Electric Guitar Basics

1. Introduction: Hello. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Jason Rivera and I'll be taking you through this Electric Guitar class. This is a complete and structured electric Guitar Basics course, where every lesson builds on the one before. We're going to lay a solid foundation and then keep building on it as the class aggressive so that there's an organized and progressive flow to this course. In this class, I'll be covering Gear. You Will Need Electric Guitar Anatomy, How to Hold Your Electric Guitar and Pick how to Tune Your Electric Guitar. How to Fret Notes, Plugging In and Setting Your Tone. How to Read Tablature warm up exercises, How to Play five Electric Guitar Riffs, how Pitch Works on the Guitar. How to Read Chord Diagrams, five Essential Chords, Strumming, Beats and Rhythm. How to Play Two Songs. What for, for Time Means? Your First Scales. How to write your own music, Lead Guitar Examples and Tips, Tricks and resources. The class will give you plenty of opportunity to play along with me. You'll have the visuals of me playing the various techniques, riffs and songs and this class, and I encourage you to play along with me in the video lessons. I'm also going to provide you with a backing track to play along with, as well as Chord Diagrams and sheet Music. I've been playing and writing Music since I was a small kid. And I've been teaching music to students ages five and up, including private guitar lessons since 2012, I'm a full-time musician and composer. I read music for films, trailers, and e-learning courses, and I've played in bands and toward the US since I was a teenager. My goal with this course is to teach you the beginner electric guitar player at the basics of the instrument, including how to play a handful of Essential guitar chords and getting a good guitar tone so that you can move forward and learn your favorite songs and riffs and hopefully write your own music as well. My hope is to make this process Fun and easy for you. I want you to start playing electric guitar as soon as possible. Thank you for watching this intro. Now, grab your electric guitar and I'll see you in our first lesson. 2. Class Project: Hi, I'm so thrilled that you joined me here for this class. I want to quickly explain the project for this course. Throughout this class, we're going to be learning some of the most central electric guitar chords and techniques. I'm gonna give you some ideas and tips on how you might use these to start to create your own music. And I'll also introduce you to some music recording software so that you can try recording your own music. Once you've gone through the main sections of this course, I'm going to encourage you to have a go at writing your own song and record yourself playing it. Please don't be intimidated by this process. This has meant to be a FUN project where you get to explore Your Electric Guitar and your own creativity. So that's the intro to our class project. I hope that you're excited about it. And the next lesson we're going to talk about the gear that you'll need for this class. 3. Gear You Will Need: This lesson, we're going to cover the gear that you'll need to get started playing electric guitar. I wanted to make sure that I included this lesson just in case maybe you've played some guitar, maybe you have some experience playing acoustic guitar, but you need some guidance in terms of the gear that you'll need to play electric. If you already have an electric guitar and the gear that you need to get started, please feel free to skip ahead until the next lesson in this class. That being said, even if you have the gear you need, you might want to watch the rest of this lesson and learn about some different gear options for you. Let's get started with a broad overview of what you'll need. So first of all, for this class, you're going to need an electric guitar. That's probably obvious. Then you'll need an instrument cable. This is what will allow you to plug your guitar into your Amplifier. Speaking of amplifiers, you're going to need one of those two. And we'll talk about some good AMP options in a minute. If you're just getting started with Electric Guitar, a good go-to our fender Squier guitars. Squier guitars, our budget versions of fender guitars. You also might want to look into buying a pack. A pack includes a guitar and Amplifier, a gig bag, a strap, a Cable, and Picks. The basic Squier electric guitar started Pack runs for about $270. So a Pack and be a really easy and affordable way to buy everything you need to get started playing. If you want to opt for a nicer Guitar, maybe with better materials and a nicer sound. Fender makes the Player Series. For example, at this point in time, you could buy a fender Player Strat for around $800. As far as AMPS go, if you're not gigging or playing with a drummer, and you're just practicing and learning at home than something similar to this vox MINIGO3. What AMP is a great solution? It actually has a nice tone and it's great for practicing at home. If you want a nicer AMP with a better Tone, more volume, you could offer something like this. 12 watt fender Tone Master, Princeton Reverb Em. Many new Guitar AMPS made these days have a headphone jack. So you have the option of Plugging in your headphones so that you can play at any hour of the day or night. You won't disturb the people you live with or your neighbors. If it's important for you to have an AMP with a headphone jack, just double-check to make sure that the AMP you're considering buying has 11 other option in terms of Amps is this super portable Marshall MS2 Micro Guitar AMP. It's a one watt and that could easily fit inside your gig bag or your backpack. It has a headphone jack and weighs almost nothing. This AMP is awesome because you can literally play your electric guitar anywhere. And it costs about $60, then you'll have to buy an instrument cable. I use cables by a company called lava. Lava cables are really well-made and they last for a long time. Even if you're using them regularly at gigs, you can pick up an instrument cable from lava starting at around $30 and you'll need some Picks as well. I think 60 millimeter Picks are good versatile option. I like these 60 millimeter Picks made by Everly Guitar Picks. For a guitar strap. I use this one by a company called couch guitar straps based out of California. Going this route of buying your gear separately will cost you more. But if you think you're gonna be playing for awhile, then it's worth spending the extra money if you're able to, the quality of gear that you'll get will be higher than if you buy a pack. I'll be sure to attach links to my gear recommendations to this class. So be on the lookout for those. So here I covered the basics of what you'll need to get started playing electric guitar. Ultimately, it's up to you in terms of which route you want to take. Whether a starter pack is for you are buying the individual pieces of gear that you'll need. The bottom line is you're gonna have to spend at least a little bit of money to get the gear that you need. But as you've seen here, there are affordable options to get started. And the next lesson we're going to talk about the anatomy of the electric guitar 4. Electric Guitar Anatomy: This lesson is about the different parts of your electric guitar. The guitar has three parts, the body, the neck, and the Headstock. I like to think of it as a person with a body and neck and head. One of my Guitar students said that she thinks of the guitar as a giraffe. Since the neck is so long. Either way you get the idea. On the body, we have the bridge. And sometimes you rest your hand there for more stability, especially when working with certain picking techniques. Sometimes you also want to rest your hand there to change the tone of what you're playing. Here we have the string saddles, and that's where the Strings pass through the bridge. These are the pickups and those Pick up the vibrations from the Strings and convert them into an electrical signal. These pickups control the tone of the Guitar to very large degree. This, which here is the pickup selector. These knobs here control the volume and the tone when you're plugged in. Depending on the model of guitar that you have, this configuration here will vary. Let's spend a minute diving into these four parts of the electric guitar since they affect Your Tone so much. So if I turn the volume knob up, I'll hear my guitar. If I turn the volume knob counterclockwise, then I'm turning the volume off. If I turn the tone knob counterclockwise, then I get a darker and warmer tone. And if I turn the tone knob clockwise, then the sound gets brighter. My guitar has to pickups the bridge pickup and the neck pickup. The pickup selector lets you choose which pickup you want to use. With the selector all the way back. You using the bridge pickup. If I move this selector to the middle position, I'm using both pickups and it sounds warmer. If I move the selector in this direction, then I'm using the neck pickup and the sound is even warmer. So I encourage you to play around with these different settings and options on your guitar. These four elements have a major impact on your sound. So you'll want to get to know them on the body. We also have strapped buttons. There's one here, and there's one here. And this is where you attach your guitar strap. And here we have the output jack on the bottom, which is where you plug in your instrument Cable. Some guitars have this output jack on the front of the body in this area, Let's talk about the neck. We have the fretboard and that's the top surface of the neck where we press down on the Strings. These pieces of wire here that are embedded into the wood of the fretboard or the Fret wires. The spaces between the Fret wires or the frets. This is Fret one Fret to Fret, three, Fret for Fret five, and so on. Guitar is usually either have dots or some kind of shape or design on the fretboard. And these are called frap marker's position markers or inlays. These shapes help us to find our place on the neck quicker. Think of them as landmarks on the fretboard. You'll see these markers on Fred's 3,579.12. When you hit Fret 12, which often has two dots than the pattern repeats. Here we have the nut, and