Beginner Guitar Chords You Can Learn Right Now

Want to learn some easy guitar chords fast? Today’s post is going to teach you three different three string guitar chords you can learn in probably an hour or less. Of course to master these chords you should incorporate them into your daily practice routine. Remember when learning something new on the guitar start out practicing it slow to perfect your technique and then introduce some speed to it.

A note about how to read the TAB I’ve used for the chords below. Each line represents a string, the X’s on a particular string mean don’t play that string, numbers on a string represent the fret to press on and a 0 means just play that string open without pressing on any frets.

C Chord on 3 Strings

E — 0 —
B — 1 —
G — 0 —
D — X —
A — X —
E — X —

To play this 3 string C chord place your first finger on the first fret of the B string and strum the bottom three strings.

G Chord on 3 Strings

E — 3 —
B — 0 —
G — 0 —
D — X —
A — X —
E — X —

To play a 3 string G chord place your third finger on the third fret of the E string and strum the bottom three strings.

D7 Chord on 3 Strings

E — 1 —
B — 2 —
G — 1 —
D — X —
A — X —
E — X —

To play the D7 chord you place your second finger on the 1st fret of the E string, your third finger on the 2nd fret of the B string and your first finger on the 1st fret of the G string. This will feel a little uncomfortable at first but it will get better with practice.

Now that you know how to make these three chords it’s time to practice them. I suggest first playing the chords on their own and strumming, stopping your strumming, switch to another chord and strum that one. Once you feel confident in making the shapes and positioning your left fretting hand you can begin to strum and switch between each one.

Like to learn more guitar chords and improve your playing? Every consider learning at home using a learn to play guitar dvd? Home study courses on dvd are becoming the private guitar lessons of the 21st centruy. With online integration where you can ask questions and get feedback it’s a great method of learning on your own terms.

Newsletter Vol. 3 # 106 – January 15, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #106 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• Topic of the Month
• Guitar Noise Featured Artist
• New Lessons and Articles
• Coming Attractions
• Exploring Guitar with Darrin Koltow
• Emails? We Get Emails!
• Event Horizon
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello! I hope that New Year 2010 is starting out well for all of you!

Since it’s the middle of the month, I guess that means it’s time for the latest edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

As more of the (seemingly endless) book deadlines are passing, I’m thinking that it’s long past time that we’ve had a Guitar Noise Seminar of some sort. So I’m thinking that it might be good to start scheduling maybe one or two for this spring, say possibly early May or early June.

Since a lot of our readers have been asking about it, I thought a good topic for this year’s seminars might be “playing with others in small groups.” That title definitely needs work! Anyway, the idea would be to have the people attending the seminar learn about how to arrange pieces for two guitars. We would take specific songs (brought by the participants) and explore how best to work up a second guitar part that would best befit the second player’s skills and abilities.

This would be held at my home in western Massachusetts (about two-and-a-half hours from New York City and two-and-a-half hours from Boston) and probably be on a Saturday, starting around nine-thirty in the morning and lasting until four-thirty and I will be providing lunch for all. If it’s possible (and if the participants are interested), I can try to arrange for a public performance at a local venue for that evening. I’m also still working out the cost, but I’m hoping to have it be around $125 for the day, and that would include lunch and beverages.

If this appeals to you, drop me an email and let me know. I’d prefer to keep the groups small, between five to eight people. If there is enough interest and we can work out when people would like to come, then it’s possible to hold them on several weekends so that we can accommodate as many folks as possible. And if there is enough interest we could also see about having them in the late summer and throughout the fall months.

Topic of the Month

As mentioned in our last newsletter, we’re starting out the New Year with a bit of a flashback – the Guitar Noise “topic of the month” for January 2010 is “Singing in the New Year” and that makes a lot of sense as so many people pick up the guitar in order to play and sing songs with others.

So if you go to the home page, you’ll find a link to many, many Guitar Noise articles, all dealing with the topic of singing and playing at the same time, not to mention just singing in general. And, as with most of our topics, there are articles from a number of folks who’ve contributed to our website over the past years. You should definitely find a few good tips to help you get your voice in shape.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

And Slash, who was known once upon a time as Saul Hudson, is our first “Guitar Noise Featured Artist” for 2010. Paul’s written a terrific bio about Slash (even though he totally omits all the special chords that are named after him) that you can find on our artist profiles page.

New Lessons And Articles

Guitar Plateaus – What To Do When You’re Stuck
by Jamie Andreas

If you’re traveling along the paths of learning guitar, you will eventually find yourself at a plateau in your learning. Longtime Guitar Noise Contributor, Jamie Andreas of Guitar Principles, explains why simply changing the way you look at being on a plateau, looking at it with the eye of a Guitar Master, can help you move forward in a short time.

Hello In There
Songs for Intermediates #29
by David Hodge

Here is a beautiful song from songwriter extraodinaire John Prine. This is another arrangement that most beginners can handle, plus we get into some discussion about choosing keys and chord voicings when creating arrangements. And you also get to hear how easy it is to turn this into a simple two-guitar arrangement.

