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Acoustic Guitar Player Blog goes Electric just for a moment.

It’s very primal

Tony Hogan blingat ning

I was talking to a friend today about guitar lessons and during the conversation it occured to me that many guitar teachers, even those teaching professionally are leaving out pieces of puzzle. 
I thought I’d do a short article to help players who are just starting out. Often they will just teach students just how to play songs, and that’s great but there’s a lot of missing elements required to help the student develop outside the music teaching studio environment. I’ve listed a few things that I know are essential to laying a good foundation.
Learn how to to tune the guitar.  Being out of tune is a bad way to start, it will annoy you and it’s important to develop an an ear, if you can’t hear that you’re out of tune you’ll be in strife.  Get yourself a simple electronic tuner, this will save the problem.
Learn the notes on the fretboard.  This is something that even seasoned players often forget to do, some people have a great technique but they are often slowed down by not knowing the basics. Note identification on the fretboard will aid you in making sense of many of the great tutorials that are available.   
Learn to understand chords, not just where to put your fingers but listen to the sound of them once you can play them, chord families have a texture to them, example majors sound happy and solid, wheras minors are sad, seventh chords sound as if they are going somewhere, they imply movement.  Often, chords with complex sounding names are not that complex after all and are basic chords with a few extra notes to give them character, don’t be fooled by the names, underlying every chord is a basic sound.   Learn what notes make up a chord e.g. an Am9 (A minor 9th) consists of A C E G B notes. If you know your fretboard notes and the notes that make up chords, you’ll very quickly start to make sense of improvisation and how to work with other players.  
Work on some basic right and left hand exercises, be consistent, there is a need to have a good technique, not for the sake of looking good or being correct but more so for you not to be hindered by the physical limitations of not have the right muscles in the fingers developed. There’s a need to have good thought-to-finger response, by doing regular simple exercises it will alleventually become natural.  

Be organised, plan what you are going to work on. If you are too organised that can also be a but of a nuisance because everything can end up a bit mechanical.  Go for the middle ground, look at alloting time for woodshedding (workshopping) and times when you can explore the instrument.
Scales are useful but be careful, they will help you become a fluent player but don’t get caught in the trap of being a fast player that is more of a technician than musician, keep it musical always.

Keep an open mind, everyone you see can be your teacher, you can learn from other peoples mistakes as well as all the useful tips people can give you.
These are few of the things that are essential to start thinking about and researching if you are new to the guitar. 

It’s advisable to also check out my other Guitar Blog Site which includes many articles to help guitar players of all standards at acoustic guitarist

 In this youtube video you’ll hear him finish off a ballad… and then he goes for it.  He has an extraordinary right hand rhythm technique. Throughout the tune he moves through quite a number of styles, seems like he’s done a little practice

I thought I’d post about this John Butler Youtbe Video because I know that a lot of players might be interested in the slide guitar that he is using that sounds very Indian, it reminds me briefly of Krij Bhushan Kabra and then it heads into a more rock sort of feel, complete with digital delay and wah wah,  it’s called Treat Yo Mama. 

 What I like about John Butler is he never plays safe, he’s always pushing the boundaries out a little more, crossing styles, cultures and bridging the gap between acoustic and electric. This music is not refined like Matin Simpson, John McLaughlin or Alex De Grassi but John Butler is an important musical voice that adds to the acoustic guitar community. 

This is Part 5 of the 6 part series in Guitar Chords – How to Make E chordsAs stated in the other articles on Making Guitar Chords ,  
chords generally have a 3rd, 5th and 7th.

So to make an E Major Chord we need the first third and fifth of an E scale

The first of E is E, the third is G# and the fifth is B

For the E minor, we flatten the 3rd (one fret lower), so the G sharp becomes G, we still use the 1st and 5th.

An E 7th chord is the same as an E but we need to take the 7th note of E and drop it one note. 
That will be a D natural, not a D Sharp.

So an E7th has a st, 3rd and 5th

For the printable TAB and Notation Click the link
Guitar Chords – How to Make E chords

How chords are made is not that difficult to understand.  You will require a tiny bit of patience and the ability to count up to 13 and also know the alphabet from  A to G.

Having a good understanding of how chords are made will help you with your guitar soloing and accompaniment, many guitar players bypass this type of information.  I would encourage you to get on top of the basics of this info and a whole lot of newe areas of your playing will open up.

If you look at the music stave above, you’ll notice that I have numbered each note and also given it an alphabetical name, no big deal, no rocket science here.

Chords are grouped into three basic categories: 

Major, Minor and Sevenths. However I did have a very long discussion once with the great guitar player Ike Isaacs and he was leaving the question open ended about whether there was a fourth type.  But I’ll keep it simple here and agree with most of the planets musicians and say there are three.

