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Hello and welcome to the ultimate beginner series for electric guitar.
My name is Keith Wyatt and I'll be your host for the next half hour as we look at some of the
essential techniques for both rhythm playing and soloing. Now no matter what
style you play, there are certain things that every electric guitar player needs to know.
And number one is you have to have a system of organization, a way to fit the neck together
so that you can see what key you're in, what the next chord is, what the scale pattern is going to be.
So we'll concentrate on that and we'll show you some of the techniques used in soloing.
And then we'll take you through some rhythm tracks so you can play along. Alright, let's get started.
.
Now before we do anything, we've got to tune up. If you don't have access to a
keyboard or a guitar tuner, I'll give you some notes and you tune your strings to mine.
Alright, we'll start with the high string, E. And remember tune up
from below and match your pitch to mine.
And now B.
The third string, G.
D.
Fifth string, A.
And the sixth string.
Now once it's all in tune, check it with a chord or something like that.
And E chord and see if it sounds pretty close. Now there's actually one more method
of tuning that I forgot to tell you about in the last video, step one.
And this is a method that's, well, Jimmy used to use this method. It's like this one.
It goes like this.
.
So if all else fails, just give that a shot. Guitar playing can be roughly divided
into two main areas of activity. One is rhythm playing and one is soloing.
But they're really not as different as they may sound because the same system of organization is
used for both. And we're going to start with rhythm playing in order to build up the system.
There are three categories of chords that we're going to work with. Major chords, minor chords,
and dominant chords. And between those three categories you can play almost any style of pop
music in a fundamental way. Now you already know, I trust,
the five open position chords. And we'll take just a second to review these quickly.
.
These are the chords that are played down on the low end of the neck using open strings.
And these are five major chords. E major.
D major.
C major. A major.
And G major.
So if you're comfortable with those five shapes, I would suggest taking a minute to kind of practice those,
moving back and forth, making sure that your fingers are comfortable with the transitions.
Because we're going to use those to build our way up the neck.
Let's talk now about another category of chords. These are minor chords. Minor chords differ from
major chords in one note only. And I'll show you what that note is. Here's an E major chord.
To make that minor, it's very simple. I simply lift up my index finger.
And I now have a minor chord. Well what happened? This note
was changed to that note. And the result is a profound
difference in the feel, the attitude, the sound of the
chord. Now the note that I changed is the note that
is the third note of the scale. I changed from a major third to a minor third.
This is not the place to get into a discussion of music theory, but it's helpful to understand the
difference between the chords and how the structure changes from one to the other. And as you go along,
you'll learn more about that and be able to make up your own chords the more you understand about how they're
built. So that's E major to E minor. Now I can do the same thing with
some of the other open chords that we have. A major for instance.
Now the note in question here is that.
And change it to that. And I have
a minor or with a more familiar fingering. This one right here.
This one's easy to include the top string.
There's our D major chord. If I want to change it to minor, the note in question is
this one right here. Down one fret and I re-finger it.
And I've got D minor. Second finger, fourth finger,
first finger.
The last category of chords are called dominant chords. And the reasons why they're called
dominant chords are a little bit too complex to go into at the moment. But suffice to say that they involve
an extra note added to the chord. And I'll show you how that's done.
Let's start again with our familiar E major chord.
Now if I want to turn this into an E dominant chord, more familiarly called E7,
then I'll do it like this. I'll lift up my third finger.
And it'll sound like this.
That's an E7 chord. Now listen to the addition of that open string.
Kind of changes the feeling of the chord. Perhaps not as drastically as
major to minor, but in a subtle and important way. And this type of chord is used a lot in blues.
So it's a very important sound.
Now likewise we can take our A major chord.
Finger it however you want to finger it.
Let's use that one. Lift up your third finger.
And you have an A7 chord. Now that can be re-fingered a little bit
more conveniently for a seventh chord like this.
So the first finger, open G, and second finger.
Continuing with open position chords, D major
can be turned into a D7 chord by lowering the D on the second string
to C.