Coming Attractions

We are constantly working on new lessons of all sorts here at Guitar Noise. Just to keep you updated as to what’s coming along in the pipeline, the following lessons are still on track for being posted up online in the next few months, although not necessarily in the order in which I’ve written them!

Easy Songs for Beginners: Sweet Home Alabama, Both Sides Now, Ziggy Stardust, Mister Bojangles, Peace Train, Just Like Heaven, Yellow

Songs for Intermediates: Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, If I Had A Boat, Homeward Bound, Fire and Rain, Circle Game, I Want You Back

Plus we’re looking forward to having more of our “Chord Melody Song Arrangements,” which will deal with pop and rock songs, like Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” or old standards like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and maybe even a surf tune, such as the Ventures’ classic “Walk Don’t Run.”

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for January 15 – Practicing Modes (Part 22)

Welcome back to our virtual coursework in the C phrygian sound, in our ongoing exploration of the musical modes. We’re “speaking” C phrygian with arpeggios this time, as we did last time. But, last time we used the C7+5 arp, and this time up it’s the C7b9.

Let’s play the music before we read about the music.

|-9---------------|-----------------|-------------6-9-|-8--
|---6-8-5---------|-----------------|---------5-8-----|----
|---------5-6-----|-----------------|-----6-5---------|----
|-------------8-5-|-----------------|-5-8-------------|----
|-----------------|-7---4-----4---7-|-----------------|----
|-----------------|---8---6-6---8---|-----------------|----

C7b9 has one extra note beyond the usual C, E, G, Bb configuration: Db. That note makes the C7 sound phrygian. In other words, it makes you think we’re going to F minor. How does this work?

The note Db is the sixth note in F harmonic minor, which is a super common minor scale your ears pick right up on. The C, E, G and Bb notes of C7 say “we’re going to F.” And the Db, which is not in the F major scale but in the F harmonic minor, says “Ah: F minor, not F major.”

We may look at substitutes for the C7 arpeggio in the next issue.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2010 Darrin Koltow

In case you’ve never visited Maximum Musician, hurry on over to Darrin’s website. You can also read his past contributions to Guitar Noise here. And you can also read some of Darrin’s past Guitar Noise News posts over at the Guitar Noise Blog.

Emails? We Get Emails!

Dear David,

I have decided to test out just how true your words of welcome are regarding inquiries. Perhaps to your chagrin. Nonetheless, I am a beginning guitarist and though guitarnoise.com and, more particularly, your instructional articles on beginner songs and the like have helped me immensely, the Internet isn’t always available to me. And you know, sometimes the computer just starts to hurt my eyes after a while.

So I was in the market for a book (or other literature) that would provide me with easy/intermediate guitar tabs, as well as some sort of basic instruction or tips for successfully learning the song. Any recommendations? If this information is covered somewhere on guitarnoise.com, I apologize — I haven’t gotten a chance to fully peruse all the website has to offer just yet.

Much appreciated,

Hi

Thank you for writing. And my thanks as well for your kind words concerning my lessons at Guitar Noise. I’m glad that they are being of help to you.

I don’t spend a lot of time on the Internet simply because my teaching and writing schedules don’t give me all that much free time. So I have not made an extensive look around at all the thousands (and tens of thousands) of guitar sites there are out there. And not to brag, but in the little that I have looked, I have yet to find any other books (or websites) that provide the same depth and level of instructional material as we do at Guitar Noise. Part of that is because the publishing industry (both book and music) make doing so fairly prohibitive with their copyright practices. A small book of, say, six to ten detailed lessons tends to cost them more to produce than just printing up the tablature and saying “here it is! Now just play it!”

Be that as it may, Paul Hackett (the gentleman who created Guitar Noise) and I are looking into how we at Guitar Noise might possibly be able to produce and publish our own series of lesson books. Unfortunately, my own teaching and writing schedule have sidelined this project for a while (I am currently writing / recording two titles for Alpha / Penguin Books – “The Complete Idiot’s Guitar to Playing Rock Guitar” and the entirely new “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar”) so we may not be able to get to it until this summer. But we will keep everyone updated either through our free newsletter (Guitar Noise News) or on the “News” section of the Forum pages.

In the absence of books and materials that are as detailed, I can recommend many of Mark Hanson’s books, such “Paul Simon Transcribed.” In addition to the tablature / transcriptions, he does give a page or so of instructions that help with each particular song. If you were to use that and to use some Guitar Noise lessons for more detail (even though they aren’t the same songs they all use similar techniques) you should do fairly well with them.

And feel free to write anytime. As I mentioned, I may not always be able to reply this quickly (or in this much detail), but I do try to.

My best wishes to you, your family and friends for a wonderful 2010.

