I understand. Maybe that just try to imitate it and make it sound right. And I understand that in this course I don't really teach you how toe count and count 16th notes and read them properly. Eso I would just be Oh, you know, just play to the best your ability and I think it's a fun kind of, Ah, kind of a classic rock kind of sound. That is how you play power cord exercise five. 6. Lead guitar techniques bends: in this lesson, I'm going to be showing you a bunch of skills that you need to know to sound good playing lead guitar. Let's take a look for the first lead guitar technique. I'm going to talk about Aziz. We're gonna talk about Ben's. How do you do? Bends what I'm gonna do for all these different techniques I'm going to use since I've already showed you how to play minor pentatonic in an earlier lesson. That's the pattern I'm going to use. It looks like this. There's so many other patterns I could use. But this is like the most used pattern on the guitar, so it seems to make sense that you would learn how to do some bends in this pattern. All right, so what is a bend? Ah, Bend is when you take a note and you push the string up or down. You could pull it down on your when you're pushing it up. It's raising the so there's two or three different kinds of bends you will see on guitar tablature. You'll see a whole step Ben. It'll have a little kind of a little line going up, and it'll say one. What that means is you're taking this note. I'm choosing just this note. I could use any note picking this note. This is the very commonplace to bend a note things four right here, eyes the fourth because the minor pentatonic is one flat 345 eso A whole step bend is I'm taking this note and I'm going to bend it up so it sounds like this e right here. This'd d I'm bending it up a whole step. So what? Ideo What I do to check is a lot of people like, Well, I don't know if I'm bending it by bending it correctly. I have no idea. Doesn't sound right. So I will usually check the notes, listen to it and then bend until I hear that note. Another thing you can do is you can play play the right here seeking Ugo. So Azzan playing this one, I'm also playing the band at the same time when they sound in perfect unison. That's that's when you know you've been up the correct amount. So that's how you would do a whole step end, uh, typical common notes in this pattern. The three most common notes to do a whole step. Is this this fourth upto 1/5? Theo? The next one will be this flat. Seventh, because it goes one flat. 345 flat. Seven. And then here's one taking this thing flat. Seventh air Spending it up to sound like this. G up to the side. That's a very common like I. Sometimes I use my pinky. A lot of times I just used my third finger. One thing I should mention is what I'm doing with these other fingers is while I'm doing this, Ben, that's a lot of pressure to put on one finger. So as I'm doing the bend, what I'm doing is I'm allowing ah, you know, my second or 3rd 2nd 3rd finger to help push. It's usually just mostly the finger right beside my bending finger. But why not let them take some of the pressure off your pinky as you're doing that? Or if I was doing it with my third finger, I'm usually just using this second finger to help this fingers usually kind of controlling the strings. I'm usually kind of muting the strings out, so I don't hear you don't want to sound like that. So that's That's another common place. This right here this note to sound like the route another really? Commonplaces this flat. Third here in an a minor scale of one to flat three. It's part of the pentatonic scale. So this see right here flat, sir, It sounds good to bend up to the fourth. So what you want to do is you want to go through and you want practices. Beds? No. Sometimes I'm typically I mostly bend off. But over the years, I've kind of gotten fund of pulling down one of the ones I just demonstrated. I usually go up, but I'll show you a couple of different Ben's where I like the pull down. So that was how you do. Ah, full step bend sometimes. Ah, in town and guitar tabs. Sometimes you just want to do 1/2 step. Then 1/2 step in is what I'm playing this note, and I wanted to sound like this one. Todo Like I said before, I'll check it will take the pitch by sliding up playing it. You can't do have stepped you probably not your pride. I could do 1/2 step in here. Eyes it's not gonna work in mind. A pendant that notes not in the scale. There might be some reason why you might do that. So, what I do with half step bends, I take a look at a scale. Um, and I see where, Like this note here. I want to target this. No, that's a great sounding note, but this is the second in a minor scale. So what I'll do is I'll go 12 and I want to bend up into that flat third. So I look for any places in a scale where I have two notes that I right beside each other, another place that I like to do really like to do 1/2 step end is, um, in a minor scale. I know I didn't teach your minor scale, but I'm just showing you a place where I would use 1/2 step bend. So yeah, this'll be one a This ABC that's 12 flat three in a minor scale. So what I like to do is it for this to here? I like to bend it up 1/2 step to the flat. Sergio way. Sounds really cool. Ah, so that's how, ah, you would do 1/2 step and, ah, full step bend on the guitar and he's in this position. These are not the only techniques you need to get down to be a legendary guitar player, But being able to play these techniques is essential to being a good guitar player. If you get these concepts down with a lot of practice, you will be well on your way to being a great guitar player. 