Subject: Answering Your Questions
You are getting this e-mail because you subscribed to it on www.learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com. If you don't want to receive these e-mails any longer, go to the bottom of this message and click on "unsubscribe." Hey there Friend, I'm taking a little break from talking about chord construction this week. There have been a few questions from new subscribers (Welcome!) pertaining to chords that I thought we'd look into today. I think it will be the most straightforward to do this "question/answer" style, so let's get started.First off, Joseph asks, "How can i study guitar online for free?" We'll Joseph, you're already here! Everything at Learn To Play Rock Guitar is accessible to you for nothing. Of course, if you're looking for videos, YouTube has tons available for free. A great online course offered by Berklee College of Music can be found on Coursera's "Introduction to Guitar". It's not currently available, but they recycle the course at least a couple of times a year. And hey, the price is right! I would also suggest Steve Krenz, founder of the "Learn & Master Guitar" home study course. Steve is a professional studio musician in Nashville. A while ago he partnered with Gibson Guitar and offers loads of free video teaching you fundamentals of guitar. In fact you can check out the latest lessons from Gibson Guitar which features video lessons from Steve. Gary is having some challenges. He states, "Picking is easy for me but playing chords is hard." Gary, everyone has difficulty with guitar chords when they're starting out. You need to move your fingers into weird contortions that they aren't used to, and you need to be able to do this quickly. What it comes down to is muscle memory. The only real way to teach the muscles in your hand (at least until some scientist comes up with a "Matrix" style program to instantly fire all the right neurons in our brains) is to repeat the muscle pattern many times. In other words, practice. You need to slowly and methodically repeat each chord pattern on the guitar until your muscles can place the fingers in the right place based on the chord your brain is telling them to play. Fortunately, the better you become with each chord, the stronger your muscles become. As you add chords to your repertoire, playing new chords should become easier. The best way to start learning chords is to memorize the basic open chord shapes. Those chords are A, C, D, E and G. While the five open guitar chord shapes aren't the only ones you'll need, they're a very good start to learning major chords and training those muscles. If you happen to have physical challenges with your hands and fingers, I've written an article you can download showing finger and hand stretching exercises that may be helpful. Mary Rose's problem ties in nicely with Gary's issue. She writes, "I'm having problem in memorizing the chords of a song." Once your fingers have memorized the chord shapes you can start putting them together to create various chord progressions. Similar to learning the chord shapes, progressions are simply patterns that you memorize. Over the years, certain chord progressions have become the basis for millions of songs - almost like a template (or pattern) anyone can use to write a song. The patterns used in a song are based on the key. You can think of the "key" as the base or root of the notes and chords that make up the song. If you can figure out the key, you'll immediately know exactly which notes and chords will work within the song. That will help you to memorize the chords that belong. Of course, like anything music related, you're going to need to memorize the note and chord patterns, but that's part of the fun. The best place to start with your memorization is the major scale pattern. You' will find that most songs use a major key as their base, so learning the major scale pattern will instantly tell you the notes and chords that belong in that key. Once you have learned the major scale pattern, you will have also learned the spacing between each chord in the key. The chords you can use line up with the notes from the scale. Think of each note as the root note for the chords that fit within the key. For example, if you are playing a song in the key of C major, you can figure out which chords belong to the key by first looking at the scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B Because the chords that belong in a key follow a specific pattern, you can take the scale you just looked at and apply the pattern like this: C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim The pattern for chords in a major key is Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished. If you can remember this pattern (and face it, we remember all sorts of random things easily), you can apply this to any key. Here's the pattern again to help you cement it in your brain: M -- m -- m -- M -- M -- m -- dim C Dm Em F G Am Bdim This is all well and good, but did I really answer Mary Rose's question? Perhaps I went a little deeper than I needed to, so let's take another quick stab at it. If you have trouble remembering which chords to use and in what order, the answer is simple: Write them out and slow down. The physical act of writing out the chord chart (this just means listing out each chord in order as it is played in the song) for a song will help your brain cement both the chords to play and in which order. You'll also be better able to recognize chord changes and patterns within the song. For instance, the verses will typically have the same chord progression. The choruses will usually have the same progression. You can easily identify each section and work on them separately until you have them memorized. Think of it as chunking - learning a smaller section until it's easy to remember and then combining it back with the larger whole. Work on each section at a slow tempo until each progression is memorized. Then you can put all the progressions back together in the order each is played in the song. That's a nice breaking point for the week. I'll come back next week with more of your questions. If you need any clarification on the answers I've provided, please don't hesitate to hit reply and let me know... I do my best to answer each email within 24-48 hours. We're in the process of selling our house, so things are a bit hectic at times, but I will get back to you. Until next week, keep it rockin'! Peace~ Dave Dave "Eddie" Vance is a rock guitar enthusiast and gear nut. He has been playing guitar for over 30 years and enjoys tormenting the neighbors every chance he gets. When he's not slaving for the man, you can find him rocking out with his B.C. Rich Bich guitar, a cold beer and some sweet tunes. He also runs Learn-To-Play-Rock-Guitar.com, but you knew that already! Follow Learn To Play Rock Guitar:I welcome your feedback! Did you like today's message? What other topics would you like to see covered in my e-mails? Please let me know at: dave@learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com As always, please feel free to forward this email to a friend! I review products before recommending them. If you buy a product based on my recommendation, I will receive a commission. However, my emails also contain links that don’t require any investment on your part and are jam-packed with "juicy, guitar learnin' tastiness". We don't rent or share your name with anybody. Feel free to forward this issue to any friends you think would enjoy its contents. They will thank you. So will I.
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