Re-fingering it slightly. So you have second finger, first finger, third finger.
There's D7.
Now we can also play open position seventh chords for the G chord
and the C chord. First the G. To change G major to
G7, what you do is re-finger it and then replace
the top string with the note a whole step down.
It's a very common sound, G7 in open position.
And finally our C major chord.
This is kind of an exception to what we've been doing. So far we've been taking the
root of the chord, the extra root. Every one of these chords has more than one root in it.
We're taking the higher one, called the octave, and lowering it a whole step, two frets, to create the seventh.
In this particular case we're going to keep the same chord shape,
but we're going to add a note to it. Instead of lowering the octave, we're going to just stick in
the note on the next string. So we have C
and the second fret, third fret on the third string,
and the first fret on the second string, at C7.
And you can use the top string as well.
Now one way to practice these chords is to change shape
from major to dominant. E major, E dominant,
A major, A dominant. Back and forth.
D major, D dominant.
Making that transition for each chord, back and forth, back and forth, so you can see how the chord changes
from major to dominant, and your fingers get used to the transition.
Well welcome to our magic world where we can take a close up look at the guitar.
The reason for coming here is that we want to learn the names of the notes on the neck.
Now to learn all the names of all the notes everywhere on the neck is kind of a task,
and it takes a little bit of time. But for right now we only need to know the names on two strings,
the sixth string and the fifth string, because those are going to form the roots of most of the chords
that we're going to be moving around, and the scale as well. So let's take a close up look at
the neck, and remember now how the strings are numbered. We've got the high string,
and remember high refers to pitch, not how close it is to the ceiling.
The high string is number one, two, three, four, five, and then the lowest, fattest string is six.
And the note names of the open strings, E, B, G, D,
A, and E. Now to learn the names of the notes
on the sixth string, it's helpful to know one little piece of information.
In the musical alphabet, which is just like the regular alphabet, but it's only got seven letters in it,
the distance between E and the next note, F, is one fret.
Everywhere else with one exception is two frets. So that's E and that's F, one fret.
And we go up two frets to G, two more frets to A,
two more frets to B, and here's the exception. B to C is also one fret.
And then again, it's two frets to D and two frets to E.
E is the octave, and the octave has the same name as the nut.
And so once you get to the octave, it continues with the same letter names that we started off with.
So once again, a quick review. E, F, G, A,
B, C, D, and E.
Now on the fifth string, we start off with an open A.
Now remember there's one fret between B and C, one fret between E and F.
Now A to B is two frets, and then B to C is one fret.
There's B, there's C. Two frets to D, two frets to E, and now we have one fret again.
E to F, and then we have two frets to G, and two frets to A, the octave.
And the octave has the same name as the open string.
To review quickly, A, B, C, D, E,
F, G, and A.
Now if you have trouble elsewhere in this video remembering where the names of the notes are,
and as you're doing your practice exercises, it might be a good idea to take a piece of paper
and just draw the two strings and the frets out on the paper, and then write the names of those two strings,
the notes on those two strings, on the paper so you can refer to it as you're playing.
And the sooner you memorize those, the easier it'll be to cover the rest of the neck.
Alright, let's go back to reality. Now when you start out, you work mainly with open position chords,
and if we look around us here, you'll notice that nobody's playing open position chords.
Everybody seems to be moving around the neck a lot, and that's one of the first problems you run into after you play for a while,
is how do you get out of the open position and play the same chords that you want to hear in other areas of the neck?
And the secret is bar chords. Now bar chords are chords in which
two or more of the strings are played with a single finger, and I'm going to show you how that's done.
For instance, let's take probably the most popular bar chord of all time,
based on this E shape right here. Now we've already played the E chord.
Now suppose you want to play an F chord. Well, F, the root, is right next door.
How do you convert this shape to F? Well, you can't just move it up, or it sounds kind of...
It's not quite what we had in mind. So there's a trick to it.
What you need to do is replace the open strings with the index finger.
So what I'm going to do is find my root,
place my index finger on F, and lay it all across all six strings, and then finger the chord around it.
