If you want to learn how to play guitar with a guitar teacher keep in mind to choose a good teacher, it’s not all about how your guitar teacher plays, it’s about how he teaches.

I knew great guitar players who didn’t know how to teach guitar, they are great guitar players but you can’t learn anything from them.

There are teachers who just gives you a lot of boring exercises and they let you on your own, that’s not teaching… Great guitar teachers will guide you preparing exercises for your needs.

When i started to play guitar i sucked at tempo and none of my previous teachers corrected that but then my first “real” guitar teacher who still being a good friend of mine prepared fun exercises to improve my tempo skills and believe me, i learned in a few classes what i couldn’t master with months and months with bad guitar teachers.

If you’re just starting to learn how to play guitar ask your friends and people who you know that play guitar about which teacher helped them most, don’t lose time and money with bad guitar teachers!

That kind of teachers will just discourage you because you may think that you are the problem, don’t let somebody discourage you and make you lose time… find someone who will encourage to improve your skills and will guide your through your guitar learning journey.

Maybe you’re not looking for a teacher and want to learn guitar by yourself, then i will recommend you to read our article about Online Guitar Lessons.

This video was provided by Mollenhauer Guitars

In this video Chris Peterson (Chief Luthier of Mollenhauer Guitars) shows an easy way to change the guitar strings so they will stay in tune and not slip. If you’re having tuning problems with your guitar this video will be very useful:

Hope this helps you to improve your guitar tuning!

Yesterday we talked about Major Chords, so today we will learn how to play Minor Chords in guitar and what they are.

What are Minor Chords?
Minor Chords are formed by the root, the minor third and the fifth, so if we take the C major scale we have this:

C (root) – D (2) – E (3)- F (4)- G (5)- A (6)- B (7)- C

To play a C Minor we need the root, minor third and fifth, if we play “C E G” we will be playing a C Major, we need to play “C Eb G” to play a C Minor, cause in this case “E” is the major third while “Eb” is the minor third.

Whats the difference between Major and Minor Chords?
The only difference between a major and minor chord is the Third, with minor chords you have to use the minor third and with major chords you use the major third, the difference between major and minor thirds is a half step. So again if we play C Major (C E G) and we play C Minor (C Eb G) you can see there’s only a half step difference between E and Eb.

Here you have this chart with the most common Minor Chords in guitar:

Minor Chords Chart

and here is a video that show you how to play this chords:

Hope this helped you to understand more about minor chords. If you have any question you leave a comment

There are lots of different types of chords in the guitar, the most common are known as “triads” which means that we use 3 notes to form them.

The most basic triad chords are the major chords and today we will learn what they are and how to play them.

What are Major Chords?

Major Chords are triads formed by a root, a major third and a fifth.
So if we want a C Major Chord we will need to play C (root), E (major third), G (fifth).
Remember Power Chords? Well, Major Chords are not so different, just add a major third and you got a Major Chord.

Here is a chart with the most common Major Chords in guitar:

Guitar Major Chords Chart

Learn how to play this Major Chords from the chart and memorize them, they’re really useful.

If you are new to electric guitar here you have some tips to learn how to play chords:

If you want to learn more about major chords and guitar in general by yourself check this: Learn How to Play Guitar with Online Lessons

If you have any question about Major Chords just leave a comment and i will answer it.

Learn How to Tune a 12 String Guitar

If you want to learn how to tune a Twelve String Guitar… read this post.

A Twelve String Guitar is just like any other Six String guitar, but with twelve strings (pretty obvious). This guitars have a really rich tone and produce a natural Chorus effect thanks to the slight frequency difference between strings.

This are some of the Guitar Gods that play (or played) twelve string guitars: Jimmy Page, George Harrison, Steve Vai, Tom Morello, Slash, Pete Townshend y Peter Buck among others.

This is the Standard Tuning for Twelve String Guitars:

• pair VI: E2-E1
• pair V: A2-A1
• pair IV: D3-D2
• pair III: G3-G2
• pair II: B2-B2
• pair I: E3-E3

Check this 12 String Guitar tuner too: 12 String Guitar Tuner

Do you play 12-string guitars?

From Guitar Hero to Real Guitar Hero

I have read a lot of stuff about people supporting Guitar Hero and people talking shit about it.

I don’t know why people argue so much, it’s a game and it’s goddamn funny, you can play it for hours and have a great time with your friends, that’s what videogames are for.

Its true that Guitar Hero won’t help you to become a “Real Guitar God”, but games like Guitar Hero makes you feel that feeling that only musicians know, and if playing a plastic guitar feels great… imagine how it would feel to play a real guitar like that!

Years ago i played a computer game called Frets On Fire, i played that game a lot and believe it or not it helped me to become a better guitarist… not because by playing the game my “real” guitar skills improved but it helped me because i wanted to learn how to play everything i played in the game in my real guitar, that game kept me motivated to go through boring guitar exercises and stuff like that cause i wanted to be able to play my favorite songs.

Music games can also help you to get some music culture, in games like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Frets On Fire, etc you go through different music styles, genres and ages from classic rock bands to modern ones, from Pop to Metal… and that’s awesome! as a guitarist and musician you have to know a lot about different genres and musical eras, general culture is always great for any kind of artist.

