How Would You Help a Beginning Guitarist Get Started? - 011

Introduction

Let’s help beginning guitar players!

Check out the complimentary post to this show to follow along with the main content:

Listener Feedback

This is listener feedback. This is where. If you have a comment or question that I can help you with I will try my best to help you.

To get in touch, you can always email me at feedback [at] playguitarpodcast [dot] com, use the comments on the show notes page, or use the contact form on the site.

But, the coolest way to leave a question for the show is by my speakpipe voicemail. When you go to the main page of playguitarpodcast.com, to the right of the screen you will see a button call send voicemail. That will allow you to record a short message for me to use on the show. You can also get to this voicemail on my contact page.

So that was my Idea of pointing new guitarists in the right direction. But what was yours. The first I recieved was from Andrew on Twitter.

Andrew says: New students need a reference point such as a guitar teacher be it online or face to face to set them on the right path, e.g. correct a basic chord or scale, once a student is set on the right path with the correct foundation, they can continue to build on this.

Thank, you Andrew: Very true. I think establishing a strong foundation is so important. And it’s difficult to know what the knowledge and skills you need as a beginner are with out good guidance. When things are just one way, you learning from some sort of content, it’s too easy to move forward before you are ready.

This is from an email I received from Chris. ( who has been great in sharing his progress on the guitar)

Chris says: Ideas for beginners, 1) know how to tune the guitar (or someone who does) and also know when the guitar isn’t in tune. 2) know the notes of the open strings, and the order. 3) teach a simple melody on one string 4) set short, medium and long term goals. These are the ideas that came into my idea after listening to your podcast 😉

These are great as well. I did’t touch on a lot of the specifics, I went more general mindset. But, what Chris touches on here are some of the essential things you need as a beginner. Know how to tune. We all take that for granted, but I can’t tell you how many new students I have who come in with snapped strings that need to be fixed from experimenting with tuning. Those strings can only be cranked so far. Sometimes I thing they should supply eye protection with starter guitar packs. Getting some sort of melody or riff as soon as possible is also very important. To keep people playing they need to hear something familiar coming from their guitar. Great ones, Thanks Chris.

This is from a comment on Podbean from soilcreep78. He says: I think the Parkening Guitar method is the best way to start. Then move on to something more personal.

Very good, especially if you are interested in Classical guitar. Even if you are not, the christoper parkening method is very good at getting guitarists up and running. With my background being in Jazz, I didn’t start that way but when I went to University of the Arts the Jazz and Classical guitar departments shared many classes togheter. I made a lot of friends and I learned a lot about the method and thinking of classical guitarists. And I agree the parkening method is a great way to get beginners headed in the right direction.

I also received an awesome email from Ryan! Thanks Ryan for the kind words. I’m glad you are getting a lot out of the show and it is helping you. Let me know if you have any questions or I can help. I’m happy to!

And finally I received a comment from Alan on one of the episode show notes pages.

He says:

Hi Lee,This podcast is helping my playing quite a bit. I appreciate you creating and sharing it.In 008 you were playing a DACG chord progression and when playing over the C chord you changed scales from D major to G avoid the C#. My question is how do you pick a good scale? Would an A minor scale work? Can anything with a C note work?Thanks for your help.

I have had a few questions about this and so I thought for the rest of the show I would take some time to better explain my process and other ways of soloing over this chord progression:

I chose this chord progression for a reason. It seems so simple but it’s very tricky. There are several ways approach this. But, to directly answer your question, I wouldn’t play just anything with a C note in it.

The easiest way, that most would do is play a D major pentatonic over the whole thing. That bypasses the whole C# – C situation. The notes in D major Pentatonic are D E F# A G.If you were going to stay with pentatonics, The next thing that is common would be to play

D major pentatonic over the D and A, and then go bluesy with a switch to a D minor pentatonic over the C and G chords. You have to be careful with this though because the F note in the D minor pentatonic can sound very sour if you don’t bend it a bit toward the F#. But we weren’t trying to play pentatonics, we were trying to find the full scale that matches the best. You can see from above that our two problem areas in this are the C – C# and the F – F#.

The path I chose in the podcast was to think of the D and A as the key of D major and then to think of the C and G chord as a temporary change to G major. Your other question about the A minor scale is answered best here.

The A minor scale comes close to working over the C and G chords but if you listen to it, one note sound very funny: The F. It has that same sour sound that it did when we played it in the minor pentatonic. It just doesn’t fit. It needs to be an F#. Well if we just changed the F to F#, that A minor scale becomes an A dorian, which has the same notes as the G major scale.This is where it gets very tricky to describe in text, where it is so simple to hear. So… If you don’t mind, I would like to make this a part of episode 11 next week, in the listener feedback section. Let me know if that’s OK with you.I hope everything is good for you today and thanks again for the comment!

So even trying to use the a minor scale and changing it to fit it still takes us to playing the temporary key change using the G major scale. Why does the G major scale work over the last two chords. The chords are D A C G. I’m thinking of the D as the 1 chord in D major and the A as the 5 chord. When we move to the C chord I treat it as the 4 chord in key of G and then the G chord as the tempory 1 chord. If this doesn’t make sense to you classifing the chords as a number, don’t worry I’ll be having a show in the future that talks about chord progressions and how to understand a certain chords function in a key.

You see, I told you it was a tricky chord progression. I hoped I helped you understand a bit better.