Now what I'm really doing is taking that same chord, E,
and then moving the shape up. And I have to use different fingers to play the chord because
my first finger is occupied now with the bar.
So I've got my third finger, fourth finger, and second finger playing the same notes
I was playing originally.
Now this chord will undoubtedly elevate your guitar playing to a new level of pain and suffering,
because that bar right there is going to cramp your hand, and it's going to put calluses and creases
in place you never thought they would exist.
Now there's one way to get around that for the moment, and that is to play a partial bar.
Use your index finger on the top two strings only.
Third finger, second finger, index finger. And that's a slightly less painful way to play it.
The key to any bar chord is to get a good clamp between your thumb, which is behind the neck,
and your index finger, so that you really get a solid grip on the strings.
Another trick is to know that you don't lay your finger flat like this,
you instead turn it slightly to the side. And the finger's a little bonier that way,
and so you get a better contact with the strings. And also make sure you don't get up over the fret,
or it'll deaden.
You can move your way around by finding the root, which is the same on the sixth string or the first string.
Here's G.
Here's G. Partial. A.
You can play D up here. Here's D.
So you can play in any key you want to with that same shape.
This is probably the most useful bar chord shape.
Now the one that is probably as popular, almost as popular, is this one right here. It's based on the A chord.
Now there's several ways to finger an A chord. This is one of them, right here.
And it turns out to be pretty convenient, because by replacing the open string A
with a fretted note, like B flat, and using the same fingering,
I now have a B flat bar chord.
Now the bar really comes into play on this one if you play the top string.
That's a hard note to get. It's going to tend to fret out and buzz.
So you don't need to play the top one. You can just play this as a four note chord.
And in C, D, and so on.
The only one that I use most of the time is to use my third finger to bar
these three notes. That just turns into a true bar chord,
because I've got three notes being played with one finger, and the index finger is still playing the root.
So that might be the way you wind up playing it most often.
So now we've got the sixth string bar chord and the fifth string bar chord.
And that means you can play just about any chord progression you want without actually moving around that much.
G to C, D, A, and so on.
When it comes to bar chords, there are only two versions of minor chords that are really common.
And that's the minor chord that looks like the sixth string bar shape.
We had our big fat bar chord, like F major.
And as we've refingered it as a bar chord, you lift up your second finger.
And now the first finger has extra duty. It has to also press down the third string as well.
A little bit of extra pressure required there.
Incidentally on these bar chords, especially when you're covering up three notes in a row, you might have to move your finger from side to side like this,
along the neck, to try to figure out where the best spot is.
Where you get the best grip so that none of the notes are dead.
Now F minor can become G minor or A minor.
Exactly the same principle as with major chords.
The other common bar chord shape for minor is this one right here based on our major bar chord, root on the fifth string,
converted to minor as we did with A to A minor.
We now have B flat to B flat minor.
And you can get the top string as well.
Now we had F major.
We had F minor. And now we're going to have F dominant.
And what you do here is form your major triad and then lift up your fourth finger.
This is kind of a tricky move here because you're going to want to move other fingers at the same time.
But part of learning the chords is learning how to move your fingers independently from each other.
So you lift up your fourth finger.
Play the notes that are left over. Now the first finger has to bar the fourth string as well.
That's a tricky note to get clean. It takes a lot of pressure to get that to work.
A7, A7, and so on.
Now the other shape is the bar chord with the root on the fifth string.
And to make that a dominant chord, instead of using a third finger bar like this, I'm going to lift my third finger up.
Let my first finger cover up the third string.
Use my fourth finger on the second string.
And then my first finger bars the top string as well.
That's a tricky chord to get clean because you have to bar three notes
with your index finger and they're all separated from each other and these other two notes come in the middle.
That's a trick chord to play, to be honest.
And then we've got C7, D7, and so on.
Now you can combine major
and minor chords into progressions and people do it all the time.
For instance, here's an example of a progression that is pretty common.
A major. Move down three frets and play minor.