Major chords have a strength about them, they are reasonably bright sounding, I could say ‘happy’ sounding but it’s not quite correct. Examples would be C, D, G, A, E with no numbers written after them.

Minor chords are very sad sounding, the saddest of all being the D minor chord.  Many composers for films will write in the key of D minor T evoke sadness in a a film, think tissues and hankies. Examples would be: Dm, Em, Gm, sometimes written with a minus sign D-, E- or Dmin or Emin etc

Seventh chords imply movement.  They are just major chords with an extra note, their sound creates a feeling of wanting to go to another chord. The way that a seventh chord is generally written is:  G7, E7, A7 etc.  They are commonly used in Blues music and variations of 7ths are common in Jazz, they’ll often look like G7b5#9 etc but let’s keep it simple.

The way chords are made is generally by taking the 1st, 3rd and 5th of a scale.

If you look at the top line of music above, you’ll see it is C, E and G, this is called a major triad.  You could play a couple of C’s E’s or G’s in it instead of just one, it’s still a C major chord.

If you look at the second line of music above, you’ll see it is C, E flat ( the little b = flat) and G, this is called a minor triad.  Also, just like the major chord, you could play a couple of C’s Eb’s or G’s in it instead of just one, it’s still a C minor chord.

The seventh chord consists of the 1st, the 3rd, the 5th and also the 7th note, but this is IMPORTANT. Look closely at the note though, in truth what is known as a 7th is really a flattened 7th, it is one note lower than the seventh note of the normal major scale. Because of the construction of the guitar fretboard, guitar players often leave out notes of a chord, in the case of the C7, I have omitted the G note, but listen and you’ll notice that it still sounds right.

In these examples I have used only three note chords, for some situations, using a thrree note chord can be better than a full chord.  Regardless what you use, it’s still valid, three, four, five or six.

To download the Free High QualityPrintable version Click the following Link:

How Guitar Chords Are Made TAB

NOTE: Part 2 will be available within four days.

For Blues Scales go to the following link at my other blog/site:

http://acousticguitarist.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/blues-scales-learn-guitar-tab-and-dots/

Most guitar players avoid the flat keys, they stick to C, D , A , G and E, because they are guitar friendly.  So let’s break the habit a little with this one and do a B Flat.  The key of B flat includes the notes B flat, C, D, E flat, F, G A  and B flat. 

But the Pentatonic I’ve used (penta being 5) is Bb, C, D, F, G .  Note the fingering of the exercise, I jump to the 5th fret after playing the open G and a few of notes later I jump up a fret.  And then decscending I move back to fret one.  Playing this way will force you to think.

To download the printable guitar scale in TAB and music notes click below:

TAB and Music Notes Guitar Scale Pentatonic Major in B Flat

My next set of six short tutorials will cover Chord Construction Made Easy

Two things that really appeal to me as a musician are:

1) Restraint and understatement
2) Interpretation of other peoples tunes

The ability to not overplay, even if you have the ability to, is a real art, to hold back and create a little tension and space.  I think many of the reggae musicians have mastered that art,; and the ability to imply music and hold back so the listener unconsciously fills in the gaps.

Interpretation is something that not all players can get their head around because they often wish to repeat what they have heard and not have a second thought that a song may have other possibilities.

I’ve stated before that I like John Butler’s music and when I heard him doing the Police tune, ‘Message in a Bottle’ I was very impressed with the way he made it his own. I like the rhythm part, the brushes as the acoustic bass.

To hear more John Butler click the link John Butler

 The notes of this scale are D E F sharp A B and I’ll include the next D so it sounds complete. Leraning simple scales like these are very usually for acoustic players, a lot of acoustic players when they are jamming will just all play the same chords.  A little aresnal of scales will enable you to create a bit of interest in a tune by using simple improvisation.  When two guitar players play the same thing at the same time,  then tend to squash each other.  Look for ways of creating space, the ‘Less is More’ principle is very useful in music. 

Ok, how to play the scale:  Start in the 2nd position, this means the first finger lines up at the second fret.  Ones you play the open E on the high string, move up to the 7th fret.  When descending, once you hit the high E note again on the open E string, move back to the second postion.  

Enjoy it, once you know the scale start to break it up into little melodic musical phrases.

To download the printable version click the link:
Pentatonic Major Scale for Guitar in D

This is part 5 of the 6 part series of Pentatonic scales, Part 6 will be uploaded within the next 5 days

To view part Part 4:
http://the-guitarplayer.com/2008/06/12/pentatonic-major-scale-in-a-part-4-of-6/