Hey there everyone,

I have finally completed my first training guide for beginners:

Guitar Essential Basics

What exactly is it:

As some of you may know, I have been teaching guitar for a couple of years now.

Over the last 1.5 years, I have created a system that is specifically designed for brand new guitar players that are picking up the guitar for the very first time.

If you’ve been playing for a few months, then I don’t think this guide will benefit you that much.

However, if you’re interested in playing guitar and you stumbled onto this website in search of lessons, then I highly suggest you check out Guitar Essential Basics.

A normal 1-on-1 instruction with me costs $55 per hour at the moment.  I plan on raising it soon because I am always have new students knocking on the door.

Because I know what I’m teaching works very well for beginners, I have no trouble keeping my students for the long term.

You see, most guitar instructors suck because they don’t know how to teach.  They can play as good as anyone else but when it comes to teaching the fundamentals, they fail.

And this is why the average guitar instructor will only see 25% of their students return for lesson number 2.

Not me.

I have students that I have been teaching for months.  My students meet me once per week and each week is a new lesson for them to practice for the next 7 days.

They’re actually more catered towards the students skill level… but most of the time, my students are brand new and I lead them through my lessons weeks after week.

It’s truly a great model and the student improves much faster than 95% of all the other beginners out there trying to teach themselves.

So, if you’re one of those new guitar players that is planning on learning by reading tabs and chords, you’re in for a rude awakening.

You’ll notice months down the road that you created bad habits that should have never been created to begin with.

Trust me, I know from experience.

I held a pick incorrectly for years because I was teaching myself.  And it took me 4 months to fix…

I see it all the time with students that come to me after a few months of struggling.  They have these bad habits that are very difficult for them to break…

And it could have been fixed with simple fundamentals from the beginning!

So, that’s why I decided to take my 1st lesson and write it up into a short report that can be sold to the masses for a killer low price.

Don’t think that it’s not useful for being short.  It’s packed full of important information that you can use to get you playing songs in 7 days or less.

Of course, you’ll have to put what you learn into action and work at it.

So, if you’d rather continue to read tabs and chord sheets and try to figure everything else out for yourself (while developing bad habits that will come back to haunt you), then my guide isn’t for you.

If you want to start off right, then Guitar Essential Basics is perfect to get you on the right track.

I’m not going to be teaching you chords or tabs or anything like that.  You can always teach yourself those.

Instead, I’m going to teach you what 95% of beginner guitarists forget to address in the beginning – and thus causing months of heartache down the road.

Check it out, download it , let me know what you think.  If you hate, I’ll refund you promptly.

- Jeff Terry

What’s up fellow country guitar players!

Being a country guitar player for a few years now, it’s been a lot of fun for me to learn other styles of guitar such as bluegrass and blues.  There’s an instructor over at Guitar Tricks named Ben Helson who specializes in teaching bluegrass.  I’ve been going through his video lessons and I’ve learned a lot of new techniques and playing methods.

Along with bluegrass, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the blues section as well.  There are several instructors that specialize in blues so there’s no shortage of video lessons for me to watch.  And I can’t say enough about the videos.  At first, I was kind of skeptical about them since you have to be online to watch, but now I am just addicted to them.  I find myself logged into Guitar Tricks almost 24/7 lol.

And of course there’s Lisa McCormick who has hundreds of country guitar video lessons.  I’ve been following her instruction for the past 3 years now and she still continues to add top quality lessons to the site.  Be sure you check out her user profile when you log in to the site and you’ll find all her videos there.

Basic Guitar Strumming Is Essential

Along with warming up and strengthening your fingers, learning how to strum the guitar is an essential skill you’ll need to learn if you want to be a good country guitar player.  Lisa McCormick has a beginner lesson that’s all about strumming.  You’ll need to know a few guitar chords to practice along with the lesson.  You should be practicing your guitar chords every single day because you’ll need them for these strumming lessons.

You’ll want to practice holding down each string with the correct fingers so that when you pick each string, it rings clearly.  It can take a lot of practice on an acoustic guitar compared to an electric so choose which one you would like to learn on.  Acoustic guitars have bigger strings so they take more power to keep them down on the frets.