that's the start of the fretboard. You can think of it as Fret zero. The Strings pass through them not to attach to the Headstock. There are six notches and the nut, one for each of the strings to pass through. Then we have the Headstock. This is where you're tuning pegs are. These are what we use to Tune the Strings. And your guitar might also have a string tree and that helps to keep the Strings in place. So those are the different parts of the electric guitar. And our next lesson we're going to look at how to hold Your Guitar and your Pick 5. Hold Your Guitar and Pick: This lesson is about how to hold the guitar while sitting down and How to Hold the Guitar Pick. First, let's talk a bit about posture. The most important thing is that you stay relaxed. You want to sit up nice and straight at the edge of your chair with your feet planted firmly on the ground. We want to be relaxed but sitting up straight and keep your shoulders nice and loose. You want to make sure your seat doesn't have arm rests so that you're free to move your arms and your guitar around. There are some designs of guitars that can be a bit awkward to Hold. Hopefully your guitar has a nice curve right here on the bottom. This way, it'll be easy to rest it on your leg. Rest of guitar right there on your leg. And then how getting close to your body. Then drape your right arm over the body and that'll give you extra support. Then you want to aim the guitar neck out just a little bit on an angle. And you wanna make sure you're Headstock is just a tad higher than parallel to the ground and your left elbow should be below your wrist. Next, we're gonna look at how to hold the Guitar Pick. Sometimes you'll hear these referred to as a plectrum. To hold a Pick properly, we're going to use our thumb and index finger. So we take our index finger and bend them knuckle. We want the pointed side of the Pick, pointing away from our right hand to the left. Then we take the Pick and just place it on the side of the index finger there and grip it with the thumb. We want to have some flexibility in the Pick, but also we want to have control over it. Don't put too much pressure on the Pick, just a medium amount of pressure. And you want to keep your wrists nice and loose when you're strumming. There are different thicknesses of Picks. Thicker Picks allow you to dig into the Strings and are great for lead Guitar. Really light Picks or more flimsy, but are great for playing chords. I'm using a 60 millimeter Pick. This is a medium thickness. It's a great pick to start out since it's so versatile. When you're Strumming, aim to strum down the middle of the Guitar. My guitar that's between these two pickups. You can experiment with different tones by playing closer to the bridge or towards the fretboard. So in this lesson, we covered how to hold a guitar while sitting down. How to hold a Pick and where to strum. And our next lesson we're going to learn how to Tune Your Electric Guitar 6. How to Tune Your Guitar: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to Tune Your Guitar using an app. Tuning, especially for beginning players, can be confusing, but it's really easy once you get the hang of it and it's essential to sounding good, Make sure to always Tune Your Guitar before playing. The first step is to get a tuner. There are many types of tuners out there. I recommend the fender Tune App, which is free and available for iOS and Android for your phone or tablet. Also, most digital audio workstations such as Cubase or Logic Pro, have built-in tuners that you can use. I also recommend that you get yourself a Headstock Tuner. Eclipse right onto the Headstock of the Guitar. And when you turn the Tuner non, you can see which nodes you're playing. One nice thing about a Headstock Tuner is that it operates by picking up the frequencies and the vibrations of the string that you're plucking. So even if you're in a really noisy room, you can still Tune accurately. Another great option is to use a Pedal tuner. This is also a really accurate way to Tune, and one that I use when I'm recording myself. A standard guitar has six strings, and each one is tuned to their own Pitch. There are many different tunings that we can tune our Guitar to. But we're gonna be looking at standard tuning in this class. So if we start with the thickest string closest to the ceiling, which is the sixth string, that's E. The next one, the fifth string is a, the fourth string is D. The third string is G, the second string is B, and the first string is E. We can use a very simple phrase to help us remember what note each string is supposed to be Tune to. If we start with the thinnest string, it's Easter. Bunnies. Get dizzy. At Easter. You can come up with your own phrase to help you remember the string names. The more ridiculous the phrase is, the more likely you are to remember it. Something worth mentioning at this point, because it's relevant to tuning or the term sharp and flat. When it comes to tuning, if something is too sharp, it means we've gone too high in pitch and pass the note that we're tuning to. If a node is flat, we haven't tuned high or tight enough. Or we've tuned the string too far down, or the string is to Slack. Let me give you a really quick tour of the fender Tune App. I want to do this to make sure you have the right settings to Tune with. So I have opened up the app and I click on auto tuner at the top. Then in the top-right corner there's a little icon with three sliders. I click on that and it opens up the Tune settings. Then down below, I select electric guitar. You can also use the chromatic mode Setting if you'd like to appear at the top. But to avoid confusing for beginners, I'd recommend selecting the electric guitar Setting down below. If I scroll down a bit, you'll notice that the tuning is set to standard, and that's what you'll want to set it to. I hit Done in the top-right corner. And I'm all set OneNote here. If you're using a tuning app, makes sure that the mic on your smartphone or tablet is pointed towards your AMP and then close proximity to it. This way, the tuning app will be able to hear your notes from your guitar easily as a heads up, I've purposely detuned a couple of strings here so that you can watch me dial the tuning in. We're going to use the fender Tune App and start with the lowest string, E. We can see that this string is too loose or flat. So what you wanna do here is follow the E string up the neck so that you can see which tuning peg that it's connected to. You'll wanna do that with each of the strings as your tuning them until you can get a feel for where the strings are in relationship to the tuning pegs. So going back to the low E, I'm going to tighten it up by turning the tuning peg towards this way, towards the Headstock. And eventually we'll get to E. Now, as I get closer to the note that I'm tuning to, my turns on the tuning pegs will be smaller. There we go. If you're using the fender Tune App, it will tell you when you're in tune by flashing green. Another note, when you're typing a string, be sure not to type in too much or you can snap that string. The next string is a. This one is also flat. Again, make your terms very subtle. There we go, A's and two The next string is D. That one's actually in Tune. So we don't have to do anything to that one. The next string is G. This one's really flat. So just as a reminder, I'm going to follow that G all the way up into the Headstock. And there we go. That's the tuning peg that I want to turn. Again, it's flat. So I'm turning the tuning peg this way, getting closer. Now. There we go. The next string is B. This one is actually too sharp. So I'm going to flatten the note by turning the second string tuning peg towards the bridge of the Guitar this way. Here we go to bees in the last string is another II, the high E string number one. This one's also too sharp. So again, I'm going to turn that tuning peg this way. There we go, we're going Tune. I use the fender Tune App here, but you can also use a Headstock Tuner or a Pedal tuner. And now our guitar sounds nice and Intune. Overtime, your ears will become more sensitive and you'll be able to hear when your guitar is even slightly out of tune. In this lesson, we covered how to Tune are Guitar using an app and we learned a simple phrase to remember our string names at this point in the class, I want to make sure that you get yourself a tuner and Tune Your Guitar. And the next lesson we're going to learn how to Fret Notes properly 7. How to Fret Notes: This lesson is about how to Fret Notes on your electric guitar. This is such an important topic that I feel like it warrants its very own lesson. We're gonna be focusing on our fretting hand here. We need to know where to press down on the fretboard. Whether you're playing a chord or a single note, you want to press your finger down right behind the fret wire. It gives you a nice clean sound and it makes it easier to play. This is really important. If you're pressing down too far back away from the fret wire, the string starts to buzz. If you're pressing down on top of the fret wire, you're gonna be muting the string. And you want to slide your finger back a bit until you're right behind the fret wire and give this a try. Place your index finger on the first fret of the finished, tracing the high E and just strum down and make sure that you haven't nice clear tone. Here are some tips. In order to get a nice clear tone, you'll need to squeeze your index finger against your thumb behind the neck. So your thumb will be pointed up behind the neck like this. Like you're giving someone a thumbs up. And then you squeeze it against your index finger, which is pressing on whatever string you need to be pressing on, and whatever Fret. Remember you want to Fret the node right behind the fret wire. And when you Fret the note, you should also try and press down on your fingertip. This brings me to another tip. If you have long fingernails on your left hand, you're going to want to cut them back short. If you have long nails, they're gonna get in the way of fretting notes. For those of you out there that like having long nails. I'm sorry, there's no way around this. Whenever I have a private Guitar student and they're having trouble either holding down Chords