7. Lead guitar techniques hammer ons: hammer ons. What a hammer on is when you have a note and I want to play this note right here. But I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pick it. What I would do is take my finger. I'm going to hammer it down on the strength things, hands on anything that's gonna hammer on. I'm playing this This no, very here, literally. By smacking my finger down, hammering it down on the neck, getting it to sound. So one thing you could do is you could give through this pattern here. This'll a minor pentatonic practice hammering down on the higher notes. They're going Go back. Thing is a good exercise. Video really helps strengthen your hands up. Ah, really good practice exercise that. This kind of like a little side note. Um, I've seen, like, a lot of pros, like just that reality and other people. They'll say that they'll do this kind of exercise just for a finger strength train where you basically take two fingers ago. You basically do this until you can't do it anymore. And then you do the you know, your 1st 3rd in this on. You do that. If you do that like once a day. Eventually after a week or two in your hand might if it starts hurting at some point because you're kind of where, you know, stressing out those muscles, then take a break. Ah, but that was just a little side note of a really good practice exercise to build up your strength in your hands. It will certainly help with doing hammer loans. That is how you do a Cameron. 8. Lead guitar techniques pull offs: for a pull off. What you're doing is we just talked about how to hammer something on. So for the pool off, where doing is what we already have already have these You need this finger down both fingers down. So you pluck the the high, this one here, you pluck the strings on. Then I pull my finger away, basically plucking this string with this finger. People don't realize you have to. You have to keep your first finger down so you can hear this second. So when you see some going, what they're actually doing is they're doing a hammer on and then a full doing tapping that kind of thing. You end up doing a lot of hammer on to pull off on, and it's very important that you you pulled down and come down. In a way, you're basically plucking with this finger. What a lot of people do, is they? They just lift up without port, like kind of plucky, plucking it, pulling it down. Eso it sounds like Then what happens the second that it sounds weaker than the first. You don't want that sound way. You want the the second note to sound as strong as the first. That's how you do a pool off 9. Lead guitar techniques vibrato: next. Let's talk about Librato. What is it? It's basically what you're doing. You I would like to do it at the end of afraid. What you're doing is it's almost like you don't like little Mini Benz. I'm taking a note instead of just playing it, not doing anything with it. I'm putting some vibrating, vibrating it back and forth. So it's kind like you do like little Mini bend your bending it down a little, bringing, letting come back and on to do that. Typically, I will where my thumbs touching back here. But the rest of my hand, I'm basically pulling down on the string and pulling down and letting and come back up. So my hands kind of going like this, Uh, and everyone has different kinds of vibrato. Some people you can really weird and fast. Ah, lot of rock stars have really wide vibrato. I remember here, and I was listening to someone speaking. They were saying about how librato is the one thing that you can really sound like yourself . Everyone knows how play the minor pentatonic pattern. But the librato is one thing that is going to be distinct toe how you play guitar, so you want to work on your vibrato, and it's a way that you can sound different than everybody else, just the way you approach it and plug and play. So what I do is, if I'm gonna dio puts a vibrato with usually like my first or second finger. What I do is kind of more of the B B King thing where I have my thumb here and I kind of rock my hand back and forth. That's a B B. King does it. It's pretty comfortable as well. My advice is just slow. Then you figure out what speed that feels right. I wouldn't get too fast. That sounds strange recording, so I would have it practice going slow first on, then speed it up. That's how you play abroad. 10. Lead guitar techniques double stops: that's right. Now we're gonna talk about double stops, double stops, air when you're playing two notes at same time. So you know, sometimes you might get a little bored just playing one note at a time, so there's no reason you can't try to notes at the same time. You'll hear that in a lot. A lot of guitar souls. So what I suggest is take your pattern, your minor pentatonic patterns and just anyplace where there's two notes. Besides, you can't do that up here because the pattern thes notes aren't beside each other. But you can't play playing these two lower notes independent tonic and then the fourth in the flat seventh. And then on the first ring, I could do these, so so gets a little money, and you wouldn't want to do it all the time. But if you kind of put it in there every now and then, if you're sounds cool, if you just kind of put him