Forum | Guitar Teacher

MJK on 10 Must Have Items for Guitarists

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:31:05 +0000

Storm,

In the 10 Must Have lesson, you mention: "#9 – Book"...

I currently have: Modern Guitar Method Grade 1, Expanded Edition Perfect-Bound Book/CD/DVD Set (LINK) and pick through this on a regular basis. While I will continue to work on this, can you give some recommendations on the type of books that you are referring to?

Storm on 10 Must Have Items for Guitarists

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:48:31 +0000

Let's imagine for a minute you are a carpenter (maybe you are a carpenter; for the rest of you, stick with me). You get hired to build a house. Even with all your knowledge, experience and desire to do the job, what do you need before you can get to work? You need the tools of your trade, of course! For a carpenter it would be your hammer, saw, measuring tape, etc.

Well, guitarists have their tools of the trade, too. If you want to 'build-up your musicianship' (get it?) I suggest you 'equip' yourself with the following must have…

Storm on Guitar Harmony Chart

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:38:28 +0000

Note: A PDF document for the Harmony Chart in this lesson can be found here.

There is quite a lot of information given by the phrase "in the key of ...". A key describes the notes used in the melody and, importantly, the chords that you can expect to play for the harmony. The following harmony chart will hopefully help you learn this information.

Now this chart can look like a crazy bingo card at first sight. Let's try to crack the code, shall we?

Follow the left hand side to the key you want to work with. Once there, read left ...

MJK on Chromatic Scale Patterns

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:12:18 +0000

Another great lesson and one that this beginner should be able to do or work on. With the Spider and the 4 Scales You Should Know, and now this new lesson, I should be able to get moving in the right direction.

Storm on 10 Early Rock Lead Guitar Licks

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:53:04 +0000

Some lead guitar licks you hear over and over again. These licks are clichés and they are valuable to have under your fingers. Just like their verbal cliché cousins, tried-and-true sayings (such as "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush") these licks can quickly get over used but they get over used because they work.

The following 10 Early Rock licks work in many styles, from Rockabilly to Blues, from Rock to Punk. Learn them and then re-work them into hundreds of "new-yet-so-familiar" phrases. The licks are all shown in the Key of A but move around…

Storm on Chromatic Scale Patterns

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:48:40 +0000

The chromatic scale is one of the easiest scales to understand and also one of the most incorrectly played by guitarists. Let's look at this, the "mother of all scales", and explore some useful chromatic scale patterns for the guitar.

The chromatic scale is made up entirely of half-step or semi-tone intervals (the distance of one fret). Therefore, the chromatic scale includes every note within an octave, twelve notes in all.

Like most scales on the guitar, we will typically change strings to get smooth access to all notes within the octave. Here is the same chromatic scale written out across the first three strings. Note in the example I move the finger position up one fret for the descending pattern. I will continue this in all remaining examples.

Other than between strings 2 and 3, the tuning of the guitar requires us to change positions to access every half-step within the chromatic scale. Many popular 1-finger-per-fret guitar exercises say they use the chromatic scale exercise. Take a look at my Spider Guitar Warmup lesson for a typical example. In fact, most of these are only quasi-chromatic patterns, utilizing a section of the chromatic scale but often skipping a note on string changes. A true chromatic scale pattern is shown below, which also makes a great warm-up by the way.

The same pattern of notes could be played in position by temporarily sliding out of position to grab the next half-step and then returning.