are playing melodies. I go through those four Tips because it's usually any one or a combination of those that will get them playing clear with less effort. In this lesson, we covered how to Fret Notes properly and we went over specific tips with this. In the next lesson, we're going to learn how to plug In and Set our Tone 8. Plug In and Set Your Tone: This lesson is an introduction and how to plug your guitar into your AMP. How to connect your guitar pedals, and how to dial in Your Tone. Our AMP is what allows us to hear our electric guitar, but it also has the ability to color our sound in many ways. Follow this lesson step-by-step, so that you have a starting point and some guidance to help you to find your own sound. Exploring sound is a big part of learning to play the electric guitar. So use this lesson as a jumping off point to find a tone that you really like. So let's take a look at how to amplify or sound. First, make sure your AMP is plugged in. But turned off. I mentioned earlier that you'll need an instrument cable. One end of that instrument cable plugs into the output jack of your guitar. And the other end of the cable plugs into the input jack on your app. On your guitar, turn your volume and your tone knobs all the way open. And my case, clockwise. Make sure you're AMS volume is turned all the way down. And then turn your AMP on, then start to turn the volume up on your AMP. Uh, my app here, I only need to turn up to just a little bit past to about two-and-a-half to hear my guitar. Now let's go over how to connect a Pedal to your setup. If you have an Overdrive Pedal or any Pedal, you'll need to instrument cables. And you'll need either a 9-volt battery or a power supply to power your Pedal. Make sure you're amplifier is off with the volume on the AMP turned all the way down. Then make sure you're Pedal is turned off to, you'll take one end of your instrument cable and plug it into your guitars output Jack. Then take the other end of that cable in, plug it into your pedals input jack. With the other instrument cable, you'll take one end and plug it into the petals output Jack, and then take the other end of that cable and plug it into the AMPS input jack. Then you can turn on your Pedal. And then turn on your AMP. Most pedals have a light that tells you that the Pedal is turned on. Once the Amazon you can start to turn the volume on the AMP up and you're all set. So now let's look at creating a nice distorted Rock Tone. I mentioned the bridge pickup. So I want you to activate that bridge pickup. Your pickups electors should be all the way back towards the bridge. You should already have your tone and volume knob set to ten. Or my case here, I don't have numbers on my knob, so I've just turned the tone and volume knobs on my guitar all the way clockwise. So with that all set, let's take a quick look at your am settings. The settings from AMTA ample very. On your AMP, you can set your travel middle and base knobs to 12:00, or in my case here to five. Now if your AMP has Overdrive settings, that's great. If your AMP has Overdrive, you can also set your Overdrive level knob to 12:00. If your AMP doesn't have Overdrive knobs, like my AMP here, then you'll need an Overdrive Pedal, which is what I have hooked up to my setup here. So with your Overdrive knob on your AMP or your Overdrive Pedal, you can start to play with the settings. On my Overdrive Pedal. I'm going to turn it on. Then I'm going to set the level knob to about 10:00. On the Overdrive Setting on AMPS, you'll have an Overdrive volume knob and you can adjust that to hover loud you want to be, now I'm going to turn my Drive knob all the way up. So with those basic settings on my AMP and Overdrive Pedal, now I'm just going to play around with the settings until I get a sound that I really like. And I encourage you to do the same with your setup for the purpose of this demo, I'm just going to play one note and let it ring out. Why make some adjustments? So I'm going to take my travel Setting down on my end. But now you can hear Tone has more things. You could also go in the other direction with your treble knob and see what that does. You can hear how that's a pretty drastic change. If you have a middle knob on your AMP, you can play with that. I'm going to play around with the base now. I'm going to turn the base all the way up. I could also turn it all the way down. So you just need to play around with these settings to get a sound that you like. For Iraq sound, we're going to want a little bit more trouble. And then go a little lower in the setting on the base knob. So I'm liking the way this sounds for an Overdrive and Rock sound. Once you've played around a bit with the settings on your guitar, you can also notice that the volume knob not only changes the volume, but it changes the tone. When the volume knob is turned down, the Tone is cleaner. Increase the volume setting, you get a more distorted tone. And that distorted Tone is a really common and useful guitar tone, especially for rock styles. One last note here. I think from this lesson you now realize how important your AMP is tear sound. I encourage you to plug in and play it often. But also be mindful of playing a really loud volumes. Not only for considering who might be near your space when you're playing, but also for being mindful of protecting your hearing. In this lesson, we covered how to plug in and get a good Rock Tone. And the next lesson we're going to cover how to Read Tablature 9. How to Read Tablature: This is an introduction to tablature or tabs. You can think of tabs as a shorthand form of reading music. Once we learn how to read tabs, we can unlock how to play riffs on the guitar. Tab is a number system that tells us where to place our hands on the fretboard. When you look at tab on paper, the first line represents the first string, the high E string. The second line down represents the second string, the B string. Then we have the third string, the G string. Then we have the fourth string, the D string, and then we have the fifth string, the a string. And then finally the low E string is at the bottom. It says if you'd laid your guitar on your lap and you're looking down at it. So each line on the tab represents a string on the guitar. And the numbers you see going across the tab represent a fret. We read these numbers from left to right. For example, a zero means to play a string open. If you saw a zero on the fifth line down, you'd play the a string open for you saw a three on the fourth line down, you'd play the third fret of the D string. If you then saw two twos on the second line down, you'd play the B string twice on the second fret. You'll notice that there's also a line going down here and that's called the bar line. The music between the bar lines is called either a bar or a measure. Let's read and play a couple of tabs. Examples. This is example one. Let's play bar one. So we're playing a zero on string six, hasZero on string 50, on strings 4.0 and string three. Okay, onto b2, we're playing the second string, first fret. And then the second string, second fret. Then we play the first string, first fret, and then the first string, third fret. Now let's look at an example where we play more than one note at a time when you're playing two or more strings at the same time, the Fred numbers are stacked on top of one another. Let's check out a second example here. In bar one, we're playing the fifth and sixth strings together open. Then in the next measure we have the third and fourth strings played together open. Then in the last measure we're playing strings 1.2 together open. In this lesson, we covered how to read tabs. So I hope this intro to tabs is making sense to you. The more that you read tab, the easier it will be to read. And we'll use tab throughout this course. So it'll get easier and easier for you to read as we progress through the material in this class. In the next lesson, we're going to learn a couple of warm-up exercises 10. Warm Up Exercises 1 & 2: Okay, In this lesson we're gonna get into a nice warm up exercise to get us loose and more comfortable with the fretboard. So here are two great warm up exercises to stretch your fingers and to build flexibility and strength and your fretting hand, I recommend to play these exercises at the start of your practice session for a couple of minutes. So I'm going to remind you about what I mentioned in an earlier lesson about finger placement. Remember you want to place your fingers down on the Fret, right behind the fret wire. Also, I recommend tapping your foot while you play these exercises. And this will help you keep it nice and even Rhythm. So with this exercise, we'll be playing on the first string, the high E string. We're going to play the first string open four times. Then press on the first fret of the first string, and we're going to play that four times. We're going to press down with finger one or index finger. Then we're going to press down on the second fret. Right there. I was pressing with my second finger. So we've got open. First fret, second fret. Then we'll add our third finger onto the third fret. And finally, we'll put our fourth finger onto the fourth fret. So this is the whole exercise put together. Have you noticed there's a repeat sign surrounding measures 1.5. So you want to play the entire exercise at least four times. Why don't you try playing this along with me? I'll count us in 1234. Last time. With your strumming hand, you can keep it simple and use all downstreams. Also, you want to make sure that your thumb is pointing up towards the ceiling like you're giving a thumbs up. I mentioned that in an earlier lesson. Placing your thumb on the neck like this makes it easier to stretch your fingers across the fretboard. So what this exercise you want to take a really slow, slow and even as possible. If you're using a metronome, you can try setting it to around 60 beats per minute. If this exercise is feeling good, you can also try extending the exercise by ascending up the fretboard from the open string to Fret for like we did on our first exercise. Then you can try descending down the fretboard. So starting from the fourth fret, we go So this second exercise and its entirety sounds like this. And you should repeat this exercise at least four times as well. Now try this with me. How kanamycin 1234. Second time through time through. Fourth time through. In this lesson, we learned to grade warm up exercises to help us stretch our fretting hand. In the next lesson, we're going to learn our first riff 11. Riff 1: Okay, In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play our first riff. Here's what it sounds like. This riff has played entirely on the low E string. We're going to use all downstreams and the right-hand. So we're going to start by pressing on the sixth string, on the fifth fret with our first finger. And we're going to play that four times. Then we move up to the seventh fret with our third finger and play that four times. Then we move down to the third fret and press down with finger one and play that four times. Then in the last measure, we stay on the third fret for two beats and then release our finger to play the open E string for two beats. If we put that together, it sounds like this. Let's try that together. I'm going to pick up the pace here and I'm going to Canvas and 1234. Third time through, time through. So there's your first riff. Congratulations. In this lesson we learned our very first riff. In the next lesson we're going to learn how Pitch Works on the Guitar. 