When you first start playing guitar, your left hand goes through a workout. The strings leave your fingertips sore, your fingers search slowly and aimlessly for the right position, and some of the stretching may seem impossible. Luckily, it all gets better. With regular practice your hand starts to remember and adjust to the new motions. Improving your technique can also make everything easier to play. Peter Vogl has two new free lessons that will teach you about proper playing position. The first lesson will show you where to place your thumb on the back of the guitar neck. A neutral position in the back of the neck allows your fingers to stretch and bend more easily. The second lesson will address how close your left hand fingers should be to the frets and how much pressure to use. Combining these tips should help improve your speed and accuracy and avoid the dreaded buzzing and muted notes.
Jody Worrell has two new premium lessons on beginning to intermediate level country guitar solos. Country soloing has come to be identified for it’s twangy sound. One way to create that twang is to use double stops or playing two notes at the same time. Using different scale intervals determines the sound of that double stop. In Jody’s Easy Double Stop Country 1 we will use 6th intervals as the double stops in our riffs. In the second lesson on this topic we will use thirds as the basis for our riffs. Both solos are taught in detail and then practiced over a backing track in the key of A. Go to the lesson page for more details or check out the previews below to hear what the solos sound like.
We have a new free lesson on learning how to play a guitar chord progression. The chords used in this lesson are C#m, A, E, and B. The C#m and B barre chords can be tricky for a beginning guitarist to play. If you’re having trouble with them, check out our barre chords lesson for tips on how to create them quicker and play them cleaner. In this lesson, you will also learn a couple of chord substitutions that can be used to create a different sound. Peter will then cover a couple of different strum patterns you can use to play over this set of chords. Go to the lesson page to get the chord charts and strumming notation.
Voice Leading is a jazz term that can get as complicated as you want it to be. But the core idea is creating a melody within a chord progression. By using different voicings, you can rely on harmonic movement to supply the melody. In our new Voice Leading Within the 2-5-1 free lesson, Guy will show you two basic examples of this. You will learn how to play a 2-5-1 jazz guitar progression in the key of C and F. Guy will teach you how to play each of the chords in the progression and then discuss the music theory involved. You can view the lesson video below or head over to the lesson page for the chord charts. If you want to learn more about 2-5-1 chord voicings, check out our 2-5-1 Progression in Two Keys premium lesson.
Over the last couple of months we’ve released a series of guitar lessons by David Ellis that cover basic bluegrass lead playing. You can now buy those six lessons with one click as the Easy Flatpicking Songs Package and save $5.99 over the standard price. The lessons will teach you beginning to intermediate level breaks for Wildwood Flower, Old Joe Clark, John Hardy, Way Downtown, Cripple Creek, Shady Grove, 9lb Hammer, Salt Creek, and Red Haired Boy. These are twelve songs that are commonly played at bluegrass jams and would be known by most of your fellow pickers. Watch the demo below or check out the lesson page to get an idea for the difficulty level and style. If you are looking for something a little more advanced you should check out our Flapticking Guitar Songs book download which features some great tabs. In the more general songbook style we also have the Bluegrass Fakebook
