Lessons

Barre chords are an important part of a guitar player’s repertoire and really expand your ability to navigate the fretboard beyond open chord playing. That said, they can be a bit of a pain to get down as they require a good bit of hand strength and dexterity to play well.

Parallel scales are scales that share the same root note, or tonic. It’s easy to confuse them with relative scales, which share all the same notes, but have a different tonic note. In this lesson we’ll take a look at what parallel scales are, how to figure out the notes of the parallel scale, and common uses for the scales.

Sus chords, or suspended chords, are variations to traditional major and minor chords. While the name might seem unfamiliar, you’ve undoubtedly heard them many times and would recognize them immediately in popular songs like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen and many others. They have multiple uses and really help to add color and movement to chord progressions, particularly around a single chord.

In this lesson we’re going to explore triplets on guitar. Triplets are rhythmically different than quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes and can really add a cool feel to both rhythm playing and lead guitar licks.

In previous lessons we’ve learned about major, minor and diminished triads. In this lesson we’ll round out the triads with augmented triads. We’ll take a look at the interval structure that creates the augmented triad and map them to the guitar fretboard.

In this lesson we’re going to take a deep dive into the G major scale on guitar. We’ll look at the intervals and notes that make up the scale, the five positions and patterns for the scale, chords that are built from the G major scale, and also look at some song examples based in the key of G major.

In a previous lesson, we looked at the 3 notes per string major scale, which is a way to outline major scale patterns across the fretboard using 3 notes on each string. In this lesson we’re going to do the same thing with the minor scale and build out the 3 notes per string minor scale patterns.

Guitar double stops can add a lot of flavor to your playing. They add life and fullness to both rhythm and lead playing, creating interesting textures not achieved by basic chords or single notes alone.

With an estimated 90% of new guitar players quitting within the first year of playing, I think it’s important to start learning real songs right away. After all, that’s why we start playing guitar in the first place, right? In this lesson, I’ve provided some easy guitar riffs for beginners to start learning and playing real music.

In this lesson we’re going to work on two foundational techniques of guitar playing, hammer-ons and pull-offs. At first these techniques may feel a bit difficult and awkward, but with focused practice they’ll become an integral part of your playing.