12. How Pitch Works: In this lesson, we're going to learn how Pitch Works on the Guitar. A Pitch is the sound of a note. On the Guitar, we have a range of high pitches and low pitches. And Music Pitch can move down or it can move up when we're playing notes that are moving towards the Headstock. They're going lower in pitch, their descending. Let's take a listen to that. Notes moving towards the bridge of the Guitar are ascending. They're moving up in pitch and getting higher. Let's listen to that. So as you move on the fretboard towards the bridge, Notes are going higher. As you move on the fretboard towards the Headstock, Notes or descending and getting lower. Now we also have to look at the other way that pitches move down or up on the fretboard. Now we're looking at playing across the strings in this direction. So the Notes on the low E string moving towards the high E, the first string are moving up in pitch. So here I'm on the sixth fret, and I'm going to walk across from the sixth string to the first string, one string at a time. Hopefully you can hear that the nodes are going up and Pitch and getting higher as I change Strings towards the high E string, if we play notes from the first string, the high E string, towards the sixth string, the low E string, we're moving down and Pitch, we're descending. Now, let's explore OneNote a and different places on the fretboard. First we'll find an a on the D string seven Fret. Now we're going to move to an a node higher up in Pitch. We're gonna move up to the G string, 14th fret. This second a is higher in pitch. We've moved towards the bridge, and also higher towards the first string. Let's play the a on the D string seventh fret again. From there, Let's find a lower pitched, a note on the sixth string, fifth fret. So right here I've moved down towards the Headstock, but also down towards the sixth string, so that a is lower pitched on the sixth string. In this lesson, we learned a broad overview of how Pitch Works on the Guitar. If you're a beginner player, please spend some time with this lesson will help you to understand the fretboard better. Free up your playing. And our next lesson we're going to learn another riff 13. Riff 2: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play another riff on the low E string. Here's what it sounds like. So for this riff we're only playing the low E string. We play the open E string three times. Then on beat four of measure one, we play the third fret of the low E string with our first finger. Then in the next measure, we play the open low E string again and let that ring out for four beats. Then in measure three, we play the third fret of the low E string again, and let that bring out for three beats. Three. Then on before of measure three, we play the sixth string third fret again, and let that ring out for an additional four beats. So if we put those four measures together, it sounds like this. With your strumming hand, you should use all downstrokes in this Rhythm. For this riff, we have whole dotted half and quarter notes. We'll get into more detail later on in this class in terms of Rhythm and counting. But let's go measure by measure and quickly talk about the rhythm of this riff. In measure one, we have four quarter notes. And measure two, we have one whole note. In measure three, we have a dotted half note, which is equal to three beats, followed by a quarter note on beat four to three. A measure for we just hold the quarter note from B34 of measure three and let it continue to wring out for all four beats of measure for this Rhythm as a whole note tied to beat four of measure three. Let me play measured three into measure 41234. Use your ears and read the tab that I've created as a reference for the Rhythm. Okay, so now that we've gone through this riff measure by measure, let's play through it four times together. So I'm gonna pick up the tempo here and I'll count us in. Here we go. 123, 4 s 23. Third time. Fourth time through. Nice job. You can probably hear me tapping my foot. This is helping me keep a nice steady pace. I'm just tapping quarter notes with my right foot as I play 12341234, I encourage you to tap your foot ball playing this riff as well. I think you'll find that it'll help you keep a nice steady rhythm, okay, so I hope that this is starting to click for you. You can always go back and re-watch any parts of this lesson that you need to. And this lesson we learned another riff, and we learned about different types of rhythms. And our next lesson we're going to learn our third riff 14. Riff 3: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play another riff on the a string and low E string. Here's what it sounds like. So for this riff, we start on the a string. On the a string, we're going to play Fret one and Fret four. Then we jumped down to the low E string. And we Play Fritz 2.4. You can play this riff with your first finger to get your bearings. That looks and it sounds like this. You start on the first fret of the a string. You jump up to the fourth fret. You go back down to the first Fret. And then you jumped to the low E string on the fourth fret. Then you stay on that low E and move down to the second fret. Then jump up to the fourth fret. And then the riff starts over. If you're a bit more of an experience Player, I would recommend using three different fingers to play this riff. You assign one finger to each Fret. This will make it easier and more efficient to play. Whichever fingers you use to Fret the notes, use all downstreams and your right hand. So every time you play the first Fret, you use your first finger. Whenever you play the fourth fret, you use your fourth finger. Whenever you play the second Fret, you use your second finger. Let's play this riff four times together. I'll count us in 1234. In this lesson, we learned our third riff. Have FUN playing this riff. In our next lesson, we're going to learn how to Read Chord Diagrams 15. Reading Chord Diagrams: This lesson, I'm going to show you how to Read Chord Diagrams. When we're learning Chords and songs, we're gonna be using chord diagrams. Sometimes chord diagrams are referred to as chord boxes. A chord diagram is a representation of the fretboard. And they're drawn as if the guitar has held up like this. The vertical line on the left-hand side of the chord diagram is the thickest string, the sixth string. The vertical line on the right-hand side is the finished during the first string, there are six vertical lines on the diagram. In each of those lines represents a guitar string. The thick line at the top of the diagram represents the nut of the Guitar and the horizontal lines beneath the NADH represent each of the frets. So we have Fret, one Fret to Fret three, Fret for Fret five, and so on. The notes that are threaded are represented by circles with numbers in them. These circles are placed on a specific Fret and a specific string. The numbers inside of the circles represent the suggested finger that you should use to Fret the note. The fingers are numbered one through four. Your index finger is one and your pinky is for the finger numbers on the diagrams are recommendations. Sometimes I'll use different fingers for a Chord if it's more efficient or comfortable for me. And also sometimes you want to adjust the fingers that using because it makes more sense, especially when you're moving from one particular core to another. But the Chord Diagrams that I'll be showing you in this course will have the recommended fingerings to use. And it's best to try to stick to them. At first. With many Chords, you'll see these X's and O's above the X means don't play that string, and 0 means to play that string open without fretting it. Here's an example, the a Minor Chord, the X above the sixth string means don't play that string, the OH, above the fifth string. And first string means to play that string open and let it ring out. In other words, play that string but don't fret that string, just let it ring out and resonate open. You'll see these X's and O's and almost every chord diagram when it comes to the x's, that symbol is telling us not to play that string. And you can do that in a couple of ways. You can avoid playing that string altogether. Or you can use your thumb or one of your fingers to mute that string. Muting with your thumb or fingers gives you a bit more freedom with your Strumming. For example, what they, a Minor Chord. I use my left hand thumb to mute the sixth string. So that sixth string with the X above it, one ring out when I'm playing the a Minor Chord. In this lesson, we covered how to Read Chord Diagrams and we learned the finger numbers on your fretting hand. Make sure that you download the supplemental materials that I provided for this class wearing included Chord Diagrams for you to review. Have a little patience with yourself through this process. Once you get the hang of reading Chord Diagrams, that will become second nature for you. And our next lesson we're going to start to