New Beginner Guitar Premium Course
Hey guys! Well I finally got around to starting my new Premium beginner guitar course.
I have been asked a lot lately via emails or comments about whether I am gonna develop a system for someone who has no experience at all with the guitar.
The information on the site is just too much for someone just starting out. They don't know whether they are learning things in the proper order.
This new course will solve that problem. There will be at least one new lesson added to the course every week just like every other Premium lesson section. 🙂
Here is a link to the course for more info: Online Beginner Guitar Course
Besides that I hope you guys are enjoying the new free daily lessons. I have been getting some good responses from them. The site now truly does have a brand new free lesson every day 365 days a year!
I have also started something with the new "Famous Riffs" and "Famous Solos" videos. If any one of those videos gets 1000 likes on YouTube I will teach the entire song note-for-note here on the site.
That is a good way for me to know what lessons people really want to see.
If you don't know how to "like" a video on YouTube it's pretty easy. If you are watching the lesson here on the site, simply click on the little YouTube logo at the bottom right of the video player. That will take you to that video's page on YouTube. From there simply click on the little thumbs up like button! Thanks for the support!
Us here in the United States have a holiday weekend coming up so I hope everyone has a good time.
I myself am heading up to Indianapolis, IN this weekend to attend the Indy 500. It's something I have been doing lately with my dad and brother even though I am not a really big auto racing fan. The Indy 500 is an amazing event though, lots of fun.
I will be back home late Monday. Luckily though, due to the magic of the internet, there will still be a new daily lesson every day while I am out of town. 🙂
I got some good lessons coming this weekend so look out for those. I especially think Saturday's lesson is gonna be quite popular!
OK well I am off to pack, thanks a bunch for watching my lessons everyone!
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Carl,
This is one of the best sites I’ve seen on the internet. Great stuff. I am a beginner and your lessons help a lot. I’m a little older than most for starting out but I’ve got the ambition. I have progressed from an old 12 string “the ol lady” and now have a Eppi Les Paul and a Fender Strat. I was wondering if you might possibly find the time to put out a lesson on “you better think Twice” by Poco. I have always been fascinated with the guitar parts and would love to see how it’s played. Anyway, super site and I’ll be here for quite some time. By the way, I’m 62. Steve G
Hey Steve,
I was encouraged to read your note. I never played a guitar before and started 2 years ago at age 55. I’ve been practicing and playing for at least 1-2 hours per day nearly every single day since I’ve started. I wish I had taped myself over the last 2 years, but the difference is night and day. My wife and I can now play hundreds of songs. I’m mostly rhythm guitar, but am always exploring and learning different lead riffs and am consistently getting better. Carl’s videos have been a big help. His attention to detail is very helpful and his videos have helped me learn several songs, both rhythm and lead parts. I really appreciate someone who has such a love of guitar and for helping others, that they put dozens of free instructional videos out there. If I was good enough, I’d do the same thing! Anyway, I’d love to hear how you’re progressing. It’s definitely not as easy for us “oldsters”, but not impossible. I plan on learning and improving as long as the Lord permits! Don’t know if I can leave an email, but I’ll go ahead: drmichaelroth@juno.com
Hi Steve: I have been playing a long time (since I was 13) but I too am 62 and quite bored for the most part with my own playing. I jam a lot with friends and I’d like to get kickstarted somehow into the next level. So as (most likely) two of the older site members, let’s us both get to a new level and tackle the stuff we’ve always wanted to play! good luck – Patricia R. PS Not very good with theory although I took piano as a kid.
Hi Carl! You`ve done a great work with those lessons and the site itself. I´m currently hanging around the beginner section and i´ve learned a lot from those first videos so far.
Next few weeks will be occupied with those chord exercises.
I ended up here because I realized at some point that it was easier for me to learn in English than in my native language. So I turned my eyes to the internet. While crawling Youtube I found one Carl`s video and started practicing that song. Pretty soon it came to me that I lack some fundamental basics. Conveniently GL365 offered me subsciption at the right time. Also your calm and rational teaching style really suits me and keeps motvated. At the moment it seems that I`ll be hanging around for a long time…
Cheers,
Tanel
Great to hear from you Tanel. I hope to help you learn for a long time to come! 🙂
Carl,
I am just starting out learning to play. I used your free lessons for a couple of weeks then I decided to take advantage of your Memorial Day sale and get a 3 month subscription. I have to admit I am a little lost. I have no problem following along in learning the shapes from the different lessons i.e. chords, pentatonic scales etc. But its like I am missing important parts. For example I started watching your beginner guitar course under the premium lessons. I watch the videos and copy what you are doing but it just feels like I am doing a “monkey see monkey do” for lack of a better analogy, lesson without an explanation of things. I watched chapter 10 and you show how to pick/strum the open position major C scale but I don’t understand how the C chord and the scale are the same or are supposed to work together, I just know that a tab is available and I am supposed to memorize it and learn to play it without knowing what to do with it after I learn it. The same thing for Chapter 11 and Pentatonic Scales etc. I have read Understanding Keys about 20 times and I still don’t get it. I even read the explanation in the comments and I still don’t get it, am I just supposed to memorize the list of Major Keys, and not worry how they are put together? Will all of this info somehow just fall into place as I go along? Do I need to read or learn something about music before I continue trying to learn guitar? Am I supposed to be looking up info to go along with the lessons? I just feel lost as how this all works except for the chord shapes, and following along to the tabs etc. I can practice all that info and it still doesn’t mean anything other than I have learned how to strum a G chord or a D Chord etc… I do understand how to play a song using the Basic chords but the rest of it I am having trouble understanding what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Hey Michael, let me see if I can answer some of your questions.