This is Lisa McCormick - She has over 325 video guitar lessons

When first learning how to strum, you’re going to want to start by playing down to the floor.  That means you play the fattest string first (the bass string) and strum downwards.  It can take awhile to get your chords sounding nice, but keep practicing everyday until your fingers hurt and follow the lessons at Guitar Tricks.  You’ll need to build those calluses up anyways!

You can see this lesson along with hundreds more by visiting GuitarTricks.com. It sure beats hiring an instructor for 50 bones!

Talk soon,

Jeff

I think every website that has done a review of Jamplay guitar lessons only tells you the positive things Jamplay has to offer.

But if you truly want to make an informed decision, you have to consider both the positives and negatives.

Don’t get me wrong, Jamplay guitar lessons are truly fantastic and I do like most things about my membership. However, we all know that no product is perfect, and Jamplay is no different.

After learning from Jamplay guitar lessons, here are what I perceive as the negatives:

1. Almost too much information – when you want to learn electric guitar online it can be overwhelming joining any guitar membership site because of the pure volume of information. These companies tend to put more and more content on their site to attract people. This is understandable, but if you are a complete newbie, sometimes you don’t know where to start.

Jamplay guitar lessons are no different. There are literally thousands of great videos and lessons. Just make sure to stay focused on the lesson plan provided and you should be OK.

2. Forums – this is difficult to call the forums at these sites a negative aspect because they can be a very useful tool to get questions answered. The problem comes in when you get so distracted by them that they become a negative instead of a positive. You can find yourself easily spending hours just reading and responding to what others are doing. And this all comes back to distracting you from what you are there to do – learn to play the guitar!

Just make sure to stay focused on what you are there to do and you should be fine.

3. One on one instruction – obviously with Jamplay guitar lessons, for example (like any online guitar instruction), you do not have one on one instruction like from a private instructor.

With Jamplay, however, you do have the option of submitting your questions and having them answered by the instructors. But this is not like having one-on-one private instruction from a private instructor.

This could be a negative for you if you need that personal, hand-holding approach. But there’s a trade-off. Private instruction can be pricey compared to an online membership site. Private instruction can be as much as $50 per hour, whereas a good membership site is less than 50 cents per day.

Before you jump into Jamplay guitar lessons, be sure to consider both the positives and negatives so you make an informed decision.

Looking to find the best deal on Jamplay guitar lessons, then visit http://www.learnelectricguitaronline.net to find the latest reviews of Jamplay guitar lessons and other top online guitar lesson sites.

The next chord that we are going to learn today is the guitar A chord.  In the previous lesson, we went over the G chord.  I believe that the G chord is one of the most important guitar chords to learn. I began this series with that chord specifically because it is a moderately difficult chord for beginners to play, and it is also one of the most used chords in country music.  Almost every single song uses the G chord.  Be sure to check out that lesson before moving on to this one.  However, you do not have to master the G chord before going over this lesson.

The A chord is much easier to play than the G chord.  As you can see in the image, your fingers are very close together on the same 2nd fret.  This is a chord that is used very often just like the G chord.  If you haven’t yet read my article on correct guitar practice, I recommend that you do so now.  It is very important that when you are learning these guitar chords that you are practicing correctly as well.  Failure to do so can result in bad habits and a longer time learning how to play them correctly.

Your first step is to place your index finger on the D string on the 2nd fret.  With your first finger firmly holding down the string, place your middle finger on the G string on the 2nd fret as well.  Play the two strings that you are holding down to make sure that notes ring out cleanly.  Once this is done, place your ring finger on the B string on the 2nd fret.

There is also an alternate way of playing the chord.  You switch the 1 and 2 fingers.  So, your index finger and the middle finger swap places.  Some find this the easier way to play.  Try out both and do what works best for you!

Practice strumming all 3 strings while your fingers are holding them down firmly.  As a beginner, your fingers may feel uncomfortable pretty quickly.  This is normal.  Just practice pressing down the strings and playing the notes.  You want the notes to be as clean as possible.  Press down as hard as you need to in order to get the note to be clear.  Take breaks when your fingers start to hurt.  Also, practice keeping your other fingers near the strings as well.  This is very important as noted in the correct practice article.