learn about Chords 16. Introduction to Chords: The next several lessons we're going to focus on learning our first Chords. These chords are gonna be played in the first position covering the first three frets, and these will be open Chords. The goal of learning these Chords is twofold. To be able to play songs with them, and also to use them in writing our own music. And that's what we'll be doing. We'll learn these Chords and then apply them to learning a new song and writing our own music. These are some of the Essential Chords we need to know to be able to play lots of songs moving forward. So these upcoming lessons, we'll focus on these chords. I highly encourage you to Google search these Chords and you'll be able to find more songs that use them, including ones by your favorite artists. This way you'll be applying the Chords to learn songs that you know and love. And our next lesson, you're going to start learning your first chord, E minor 17. E Minor Chord: The next handful of lessons we're going to start learning our first Chords. A Chord as a combination of different notes played at the same time. In order to do this on the Guitar, you strum more than one string at a time while forming various shapes. And your fretting hand, why is it useful to learn these open chords? The cortisone I'm going to teach you in this class will help you to start to build your Chord vocabulary. Learning Chords will open up hundreds, if not thousands of songs for you to learn. In this lesson, we're going to learn our first chord, E minor. Here's what it sounds like. To make the E minor, we only need two fingers. We put our first finger on the second fret of the a string, and our second finger on the second fret of the D string. Then we strum all six strings. Make sure your fingers are arched off of the open strings. And your thumb is pointed up behind the neck. And you want to bend your knuckles and press down with the tips of your fingers right behind the fret wire. This Chord uses a lot of open strings, so it's a good first core to learn. Let's practice this chord by taking our fingers off the Guitar and then try building the E minor again. Your first finger goes to the a string, second fret, and your second finger goes to the second fret of the D string. And that's how you play the E minor chord. As I mentioned, you want to press down on the strings with the tips of your fingers. This can be painful at first, so just make sure to take breaks from playing. You can shake your handout. Eventually you'll build up calyces on your fingertips. And once you have calluses, it'll be easier to hold down the chord shapes. Also, you don't want to accidentally mute strings that you're not pressing down. This usually happens when your fingers are flattened like they are right here. So pressing down with your fingertips will help you with this if you're having this issue. Also, you wanna make sure that you have some space between the palm of your hand and the fretboard right in here. You also need to build up strength and your fretting hand. And it'll probably be uncomfortable to hold down Chords in the beginning. Like I mentioned earlier, just make sure how to take breaks from playing. If you're chord is not ringing out clearly, you can cross-check that each string is sounding properly one-by-one. So you form the chord and then start with the sixth string and work your way to the first string. You can hear how the Strings are ringing out nice and clear. If your core does not sound in clear, also double-check that you're fretting the notes right behind the fret wire, like we talked about before. So in this lesson, we learned our first chord, E minor. I want you to practice this chord by taking your fingers off of the Guitar and then try building the E minor again. What we're doing with this little exercise is building up our muscle memory to be able to eventually form the chord shape quickly. Please download the chord diagrams that I've included with this class for reference. The next lesson we're going to learn the D chord 18. D Chord: This lesson, we're going to learn how to play the D major chord. This is another open chord and that's a really important one to learn since it's so commonly used, Here's what it sounds like. The D Chord uses three fingers. It's a Chord where your fretting hand fingers are bunched up a bit. So you'll have to get used to playing this one. To play this chord, put finger one on the second fret of the G string. Finger to is gonna go on the second fret of the high E string. And finger three is gonna go on the third fret of the B string. And you strum down from your open D string, the fourth string. Your D chord probably won't sound clear when you're first trying it. But there are some things to look out for to help you with this. Remember to place your fingers right behind the fret wire. Also be sure to arch your fingers and play with your fingertips so that you're not accidentally muting any Strings. When you arch your fingers this way. It'll also help you to apply just enough pressure with your fretting hand so that the Strings ring out beautifully without straining your hand. As a reminder, just like with the first chord that we learned, you can always self-diagnose any problems by picking each string individually. And then you can look at your fretting hand and see where any problems might be. Maybe you're pressing the string down on the fret wire, which will cause muting. Remember you want to press the string down right behind the fret wire. Just like we did with our first chord. Let's practice this D chord by taking our hand off the Guitar and then building the D again. Practice this D chord to get comfortable with it. We're gonna be linking it with other Chords and the upcoming video lessons. So in this lesson we learned a D chord, and now we've learned to Chords and we're building up our Chord vocabulary. And the next lesson we're going to learn our third chord C. So let's jump right into that now 19. C Chord: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play another open chord, the C Chord. Here's how it sounds. Will use three fingers to play this chord. And you have to stretch your fretting hand quite a bit across three frets. To build a C chord. You put finger one on the first fret of the B string. Add your second finger to the second fret of the D string. Then we add our third finger to the third fret of the a string. And we strum down from the a string. Makes sure all the strings are ringing out clearly for you. If not, remember the arch your fingers and plan your fingertips and make sure your thumb is straight up behind the neck. Let's draw it again. Now let's take our hand away and we're gonna build a C chord again. Finger one goes on the first fret of the B string. Finger two goes on the second fret of the D string. And finger three goes on the third fret, the a string. And we strum down from the a string. Make sure your patient with yourself, this court takes some time to get used to playing. You're stretching your fretting hand across three frets. So just build the Chord one finger at a time and be patient as you build up your fretting hand strength and flexibility. So in this lesson we learned another new chord C. Remember to download the chord diagrams that I'm attaching to this class for your reference. The next lesson we're going to learn our fourth chord, G. So let's jump right in 20. G Chord: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play another open Chord, the G chord. There are some variations as to how you can play the G chord, but in this lesson we're going to learn the standard version. Here's how it sounds. To make the G chord shape. We place finger one on the second fret of the a string. Then we take finger to and place it on the third fret of the low E string. And then you place finger three on the third fret of the high E string, and we strum all six strings. That's the most common way to Fret the G chord. I'm gonna give you an alternative way of creating the G chord. We place finger one on the second fret of the a string. Then we take finger to and place it on the third fret of the low E string. And then you place finger four on the third fret of the high E string, and we strum all six strings. This alternative way of creating the G chord is a version that I like to use. So feel free to learn both versions if you'd like. This chord is a little tricky because it requires you to stretch your hand across the fret board in this direction. If you stick with it over time, your hand will become more flexible and stronger. Remember to play on your fingertips so that you don't unintentionally mute Strings. And apply just enough pressure with your left hand that had the string ring out beautifully. Let's practice this G chord by taking our hand off the Guitar and then building the G again. Finger one goes to the second fret of the a string. Your second finger goes to the third fret of the low E string, and your third finger goes onto the third fret of the high E. And we strum all six strings. So practice taking your hand away from the fretboard and then try to form the G chord as quickly as you can. Just like with our other chords that we've learned. We're building muscle memory and our fretting hand. And getting comfortable with this G chord will allow you to play many of your favorite songs. As a reminder, if you're having problems with the G chord, you can always self-diagnose the Chord by picking one string at a time. When first learning the G chord, because your hand is stretching across the neck, you'll probably be muting Strings unintentionally. As a reminder, just try to play on your fingertips. Be sure to practice this G chord to get comfortable with it. So in this lesson we learned another Essential open Chord, the G chord. In the next lesson, we're going to learn about Strumming Beats and Rhythm 21. Strumming and Rhythm: We're almost ready to play our first song, but first we have to cover Strumming. To do this, I'm going to introduce just a little bit of music theory. But don't get nervous. I'm only going to touch on enough Music Theory to enable us to play popular songs at the foundation of strumming his posture. Earlier in this class, I talked about posture when playing guitar. Please refer back to that