String Love Guitar Lessons

In this lesson, let’s look at the C Major scale in open position on the guitar.

This is one of the most immediately accessible–and useful–scales you can learn on the guitar. Working this scale provides a number of powerful benefits for your playing. I’m going to cover all of the powerful benefits you’ll receive as a result of putting in some consistent attentive practice on the C Major Scale, and I’m also going to discuss the crucial pointers you need to keep in mind if you want to receive maximum benefit from every minute you spend practicing this scale.

In this video, I cover everything you need to know to practice the C Major Scale in open position to take huge leaps forward in your playing:

I regularly encourage students to get at least this open position C Major Scale under their belts even if they have very little interest in soloing or doing intensive technique work.

There are just so many benefits to acquire from working scales like this open C Major scale. But here’s a quick word of warning–if you’re anything like most students, you’ll probably resist actually saying the names of the notes out loud as you work on this scale. But if you don’t etch the names and locations of the notes along the fretboard in your mind, you’re missing out on the best part of working this scale.

As you become more familiar with where the actual notes fall on the fretboard, a ton of different musical possibilities will open up to you. So put in the (very small amount of) extra work here, now, to learn the location of the notes of the C Major Scale on the fretboard.

And, as always, be sure to take your time at first and really work fantastic technique. Develop those good guitar habits from the outset!

In this lesson for beginning guitarists, I’m taking a look at the subtleties of one of the simplest finger exercises you can work on the guitar.

Chromatic scales involve positioning the fingers of your fretting hand each over four consecutive frets and then playing first up and then back. From the index finger to the middle, then to the ring and finally to the pinky, you play four notes going up the neck. Once you’ve reached the pinky finger’s note, you then turn around and head back down the neck playing four notes again–pinky, ring, middle, index.

Chromatic scales aren’t meant to sound like sweet beautiful music, but working them slowly and with attention helps you perfect proper finger movements. I should mention–Jamie Andreas covers chromatic scales thoroughly in her seminal book The Principles of Correct Practice for the Guitar (which, if you haven’t, you really should).

In this video, I demonstrate the best way to derive maximum benefit from working chromatic scales, and I once again discuss the invisible aspects of playing guitar that you won’t get off of guitar tabs or from the vast majority of guitar books. Lots of good stuff in this video:

Okay? So as you work chromatic scales, you want to focus on the following specifics of how your fingers move:

1. Keep your fingers close over their respective frets as they wait their turn to play. The closer the better–strive for mere microns. This applies when you’re coming back down and pulling the fingers off as well. It’s particularly challenging to keep the fingers close when you’re lifting them up off the frets. But that’s where you get the most benefit from this chromatic scale workout!

2. Keep your fingers curved. None of this super-tense looking finger stuff. Ugly hands make ugly music.

3. Keep your fingers vertical. When you come down on the individual frets, make sure you come down right on the fingertip and very vertical. The ring and pinky fingers, in particular, don’t naturally come down vertically at first.

4. Keep your fingers relaxed. Continually breathe into any tension that arises in your hand as you work the chromatic scale. Taking your time, going extremely slowly and paying total attention will help you become more aware of any tension spots and then relax them.

This is, of course, just the beginning of how to use chromatic scales to improve your guitar playing. The rabbit hole goes very deep on this exercise, but this is plenty enough to get you started or to help you refocus on what you’re trying to do with chromatic scales in your overall process of becoming a fantastic guitarist.

Any questions? Ask me in the comments!

Why is it so seemingly hard to learn guitar off of tabs, books, sheet music or by ear?

Why do so many guitar players struggle to figure out how to shift from chord to chord smoothly? If you can’t shift smoothly from one chord to the next, you won’t be able to play the songs you long to play on the guitar?

In this video, I discuss a very key distinction you’ll want to keep in mind as you learn how to move your fingers on the fretboard through various guitar chord changes. I refer to “Invisible Channels,” which are the exact trajectories your fingers follow from Point A to Point B as they move from their position in one chord to their position in the next.

This is vital information for you to absorb if your chord changes aren’t happening smoothly yet:

This past week, I worked with two different students who exhibited the same ring finger tension when they switched from C Major to D Major. It was fascinating to see the exact same involuntary finger twitch in two totally different guitar players in two separate lessons.

