free jam tracks - brought to you by nick cresswell

Chords, Scales and Making Guitar Practice Fun

One of the hardest things about learning to play the guitar is that you often don't know what to practice so you will actually become a good guitar player. Here are some ideas on how to practice chords and scales that will make guitar practice a lot more fun than just practicing a bunch of exercises.

Guitar Chords - Learn to Play Songs

There are five basic guitar chords that every guitar player needs to learn. These chords are G, C, D, E and A. Each of these basic chords have different chord shapes. A chord shape is how you fret the notes on the fretboard to play any one chord. Chord shapes are great because they are moveable. This means that once you know how to play a chord shape in one position on the neck of the guitar you can then move the shape up or down the neck to play a different chord. Your fingers will be playing the same shape but because they are at a different place on the guitar neck you will be playing a different chord.

Knowing this and the five basic chords, allows you to play any Major chord anywhere on the guitar. If you also learn the minor chords for G, C, D, E and A you will be able to use this knowledge to play just about any song on the guitar. So you can quickly get away from learning exercises and start learning to play songs.

Learning to play songs is a lot more fun than just learning chords. Learning to play songs will help you learn chords, chord positions as well as teaching you to be able to play through chord changes. Chord changes in a song force your hands to get into the new chord position quickly which will help your guitar playing immensely.

You can find the chords used for just about every song every written simply by typing the name of the song followed by the words 'tab' or 'chords' into a search engine. Tab is short for guitar tablature and shows you where to place your fingers on the guitar neck to play a chord.

Guitar Scales - Learning to Play Melody and Lead Guitar

Its no secret that scales are boring to play. Just playing the notes of a scale up and down not only become tiresome fast but it also sounds boring. Music isn't about exercises; music is about enjoyment and playing sounds with real feeling that come from your heart and soul. If you aren't thinking about putting feeling or emotion into what you are playing, then you may as well be typing on a computer. However, as scales are an essential part of learning to play music its a good idea to come up with some ways to make scales sound more musical.

To make scales sound more like music and less like exercises, instead of playing a scale in note sequence from the Root of the scale, up the octave and back down the octave, play your scales by skipping notes.

For example; one octave of the C Major scales comprises of the notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. If we name the notes in sequence with numbers we have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. With the 1 being C, the 2 being D and so on until we reach one octave higher to 8 which is C, one octave higher than the 1 which is the Root note of the scale.

Instead of playing the notes in sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, play the notes of the C Major scale by skipping one note as we move up the scale. So play: 1 then 3 (C to E) which skips the 2 (note D). Then move to the 2 (i.e. D) and again skip, this time from the 2 to the 4 (D to F). If you continue in this manner the note sequence you play will be this: 1, 3, 2, 4, 3, 5, 4, 6, 5, 7, 6, 8. To end this sequence of so it plays nicely you can add the notes 7, 9, 8. The 9 is the D note and is one octave higher than the 2. This is called a 9th. So the 9th is the same note as the 2nd but one octave higher.

When you come back down the scale start on the 8 and skip back down. So the sequence here will be: 8, 6, 7, 5, 6, 4, 5, 3, 4, 2, 3, 1, 2, 7, 1. Notice here that we added three extra notes at the end of the sequence. We are playing the 2nd (D note), then the 7 which is the B and is one fret lower than the 1 (i.e. our Root note C) that we started on and then we finish back on the Root note, which is the 1 (i.e. C).

If you learn to play your scales using this method you will find that the notes sound a lot more musical. You can then use parts of this scale to go from playing a scale to playing musical phrases. This is a great way to develop playing melodies and in turn lead guitar.

If you want to get more sounds and become more melodic extend this concept so instead of skipping one note as you move up and down the scale skip two notes. So play: 1, 4, 2, 5 and so on.

Not only are you moving away from playing exercises and towards playing music, playing scale patterns in this way will help you learn scales a lot faster than if you just had of played them the boring way going up and down in sequence.

Keep Practice Musical

Keeping your practice musical by learning to play songs when learning chords and learning to play melody and lead when learning scales will give you a lot more enjoyment from your practice than just playing exercises. The more interesting and creative that you can make your practice the more fun you have. The more fun you have with music, the more you will want to play. And the more you play the better a guitar player you'll become. Pick up your guitar, get creative, and have some fun.