Anybody who has started to learn the guitar needs to know what he or she should learn! So what should one learn when someone is starting out?

Beginner guitar lessons

If you focus on few basics that I have covered in this free guitar lessons blog, you can start playing guitar in a very short time. When you are starting out, you need to build strength of your fingers and you can do that by practicing the chromatic scale and also learn to play few open chords.

These are a few things that I recommend for a complete beginner who is learning to play the guitar:

1) Learn to tune the guitar (Buy an electronic tuner) - Tuning is very important for a beginner and if you don't learn this, you will learn wrong notes and you don't want to do this. You need to learn the sound of the basic chords that you play and this can be done when your guitar is properly tuned. This is a very important skill for a musician.

2) Practice the chromatic scale - Chromatic scale has all the notes and is also a good exercise for your fingers. It will strengthen your fingers when you are starting out and is also good to learn the sound of the notes.

3) Learn basic chords - Chords are the backbone of music and it is absolutely necessary to lean chords. You can learn basic open chords and try to distinguish between the sounds of the different chords. Learning the guitar chord songs will help as you a musician. The main goal for any musician is to play songs by ear. When you memorize the sound of the different chords, it will help you a lot in future. Trust me on this.

4) Learn to change chords from one chord to another - How are songs made. Songs are made of different chords. When you are learning chords, you should also learn practice to switch between chords. When you switch chords you can make songs of your own or you can play songs of other people.

5) Learn the major scale - Learn how major scale is constructed and how chords are made from the major scale. Major scale is used for reference for many things in music. So you should know how to make a major scale and how to derive chords from the major scale.

6) Making a practice schedule - You will have to decide which is the best time for you to practice. Practicing for half an hour or one hour everyday is very important. You will have to set your priorities and then make a practice plan.

These are some beginner guitar lessons that I feel are important.

easy rock licks video.

Easy rock licks

This is a free guitar lesson is about playing an easy rock lick.

You can practice these licks with out distortion first and then you can use distortion. You can get more information by clicking on my previous post about easy rock lick



You can post a comment if you want more information about this easy rock lick guitar lesson.

beginner guitar lesson (open guitar chords with tabs)

Online songwriting

In this free online guitar lesson, I felt I should post something about songwriting.

One important online guitar lesson is songwriting and when one becomes a guitarist, he or she should know how to write a song.

Songwriting is an important thing for a musician. Most of us who play the guitar love to play cover songs. Many of us have also picked up the guitar to play our favorite songs.

We should play some cover songs but we should also focus our skills on making new songs and using our creativity.

There are many things that we need to consider when making a song

Be unique when writing a song

You can be unique by focusing on your own mental pictures and experiences when writing a song. By this way, you can tap into your creativity. When you are composing your first song, writing something is difficult but keep on trying. Don’t think how the final song will be. Just write anything. You can tweak your song later and add details.

Be unique but also use some conventional methods

If you don’t want your songs to be completely different, I would like to illustrate some points that you can consider when you are making a song.

Most of the songs that we hear have the following parts:

1) Verse

2) Pre chorus

3) Chorus

4) Verse again or verse 2

5) Bridge

6) Guitar Solo

7) Verse or chorus again

This is a general pattern that I have mentioned and its’ not necessary that all the songs will have this pattern. Many songs have a different pattern and most of the modern rock songs don’t have a solo.

You can tap into your creativity and make a few changes as you like. A verse should be good and when the listener starts listening to the song, he should get engrossed in the song. A pre chorus is a part when the song changes from verse and the listeners subconsciously feel something new is going to come. It’s kind of a transition from verse to the chorus.

When the chorus of the song comes, that’s the time when the tune should be ‘catchy’. We have seen many times when people repeat some tunes of some good songs. So chorus should be very good.

Bridge is a part when the song changes and it breaks the monotony of the song. As a guitar player one can use a passing chord or some other chord which doesn’t belong to the diatonic scale. I feel these are few things that are required for a great songwriter and you can try them out. I would also like to emphasize on experimentation as more you experiment with what you already know in terms of chords and scales, the more unique and good your music will be. I hope you like this online free guitar lesson. There are also many songwriting contests online. You can take part in them after writing some good songs.

guitar chromatic scale lesson video

In this free guitar lesson, I have explained about how to play a guitar chromatic scale.

E minor pentatonic jam

E minor pentatonic jam is something random I played after recording E power chord and G power chord rhythm pattern on the Sony Acid pro software. In this video, I am using the Pentatonic minor scale.

Using a metronome to learn strumming.

Using Metronome with strumming patterns.

This free guitar lesson is about Using a metronome to learn strumming can be a very rewarding experience. You will come to know when to play in time and this will increase your skills when you play with a band. A drummer of the band usually gives the time and you can get the feel of playing in right time by using a metronome. You can download a free metronome on your computer.

There are many guitar websites that offer this. You can look up for this on your favorite search engine. If you are using a metronome to learn strumming, make sure that your tempo is low and you can start with 50 beats per minute or 60 beats per minute.

You can start the metronome and you can start playing some quarter notes and when you are comfortable, you can increase the tempo or beats per minute. So for every time you hear the metronome beat, you need to strum down when you hear the beat. At the same time you can change chords. This is called a quarter note strumming pattern.

When you hear the metronome beat and you strum down and up, every time you hear a beat, then this means you are playing eight note strumming pattern. These are easy strumming patterns you can start with and you can gradually mix both the patterns when you are confident.

Increase the metronome tempo only when you strum properly because when you are learning to strum accuracy is more important than speed.

I have also posted another free guitar lesson on this blog about how to strum with plectrum.

The reason behind using a metronome to learn strumming is that you build speed gradually and you will play in time.