Posts Tagged ‘Guitar Chords’

Easy Learning Guitar Chords

December 31st, 2009

If you want to learn to play guitar chords you can buy a chord dictionary. These books contain every chord known to man, most of them you will never use. There are two common kinds or chord – the major chord and the minor chord. All western music is based on the major scale. Let’s take a look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C. On the piano these are the white notes but on the guitar we have to find the note patterns and find ways of remembering them. The lowest C note on the guitar is at the third fret of the fifth string, the next note, D is the open fourth string and the E is the second fret on the fourth string. The third fret on the fourth string is the F and then we move onto the open third string which sounds the note G. The the second fret of the third string is A, the open second string is the B note and the first fret of the second string gives us C which is the beginning of the next octave. To play the C major scale using these frets, which is known as playing in the first position, use the first finger for notes that appear on the first fret, the second finger fro notes at the second fret and use the third finger for third fret notes. Now you know the notes, all you need to do is practice every day. According to its basic definition a chord is a mix of any number of any notes but a major chord is the first, third and fifth note of a major scale. In the case of the C major scale the notes are C, E and G. To play a C minor chord all you need to do is play the note E flat (written Eb) instead of the E natural note you played in the major chord. This applies to all keys. Always and everywhere, the major chord is the first, third and fifth notes of the scale and the minor chord, which has a sadder sound, contains the flattened third. You can play scales and notes in all keys in th first position. If you haven’t already, download a guitar fretboard diagram to show you where the notes are and some tabs or chord charts for some songs you want to learn. You will be learning open chords like the C major and C minor chords you just learnt and you have already found out how to work out where the notes are for your major and minor chords. To save you some work you can download a collection of guitar chords but once you know how to find them for yourself, why not use your musical knowledge?

Beginner Guitar Players Jam Session

December 11th, 2009

The Rock Shop in Florida is a our local music shop. The owner Tom is kind enough to host a small beginners jam on Tuesday nights at one of his warehouses. He has a lot of patience. He should have been a Doctor! It is very personal and comfortable and has a wall of various amps, a full drum setup and space for the bass, rhythm and lead guitar players on a stage.
Tom is a terrific musician, he plays a wicked guitar and ain’t to bad at the bass guitar either. John plays the drums, his experience is important as a way of keeping time. John really shows the value of a metronome. The timing and rhythm necessary to play with other folks that is critical. Jack is our regular bass player and he has about a year into it, he has really good chops for a relatively new player. Man, a decent bass player is like a metronome too, this is the beat we listen for.
Note: Use a metronome and a guitar tuner.
The first jam most new players are nervous. Realistically speaking that is an understandable emotion. However, that feeling passes quickly as you blend in and learn to play with other folks. The whole vibe is to get you playing and make it a fun experience. No one leaves bummed out, we make sure to play simple three chord songs that most people are familiar with. Lots of them are in the twelve bar blues structure.
Learning about Guitar Tab is a wonderful way to get the music, scales and chords to a song on paper. If everyone has the same tab and understands it, then it’s easy for everyone to get into a groove. The mandatory common guitar chords stage one will give you a good start. Choosing the right songs is another benefit for beginners.
Louie Louie by Richard Berry and The Pharaohs in 1957 has three chords: A A D7 D7 E E D7 D7.
Gloria Tab by Van Morrison has three chords: E D A E E D A. These are just two of thousands of three chord songs. Choose ones you are familiar with.
Each band member has a part to play. In other words, if your job as a guitar player is to play rhythm, then play rhythm. If you are supposed to play lead guitar, than play lead. Like football, every player has a job or position to play. If the guy next to you blows his assignment, don’t worry about it, take care of your assignment only. Keep the beat, miss a note, keep the beat. Always keep the beat. Focus on the bass guitar or drummer.
The basic idea is that if you go into a zone, where all you focus on is the beat and what you are doing, than perhaps you won’t get stage freight. Going into a zone should prevent you from worrying about the audience. You won’t even know people may be listening.
Many of the places beginners jam at already have amps, drums and a stage like Tom’s warehouse. If you get in a band and do gigs, you got to bring your own equipment.
With that being said, at a minimum, bring a set of strings, a 20 foot guitar chord, a tuner and a guitar stand. Bring some potato chips and cokes for the host!
Do you remember your first jam?
Jamming is fun and valuable in terms of furthering your guitar education. Try it, you will like it.

Guitar Chord Software You Can Get for Free

December 11th, 2009

Free guitar chord software is a sought after item. If you feel you must own software that can spit out every chord known to man then why not get it for free? I cannot help wondering how many variations on the basic chords a guitar player needs. If you want to put a little variety into a song or guitar solo then a new fingering for the chords you are using is the obvious answer. In the pre-internet days we had to look through books of chord shapes which were not always readily available. With guitar chord software you can have a world of chords at your fingertips as long as you have your laptop with you. With “Guitar Alchemist” you are able to get to know the chords of the major scale in all keys. According to the program’s website you will “easily find chords to play over any scale and vice-versa”. You can filter your chords by inversion or degree of difficulty. You can reconfigure the program for left-handed players. “Advanced FretPro” is a free software designed to train guitar players to gain familiarity with the fretboard. A library of scales and chords comes with the program. “TabPlayer” is the first guitar software which is able to play, edit, convert, format and export tabs as a text file. It has a chord dictionary that contains over a thousand chords. You just pick the chord you want and insert it into your music. The program plays your tablature, plays CD’s and mp3 files and searches for songs on the net. “Power Tab Editor” is a software program for writing guitar tabs. The program includes a chord dictionary  that you can use to display chords in standard music form or as tablature. You open the chord dictionary which displays chord diagrams. You select and insert the chord and you can see the notes and the fingering in tab form. “Guitar Chords v 2. 2″ is a no-frills guitar chord software. It has a library of forty thousand basic and not so basic chords which are displayed as guitar tab.   Guitar Chords is the software you need if you want to never have to look for chords again and you want your chords displayed in an easy to read format.