And then find the root on the fifth string and play D major.
And then up two frets. E major.
Once again, A major. F sharp minor.
D major. E major.
That'll take a little practice to get the transition from chord to chord clean.
Let's see the right hand here. This is like a real common strum.
You're going to use more of your wrist and forearm on this one. It sounds like this.
Now the right hand keeps going up and down in a steady pattern, but you don't pick every single stroke.
So I go down, down, up, up, down.
Down, down, up, up, down.
Notice the right hand is still moving steadily, but the pick only strikes the strings on some of the notes.
Let's play it together one time. Three, four.
Again.
Now let me show you an exercise for practicing dominant chords, starting with G to C to D
back to G again. Only this time all dominant.
G7 bar chord. C7 bar chord.
D bar chord.
Back to G again. Now we're going to play a little bit different kind of rhythm here.
It's going to sound like this. Check it out.
Now I'm not using a steady right hand
up and down all the time as I was on the other patterns.
I'm not using all down strokes. I'm kind of using an easy strum and just trying to hear a pattern.
It's not so technical. It's more like listening and copying.
And you'll notice as far as my right hand is concerned, I'm doing a big strum.
I'm letting all the notes ring out.
Now sometimes I'm slapping the strings without pressing the chord down.
And that gives you a little extra rhythm.
That's something that funk players do all the time.
You hear stuff like this.
It's that same kind of technique, but we're doing a little simpler version of it.
So let's play that progression together one time. G to C to D back to G again.
Three, four.
Again.
Well now that you've learned all these different chord forms, major, minor, and dominant,
it's good to have a way to apply them in some sort of a musical context.
So what we're going to give you right now is a chord progression. And this is a challenging progression.
It's going to take you a while to really get a handle on it.
And what it is, is playing all the possible keys moving around the neck.
It's going to force you into different positions and at the same time force you to learn all the different keys
so that you're not only playing in one key all the time.
Now what you're going to see on the screen is the name of the root of each chord as it passes by.
You can see pictures of my hand playing the chords as well.
Now you can play major, minor, or dominant. And you can choose to play all minor through the progression one time
and then all major, all dominant. Or you can mix them up as you go.
That's part of the fun of practicing. And you start to hear new sounds.
So let's give it a whack. You'll hear four counts of the metronome and then the chord progression will start on an E chord.
Here we go.
Let's go.
...
We've talked a lot about chords but we haven't really said anything about soloing.
And there's a lot to say there too. But in a way you can simplify things a little bit
because there's really one main scale that almost all guitar players in every style
learn how to play at the very beginning. And that's the one we're going to learn today.
It's called the minor pentatonic scale.
...
Pentatonic scales are found in practically every style of music worldwide
but they're most commonly associated with blues and rock.
Now we know how to play a major chord, a minor chord and a dominant chord.
And the magic of this particular scale is that you can use it over all three kinds of chords.
I'm going to show it to you right now. This is an A minor pentatonic scale.
And the basic note of the scale is A on the sixth string at the fifth fret.
Now along the bottom of your screen as I'm playing the scale you're going to notice six lines appear.
And on the lines are going to appear some numbers.
The lines correspond to the strings of the guitar and the numbers are going to tell you
which fret you're playing on at the moment. So right now on the sixth string, which is the lowest string
in your picture, you're going to see the number five. And that represents the fifth fret.
So you can watch the picture of me playing and watch the tablature. This is called tablature by the way.
And you'll understand where I'm playing and you'll see which finger I'm using from this picture.
So index finger plays the A. Then I go up three frets and play the C.
Moving to the next string, fifth fret, seventh fret.
Now notice that whenever I have a reach of three frets I'm going to use my fourth finger.
And whenever I have a reach of two frets I'm going to use my third finger. I'm staying in position the whole way along.
First finger, fourth, first, third.
First, third. First, third. Pretty easy shape so far, huh?
Second string, first finger, fourth finger.
And first string, first finger, fourth finger again.
Let's play that together one time and see if you can follow along with the fingering as I go.
First finger, fourth, first, third.
