The Guitar Resource

Today we will take a look at how to build a scale using certain notes on your guitar (or any other melodic instrument you play). Just like notes are the building blocks for scales, scales are the building block for composition. All chords are derived from scales. And in western music there is one scale that is more important than all the others: the Ionian scale, (most commonly called by the “Major” scale.)

Read Full Post »

This is a great article I saw online today. I wanted to share it with you:

Guitar Players...Get a Balanced Guitar Practice Diet By
craig basset

Do you have a wide variety of things that you practice. Or do you like to binge? (You know...the type of player who practices sweep picking for a kazillion hours a
day but only know three chords)!Having a balanced practice routine is essential
if you want to become a versatile guitarist. If you just practice one or two
things, sure you'll get great at those things...but you'll be weak in aother key
areas.

Read Full Post »

Before we go any further I want to make sure you know how to read guitar tabs and chord charts. You will need to know this because I will be using them a lot on this site from now on.

Guitar tabs are very easy to learn. It is not nearly as complex as reading sheet music. By the end of this post you should be able to read guitar tabs quite easily.

Let me first explain the difference between guitar tabs and sheet music. The first, and biggest difference is that sheet music tells you which notes to play (I.E. C, Ab, D#, etc…). Sheet music can be applied to any instrument. The notes are marked by different circles, each having their own time value (whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, etc…) So sheet music not only tells you what notes to play, but tell you how long to play each note for. Tabs are designed for guitar. They tell you what string and fret to play. They are written out as numbers on a string. They also don’t tell you how long to play each note for. So you have to already be familiar with the song in order to play the tabs accurately.

Read Full Post »

This is a great book that i own. It really taught me a lot. I reccomend it if you are serious about understanding guitar theory. It will make you a much better guitar player. It also comes with a very helpful Audio CD. (You can find the direct link below)

Pratical Theory For Guitar

Read Full Post »

Now that you know what notes are and how they work (Click here to see the last lesson if you don’t), we can apply it to you guitar’s fretboard.

Now that we know the order of the notes, we can figure out what all the notes are on your guitar. Let’s start with the open strings (an open string is a string played open, without your hand fretting it at all. If you pick any one of your guitar strings without touching it, that an open string)

Read Full Post »

Before you really start understanding guitar you need to know a little bit about how music works (commonly called Music Theory). I am going to explain what notes are and how they work. This will help you understand later lessons that go deep in into music theory.

Here is the definition of a note from dictionary.com: Note- a sign or character used to represent a tone, its position and form indicating the pitch and duration of the tone.

Read Full Post »

Ok. So you decided you want to play guitar. Maybe it was because Jimi Hendrix captivated you with those magical screams that you never thought could come from any instrument. Maybe you decided you wanted to write a love song for someone. Maybe you just have a lot of free time on your hands. Whatever the reason, you have to understand one thing: If you want to be good it’s going to take practice and commitment.

Read Full Post »