in there every now and then on that is what double stops are 11. Lead guitar techniques rhythm: something that you want to think about when you're practicing the lead guitar is you want to be varying up your rhythms s a lot of times. What I tell people is you force yourself to just play quarter, maybe just take a little solo. Just using eight notes like one and two. Theo. Um, maybe triplets like like triple triple at 123123 when you're when you're soloing and all the sudden you put a couple triplets in it has a different feel when it sounds really cool . A lot of guitar players do that. They slip in those triplets and it sounds Sounds great. The last rhythm that I would suggest using would be practicing 16th notes where you're going one e and the two e and three e and four e, and you're basically playing four notes evenly per beat. That's how you count it money and to be and three so for each foot, Technical one, and that would be doing 16th notes. So then when? When you're practicing, maybe not taking a solo in front of everybody, try different things, you know, do a few notes and 16th notes and mentally be thinking I'm going to switch to a different type of rhythm here on. You'll find that your your playing will sound much more interesting when you're, ah, changing rhythms. 12. Lead guitar techniques scales: one way that you can sound different on guitar is by learning different types of scales. The first scale that you wanna learn is a major scale. No rain means love me. So you want to learn major scales? I do have another course out on this platform where it's beginner guitar players guide to major scales. You might want to check that out where I show you how to play major scales that I show you how to play Major pentatonic scales e also show you how to play along chord tones in each of the five positions for the major scale. So major scale is one way a minor scale, another scale that you want experiment, most songs that you listen to, what we're gonna be in major minor scales. So you want to learn those scales really well, then there's other scales. If you're gonna play over dominant seventh chord, you may want to use a mix of Lydian scale. I like this guy. I think it sounds pretty exotic. That's I call that a mix of lean and flat nine flat 13 but there's there's other names for it, But my point is that you want to experiment with scales. Look up different scales just to see just to get different sounds out of your guitar gets. It gets pretty boring if you only use one pattern for like 20 years. It's very, very stale. So you want different scales, can be kind of a exotic and fun on. It can make your playing just more interesting to yourself and Teoh the people that are listening to you play. 13. Lead guitar techniques dynamics: dynamics. What are dynamics to me? What it means is how loud and how quiet I played. I think that's one thing that lead guitar players don't spend enough time doing is varying how their attack, how loud it is, how quiet it is. So when you're soloing practice like how quiet can Ugo in the practice making a little louder, louder? And it was really hard. Theo. Quiet. Just practice, getting real quiet, real soft. The dynamics will make you sound. I don't know about 10 times better, but it will make your playing sound much more sophisticated than if you're just kind of hammering it out all at the same level. Eso work on your dynamics, and you will sound a lot better as a lead guitar player. 14. Lead guitar techniques don't be affraid to fail: the last lead guitar technique or topic I'm going to talk about is, don't be afraid to fail. It's ah, when you're when you're practicing at home, you know, experiment with notes don't worry about, you know, everyone gets so caught up and I'm playing the right notes in the right licks that I think a lot of times they forget, uh, really have fun and play it, play a bunch of wrong notes. It's fine. Um, I like to play kind of like Stevie Ray Vaughan cover that kind of ah kind of a Texas shuffle kind of feel. So when I'm kind of messing around with that, I end up doing a lot of failing. Basically, I like to just kind of dramatically walk all around. And as I'm doing that, I'm coming up with different ideas, like, I don't know that I've ever done that before going. So you're doing that? I'm completely failing most of the time, but I might come across an idea that I like. I do that with rhythms from, um, that was a mess, but sometimes I'm like, Can I strum faster than thing gets Sloppy gets messy, but you find out what your limitations are. Eso as you're playing, you play wrong, notes the's air, the correct notes and then pentatonic matter. What's it sound like when you play with that? She sounds pretty good. Ah, and you won't know that until you kind of experiment mess around. And like I said, play some role notes. Uh, a lot of times what I do is I I walked between Ah, a lot of times it ends up sounding good, and it sounds like something that I've heard before on a on a recording. So don't be afraid to fail. Make a lot of, ah, a lot of noise and just have fun. Experiment. When you're performing live, you probably don't want to do that a ton because everyone's listening you. That's probably where you want to go back Teoh things that you know how to do properly. But, um, in the privacy of behind closed doors, you know, come up with a lot of licks and weird sounds on your own. That's my lead guitar techniques for this course