If you don’t train your fingers to move smoothly, softly and efficiently, they may well default to inefficient, tense movements that will keep you far from being able to play through chord progressions quickly. All it takes is for you to know what you need to make happen and a willingness to take the time and put in the attention to create the results you’re after.

This concept applies not just to the shift from C Major to D Major but to all guitar chord changes and, really, all movements you perform on the guitar. Look at how your fingers move, imagine the most efficient and relaxed possible movement and strive to make that movement your regular reality on the guitar.

For the past several lessons, I’ve been going over the basics of Travis-style technique.

Today, let’s actually apply all that fun picking-hand work to some actual chord progressions!

In this video, I demonstrate three different chord progressions and how you can experiment moving through them using Travis-style accompaniment:

Now, I’m going to be honest with you–the more basic music theory you understand, the better for knowing which notes you can use in the bass. However, even if you don’t know any music theory, you can still work on each of these chord progressions and make some really fun music happen.

Here are the chord progressions I played in the video for reference:

Progression I:

C G/B Am G/B

Progression II:

G D/F# Em D/F#

Progression III:

G C G C G D

These progressions are very standard. Mastering them will set you up to play hundreds and thousands of popular songs using the Travis-style accompaniment patterns to guide you.

Over time, I’ll include more and more actual tabs with songs played through using Travis-style accompaniment.

For now, though, one thing you can do to find new progressions to work on is to just go hunting around online for tabs to your favorite songs. Even if the original version of a song you love was in no way played using Travis-style guitar, you can still create your own arrangement by playing through the chord changes using the basic Travis-style patterns you now know.

Often this kind of experimentation leads to all sorts of fun new versions of familiar songs. And some of them can even be more beautiful than the originals!

Just remember–have fun and work these things S-L-O-W-L-Y at first until you’re able to maintain both the rhythm and great sound as you move through the changes using the Travis-style patterns you know.

Up until now, I’ve been going over the very foundational basics of Travis-style guitar.

I’ve looked at good finger movement. I’ve gone through some important basic patters that incorporate the index and middle fingers along with the customary alternating bass that characterizes the Travis-style sound.

Today, we’re going to look at the Travis-style pinch, which is where you simultaneously play your thumb and either your index or middle finger at the same time.

The pinch opens up a whole bunch of fantastic musical possibilities, but it can be surprisingly tricky when you first start learning how to do it.

Check out this video for a full breakdown of the pinch–what it is, how to do it and what to look out for as you practice it:

If you’re new to fingerstyle guitar, then this combination of playing the thumb and either the index or middle finger can really feel confusing at first. Since the thumb pushes out away from the hand and the index or middle fingers pull into the hand, it can be hard to balance those conflicting movements.

As always, slow practice is the answer. Take this slow. Really work on developing a comfortable feel for pinching with the thumb and either the index or middle fingers. You will need to do index and middle finger pinches depending on the musical context, so take the time to make sure both become very easy for you even if one finger is more challenging for you than the other.

Pay attention to the fine details here–you want both notes to ring out simultaneously. Don’t settle for “almost.” Let both notes ring out at exactly the same time. And, again, if this feels really hard at first, just slow it down. Take your time and work the pinch outside of any chord changes or musical rhythms.

If you’d like some musical exercises for working the pinch, here are four different ways you can practice pinching:

1)

1 ————————————————————————————————
2 ——-——–——-—————-—————–———————————-———-
3 —I———I———I———–I———I———–I———-I————I——————-
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————–P—————————————–P—————————-

2)

1 ————————————————————————————————
2 —M——-M——–M———M——-M———M——–M——–-M—————–
3 ————————————————————————————————
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————–P—————————————–P—————————-

3)

1 ————————————————————————————————
2 ————-M——–————M——————-M——————–M————-——
3 –I–——————-I——————-I———————I———————————
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————–P—————————————–P—————————-

4)

1 ————————————————————————————————
2 –M——–———–M——————–M——————–M——————–———-
3 ————-I———————I——————–I———————I——————
4 ————-P——————-P——————-P——————–P—————-
5 –P—————————————-P————————————————–
6 ———————–P—————————————–P—————————-

I hope those helped you out! Good luck mastering the pinch!