Looking forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

Event Horizon

Just as it’s important to support each other when it comes to CDs, it’s also important (probably more so) to support live music. Sometimes it’s about being there. Literally. As musicians, it’s always good to support each other simply by being at a gig if it’s at all possible.

One thing we at Guitar Noise would really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

So please feel free to write me if you’ve got some gigs coming up. Remember that Guitar Noise News is sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. Usually I will have it ready to be sent out a few days ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of January (that is, after the fifteenth), then let me know by the tenth or the twelfth. If you’ve already got a show in August, 2010, let me know, too! It’s never too early to plan for things!

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming holiday shows!

Send your gig dates to me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put “gig alert” in the subject header.

Random Thoughts

Last Saturday, I took a needed break from things and visited a new dining establishment in Great Barrington, Massachusetts called the Gypsy Joynt, on Route 7. Terrific food and a great open mic hosted by Jordan Weller. He and his family have recently relocated from North Carolina and opened the place up. Jordan is a great guitarist and songwriter and I’m expecting I’ll be hearing a lot about him now on our local music scene here in the Berkshires.

He and his family obviously are very much into both good music and good food and it’s terrific that another local place is providing a showcase for local music. It’s always a risk for anyone running a business to try to promote other aspects of life, and even though restaurants and music would seem to go together like, well, restaurants and music, simply having local musicians come in and play doesn’t necessarily pay the rent.

You’ve no doubt read similar sentiments from me but it bears repeating, and the first part of a new year seems an apt time to do so. If you’re a musician who wants there to be places to perform, you should do what you can to patronize these businesses. If you’re playing at an open mic, you obviously should buy something while you’re there. At the very least you should add to the tip jar of the wait staff. That’s only polite.

Likewise if you’re playing at a restaurant, you should also do your best to keep your space of impact to a minimum. Don’t make it hard for other customers to move about and remember that they are to enjoy themselves as well. The more you can draw your audience into a performance, the more likely they are to enjoy the show and (hopefully) to come again and bring others. That’s common sense.

Because we all spend so much time with our computers, it’s easy to forget about the little nuances of human contact that truly mean a lot. So do try to get out and support your local music scene, regardless of how small or how extensive it may be. You never know when you might be listening to someone who will one day be performing on the national or even International scene.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace

Learning to Tune Your Guitar By Ear

Most beginner guitar players tune their guitar using an electric tuner. It is of course the most logical way seeing that there are these small tuning devices for just the job.

What if you don’t have a tuner handy? You could be at a store playing a guitar for sale, a friends place who doesn’t own a tuner or around a camp fire trying to play sing-a-long songs.

Knowing how to tune your guitar by ear is an important beginner skill and that’s what we’re going to cover today. At the end of this lesson there’s a short video that covers everything we talk about here and provides a walk-through example. Take a few minutes to watch that video after you’re done reading.

The Magic of the 5th Fret

Tuning your guitar by ear isn’t difficult. There are only three things you must keep in mind.

1.)The note of any given string is the same as the 5th fret played on the string above it
2.)There is one exception, the B string is the same as the 4th fret on the G string above it
3.)To tune the low E, or 6th string either match it to the tone of the open high E string or play the 5th fret of the B string (note the low E should be one octave lower then the E played on the 5th fret of the B string.

Example: The D string seems a bit out of tune on your guitar, to test you can play the 5th Fret of the A string above it and then strike the open D string. If the D seems like it’s lower or higher then the 5th fret of the A string adjust it with the tuning peg.

Be Careful

It can happen that the string you’re tuning to (in above example you would be tuning to the A string on the 5th Fret) is out of tune. If you sense this might be the case take a moment to first check the tuning of the string in question (in example above the A string). You can do this by verifying the tuning with the string above it.

Practicing

It’s a good idea to practice this technique each day you sit down to play. Before you start practicing take a few minutes to check all your strings to ensure they’re in tune. This will get faster as you practice and eventually become second nature.

Take a few minutes now to watch the video below. It covers the same concepts as in this article then walks you through a sample tuning of all the strings on your guitar.

Interested in becoming a better guitar player? Ever consider taking some guitar lessons for beginners? You can, and you don’t have to leave home to do it either. Thanks to online video lessons and DVD’s you can study guitar at home and improve your playing fast.

Key Centers and Chord Roots

Here’s a tip on hearing and playing with key centers. This could help players who can already play a few songs. They can even be three-chord songs. You might be looking around for more songs, but also wanting to develop an understanding of what you’re playing. You can get that understanding if you study chord roots and key centers.

These two are really close relatives. Chord roots are the hearts of chords, and key centers the hearts of keys. Let’s get a bit more specific and practical here. Play any chord you know. Your task is to – by ear – identify and then sing the chord’s root. What’s the point here? The point is to become aware of the most important part of the chord. Without awareness of that part, I don’t think you can fully explore music the way you want to.

Exercise two would be to do the same thing for key centers: hear any portion of a melody or a chord progression, and identify and sing the key center. This skill, like identifying the chord root by ear, is pretty easy to acquire, and you don’t even need a guitar. You can train yourself to pick out key centers by ear in a number of ways. One fun way is to use the free computer program at http://www.miles.be.

