Step 6

Good Job! You've been going at a fast pace for people that are just beginners. There are a lot of advanced stuff that we looked at. This is going to have to be my last post for this topic. I know my one follower will be sad. But we have to carry on. I want you to take a look at Arpeggios.

Arpeggios

Just a review here, but Arpeggios are a musical technique where notes in a chord are played in sequence. One after the other is usually how it's played. This is a beginner's instructional video for Arpeggios. It goes on for a bit about scales and arpeggios, but it is necessary to know the difference. He knows much more than I do about the guitar than I do, but I too, am still learning.
Visit his site to get the Arpeggio shapes.


It's a bit long but very useful.


Now that is just showing you how to start. There's a whole other world of things you can do with Arpeggios. I'll give you a link to see just how advanced you can become. Here is Arpeggios From Hell.

This is the fastest I've ever seen anyone play Arpeggios. So good luck with leaning them!

Step by Step
Now we have somethings to go through. We have been through a lot of things with these few "steps." Like in Step One, the first thing we did was go through just the first string and now look how far we are. Then, we moved to an electric guitar, and moved on from there. Electric and Acoustic guitars have a very different feel. One you might be completely comfortable with and then with the other, you might have a little trouble getting used to.

Step number three, I really liked. Showing you someones real progress, and showing you another person's skill. It is a tough thing to do to be dedicated to doing anything long enough to master it. Especially the guitar, because you never truly stop learning it. After that, we moved onto scales. Scales are a great guitar tool to know. It is a critical tool to know before you start doing your solos like Kirk Hammett.

Then we had our fifth step. I posted a video of me playing my favourite song. Again, it's not perfect, but I just enjoy playing and listening to that song. This step was basically a review of Dean's progress, how to play scales, and setting up for Arpeggios. If you have ever looked at my blog more than a quick glance, you'll see that to the right, I have an RSS feed from www.ultimate-guitar.com which is my favourite guitar tabs site. And above right at the top, are additional instructional videos on learning the guitar. And I just have to say this, although it's not the best guitar playing int the world, I'm proud to have my video out for the word to see.

Final Reflection
I know I never marked where I was reflecting before, but this is the last one. I feel like I have to. It has been fun going through the guitar with you, but class is done tomorrow, and blogs take a lot of work and keeping up a blog with two jobs, two separate sports teams, and going through other courses will be tough. I know that with the end of this, you're going to have to find your own little instructional sites like I had to before this. So, here is a tool that I use the most and how I came to use it.

Well, when I first started playing the guitar, all my mentors moved away for school and such, so they gave me a site that they used and downloaded. Now it's my turn to give it to you. Even though it costs a small chunk of your money, I feel that it is the greatest tool that anyone could have given me. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Guitar Pro. It literally takes the learning out of learning. A great thing about it is, you can log onto my favourite guitar tabs site and download Guitar Pro tabs and it actually goes through the song with you. There are a lot of useful tools in that download. You can slow down the song, learn the different guitar parts (if there is more than one guitarist) and use different guitar sounds.

There are also a lot of good and bad videos you can find on YouTube. But ultimate guitar does have lessons you can use too. I don't often have to look further than ultimate guitar and just that there shows how useful and how resourceful a site it is.



Thinking back on it, it would have been a really awesome idea to take pictures of me working on this blog and posting a slideshow at the end. Like right here, at the bottom would have been nice, but since I dont have pictures of me working on it, here's a few random pictures.

Step Five

 

In my video, I play a mix of two guitar parts of the song. I play the rhythm, Corey Taylor's part and the lead, Jim Root's part. I mixed it up because it sounds better than playing both individually and I don't have the momentary pauses like the actual song. As you can see, I'm not the best guitar player and I'm still not completely perfect with the song, but playing the guitar is just something I enjoy doing.




I love the guitar. I'm repeating myself of course, but it's true. I love the guitar, there are so many different sounds you can create. Whether it's heavy or melodic, or even both. Stone Sour is a great example of creating heavy yet melodic music. A perfect example is Say You'll Haunt Me a hit single from their latest album. But even further, there are other bands that have a great melodic sound but still maintain the heavy sound that I like. For example, Metallica. They (in my opinion) are the greatest metal band that came out of the 80's. They have guitar riffs that are heavy but also are catchy and stay in your head. That is very true when it comes to Enter Sandman.


Scales
There are a lot of different types of scales for guitar, there's: the Blues Scales, Majors and Minors. There are so many, that I can't list them. Scales are the guitar tools that will give you the skills to play like all the greatest guitarists. They show you what notes sound good together is basically what I'm trying to say. For example, a C chord played before or after an A chord sounds good. Throw in a G chord and you have a song. But if you play the notes in scales and your one step away from a solo.



