Beginning Guitarist Study Outline

8/13/2019 Beginning Guitarist Study Outline

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Beginning Guitarist Study Outline

Going it alone as a beginning guitarist can be challenging because you dont get the roadmap through the musical journey that a teacher can provide. Its much harder to learn

intermediate and advanced guitar concepts if you dont have the basics down first. Im

going to give you a checklist of guitar concepts every guitarist needs to know, and theorder you should learn them in for the easiest advancement.

First, a couple of tips. Dont try to tackle all of these subjects at once. Music is a

cumulative study. Think about the way youd study math. You cant learn calculus until

youve already got algebra under your belt.

Second, dont just study these concepts in a vacuum. As much as possible you want to

learn them in the context of a song. Youll understand the ideas better and find they stickin your head more if youre using them in a real world context. Plus, its just more fun to

learn that way!

Some of these ideas will overlap each other a little bit along the way. And some areongoing ideas that youll continue to develop at higher levels. But this is a good basic

order to learn them in.

Reading Standard Music Notation and TablatureLearning to read music isnt as hard as it seems and will make the rest of your learning

experience much easier. The notation is simply the instructions on how to play a piece of

music. Without it, its like trying to put together a piece of furniture without being ableto read the instructions. You might eventually figure it out, but it will be harder and take

longer than it needs to.

Guitar tablature is a simple system to understand, but dont stop with that. Tabs donthave a rhythm notation component. So you already have to know the rhythm to make

sense of the notes. Being able to read standard notation along with the tab will get you

everywhere you want to go.

Open Position Notes

The open position is the first three frets of each string. Youll learn the names of theopen strings, plus a couple other notes on each string. I suggest taking this one string at a

time and finding little pieces to play with each set of notes. Keep expanding one string at

a time until youve done all six strings. You may want to invest a couple bucks in a

beginner guitar book by Mel Bay or someone similar. Having their little graded piecescan save you a lot of time searching around for something to play.

Basic Music Theory

You might think its a little early for this, but its not. Music theory is something thatyoull use and expand on throughout the guitar learning process. Its like learning the

grammar of music. By knowing how the music is put together, youll be able to apply

that knowledge to every new song you learn to make the learning go faster.


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Heres a quick list of basic theory ideas you should get to:

- How chords are built- Tension and release- What a key is-

Chord relationships (You should be able to answer a question like What is the IVchord in the key of F major?)- Half, Authentic, and Plagal cadences- Intervals- Borrowed chords

Again, dont just try to memorize these concepts. Always look for them in real pieces of

music to see how theyre actually used.

Basic Open Position Chords

Open chords are ones that use a combination of fretted notes and open strings. Theyll

mostly occur within the first three frets of the neck. I suggest starting with major, minor,and dominant seventh versions for all the natural notes, A-G. Look for songs that use afew of the chords and learn them in that context. Dont try to learnany more than five or

six at a time. This allows you to learn new chords as you need them instead of trying to

cram 21 different chords into your head at once.

Strumming Patterns

Its no good having chords if you dont have any rhythms to go along with them, right?

You can start with some basic quarter note/eighth note rhythms and later expand intosixteenth notes and syncopations. Work the rhythms first over just one chord, then use

pairs of chords to practice changing them effectively. Youll continue to learn and invent

rhythm patterns throughout your studies.

Tuning By Ear

I didnt put this earlier in the list because you can use electronic tuners to keep you in

check early on. But as you get more advanced youll find that those tuners will get youin the ballpark, but rarely perfectly tuned. Being able to tune by ear will help you fine

tune your guitar to make it sound much better. Youre not looking for perfect pitch here.

Youll start with a reference note from another source and use relative pitch to tune therest of the guitar.

Barre Chords

Once youve gotten your open chords down, youll start running across chords that cantbe played that way, like a C#7. Barre chords use all fretted notes to create the chords.

The nice thing is that you really only need to know eight patterns here because theyre

movable to other areas of the neck. Make sure to learn major, minor, dominant seventh,

and minor seventh voicings rooted from both the fifth and sixth strings.

What makes barre chords a little harder is the physicality of holding down five or six

strings at once and keeping them all clean sounding. If you run into some trouble with


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these, thats totally normal. Just keep working at them. As a guitarist, youll use barre

chords a lot.

Also, while youre learning your barre chords, you can easily learn how to read all the

rest of the notes on the fretboard.

Pentatonic ScalesTraditional music teaching would have you learn major scales first. But for a guitarist,

pentatonic scales are much more immediately useful. As with anything, dont try and

learn everything at once. Start with a basic box pattern rooted on the sixth string. Add

subsequent patterns once youre comfortable with the one youre learning.

Major Scales

Same as with the pentatonics, you want to work with one pattern at a time here. The nicething is that once you know some major patterns, they can be slightly changed to become

other interesting scales as well. Always look at how the new thing youre learning relates

to the old stuff you learned.

Position Playing

Position playing means being able to play melodies higher up on the neck than the open

position. Once youve got some major and pentatonic scales under your fingers, this

wont be that hard.

Minor Scales

Your minor scales are related to the major patterns you learned before. Here youll wantto get to know the natural, harmonic, and melodic minors.

Extended Chords

Extended chords go beyond the old major and minor. Youll need all the variations ofseventh chords, diminished and augmented, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth voicings. As

you go along youll pick up new chords you find in pieces your playing.

Remember that music is a cumulative form of study. The more you learn, the easier it is

to learn more. The building blocks that you learn early on will still be relevant later when

youre tying out much more complicated pieces.

Once you can make your way around each of the concepts above youll be ready to go

into any style and any piece youd like with the proper tools to teach yourself.

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Beginning Guitarist Study Outline