Once you can identify chord roots by ear, you can accomplish a number of important tasks. One of them is to recognize two different inversions of a chord as being the same chord. The advantage of this is that, if you’re reading a song’s chord chart, you’re not locked into playing the inversion the music calls for. You can play the same chord in a location you think sounds good.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2010 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News – May 1, 2008 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Newsletter Vol. 3 # 105 – January 1, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #105 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• Topic of the Month
• Guitar Noise Featured Artist
• Soon-To-Be New Lessons and Articles
• Exploring Guitar with Darrin Koltow
• Event Horizon
• Reviews
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the first day of 2010! And here to help you get started on this wonderful New Year is the latest edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com in case you’ve forgotten!)

I’m actually writing this newsletter up on Christmas Day, so I’d like to take a moment to wish everyone a “Happy Christmas,” although it will be a belated one by the time you read this. My wishes to you all for a very Happy New Year, though, should be precisely on time!

Topic of the Month

We’re starting out the New Year with a bit of a flashback – the Guitar Noise “topic of the month” for January 2010 is “Singing in the New Year” and that makes a lot of sense as so many people pick up the guitar in order to play and sing songs with others.

So if you go to the home page, you’ll find a link to many, many Guitar Noise articles, all dealing with the topic of singing and playing at the same time, not to mention just singing in general. And, as with most of our topics, there are articles from a number of folks who’ve contributed to our website over the past years. You should definitely find a few good tips to help you get your voice in shape.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

We also have a new “Guitar Noise Featured Artist” to kick in 2010, someone who needs no introduction to those who love rock music and the electric guitar – Saul Hudson! Hmmm, maybe he does need an introduction! How about if we call him by his stage name – Slash!

Check out the great bio Paul’s written on this iconic guitarist. You’ll find it on our artist profiles page.

New Lessons and Articles

In case you’ve not been to the home page in the past few weeks, you may have missed two Christmas song lessons that we posted up online right before Christmas: ”Away in a Manger” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas“.

I was hoping to also manage a lesson on “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” but things just didn’t pan out in terms of timing. My apologies for that, but it’ll be ready and waiting for you in about eleven months!

In the meantime, we do have two new pieces that should be up online by the time you receive this newsletter, and they are:

How To Prepare For Gigs And Make Your Live Shows Better
by Tom Hess

Creating memorable live performances can help you get more gigs and can bring more people to those gigs. Here are some great tips from Tom Hess on how to rehearse for all the aspects of performing live.

Banana Pancakes
Easy Songs for Beginners # 42
by David Hodge

This is kind of a “two in one” lesson with a look at rhythms and string muting as well as some work on simple barre chords and the importance of good positioning when it comes to playing riffs, even very simple ones like those used in this song! And I’ve also included a “barre chord free” arrangement for those whose barre chords still need practice.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for December 15 – Practicing Modes (Part 21)

Welcome back to our exploration of modes and our continued look at the C phrygian mode in particular. Today we’re going to communicate the C phrygian sound with an arpeggio. Without further ado, here’s C7(#5) around position V.

|-8-6-------------|-----------------|---6-8-------|------|
|-----9-5---------|---------------5-|-9-----------|-6----|
|---------5-------|-------------5---|----------5--|-5----|
|-----------8-6---|---------6-8-----|-------------|-6----|
|---------------7-|-------7---------|-------------|-8----|
|-----------------|-8-6-8-----------|-------------|------|

Let’s have a bit of theory with that. What are the notes in C7(#5)? What makes it C phrygian? Plain C7 has C, E, G, and Bb. Sharp the five and you’ll have G# instead of G. What makes this chord so dark is that G#.

What’s dark about G#? Well, think about the fact that G# is the enharmonic equivalent of Ab. Then remember that Ab is the minor third of the key center that C7 is pointing to, F minor. The Ab telegraphs the F minor feeling before we actually get to F minor.

We’ll look at another darkly sweet C phrygian arpeggio next time out.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2010 Darrin Koltow

In case you’ve never visited Maximum Musician, hurry on over to Darrin’s website. You can also read his past contributions to Guitar Noise here. And you can also read some of Darrin’s past Guitar Noise News posts over at the Guitar Noise Blog.

Event Horizon

Just as it’s important to support each other when it comes to CDs, it’s also important (probably more so) to support live music. Sometimes it’s about being there. Literally. As musicians, it’s always good to support each other simply by being at a gig if it’s at all possible.

One thing we at Guitar Noise would really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

So please feel free to write me if you’ve got some gigs coming up. Remember that Guitar Noise News is sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. Usually I will have it ready to be sent out a few days ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of January (that is, after the fifteenth), then let me know by the tenth or the twelfth. If you’ve already got a show in August, 2010, let me know, too! It’s never too early to plan for things!

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming holiday shows!