Dean's Progress
I was hoping to give you guys a peek at Dean's progress, but embedding a video right now isn't really working due to problems with the Internet. It's weird, I can post and write all I want but when it comes to videos and pictures, it is taking an extremely long time. Although, I can give a link to his page. He has come well along for a person without a teacher. In a few weeks, Dean went from not knowing anything about chords and guitars to being able to almost completely play the song.



Arpeggios

The next thing we are going to learn about are Arpeggios. I'm saving this for my next post but here is an example of what it would look like:


Just a heads up, but arpeggios are very advanced and you mighthave some trouble. Although, I'm confident you guys will learn quickly.

Step 4

By now, some weeks into this, you should be almost at the intermediate level. Chords are becoming easier to understand, picking is becoming simpler, and transitions are becoming a breeze. But here comes the next part, playing scales. Scales are the stop and start of an octave usually from going from low to high. Most scales use 7 notes but I'm going to show you guys the entire G Major scale.

 These are the notes to the first scale:








And this is how to play it:










 Lately, I've been thinking that it's kind of unfair that I use videos from other people and not have something a post that I made myself, so I'm going to make a video of me playing my favourite song, post a link to the tab, and see how everyone likes it. The song is called, "Hesitate" by Stone Sour.

Stone Sour
Stone Sour is a band born out of Des Moines, Iowa. Though they were together since 1992, they didn't get their first album release until 2002. The members go like this, Drummer: Roy Mayorga, Bassist: Shawn Economaki, Guitars: Jim Root and Josh Rand, and Vocalist: Corey Taylor. They have released a total of four albums together and have recently finished a world tour.
www.stonesour.com

 We'll see how my video turns out when I do it, wish me luck!
 Have a look at how it's played ahead of time: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/s/stone_sour/hesitate_ver5_tab.htm - There is no single perfect tab so here's another: http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/s/stone_sour/hesitate_ver8_tab.htm

Step Three

I thought it would be cool for you guys to see another persons progress. This person is 3 weeks into his own lessons. Heis doing a project with his class so he is going on about that for a while but thats his progress after playing around 20 minutes a day for three weeks without a teacher. It's not very good and I want you to find that encouraging. As mean as that sounds, it should be, because you know what to expect when you get into the weeks of your learning. As I have said before, learning the guitar is a long process.

The truth is, you never stop learning, there will always be songs that you need to learn and by the end of it, I hope you can play like this:





He put in countless hours of practice and maybe by the end of it, you'll be able to play things like this or even more advanced. Sorry for the bad resolution, feel free to close your eyes and just listen.
I hope that my effort in showing both progress and end results will encourage you to continue playing. And if there's a specific song that you want to learn, here are a few sites that could help you:
www.ultimate-guitar.com
www.guitaretab.com
www.guitartabs.net

Step 2

As I was writing the end of the first post, it occurred to me that there are no real steps to learning the guitar. There are different types of guitars. Well, really, the basics are Acoustic, Classical, and Electric. But further than that there are brands, types, baritones, signature, or just standard. Now that you have seen the very beginning of the acoustic, I want you to see the electric. For those who don't know, it can make a big difference on how comfortable you are. I personally, like acoustic guitars, but that's just me. As we go though these lessons and tips and videos, I hope you'll find that the potential music you'll be making is beautiful. Guitars are my favourite instruments by far, because they can be melodic yet heavy. They can be peaceful, or open up the mosh pit and cause chaos. Guitars could possibly be one of the most popular instruments in the world. Now let's see how this second video will help and I'll be back with another post soon.http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Lessons/?s_kwcid=guitar%20lessons|2991119454&gclid=CLrG0aHcp6wCFSwaQgodFgiLEw, http://www.guitarlessons.com/guitar-gear-reviews/electric-guitars/epiphone-sg-g-400-guitar/

Step One

This is a good video I found to help learn the basics from the very beginning.  My own personal experience tells me that learning the guitar isn't just picking up a guitar looking at notes and playing. Learning the guitar is a never ending process.

I was 15 when I first picked up a guitar. My previous experience before that was just my awesome air guitar solos. The first time I went to my guitar class, I felt like a 6 year old boy. Nothing I played sounded nearly as good as I thought it did. As my friends say, "like a cat thrown in a blender," which is why I joined the guitar class. And with all the trouble i had just getting started, I thought I'd share my experience and try to simplify yours. This is the best video I could find to start so watch and let's see how we start.    mjspublications.com