lesson if you need to, make sure you're using good posture when holding the guitar and strumming. And also in that same video lesson, I demonstrated how to hold the Guitar Pick. Definitely go back and re-watch that lesson. If you need a refresher, once you're in a good posture, you're relaxed and you've got a good grip on your Pick. Let's try Strumming with all downstreams and the right hand. And we'll just let the fretting hand relax off the Guitar. Or we can use it to mute the Strings by gently touching all six strings. So we're just moving our strumming hand down towards the floor. Most of this movement is going to come from the elbow and my wrist is nice and relaxed. This is called the downstream. Now let's try strumming the opposite direction. That's called an upstream. Now let's combine the downstream and the upstream together. We're just going to alternate down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. While Strumming that pattern, you can count 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. This down, Up pattern is one of the most useful patterns to learn when starting out. Now let's talk a bit about Beats. You might have heard musicians count each other in with 1234. These counts, or Beats are references that allow us to play with other musicians. These Beats are grouped together and what we call bars or measures. And usually these Beats on groups of four. So in most songs you count 1234. Another way of saying that is that in most popular music there are four beats per bar. And we make a note of that with something called a time signature. The most common time signature is called 44. There are many other Time signatures out there such as 345468, etcetera. For right now, we're going to focus on for, for time. Let's count some Beats together. And for, for time. Here we go. 1234, 1234, 1234, 1234. Now let's dive a little bit deeper into Rhythm. Let's talk about different types of rhythms we might play. Let's start with whole Notes. A whole node is equal to four beats. So in four-four time that takes up all the Beats and 1 bar to play a whole note. We Strom on beat one and let the note wring out while we count 1234. Let's try this out. Let's form the E minor chord that we've already learned. Remember to play E Minor, our first finger goes to the second fret of the a string, and your second finger goes to the second fret of the D string. And we strum all six strings. So to play a whole note, you want to strum down on beat one of the bar and let it ring out while you're counting the rest of the Beats or the measure like this. 234. Now let's try this together. I strongly suggest counting out loud while you do this exercise. Okay, Here we go. Grab the E minor chord, and I'll count us in 1234234. Great job on whole nodes. Now let's play some half notes. Half notes or equal to two Beats or two counts. So to complete a measure, you need two half notes. So you need to strum down two times per measure. For example, 234. Okay, let's play half notes together. We'll play the E minor chord, count out loud and play a downstream on B1 and B3 of the measure. Here we go, 12342. Okay, now let's play some quarter notes. Quarter notes, or equal to one beat. So 1 bar has four quarter notes to it. It sounds like this. Okay, try this with me. Grab that E minor chord and we'll strong down four quarter notes per bar. Don't forget to count out loud with me. Here we go. 1234. Okay, now let's play some eighth notes. If we break up a quarter note in half, we get an eighth note, eighth notes or equal to half of a beat. So there are two eighth notes in one beat. So 1 bar has eight eighth notes to it. It sounds like this. Okay, try this with me. Grab that E minor chord and we'll Strom eight eighth notes per bar. Don't forget to count out loud. When you strumming eighth notes, you'll want to use the 1.2 and 3.4 N counting that I mentioned earlier. Even though here will be Strumming all downstreams. Here we go. 1.2 and 3.4. So in this lesson, we learned about Strumming Beats and Rhythm. And the next lesson we're going to learn how to Read Tablature with Rhythm 22. Reading Tab with Rhythm: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to Read a form of Tablature that includes Rhythm. Tab with Rhythm is really helpful because it's a more specific form of Tab. It includes more detailed information on how to play the song or riff. You're trying to learn Tab with Rhythm as a combination of tabs with different types of rhythmic notation. We're going to take what we learned on our last lesson about whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, and eighth notes. And we're gonna put that information into the context of tabs. Let's check out how to read each of these rhythms and Tab. A whole note is a note with a circle around it. The note lasts for a count of four half-note as a circled note with a stem. And each half-note last for two beats. Quarter notes have a stem without a circle. In each quarter note lasts for one beat. Eighth notes have stems with either a flag attached or a beam that connects two or more eighth notes. Each eighth note last for half of a beat, and you count multiple eighth notes as 1.2 and 3.4 N. We learned all about how to count eighth notes in our last lesson, these four types of rhythms can be written on any string and on any Fret. Let's take a look at this rhythmic Tab and action. Here we have a 4-bar example. We're only playing on one string for this entire example, the open third string. Each measure here has four beats. Let's play this exercise together. It's all on the third string, the G string. Please notice that this sheet has repeat symbols in it. This tells us to repeat these four measures. So we'll play through these four measures two times total. Tried to count out loud while playing this and use all downstreams and your strumming hand, I'll count us in. 1, 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 4 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 4 1 2 3 4. Nice job. Please make sure that you tried to play this exercise with me at least one time through a lot of sheet music publishers use this rhythmic Tab notation style. And so when you see this style of Tab, you'll know how to count and how to play what's on the sheet. In this lesson, we learned how to Read Tablature with Rhythm. And the next lesson we're going to learn our first song 23. Song 1: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play our first song. It's a song that I've written, especially for this class. We're going to use the four chords that we've already learned in our previous video lessons. Make sure you're tuned up and let's get started. Here's what the song sounds like. So first we're going to play E minor. And for this song, we're going to keep it simple and use all downstreams and play eight eighth notes per chord, except for the last measure where we play a whole note. So we start with E minor. The next chord is C. And again, we play eight eighth notes on C using all downstreams. Our third chord is G. And again we play eight eighth notes on G. Then we play eight eighth notes on D. So let's hear that entire pattern play together. Then we start that entire pattern starting on E minor all over again. And we end on a whole note on E minor. Remember to stay nice and relaxed and your shoulders and your wrists. And I suggest that you tap quarter notes with your foot while playing like I'm doing here. This will help you to keep a nice and steady rhythm. You just tapping quarter notes with your foot. 1234. Also for this song, I'm using a pretty clean guitar tone. This is just a personal preference, but I wanted to point that out. Okay, now we're going to play through the whole song together without stopping, will go nice and slow. And I want you to try and play along with me. Here we go. 1.2 and 3.4 N. Congratulations on learning your first song on electric guitar. In the next lesson, we're going to learn our second song 24. Song 2: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play another song. It's another song that I've written specifically for us in this class. And again, we're going to use the four chords that we've already learned in our previous video lessons. The main point of this song is to give you more practice with playing the four chords that we've learned so far, the timing of this song is different than the previous song that we just learned. The first song we play it was in four-four time. Now we're counting Beats and groups of threes, but I don't want you to get too hung up on that. I mostly want you to listen to and feel the rhythm instead of trying to get too deep into the math of it, make sure you're tuned up and let's get started. Here's what this song sounds like. So let's check this Rhythm out. The first chord is G. And let's hear the rhythm on this Chord. Hopefully you can hear the groups of three here. So it's 123123. Also make note that there's a slight accent on the first beat of each set of three strings. Are second chord here is E minor. Then we play G to E minor again. Then we play the C chord. Then back to E minor again. Then back to our C chord. Then we play a D chord, and we play that for two measures. Then we go back to the beginning and start the whole pattern over on the G chord. And we end the song with one down strum of G. Okay, Now, let's try to play this together. I want you to play along with me. So go ahead and grab your G chord and let's get started. I'll count us in 123123. Like I mentioned, after we play the whole Progression two times, we end on one down strum of G. And then this song, just like the first song, I'm using a nice Tone and my guitar and am settings. There's a second song that uses the four chords that we've learned. Have FUN playing this song. And I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to learn more about for, for time 25. 