Send your gig dates to me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put “gig alert” in the subject header.

Not So Random Thoughts

Back in the long, long ago when I considered myself a wise person (much in the way that all teenagers know that they alone in the universe know the answers to everything), I somewhere picked up a habit that ended up being a bit of a New Year’s tradition – the week between Christmas and New Year’s I would try to write down my thoughts about just about everything that had happened that past year. It could be world events but more often than not it was all about me, my friends at school, my worries and meanderings about life and love and the future. You know, the typical stuff that usually fills journals or songs of songwriters who haven’t learned the valuable skill of getting out of oneself.

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, I’d usually have to drive my mom to work for the night shift (she didn’t drive and she worked eleven to seven) and I’d get home around eleven-twenty or so and start a fire in the fireplace. Then around eleven-thirty or so I’d read all the stuff I wrote and then at the stroke of midnight, I’d throw it into the fire and watch the old year literally go up in smoke in the first moments of the new year. Sentimental and very clichéd. I know, but I was (and still can be) very sentimental and certainly clichéd.

And as symbolic as this might have tried to be, I think it’s much more interesting to watch what bits of the past people carry around with them in their everyday life. We all do, to an extent. Some folks can go a bit overboard and actually try to live in the past while being here in the present, comparing any and everything to their own lives long ago and not even all that long ago. One of my young students made my day by longing for the “good old days” when he was seven (all of eighteen months ago!).

As you go into the New Year of 2010, try to make a point of living occasionally in the here and now. Go see a new band. Learn a new song (whether new to you or an old song you’ve not learned before) or come up with a totally new arrangement of something you’ve been doing the same way for ages.

In this digital era, it’s easy to confuse reading something on the computer with actual first-hand experience and knowledge. Actually, it’s been that way a long, long, time as anyone who works in either advertising or politics can readily tell you! Get out and participate. Play at an open mic. Start up a band so you’ll be ready to play at summer picnics! Start writing those songs you’ve been meaning to write since the “good old day!”

I hope this newsletter finds you safe, in good health, and full of good hope and cheer with these first days of a New Year, and a new decade, to boot!

And until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace

Picking Out Fast Melodies By Ear

Here are a few ideas for picking out hi-velocity melodies by ear.

A straightforward way to do this is to get software or hardware – like machines made by Tascam – that slows down melodies enough for you to hear the individual notes. Those machines have their place, but if you are slowing down everything you want to transcribe, you’re cheating yourself of a great chance to build your ear.

Someone who can successfully transcribe fast melodies is someone who uses everything he knows about music to make educated guesses at what he’s hearing. He takes the key center, the last few chords played, the scales most likely used by the guitarist he’s transcribing (e.g. Clapton and SRVaughn; heavy pentatonic usage), and other factors that are separate from the actual notes, to drastically narrow down the possible sources of melodic material. In other words, the more theory you know – especially theory related to the genre of the music you’re transcribing – the better.

Once he’s got all that info down, the successful transcriber may listen for the shape of the line. You can actually draw this. Is the line dipping down or moving up? Listen for repeated patterns, e.g. 1 3 2 4 (C E D F in C major), and also very important, the melodic rhythm. Tap out the rhythm of the line. Also, listen for pauses in the line. and identify the notes at those pauses.

Another big, big help: scatting/singing. Even if your pitch is way off, singing gets you inside the music, which gives you a fresh perspective on the line you’re transcribing. And you can scat to some pretty fast lines, faster than you can play. Then, you can slow down your singing so your ear can pick out the notes.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2009 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News – April 15, 2008 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Slash

If a commanding stage presence and instantly recognizable image were the things that made a great guitarist, Slash would be my first choice out of the gate. But in addition to those visual traits that make him famous, Slash is a guitar player with an undeniable passion for music and a technical mastery of the instrument. It must have been an easy decision for the video game company Activision to choose his music and likeness to promote their billion dollar selling (yes billion!) Guitar Hero. As well as being a playable character in the game, Slash wrote and recorded the game’s theme song and the marketing campaign prominently features his distinctive likeness. He is unquestionably the world’s first ambassador of guitar.

Slash (real name Saul Hudson) was in born in England in 1965. He wouldn’t even have to wait to grow up before getting an inside view of the music industry as his mother, a costume designer, worked for David Bowie (among others) while his father designed album covers for the likes of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. The Hudson family moved to L.A. when Slash was eleven and growing up in Los Angles in the 1970s is about a cool a place as any for a musician to come of age. Riding his BMX around Hollywood, Slash would find himself hanging out at the same playgrounds as other kids like Flea, the future bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Early music influences for Slash included the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, and these bands’ take on American blues music is a prominent feature of Slash’s sound. Taking up guitar himself, Slash quickly abandoned guitar tab and music books to figure things out by ear. One of the first songs he learned to play was “Smoke on the Water.” Later in life he would come to say: “Imitation should remain a stepping stone for a player to find his or her own voice, but it must never become his or her own voice: no one should emulate their heroes to the point of note-for-note mimicry. Guitar is too personal of an expression for that; it should be exactly what it is – a singular extension of the player.” So he probably smiles with a bit of irony when remembering his first band, a Motorhead tribute called Road Crew that he formed in 1983.