First off, the beginner guitar course doesn’t really dive into the nuts and bolts of how all the chords or scales you are playing are created and how they work in order to create music. The most important thing for a beginner guitarist is to simply get them playing music as fast as possible without a bunch of extra study work thrown in there that can confuse them and frustrate them enough to make them quit. That is why I don’t go over any of that in the beginner course.
Most guitar players never get past the beginner level for a couple of reasons. First, they have no desire to learn anything more than some simple songs, Or perhaps they tired to understand how music works from the ground up from the very beginning and they inevitably got frustrated and quit.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel that it is great that you want to know more about what you are doing, I am just explaining why you don’t get that information in the beginner course.
So let’s get back to the understanding keys lesson. At what part of it are you getting confused? The understanding keys lesson simply teaches you a simple “method” for learning all the notes for each major scale. I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible and you will hopefully just be getting hung up on one aspect of it that I can help you get past. The major scales are pretty much the foundation of music, so learning those well first will help you understand just about all other areas of music theory (ie, chords, chord progressions, minor keys etc).
One thing I do notice a lot, especially with adult students learning this type of theory is that they simply make it harder than it really is. If they just follow the simple steps without thinking about ways they have imagined music to work before they automatically are more open to the process. Not saying that is what is going on with you, it is just an observation from past experience.
The idea is a simple one, ALL major scales contain ALL of the first 7 letters of the alphabet. A B C D E F G … If it is a D scale you want, you simply start on D (D E F G A B C) and so forth for the other keys.
Then it is a process of figuring out which notes have sharps (for sharp keys) or flats (for flat keys). That is what the system shows you how to do. For sharp keys you have an order of sharps that you memorize F# C# G# D# A# E# B#. Now, let’s go back to that D key, we have the seven letters starting on D (D E F G A B C) and we know from the PDF that you need to determine whether D major is a sharp key or flat key first. That is simple as well. ALL flat keys have a flat in there name (Db Eb Ab etc) except for one. That one key is F major which is easy to remember since that is the first letter of the work Flat. All other keys are sharp keys! So that means D major is a sharp key.
Now at this point you use the simple formula for figuring out which notes in the D scale above to sharp. That formula starts by figuring out your last sharp which is always a half-step below the tonic or in this case D. Simply go back one letter in the alphabet to C and add a sharp to it to get C#.
Now you remember that order of sharps from above? The C# is the second sharp. What that means is that if you follow the order of sharps, you have to have both an F# and a C# in that key since we figured out the C# on our own but you can’t have a C# in a key without also having the F#
So now you simply go back to the D scale above and add those sharps to it which will give you D E F# G A B C# … All the sharp keys work the exact same way.
Basically what we are doing here is learning how to get the notes into our mind so that eventually they are memorized and we don’t have to use this system anymore. But you have to work with them a bit before they become second nature to you. Then you will use those scales to create chords and chord progressions and so forth.
Is this all making a little more sense now?
Carl…
Carl,
Yes that helps with the Keys Lesson. I guess I need to relax and just have fun learning to play. I seem to always go at things with to much intensity lol. I see why you don’t explain every detail as that could cause frustration for someone (like me) who isn’t seeing where all the simple lessons are leading. I like to know why I am doing something and how it connects to other things so I can get a complete picture in my head of what it is I am trying to accomplish. Thanks for the response, and helping me understand the Keys Lesson, I was way overthinking the whole system. Hopefully in a few months (with some patience on my part) some of the things I am not connecting will fall into place. Thanks again for the quick response.
Mike
Hello carl,
Since i have watched your lessons on youtude. I have feel that u r a great teacher who teaches simply to the learner. When i was learning to play in our country nepal, kathmandu. I didn’t find good mentor to teach me but after i seeing yours lessons my desire to learn has increased so much. I have request that can u make a lessons on youtude for band like creed song (my sacrifice, one last breath) , dream threater songs, john petrucci more solos, andy james etc.
Thanks u sir
Sandeep. Baj
Nepal, kathmandu
Hi Carl looking forward to using your sight need to get the basics locked up and some structure in me playing hope you can help me looking forward to hearing from you Mickey South wales England grait Britain
Hey Mickey, thanks for checking out the site! Hope you have checked my email to you. 🙂