If you play Guitar Hero but don’t play real guitar give it a chance and learn how to play guitar with online guitar lessons or with a guitar teacher … playing a videogame with friends it’s great and i like it a lot, but the feeling of playing a wood and steel guitar for your friends and your audience is unbeatable.

Have you ever read a “P.H” in a tab and don’t know what it means?
No, “P.H” doesn’t stands for “Punish Heathens” or something like that… it means “Pinch Harmonic” a.k.a “Pick Harmonic” or “Artificial Harmonic”, its a picking induced harmonic.

We already learned how to play nice Natural Harmonics and today we will learn how to play badassed Pinch Harmonics that will make your guitar scream like a beast.

Basically you get these squeals happening by picking the note so that the side of your right thumb (if you’re right handed) hits the string at the same time as the pick does… exactly where you pinch the string determines what kind of squeal harmonic you’ll get happening. There’s more than one “squeal spot” per note and string and you can miss the spot too, so try different positions to find your sweet spot.

Distortion and bridge pickup helps a lot with this, so crank your distortion and use your bridge pickup with you’re practicing Pinch Harmonics, they’re much more easier that way, try this picking technique all over the area between the pickups.

Maybe you won’t get this at the first time, but practice and spend a little time with this and you’ll master Pinch Harmonics!

Here’s a video that will help you to understand what i’m talking about:

Find your guitar’s sweet spot! and there’s more than one per string so find them all! Squeal Harmonics are one of my favorite guitar techniques ever.

Maybe if don’t feel prepared you’ll need to take more guitar lessons or learn natural harmonics first… keep playing guitar and master Pinch Harmonics!

If you have any question about harmonics leave a comment and i’ll answer it!

Do yourself a favor, always warm up

Warming up your hands is an essential part of guitar playing, it doesn’t matter your experience or playing style.
In the same way professional sport people warm up to avoid injuries, we warm up to avoid guitar playing diseases like tendinitis or carpal tunnel syndrome, this afflictions are really painful and the only cure is complete rest, so you don’t want to get this!

You only got two hands and they are both vital, when the weather is cold warming up becomes even more important cause your hands and fingers receive less blood. If its winter and you’re playing in a unheated place make double sure you warmed up properly before start playing.

Now the exercise:

guitar warm up exercise

Repeat this pattern until you reach the 15th fret and then begin it again but this time using your index and middle finger, then your index and your ring finger and at last your index and your pinky. This exercise will warm up all your fingers properly and then you’re ready to start playing your riffs and leads.

Just keep this things in mind while you warm up:

- At any point of time, if you feel severe discomfort or sharp pain, STOP immediately and give your fingers a rest. Do not force your fingers too much as you’ll do more harm than good.

- Using a metronome is a MUST.

- Concentrate on your finger movements and NOT SPEED.

Now you’re ready to warm up properly before you start to play, don’t skip this cause tendinitis sucks! Leave a comment and tell us how do you warm up.

If you’re learning how to play guitar its almost sure you have read or heard something about “arpeggios”. In this post we will tell you what they are and how to play them.

What are Arpeggios?
Arpeggios are just like chords but played note by note.

Here we have a G major chord:

3 – - – - – - – - – e
3 – - – - – - – - – B
4 – - – - – - – - – G
5 – - – - – - – - – D
5 – - – - – - – - – A
3 – - – - – - – - – E

And here we have a G major arpeggio:

- – - – - – - 3 – - – - e
- – - – - – 3 – - – - – B
- – - – - 4 – - – - – - G
- – - – 5 – - – - – - – D
- – - 5 – - – - – - – - A
- 3 – - – - – - – - – - E

One of the most famous rock arpeggios is the Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” intro… in fact, that was the first arpeggio i ever learned, it’s easy and sounds great, you’ll learn that exercise later on this post.

How to Play Arpeggios
Play one string at time, note by note. If you’re using distortion be sure to mute each string you play with your hand’s palm before you play the next string to avoid horrible buzz… unless you want to create that buzz for some kind of effect in a song.

Arpeggio Exercises
This video shows you how to play the Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” intro arpeggio… is a great exercise to learn how to play arpeggios.

Here you have Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates” intro arpeggio… great exercise if you mastered the previous lesson.

You can apply some advanced techniques like Sweep Picking to arpeggios and they’ll sound really awesome, but we will be talking about that in the future.
Hope this helps you to understand what arpeggios are and how to play them,

Natural harmonics are a great resource to create the sound you’re looking for, they’re easy to play and they sound great…. if you’re learning how to play guitar, you need to know about them.

How do natural harmonics sound?

Natural harmonics sound like “cow bells”, one of the best examples of natural harmonics is the Super Mario coin sound.

Why are natural harmonics produced?

I explain all the physic and string vibration stuff here: How is a Harmonic Produced if you just want to play them and don’t care aout the science behind this… keep reading this post.

How can i play natural harmonics?

Natural harmonics are really easy to play, you just need to press the string slightly in a strategic fret then pick it softly and release your finger.

The most easy places to play natural harmonics are 12th, 7th and 5th fret in the “e” and “B” string.

Here you have a video showing an easy guitar exercise to learn natural harmonics:

Hope you now understand how natural harmonics work and how to play them, next time i’ll show you how to play pinch harmonics!

If you have any doubt, just ask!