Among the other members of Road Crew were his childhood friends Steven Adler and Duff McKagan (who played bass for a brief spell). After Road Crew disbanded, Slash briefly played with another L.A. hard rock/punk band called Black Sheep. They sometimes shared the same bill with a band called Hollywood Rose, who were fronted by a singer calling himself Axl Rose. The pair became friends and they would eventually form a band together. They were joined by bassist Duff McKagan, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, and drummer Steven Adler to form Guns n’ Roses.

Guns n’ Roses spent 1985 and 1986 writing songs and making a name for themselves around the L.A. bar scene. In 1987 they released their first album Appetite for Destruction. The album would become the best selling debut album as well as the fastest selling album of all time. To this date it has sold over 28 million copies. This album is a virtual greatest hits of 1980s hard rock staples like “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City” and that staple of guitar store noodlers everywhere, “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” The band released an EP in 1988 but it would seem an interminable wait for another full length studio album. In 1991 Guns n’ Roses released a pair of new albums on the same date. Use Your Illusion I & II were sprawling and less cohesive albums than Appetite. Still, they produced another torrent of rock radio anthems such as “Civil War,” “November Rain” and a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” The band’s popularity was underscored by the memorable music video for “You Could Be Mine.” The highly requested MTV video featured Arnold Schwarzenegger from the movie Terminator 2 hunting down members of the band at one of their concerts. (You can check out the video here.)

Guns n’ Roses toured for more than two years on the strength of their continuing album sales. These were turbulent times for the band, and they would only release one more album of cover songs before Slash was out of the band for good. The band today is still fronted by Axl Rose with all new musicians. In 1995 and 2000 Slash released solo albums under the name of Slash’s Snakepit. In 2002, Slash reunited with former Guns n’ Roses pals Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum (Adler’s replacement since 1990). They initially approached Izzy Stradlin who opted out, preferring to stay away from life on the road and his unwillingness to work with a singer again. The band found a willing collaborator in Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots fame. Velvet Revolver, as they were called, released a pair of albums in 2004 and 2007 and is now currently looking for a new singer to replace Weiland who has returned to his former band.

The ups and downs of Slash’s career are chronicled with great detail in his 2007 autobiography simply titled Slash. He writes at great length about growing up in L.A. and his musical influences. He describes playing guitar as a personal experience: “Finding guitar was like finding myself; it defined me, it gave me a purpose. It was a creative outlet that allowed me to understand myself. The turmoil of my adolescence was suddenly secondary; playing guitar gave me focus.”

Slash has a well documented love of Marshall Amps and a collection of over a hundred guitars. Gibson Guitars now sells a Slash Signature model Les Paul which comes close to matching the axe used on Slash’s most famous songs. Slash has also lent his distinctive sound to other artists, including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, Michael Jackson, Ronnie Wood, Ray Charles and Daughtry. For an unapologetic read on sex drugs and rock and roll, plus a behind the scenes look at a life in rock music, check Slash’s autobiography. You can also find numerous resources online for emulating Slash’s style, including this one on his use of licks and scales and this one on trying to get the right tone.  Lick Library offers some very good tutorial DVDs as well.

How to Prepare For Gigs and Make Your Live Shows Better

The very best way to get more people to repeatedly come out and see your band play live is word of mouth. When your live shows are great, people will like you and your music and talk about you to their friends both online and offline. Besides the obvious point of playing good music that people like, there are five main areas of preparing for your gigs.

1. Your individual playing

The most important thing you can do (individually) to prepare for your gigs is to focus on playing your songs ‘consistently well’. To improve this, practice your songs in a wider variety of environments and situations. Play your songs standing, walking, in the dark, under a strobe light (if you have one), while talking, without looking at your guitar, while friends are listening, etc. The key point is to practice playing consistently well in all those different scenarios. This will help your individual performances on the stage.

2. Your band’s performance

When your band rehearses you should not be focused on playing the songs correctly. If your band mates cannot play the songs flawlessly before the band rehearses, send him/her home to learn the songs. Once he/she has truly done that, bring that person back to band rehearsals. Band practice is not about holding people’s hand through the process of learning the songs which should have been learned at home. If you have a band mate who needs your help learning the songs, you can do this by meeting alone with that person to help. However, if this is a consistent problem, then you may need to replace that band member for someone who is better (or less lazy if that is the case).

Band rehearsals should be about the band playing the songs tight rhythmically, matching dynamic levels in various parts of the songs and developing great stage presence (more on this later).