4/4 Time: In this lesson, we're gonna talk about 44 time. 44 is a time signature. You'll find the time signature at the beginning of any written sheet music or Tab. A time signature is two numbers stacked on top of each other. It almost looks like a fraction. A time signature helps us to organize Beats into bars. The bar lines here help us to know where 1 bar ends and the next one starts for, for time is extremely common and popular music. The top number tells us how many beats are in a bar. The bottom number tells us what type of note is equal to one beat for, for the top number tells us that we have four beats in a bar. And the bottom number stands for a quarter note. In other words, the quarter note is equal to one beat in for four, we can have different types of nodes such as eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes, but they'll always add up to four beats per measure. In this lesson, we learned about four-four time. I'll see you in the next lesson where we're going to learn another Essential chord, a minor 26. A Minor Chord: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to play the chord a minor. This is another open chord in first position. Here's what it sounds like. For this chord, we'll be using three fingers, will put our first finger on the first fret of the B string. Our second finger goes on the second fret of the D string, and our third finger goes on the second fret of the G string. And we'll Strom five Strings down from the open, a string. Don't forget to arch your fingers and make sure your thumb is pointed up behind the neck. Let's practice this chord by taking our fingers off of the Guitar and then try building the a Minor again. So the first finger goes on the first fret of the B string. The second finger goes to the second fret of the D string, and the third finger goes to the second fret of the G string. Remember to place your fingers right behind the Fret wires and then strum from the open, a string down. If you're Chord isn't sounding clear, you can check for a few possible problems that could come up. Remember to place your fingers right behind the fret wire. And you want to use the tips of your fingers to press on the strings. You can always self-diagnose any problems with your Chord by picking each string individually. Then you can look at your hand and see where any problems might be. So in this lesson, we learned that a Minor Chord. And our next lesson we're going to learn our first Scale 27. E Minor Pentatonic Scale 1: This lesson we're going to learn how to play off first scale. A scale is an order of notes that come one after another, either ascending from low to high, or descending from high to low. What notes are used determines the key that we're playing in. At this point in the class. We're not gonna get too bogged down with the theory side of scales. Instead, we're going to focus on the benefits of scales. Scales are great for warming up your fingers and they form the foundation for many popular songs, Riffs, phrases, and solos. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to play the E minor pentatonic scale. Penta comes from the Greek word meaning five. The scale actually has six nodes. That last node is a repeat of the first note E. So we actually go from E. Allow me to a higher E, one octave up. Let's check out the E minor pentatonic scale, ascending from the lowest note to the highest note. Here's what it looks and sounds like. For your strumming hand, I want you to use alternate picking, starting with the downstream. So it goes down, up, down, up, down. So we're starting on the sixth string here and playing across three strings. Let's break this down note by note. So on the open low E string, we play the open E. Then we play the third fret. And I would suggest using finger number two to play that third fret. Then we move to the a string. We have the open a string. Then we play the second fret with finger one. Then we play that same pattern on the D string. We play the open D. Then we play Fret to with the first finger. Let's try to play the scale together. Ascending. Here we go. 1234. Nice. Now let's try to play this scale descending. So we start on the second fret of the D string and play Fret to with finger one. Then we play the open D string. Then put your index finger on the second fret of the a string. To the open a string. Then finger to, on the third fret of the low E string. To the open low E string. Let's try to play this scale together. Descending. Here we go. 1234. Nice job. Now let's play the scale together, ascending and descending, and we'll play it through a two times. Here we go, 1234. So there's the E minor pentatonic scale and one octave, a ascending and descending someone. This lesson, we learned that E minor pentatonic scale. This scale is great for playing riffs and solos. And our next lesson we're going to learn how to play the E minor scale using all six strings. 28. E Minor Pentatonic Scale 2: In this lesson, we're going to learn the E minor pentatonic scale and open-position covering all six strings. This version of the E minor pentatonic scale is different than the version we learned in the previous video lesson. Because this one covers all six strings and we cover two octaves. Here's how it sounds. Let's go through the notes that were playing one-by-one. First, we'll start ascending, starting on the low E string. We play it open. Then we play the third fret with our second finger. Then we play the a string open to the second fret with our first finger. Then we play the D string, open. The second fret of the D string with finger one. Then we play the open G string. Second fret of the G string with finger one. Than we play the open B string to the third fret of the B string with finger to. Then we play the open E string to the third fret of the E string with finger two. On that E string, we're up a second octave from where we started. Now let's look at the scale descending. We play the high E string, third fret with finger two to the open E string. Then we move to the B string. Third fret with finger two, to the open B string. Then we move to the G string. Second fret with finger one, to the open G. Then we move to the D string. Second fret with finger one. The open D string. Then we move to the a string. Second fret with finger one, to the open a string. Then we move to the low E string. Third fret with finger to the open E string. Okay, so we're going to play quarter notes in the scale and we're going to use alternate Strumming, starting with a downstream. Let's play this scale together two times. Here we go. 1234. Nice job. So in this lesson, we learned the E minor pentatonic scale covering two octaves. In our next lesson, we're going to start to put our new Electric Guitar knowledge into practice by writing our own original music. 29. Create Your Own Music: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to put our new knowledge of Chords, Scales, rhythms, and Setting are guitar tone together to make our own original music. The first thing that I want to mention here is that this is supposed to be a FUN, Creative, and free section of this class. I don't want you to feel any pressure at all during the process of making your own music. I'm gonna go step-by-step through the process that I want you to try. The chords that we've learned so far in this class are used in thousands of songs. So now you have a pallet of sounds to work with that are very versatile and flexible. I want you to feel free to mix and match these chords together into new combinations. Just use your ear and trust what sounds good to you. And also, I want you to feel free to play around with any strumming patterns that you want to try out or invent yourself to help you with some ideas on how you could approach this. I've taken the chords that we've already learned and I've put them together into an order that sounds good to me. Then I apply it and all down strumming pattern. I want you to notice those two elements, as well as to pay attention to how long I'm staying on each chord before I change to the next one. Lastly, I'm using a pretty clean guitar tone here. These are creative choices that I want you to consider when you're creating your own music. So for the first section, which is usually referred to as averse, I'm playing each chord for four beats, and we start with an E minor. Then we move to a G. Then we play in a Minor, then a C. And then we repeat that entire section. Then we move into the chorus section. And then the chorus. I'm playing each chord for two beats and then switching to the next chord. So in the course, so we start with a D to a, G, to an a Minor, and then to a C. Then we play that entire section three more times. Then we play C for one more bar. Then we play D for 1 bar. Then we play the first section again, then the course section again. And then we play the verse section for a third time and the course section for a third time. And we end on one downstream of E minor. So that's what I came up with for my chord progression. I didn't spend a lot of time creating this Progression. I just use the chords that we've already learned in this class and I put them together in an order that sounds good to me. I didn't overthink this process and I would suggest that you take the same approach when you're creating your own Progression. Just play around and have FUN and trust yourself. I created a recording of the song that I've made up here. And then I'm going to use the E minor pentatonic scale that covers two octaves. And I'm going to improvise some Lead Guitar ideas on top of it. A quick side note about recording your own Progression. To record yourself playing, you can use an app on your phone, such as voice memos or something similar. Or you can try recording yourself with music software such as GarageBand, Logic Pro or Cubase. It really just depends on how comfortable you are with computers and whether or not you want to learn how to use music software. If you don't know how to already. One of the nice things about dedicated Music Software as you can record multiple layers on top of one another. But even if you just use a simple app like voice memos, please record yourself playing your Chord Progression. Recording yourself playing as a great tool not only to capture your creative ideas, but also to hear your playing objectively. So you can listen back to your recording and make mental notes on which things you need to focus on during your guitar practice. Now back to improvising some Lead Guitar ideas. I'm going to use the second E minor pentatonic scale that we learned. So if you remember at a ascends and then a descends, I'm just gonna pick Notes from that Scale. And I'm just going to play around and