Practice these methods with the G chord and now the A chord.  For a more advanced lesson, practice transitioning between the two chords as quickly as possible.  See how fast you can transition between the two.  The more you practice this, the faster you will get and the better you will be at playing chords.

Stay tuned for our next lesson, the C chord!

Welcome to the first course in our guitar chords lessons series.  As you may know from my previous article about learning guitar chords, I stress the importance of warming up.  I know you’re probably tired of me saying it, but please check out my less on guitar warm-up.  In it, you will learn a simple but highly effective warm-up exercise that should be done every day before playing for at least 5 minutes.  Do this exercise before beginning this lesson.

I hope your hands are all nice and loose and ready to play.  That’s the idea of the warm-up!  In this lesson, I am going to introduce the first chord that I recommend people to learn:

The G Chord

The reason I recommend this chord first is because I love it.  I think that this is a nice and intermediate chord that should be mastered first before moving on to other chords that are easier and more difficult.  So, let’s first take a look at how to play the G chord on the guitar:

What you see here is what I call a chord chart.  This one in particular is for the G Chord.  I will teach you how to read this.

What you see on the chart is 6 lines.  The left line, E, represents the 6th string on your guitar.  The 6th string is the fattest string.  In normal tuning, it is in the key of E.

You will also notice the horizontal lines.  Each one of these lines represents one of the silver bars going across your guitar neck.  I call the area between the metal bars frets.  You can either place your fingers on the metal frets or in-between them.  The closer to the fret, the easier it is to play the note.  Keep in mind that these aren’t tabs.  Head on over to my article about guitar tabs after this exercise if you’re interested in them.

In the picture, you will notice that there is a “1″ on the 6th string inbetween the 2nd and 3rd fret.  This is where you will place your index finger.

On the 5th string, you will notice a “2″ between the 1st and 2nd fret.  This is for you to place your middle finger.

Do the same for your 3rd finger for the 5th string and your pinky finger for on the 6th string.

This guitar chord may be quite difficult for you to play when you are first starting out.  I recommend that you practice getting all 4 fingers on on the strings and holding the chord for as along as you can.  Don’t worry about strumming the chord.  Just get your fingers used to the position.

Doing the warm-up will make your hands stronger for chord playing.  Along with practice, you will get this chord down before you know it.  This is a vital chord to learn if for a country guitar player.  Practice this chord everyday after you warm-up!

Welcome to my introductory lesson that will cover my philosophy about the basic guitar chords. Before we begin, make sure that you’ve gone through my guitar warm up lesson.  It is absolutely vital that you warm-up for at least 5 minutes every day.  Do not blow this off.  It is absolutely crucial that you do exercises that will strengthen your fingers, hands, and forearms.  These exercises make you stronger, faster, and the ability to play longer.

With that said, let us begin…

The first thing I want you to know is that I’m not going to sit here and write about a bunch of chords that are great to play.  I’m going to give you tips on playing chords so that you can understand what you need to practice in order to play them well.  Keep in mind that all music is built around chords which are built from scales.  So, in order to be a great country guitar player, it is important to master both scales and chords.

So what exactly is a chord?

Well, I am glad you are asking that question (you are asking that, right?).  Remember how I mentioned chords being built from scales?  A chord is 3 different notes from 1 scale played together at the same time.  When you strum these 3 notes, it will create a nice sounding harmony that is pleasing to the ear.

In order to play a chord, you will need to learn how to press down 3 different strings at once.  Now do you see why I am making you practice that warm-up everyday?  You will have a very tough time pressing down 3 different strings with 3 fingers at the same time if you do not develop your fingers with the warm-up.

You see, most people sit down with the guitar for the first month and try to only learn chords.  It’s what I did.  It’s what 95% of beginning country guitarists do.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to play music, but I created this site to make you a good country guitar player.  In doing so, you’re going to have to follow my advice.  No short cuts.

So I recommend that you do the warm-up at a minimum of 5 minutes per day.  However, I would prefer if you would practice the warm-up until your hands are sore to the point where it hurts to play.  That is when you know you have reached your threshold.  At this point, you can now start studying chords, scales, theory, tabs, etc. anything that you want.