Because it can be very difficult to really know how good your band is in any of these areas as you are practicing, I strongly suggest you record your band rehearsals in two ways:

• Video record your rehearsals. When you watch the video, turn the volume off and simply pay attention to how the band looks visually. This will help you to really focus on the stage presence and visual impact your band may (or may not) have on your next audience.
• Audio record your rehearsals. Do this with computer based recording software and make sure each instrument is recorded onto its own track (multi track record). Do not listen to the audio from the video recording! The first thing to do is look at the recording on the computer screen. You want to notice patterns of rhythmic flaws. Is your bass player always playing slightly before the beat? Is your guitar player playing slightly behind (late) the beat? For many people it is much easier to ’see it on the screen’ than it is to hear it. Once you see it, then you will be able to hear it afterwards much more easily. Doing this exercise will really help your band to play much tighter rhythmically (which is absolutely critical for any band). Also listen to how the dynamic levels of the band are changing? Does everyone get louder and softer at the same time? Or is everyone doing their own thing randomly? It almost always sounds best when the band does this together.

3. Your stage presence

When you play live, your music is only 50% of what most people in your audience care about. The other 50% is what they see. Remember, they came to ’see and hear’ your gig. Great ’sounding’ bands often lack bigger success because their live shows suffer from lame stage presence. If you want more people to consistently come out to your gigs, you must develop great stage presence.

As mentioned above band rehearsals aren’t about ‘learning to play the songs’. Schedule at least 50% of your band’s rehearsal time to analyze your stage presence skills (watch the video as described above and take notes on what you notice), then begin to implement improvements to this part of your live playing. You can make a lot of improvement on your own simply by some self analysis. If you want more help, check out my free stage presence tips.

4. Eliminate (or at least reduce) stage fright

If you have cool music, a cool band and have prepared well to give your audience an awesome show, that can all be quickly destroyed if stage fright gets in your way. Many musicians simply don’t perform well on stage due to anxiety. Don’t let this happen to you and your band. You have worked too hard to let fear cripple you. Your audience deserves better, and more importantly, you deserve better! You are on stage to have fun, not to be nervous every moment of the gig. To eliminate (or at least to significantly reduce) performance anxiety, check out this stage fright article.

5. Performance logistics

In addition to stage fright, there are other things that may happen during your gig that can hurt it. The main two issues are not being able to hear and not being able to see. If you’ve already played gigs, then you know that every gig sounds different on the stage. One night you can’t hear the bass, the next night you can’t hear yourself, etc. When you are the opening band, you typically don’t get a sound check before you play, so you have no idea what you will be able to hear (or not hear) on stage until you start playing the first song. While there are many different ways to deal with this problem, I’m going to focus only on one of them here. One of the best ways to prepare for not being able to hear all the instruments is to practice your songs with you and only ONE other instrument. So for example, practice playing only with the bass player. Next, practice the song only with the drummer. This will prepare you for live situations when you can only hear the bass or only hear the drums etc.

The next common logistical problem is not being able to see. Often live stages are dark in some moments and then extremely bright in other moments, making it very hard to see your instrument. My eyes are very sensitive to light, so I always play with dark sunglasses on (since the bright lights often blind me on stage without them). For dark situations you can add white out (or even glow in the dark markers) on the side of your fingerboard, so even in very low light you can clearly see your fingerboard. Of course practice playing the entire song without ever looking at your guitar is also a great way to prepare for unexpected lighting problems on the stage.

To get more help developing your music career check out my fifteen free music career tips.

About the author: Tom Hess is a professional guitarist and mentors musicians to start a career in music.

©Tom Hess Music Corporation.
All Rights reserved.

Top 10 Guitar Noise Lessons of 2009

Once again it’s that time of year where year-end lists pour in from all corners of the web. Just like we’ve done in previous years (2008 and 2007), we’d like to take a quick look at the most popular Guitar Noise lessons this year.

This year we introduced a new topic every month as well as a featured artist of the month. A few of those artist profiles made the top ten. We’ll be adding even more featured topics and artist profiles in the new year so keep your eyes open for that.

Happy holidays. Hope to see you all in the new year.

The Guitar Noise Top 10 Lessons from 2009

1. Hey There Delilah – Plain White T’s (February 10)
2. Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd (April 11)
3. Lay Lady Lay – Bob Dylan (June 1)
4. Seven Nation Army – The White Stripes (August 31)
5. Dust In The Wind – Kansas (February 6)
6. Behind Blue Eyes – The Who (January 16)
7. Coldplay Guitar Lessons (June 1)
8. While My Guitar Gently Weeps – The Beatles (April 25)
9. The Beatles (September 1)
10. Easy Guitar Songs by R.E.M. (January 17)

You can also check to see if you missed any of our top articles from 2008 and 2007.

Away in a Manger

Coming up with single guitar chord melody arrangements (or close to chord melody, I suppose you could call it, too, since sometimes you don’t play full chords) can be a lot of fun, if for no other reason than sometimes you end up with something totally different than what you first set out to do.

Case in point – this lesson on the old Christmas carol Away in a Manger started out as a very simple lesson on melody movement, but, well, you’ll see!