experiment. I know that this E minor pentatonic scale pairs really well with the course that I use them, my chord progression. So no matter which note I play, it's going to sound good. I'll probably use some repeating notes. I'll probably let some notes ring out for longer. I might play two notes at the same time. I'm just going to play around and just feel the chords that are playing in the recording and have some FUN. You have the option when you're trying this out to use the first E minor pentatonic scale that we learned, the one octave version. If you more comfortable with that first version we learned, go ahead and use that for your lead Guitar ideas. Remember this should be a font and enjoyable process. It's a no pressure situation where you can start to get more familiar with your electric guitar and start to use the techniques and skills that we've learned in the class so far to express yourself creatively. In this lesson, we put some chords together that sound good. In our next lesson, I'm going to play along with a recording of the song that I wrote for this project. And I'm going to use the E minor pentatonic scale to jam on top of it. 30. Lead Guitar Example: In this lesson, I'm going to play the backing track that I've created for this project. And then I'm going to jam some lead guitar on top of it using the E minor pentatonic scale, 1234 there. So you can see that I was just playing around with the E minor pentatonic scale. The ideas were simple, but I hope it can help you with generating some Lead Guitar ideas of your own. And hopefully this demo shows you that simple lead ideas be really effective. One other node, notice that I was using a bit of a fuzzy distorted sound that we learned how to create. At the beginning of this course, I chose this Tone from my lead guitars so that it contrasts against the clean guitar tone that I use when playing my chord progression. In this lesson, I use the E minor pentatonic scale to jam on top of my chord progression. And our next lesson, I'm gonna give you some guidance on how to play along with the chord progression that I wrote for this project. This is for you all that might not have the ability to record something of your own. This way, you can still take the E minor pentatonic scales that we've learned. And you can use them to experiment with lead Guitar ideas while playing along with me 31. Backing Track Tips: In this lesson, I'm gonna give you some quick tips on how to get the most out of the backing track that I'll be playing for you. So the backing track beat will be the same one that was in the last video where I was jamming lead Guitar ideas. But this time I'll be playing the chord progression live along with the beat. If you created your own chord progression and recorded it, That's awesome. I hope that you've used it to also play the E minor pentatonic scale on top of it and experimented with that. But even if you've done that, I would strongly suggest using the backing track video and the next lesson to jam along with me. This way you can get a sense of what it's like to play music with another person. This is an important aspect of learning the electric guitar. When playing my chord progression, I'll add in some dynamic changes and subtle nuances in my playing that will hopefully make it a little more interesting for you to play along with. And you can see how what I Play affects your lead Guitar choices. Also, just as an FYI, I'll be playing my chord progression at 80 beats per minute. In this lesson, I gave you some quick tips on how to get the most out of the backing track for our project. And our next lesson, I'm going to play the chord progression that I wrote for this project along with a beat. I hope you have FUN jamming on top of my chord progression. 32. Jam with Me: In this lesson, I'll be playing my project chord progression along with the beat, so that you can play along and try out some of your own Lead Guitar ideas. 123. Okay, so I hope that you had FUN jamming along with that. Remember you can re-watch this video lesson and have another try at jamming along as many times as you feel like. In this lesson, I played my chord progression that I created for our class Project, along with a drum track. And our next lesson we're going to learn another riff 33. Riff 4: Hey there. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to play another riff that I created for you. This riff comes out of the E minor pentatonic scale. I thought this would be cool for you to see how you can build a riff using Notes from a specific scale. Okay, Let's jump in. Here's what the riff sounds like. For this riff will only be playing on to Strings. We'll be playing on the a string. And the low E string. We start the riff on the open a string, playing it one time. The second node is on the a string second fret. And you want to press down on that Fret with your first finger. Then you want to play the open a string again. The first three notes are you open a, then the a string, second fret. And then the open a string again. The next two notes are on the low E string. And here we play the third fret to the open E string like this. So I'm using my second finger to press down on the third fret. So let's put those first five notes together. We start with the opening a to the second fret of the a string, to the open, a. Bend to the sixth string, third fret. Then the open E string. Let's play it again. And so that's the first measure of the riff. For measure two will go back to the open a string and play that twice. Then back to the third fret of the low E string and play that two times. So let's put measures 1.2 together. Now for the third measure, it's an exact repeat of measure one. A measure for we play the third fret of the sixth string two times and let it ring out. Then play that third Fret another two times. Then we play the open sixth string and second fret of the a string together at the same time. And again, I'm using my first finger to play the second fret of the a string. So if we put it all together, that fourth measure sounds like this. So let's put measures 3.4 together. So after measure four, we go back and repeat the entire riff. So let's try and play the entire 4-measure riff one time through at a slow tempo right now. Try it with me. 1234. So that's the riff. Okay, Now we're going to pick up the tempo and play through the entire riff two times. Here we go. 1234. Congratulations on learning and other riff. In this lesson, we learned our fourth riff. In our next lesson, we're going to learn one last riff for this class 34. Riff 5: Alright, in this lesson I'm going to show you how to play another riff that I wrote for you. This will be the last riff for this course. I think it's a really FUN one. So let's get started. So here's how this riff sounds. Okay, let's cover how to play this riff. With. This riff will always be playing two strings at the same time. And bar one, we're playing the D string and a strings together. We play the second fret of the D string and the open a string. We'll use finger one to play the D string second fret. And we play the open a string at the same time. So we play these two notes together two times. Then we keep our first finger down on the second fret of the D string and bring our second finger down onto the a string, third fret, and play those two notes together two times. So that entire first bar sounds like this. You'll notice that I'm using all downstreams and my right hand now onto b2. Right here we go back to playing the exact same Strings and frets from the first two streams of bar one. Then we quickly move our first finger onto the second fret of the a string and bring our second finger down onto the E string, third fret. And we strum those two nodes together at the same time for to Strumming. So the second measure sounds like this. Okay, So this is a two-bar riff, and those are all the notes. You'll notice here that I'm using a distorted Rock Tone again. So get that Tone dialed into your setup. And let's play through this riff two times slowly. 1234. Okay, Hopefully you've got that down. Now, let's play through this two-bar riff four times and a bit faster. Here we go. 1234. In this lesson, we learned our fifth riff. In our next lesson, we're going to wrap up our class with some more tips and resources. 35. Final Thoughts: Okay, so that wraps up our electric Guitar Basics course. Thank you so much for joining me here. I hope that you've found this class to be phon, and I hope that you've gained a really solid footing for playing Your Electric Guitar. Some final notes about learning Electric Guitar. Be patient with yourself throughout this process. There's a lot to learn. So take your time, get to know your Gear, get to know the sounds that you like, and get familiar with the Chords and the scales that we've worked on. Do your best and enjoy the journey of learning Electric Guitar. Also try to pick up the guitar every day if you can. This will help to build up your strength, especially in your fretting hand. And regular playing and practice will help to build up your muscle memory as well. As far as an approach to practice goes, I think it's a good idea to mix your practice up. And what I mean by that is to rotate between practicing scales, Chords, learning from tabs and Chord sheets, learning your favorite riffs and songs, playing with other people and recording yourself playing. If you can spend about an even amount of time on all of these aspects of playing electric guitar. You'll be well on your way to developing and growing as a guitarist. As a musician, when it comes to this class, you can always come back to any particular lesson and review it as many times as you need to until the material really sinks in and definitely take advantage of all the opportunities to jam along with me and the video lessons. Also, don't forget to download the supplemental materials that I've created for this class. I hope you enjoyed this course. I have other classes on guitar, ukulele and Songwriting. And if you enjoyed this class, I recommend that you check out my other courses as well. Music is infinite and there's always more that we can learn about playing guitar and creating music. Thank you so much for joining me. Have Fun and I hope to see you and another class soon.