By doing the guitar warm-up every single day, your skill level is going to surpass every beginner that isn’t doing the warm-up tremendously.  What I am saying is that you are going to be better than 95% of the other guitarists out there that started playing when you did.

I hope I’ve ingrained into your head how important the warm-up is.  You’re probably sick of me talking about it already!  I’m glad that you took the time to read this.  From this point, we can move on to me actually teaching you guitar chords which I will be doing in the next lessons.

Country guitar licks are an amazing way for intermediate guitar players to improve their speed, accuracy, picking, and strength. If you are itching to improve your speed and technique, then this is the way to go.  In this article, I’m going to teach you how to build your own licks and how to correctly practice them in order to greatly improve your guitar skills.

What Is A Guitar Lick?

When I teach students about licks, I try to teach it in a visual point of view. Imagine a sentence or a phrase on a sheet of paper. Replace each word in the phrase with a note on the guitar and you have a lick: a phrase of notes played on the guitar.

Guitar licks are great for practicing purposes because you can simply pick up the guitar and play these over and over again for a great exercise. And there are thousands among thousands of licks out there.  Countless amounts, to be honest.

You can take any tab of a song, grab an 8-12 note phrase that you find difficult, practice playing it over and over again at different speeds, and you have just created a great lick for guitar practice.

What Are Some Good Country Guitar Licks?

Now, instead of me sitting here and feeding you licks all day, I want you to learn how to develop your own licks. With the method I explained above, you really can play any lick you have ever wanted.

Let’s say that you are a big fan of Brad Paisley and you really want to learn some licks that he does. Well, what I would do as your teacher is have you listen to the song and point out the guitar parts that you really enjoy.

I would then take these parts and show you how to build them into licks. The easiest way to do this is to simply find a tab online for the song. You can do so by going to Ultimate Guitar. Search for the artist and find the song.

With a good guitar tab in hand, you will usually have no problem finding the phrase since good tabs explain the parts of the song and/or have the lyrics to go along with it.

Find the phrase, write it down, and practice.

This, my friends, is called correct practice. By playing small phrases (licks) in repetition, your brain will learn the movements, your muscles will gain strength, and your speed will improve. Plus, you’ll know how to break songs up into parts, which is a great skill for any musician.

This is going to be a theory related article where we will learn about the most common country guitar scales.  Learning guitar theory is an important part of guitar playing.  There are plenty of great guitarists that have never learned theory, but being a guitar player that knows how the instrument works will take you to new levels in your playing.  I highly recommend that you spend some time learning theory.

Since this web site is all about teaching how to play country guitar, the scales that you will be learning are ones that are found in country music.  Country music is different than jazz or blues, and each branch of music has different scales that are used.  For country music, you will want to learn which scales are used, which chord progressions, which techniques, etc.

With that said, the most popular scales used in country guitar are the Major Pentatonic scales.  There are multiple patterns for playing this scale.  The most common pattern begins by starting on the 5th fret on the largest string (e string) with your pinky/fourth finger.

Take a look at the following picture.  The “5″ represents the 5th fret where you start with your 4th finger.  This is the most common pattern for playing country guitar scales.  Each horizontal line represents a guitar string.  The bottom line is the low E string.  The highest line is the high E string.  With a little practice, you will know this scale memorized.  For further advanced practice, you can study what each and every note is that you play.

There are multiple patterns for playing this scale.  The way the guitar is made makes it possible for multiple patterns.  Some patterns are easier to play in certain areas of the guitar than others.

By studying this scale and the multiple patterns, you will be able to play along with certain chord progressions.  Country guitar greats like Chet Atkins play most of their music in the major pentatonic.  Take a listen to their songs and you will notice these patterns being played in the form of licks and lead guitar parts.  For practice, grab your guitar and play notes in this pattern while listening to country songs.  You’ll notice that this pattern works well with most country songs.

This is just a basic introduction to scales, with only the most popular being discussed.  I recommend that you continue to seek out information on guitar theory because it is a very important part of guitar playing.  If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Ahh, the infamous question about guitar tabs.  Every single student I have ever had the pleasure of teaching has always asked me this question, and tabs are definitely an important part to your country guitar playing career.  Most of the licks, chords and more for songs are written in tab format.  When you move on to learning lead guitar, tabs will be your friend.