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of this song. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Away in a Manger is a beguiling, simple yet beautiful melody built on a descending major scale line, but starting on the fifth note of the scale. In the key of G, it would be like this:

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

When I was working this out, I was indeed playing in G. This led me to thinking, what if I raised the melody up an octave so that I could play it mostly (almost entirely, in fact) on the high E (first) string and then use the open B, G and D strings as a drone, kind of making the guitar more into a dulcimer. That turned out like this:

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I liked this a lot, especially since it opened up some many possibilities for concentrating on the single notes of the melody. One could, for instance, use a single finger and slide from note to note. Or you could place your index finger on the B note at the seventh fret of the high E (first) string and set up the C note (eighth fret) with the middle finger and the opening D at the tenth fret with the pinky and then using pull-offs to sound the first three notes of the melody. Being able to focus on the tone of each note of the melody, how playing it even with different fingers creates a different tone, can keep me occupied for hours!

As much as I enjoyed being able to play around with the melody, I found myself missing having a low G note in the bass. But the thought of trying to have one finger on the G note at third fret of the low E (sixth) string while simultaneously playing the D note at the tenth fret of the high E (first) string, well, let’s just say that I didn’t think it being a good idea and leave it at that.

But there are all sorts of ways of getting around these kinds of challenges if you have an open mind. Since I wanted to have a low G note for my bass, why not tune my low E up to G just for this song and give myself nothing but open strings for my bass accompaniment, like this:

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Now, you might wonder why I didn’t tune my A string down to G instead, and you certainly can do that. But I was worried about the fact that, Away in a Manger being in the key of G, the song would primarily contain G, C and D chords and tuning the A down to G would make the C chord problematic, whereas changing the low E string wouldn’t change the C chord at all.

Away in a Manger, like many songs, has four lines and the melody line of the first and third lines are the same. Let’s tackle that first line with our newly tuned guitars:

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You’ll notice that I changed the accompaniment in the third measure, using the C note at the third fret of the A string as the first bass note but not changing the other two notes. Technically, this creates a Cadd9 chord instead of a regular C, but I liked the way it sounded, slightly dissonant but in an interesting way. After trying out using regular C and this one, I ended up liking the open D string much more.

Although I didn’t realize it at time, keeping the A string tuned to A made the first full measure of the second line much easier to deal with:

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This is simply a C7 chord (x32310) slid up two frets, creating a D9 chord (x54530) and the use of the F# (fourth fret of the D string) and C (fifth fret of the G string), mixing with the ringing tones of the D (third fret of the B string) and E (open high E (sixth) string) in the melody, makes this sound much more interesting than if I’d used a regular D with just the open high E string (xx0230).

The “regular” open position D chord does have its place, though, as it’s the perfect choice for the second measure. Some people might find this measure easier to play by making a partial barre at the second fret, covering the three high strings with the index finger. Doing so should allow you to play the initial D note (third fret of the B string) of the melody with the middle finger and the A note (fifth fret of the high E (first) string) with the pinky.

Using a partial barre also puts you in a position to simply stand up your index finger onto the second fret of the D string for the Cadd9 chord (x32030) in the following measure. The middle finger would get the C note in the bass (third fret of the A string) and the ring finger would play the D note at the third fret of the B string. You would then slide that finger up to the eighth fret to get the G note of the melody and hang onto it so that it could ring out while you play the B note (seventh fret of the high E) to end this phrase.

Since the melody of the third line is an exact copy of the first line, I thought it might be nice to do something different this time around. Adding a bit of additional harmony is always nice:

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These are basic double stops, and shouldn’t give you too much trouble provided you remember to keep the G note of the melody (eighth fret of the B string) the same while changing the harmony note from F (tenth fret of the G string) to E (ninth fret of the G string). And you don’t have to release the B note (fourth fret of the G string) in favor of the open G string if you prefer not to. This was something I thought was nice.

The final line has a few slightly complicated challenges to it involving a few partial barres:

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Begin the first measure here with your index finger barring the first four strings at the fifth fret. This, along with the open A string in the bass, gives you an Am7 chord for your harmony. Your pinky should be able to reach the C note of the melody (eighth fret of the high E) without difficulty and you can use either your ring finger or your middle finger to get the B note (seventh fret) that follows.

You remove the barre in the second measure but replace it, this time using your middle finger to barre, in the third measure. That frees your index finger for the F# note at the fourth fret of the D string. This chord, x04555, is D9/A by the way. Use your ring finger or pinky to get the F# note at the seventh fret of the B string and then slide that finger up a single fret to play the final G of the melody line.

Okay, let’s put this all together, shall we?

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I hope you’ve enjoyed working out this Christmas carol with me. Even though it’s fairly simple, I think we’ve managed to come up with an arrangement with some flair of its own.

As always, please feel free to post your questions and suggestions on the Guitar Noise Forum’s “Guitar Noise Lessons” page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until our next lesson…

Peace

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