Same here. Keep going.
And back down again. Fourth finger.
Here comes the fourth again and to the bottom.
Let's talk for a second about picking.
A lot of the problems people have when they start playing guitar have to do with the unnatural act of holding a pick.
And if you do it right actually it's pretty comfortable. It just takes a little bit of getting used to.
Now hold your right arm out like this and let your hand dangle.
Turn it over and you'll notice that the thumb and forefinger naturally meet each other.
And you take the pick and stick it in that spot right there. Bring it back around to the guitar.
And if the pick is pointing straight down at the body of the guitar you got it.
Just adjust it until it's in the right spot there. And then the right arm moves up and down in a comfortable arc.
And you got it made.
Now let's take it and apply it to the scale.
And basically three forms of picking that people use commonly.
First is all downstrokes. And that's where the pick strikes the string.
You come back up without striking the string and you hit it again.
Now to develop your picking technique to the next step we're going to combine downstrokes with upstrokes.
We're going to be playing the same scale but simply moving up.
And there's no real good reason to do that frankly. The only time people use upstrokes exclusively
is usually on some certain kinds of chord patterns or something.
But what most people do most of the time is called alternate picking.
That's a combination of downstrokes and upstrokes. So you're picking down on the first note, up on the second note,
up, down, and up.
And now you're ready for full on alternate picking where you're going to pick a downstroke,
change to the next note, use an upstroke, and so forth. Like this.
Down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.
Take it through the whole pattern.
Let's work on some more exercises
for coordinating the picking hand with the fretting hand.
Often when you have problems getting a clean sound it's not the fault of the picking hand,
it's the problem of coordination, getting the pick to strike the string at exactly the same instant
that the fretting hand is pressing the note down.
So with that in mind, let's do some exercises. These are called sequences.
And what these are are groups of notes moving through the scale in a steady pattern.
For instance, I'll show you one right here. This is called the group of three.
And it's easy to understand once you play it. You're going to play three notes.
One, two, three. And then you're going to play the next three notes. One, two, three.
And back again.
So you're going down, up to the next note, and then
you start to pick up the pattern here.
Okay, now we're going to do that, but do it in tempo, without stopping on any of the notes.
So it'll sound like this. Three, four.
And down again.
Now it might take a while to work it up to where you can play it at that tempo,
but once you understand the sequence, then you can set a metronome and gradually work your way up.
And having a metronome is a very good tool, because that will track your progress
day by day as you start to develop your technique, and you know exactly how well you're moving along.
I'll show you another sequence right now. This is a group of four. Now the tricky part here is going to be in the left hand.
Watch as I play a little bit of it for you.
I play the first four notes, then the second four, and now, when I play this note,
I'm actually playing it more on the side of my finger so that I can roll it back to the tip.
See that motion there? This is a move that you're going to use all the time.
This is a basic technique of electric guitar. It's the roll.
Using the side of the finger to the tip of the finger again.
And now we're set up for the next part of the sequence.
Same thing here. The third finger rolls from string to string.
So you're actually playing two strings with one finger.
The first finger again.
Now the third finger. And the first finger.
Now we don't have a roll here, but there it is again.
And from the top of the scale down,
now we roll in the other direction.
Again. Now the third finger.
First finger.
Third. First.
And home.
Now you want to keep working on this sequence, and the other one too, until you can build them up
to a reasonable tempo. What's reasonable? I don't know.
We all want to play fast, don't we? But remember that a famous guitar player said one time,
and this is absolutely true, that speed is the byproduct of accuracy.
If you play cleanly, if you're accurate, the speed will come along. But if you try to push it too hard,
you're going to play sloppy, and that's not going to make it.
Let's play it one more time.
Now what we've been working on up to this point is pretty traditional technique
that would apply to any style of guitar, and actually would work equally well on acoustic as on electric.
But there are some aspects of technique that are more common to the electric guitar,
and the reason is that, well, first of all, probably got skinnier strings. You can do things like bending and so on.
