A Guitar Lesson Primer

There are several ways to approach a course for beginning guitar students. I could just tell you what the names of the strings are, teach you how to tune your guitar and then start showing you some chords so you could get right to playing some songs. But I’ve learned through my own experience that really understanding music theory and other musical dynamics has helped me be a better musician and prepared me for the time when I lived in Nashville and needed that education in order to work in that environment. Now you may have no plans on moving to Nashville, New York, L.A. or any other major music city. But my intention is to give you all the tools you will need to be a well rounded musician and to be able to be productive and have a lot of fun no matter where you choose to live.

There are different styles of guitar music from classical to jazz, rock, blues, acoustic, and others but this course will assume several things. First we will assume that you have little or no experience playing the guitar. Secondly we will assume that your goals are to either just play for fun or maybe play with your friends maybe forming or joining a musical group. Some of you may have plans to teach or even to be the next Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughn. And for those of you who do want to move to the big time, I will give you invaluable tips and I can be contacted easily if you have questions.

The ability to read music is a wonderful thing. The problem with that approach is that in today’s real world of popular music there is little need for it. In fact even session players who play on the songs you hear on the radio don’t read formal music when they record these songs. They listen to a demo of the song, write out a chart (we’ll get to that later) and make up their parts on the spot using the chart, their experience and talent.

I really have come to believe that the great majority of people wanting to learn guitar these days just want to be able to play the songs they hear on the radio and on their CDs. They just want to play by ear! You see there is a real art to being able to play by ear. It takes talent to be able to listen to a song, and play it without music in front of you. Playing by ear comes easier to some than others. But except for those who are truly “tone deaf” the ear can be developed and I can teach you how to listen and play, listen and play. One more time, LISTEN AND PLAY!

You will learn things in this course that I have never seen in any other guitar course. Yes you will learn chords, scales, arpeggios and all the rest, but you will also learn things like how to play different chord inversions, how to use a capo to get different textures, how to use different tunings to get different sounds and how to use the Nashville Number System to change keys without having to change your chart. So get ready, dive in and remember I’m only an email away if you get stuck.