Everything You Need to Know About Reading Guitar Tab

This lesson covers all important symbols you will encounter when reading guitar tab.  You can see how the strings are laid out and diagrammed in guitar tab notation along with many symbols like hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, releases and muting.  Each of these items is then demonstrated for you in the video while displaying the associated symbol in tab form.



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Learn to Play Barre Chords on the Guitar

One thing that seems pretty straightforward but many times burns out a lot of beginner guitarists is playing barre chords. Since the barre chord shape doesn't ever change as you move up and down the neck, it seems like an easy alternative to playing standard chord shapes. In fact, it is an easy alternative and once you train your fingers to hold this position, you can easily slide up and down the neck to produce different chords.

This video will show you how to set the barre chord shape on your guitar fretboard and then use it to play different chords. The key is to learn the shape and then put in lots of practice time so that your index finger is strengthened enough to barre over all six strings.



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Learn to Play Country Bluegrass Lead Guitar

We like to touch upon many different musical styles when learning guitar. This will help you to have a more rounded understanding of the instrument and have more under your belt.

Here is a great lesson on playing country bluegrass lead. Learn a great bluegrass-style lick and see the similarities to playing blues lead guitar.

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Recognizing Notes on the Piano

This video lesson is for anyone new to the piano and reading music. It will show you exactly how notes are named as you move up and down the keys on a piano. This will also allow you to visualize theoretically how notation on the music staff works.

Remember that sharps go up (to the right) and flats go down (to the left). Once you see how simple this system is, you can easily understand how an Eb = D# and an Fb = E and so on!



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How to Play Slide Guitar for Beginners

Here's a video lesson that's great for any beginner guitarist or just anyone new to playing guitar with a slide. Slide guitar is great because it has a very cool sound, you can also play all kinds of different blues, bluegrass and surf music without worrying about complex fingerings!

This lesson covers the basics of slide guitar, to follow along and learn, simply tune your guitar to drop D tuning (D - A - D - G - B - E), or drop your lower E string to D from standard tuning. This tuning is the basis for many slide guitar songs because the slide needs to bar across different strings and create chords. This is possible with drop D tuning because it leaves your lowest three strings in a root-fifth-root configuration so that you can play power chords with a bar over the strings.

Enjoy one of the easiest guitar methods that any novice can pick up quickly and sound great right away!

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How to Change Chords on the Guitar

One of the greatest challenges that a beginner Guitarist faces is learning to change chords. The best way to learn to do this is by starting out with chords that have very similar fingerings. You'll find that when learning to play chords this way, you actually rewire your brain to think of chords as shapes rather than fingerings. You can then begin to play more and more complex chords and easily move between them.

To see what I mean, view the video lesson and practice along with the different chords that are demonstrated. Once you've been able to play two chords in sequence, you can begin to put more together to form different songs!



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How to Play Basic Major Chords on the Piano

This is related to the previous "How to Play Minor Chords on the Piano" post. Now you will learn how to play the basic Major chords on the piano. Pay close attention to the demonstration of how the chords are played. When you're ready to try it for yourself, pick out a few of the chords and start memorizing their fingerings.

Soon you'll be able to land on the chords without much thought and you can even begin to add in the Minor chords that you learned from the previous lesson to make up a song!



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How to Play Basic Minor Chords on the Piano

Here is an introduction to playing Minor chords on the piano. Watch the demonstration of each chord being played and listen closely to how each sounds. Then, try it for yourself! Pick out a few of the chords that sound appealing and begin memorizing them.

Soon you'll be able to land on the chords without much thought and you can begin to add other chords to make up a song.



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How to Write a Song on the Guitar

Unlock your creative energy and begin writing your own songs! Here's how.

First, download the Major Key sheet for FREE at http://www.nextlevelguitar.com/pdf/chordsineachkey.pdf

Next, choose a row for a key to write your song in. I recommend the first row which is C Major for beginners.

Finally, after learning to play the chords, start picking out certain chords from that row and put them together to see how they sound. Once you find a nice sounding chord pattern, repeat it to form the basis of your song. Usually three or four chords together in a row works nicely (ever hear of three chord bands?)

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How to Play Major Scale on the Guitar

One of the first things that serious guitarists learn when just beginning on the Guitar is how to play the Major scale. The Major scale can be seen as an important building block of music, as he mentions. Once you learn the Major scale, you can expand upon it and apply it toward many other related concepts on the Guitar.

With this lesson, you will see the Major scale demonstrated along with an outline of the fundamentals.

Try it with G, C, D and so on.

Just remember the pattern: Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half



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How to Play Beginner Guitar Chords

If you're new to the guitar, learning chords and be a difficult task. With this short video lesson, you can learn to play a handful of common chords without having to figure it out for yourself. Just watch how the demonstrator places his fingers on the individual notes to make up the different chords. Then, try it yourself.

Continue practicing each chord individually until you feel comfortable with them and are able to land each the notes which make up the chords accurately. Once you have the chords memorized and are able to properly form them with your fingers, you can begin to combine chords to make up songs!

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Blues Improvisation Tricks for Beginner Pianists

If you're a beginning pianist and want to learn the blues, try out these helpful tips to get you started. You'll instantly be able to play blues licks on the piano and sound great doing it!

Take your blues soloing to a whole new level by learning that C blues scale as she demonstrates. Add to it or try it out with trills and thirds. Don't worry if you can't keep up with everything she is playing. Pick out a few hand positions that she uses and memorize those while adding in trills and thirds.



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Beginner Guitar Lesson - How to Play Barre Chords

If you're new to the guitar, playing and remembering chords can be a daunting task. Fortunately, there's a simpler way to play chords, without ever having to change the position of your fingers!

These are called barre chords and are played by using your index finger as the barre of the chord over all six strings while the rest of your fingers play all of the other notes. Once you have this fingering position set up on the fretboard, you can simply shift it up and down to play different chords!

Barre chords are a useful substitute, especially for the beginners, to playing standard chord shapes. As they require you to hold your index finger over all six strings, they also help you to develop finger dexterity, and the ability to hold chord positions for a longer period of time.

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