And also sound. We're plugged in. You don't have to be plugged in to practice with this video, of course,
but as you become more and more adept at playing,
your sound is going to become as important as the notes themselves.
Now think about the great players, the guys that you admire, and they have an instantly recognizable sound,
and that's a function of the guitar and the amplifier and the effects,
but it stems from the fingers. The fingers are the most important element of anybody's sound.
Now things that electric guitar players do, commonly, include things like hammer-ons and pull-offs.
Now this is another way of getting around the neck. We've been picking every note, and so on.
Now what a hammer-on is, is when you're playing two notes on the same string,
instead of picking the second note, you pick the first note and then
bring the finger sharply down on the second note.
And the impact of the finger striking the neck
creates the sound.
Try it on the fifth string. First finger, third finger.
Now you're actually using a lot of force there.
Fourth string, third,
second, and first.
Now the opposite of a hammer-on is a pull-off.
I go up to the high string and strike the first note with my fourth finger,
and then with my first finger already in position,
pull my fourth finger to the side. By pulling the finger to the side,
I'm plucking the string, but I'm plucking it with my finger rather than with the pick.
And when I come back, of course, I'm using a hammer-on.
That's an effect you hear quite a bit. Now doing pull-offs across the neck,
it would sound like this. Pick, pull-off. Pick, pull-off.
Pick, pull-off. Pick, pull-off.
Now one technique that probably drew most of us to the electric guitar in the first place
is string bending. It's a way of making the guitar sound unlike any other instrument,
because what you're really doing is making the guitar sound more like a voice.
The technique of bending is basically quite simple. You pick a note,
let's say we're going to bend from the third finger on the third string,
and bend it up like that. What I'm doing is pushing the note toward the ceiling,
and the only trick involved here is that instead of using one finger all by itself,
which is kind of hard, I'm going to use all three fingers together.
So I've got my third finger, second and first finger behind it. That adds the strength of all three fingers to the bend.
So when I push it toward the ceiling, I've got plenty of strength.
I'm bending it up and I'm trying to use my ear to hit that note right there.
It's bending the equivalent of two frets.
Try to bend that note so it's right on pitch.
That's called a whole step bend.
Try it from the eighth fret on the second string.
Now in this case here, this is where I would personally use my third finger for the bend,
with the second and first finger behind it. It means moving out of position slightly,
and I bend that string up a whole step.
Now you can also bend by pulling toward the floor.
Now you can also bend with other fingers,
the first finger,
or the second finger.
Now practicing technique, whether it's hammer-ons, pull-offs, picking, string bending even,
is all well and good, but that's not why we started playing guitar.
An important part of your practicing is to just play,
and not necessarily have a structure on it, but just start a tune.
Play with a friend, or play some chords into a tape recorder, or just sit by yourself and mess around.
That's what it's all about, and that's where you start to put your techniques together and make music.
So for instance, let's do a little jam. I'm going to jam here with my friend Don in the key of A,
and we're going to do the exact same scale that we've been talking about all along.
Same pattern, everything. Hammer-ons, pull-offs, string bending. Let's go.
But we've come to the end of this video,
and even though we packed it full of information,
there's so much more to know.
Scales, chords, techniques, sound.
So many things we haven't had time to touch on.
If you want to keep studying, the real question is, what to do now?
And if you want to study on your own, there are any number of books and videos that you can draw on,
but if you want to learn how to play guitar,
that will give you lots of different perspectives on music.
I always think it's the best idea to have a good teacher, somebody that's already been there,
that can save you time, tell you what to do next, and will know your personal needs.
If you feel that you're ready to take a big step, there are music schools where you can immerse yourself
in the instrument for any period of time, and then you're really thinking about making a career of it.
But whatever path you take, there are three things that you need.
You need the knowledge, that's the language of music, the theory, so on.
You need technique so that you're able to play the sounds that you hear in your head, and you need experience.
That'll tell you what to play and when to play it.
Now, no matter what you do with music, I hope this has been an informative video for you,
please, and until then, whatever you do, keep listening.
Thank you.