But first, I want you to be aware that many of the tabs out there are very incorrect.  However, there are plenty of great tabs, too!  So, when you are searching for guitar tabs, try to use ones that have a high rating and approval from other users.  Some websites, like Ultimate Guitar, offer this sort of approval and rating system that you should definitely use to determine whether a tab is good to follow or not.

Let’s take a look at this simple image that I pulled off of Google Images:

The first thing I want you to notice are the 6 horizontal lines.  These represent the strings of your guitar.  The top string that you see, the one with the small “e”, is the high e string on your guitar (the thin one).  The “E” that you see on the right in the low E string (the fattest string).

The Zero’s that you see are your guides.  These numbers tell you which fret of the guitar to play on.  For this case, Zero means that you don’t place your finger on any string.  You simply play the string open.  If there was a 5, you would place your finger on the 5th fret for that string and play it.

If I were to write a tab for my guitar warm up exercise that I discuss, it would simply start at 1-2-3-4 for each string.  After all strings have been played, you would then play 2-3-4-5.  I hope this makes sense to you because it is quite hard to explain.  I will post tabs of my warm ups in the future for you to refer to.

So, these are the basics of guitar tabs.  It’s not that hard to understand how tabs work once you get a feeling for it.  Simple place your finger on the fret and string that the tab tells you to.  Over time, you will get fast at reading these tabs.

Remember, each line represents a string, with the highest string in the images as the high e string.  Play the tabs very slow at first.  Do not try to ever play a song at full speed when you are learning.  Playing slow is the best way for your brain to work out a song.  Walk before you run

This will be my first lesson about guitar picking. I plan on adding more detailed lessons about the different types of guitar picking. For now, it is important to understand the basic types and styles of picking so that you can begin the guitar chords lessons that I have created.

This lesson will be an introduction to alternate picking and the other forms of picking such as sweep picking, finger picking, speed picking, and tapping.  As I’ve stated in previous articles, I always recommend practicing guitar on an acoustic. You will build up strength and flexibility much faster than with an electric guitar.

What Is Alternate Picking?

Alternate picking is the process of picking up and down while playing notes on the guitar. Whether you’re doing a speedy lick or a slow, dramatic lead, alternate picking guarantees smoothness and speed throughout the part.

To practice your alternate picking, I recommend finding some guitar tabs that you have. Pick the first note on the tab with a down stroke. On the second note, pick this one with an up stroke. On the 3rd one, play with a down stroke. Up-Down-Up-Down-Up-Down and so on. This is alternate picking.

Learning how to alternate pick is an important skill to have as a guitar player. It is very important that you practice this picking technique before any of the others simply because this is the picking technique that builds speed.

What Is Finger Picking?

Finger picking is another popular form of picking that usually involves no guitar pick. The picking is done with the thumb, 1st, and 2nd fingers. The thumb usually plays the 3 largest, bass strings while the index and middle fingers handle the other 3 strings.

This style of picking feels very uncomfortable when you are first starting out. But over time, you will begin to like it and it will become natural. Finger picking is one of the most beautiful forms of guitar playing that is sure to impress any onlookers and listeners.

The only way to get good at this style is to play repetivive patterns over and over again. Thus, you must either devote yourself to becoming a finger picker or an alternate picker. They both take a lot of time. If you have the time, you can learn both.

What Is Speed Picking?

Speed picking is another form of picking that is rarely used in country guitar. It is an advanced form of picking that takes awhile to learn due to muscles not being developed early on.

Speed picking usually involves alternate picking with immense accuracy and synchronization between both hands. This is why its important to practice alternate picking at slow and steady speeds before moving on to fast licks and leads.

What Is Tapping?

Tapping does not really fall into the same category as picking, but it still uses both hands with the picking hand doing the tapping. It is not nearly as hard as it looks, and it can create some really cool guitar parts.

Tapping is when your fingering hand holds down 1 or more notes and your picking hand quickly presses on the strings at higher places on the neck creating a very fast tempo. It is hard to describe in words, but it is resonsible for making Van Halen famous.