“‘Joy to the world’ is perhaps an unlikely popular Christmas hymn. First of all, it is based on a psalm, and, second, it celebrates Christ’s second coming much more than the first. This favorite Christmas hymn is the result of a collaboration of at least three people and draws its initial inspiration not from the
Here’s a guitar rendition from our Christmas collection… This is a fairly easy arrangement that combines the melody of “The Little Drummer Boy” with chords, strumming, and arpeggios. This is a good place to start if you are interested in playing Christmas songs that go “Beyond Chords”.
We are in the process of launching a new course called “Beyond Chords”. This is a “Level 2” course that focuses on combining chords and melodies, as well as embellishing your playing with note sequences, bass runs, and riffs. For more information see Beyond Chords.
Is learning to read traditional music important for guitar players? Can you play guitar at a reasonably high level without learning to read music? Many guitar players and teachers argue that what is important for guitar players is to be spontaneous and creative: that playing from music holds them back and discourages them from thinking
In this video I introduce the idea of “Scales +”. If you want to get past just strumming chords along with songs, this is a good place to start. We begin by simply adding a chord strum (of the I Chord) to the beginning and end of a major scale. The next step will be
We’re currently working on a couple new downloadable courses. The first one called “Guitar Magic” is for brand new guitar players. It features a series of lessons that introduce some basic theory, critical chords for five common keys (G, C, D, E, A) and a whole bunch of easy playalong songs to get you going.
The “key” of a song is simply the root note of the scale the song is built on. So, for example, we say a song is in the key of D Major when the song is built on the D Major scale. D is the root note of the scale. Specific chords are associated with
If you’re like me you’ve played guitar for a while and it is your primary instrument. But you also dabble in the ukulele. Keeping the two instruments separate is a bit of a challenge – just a bit. Not a major challenge because many of the basic techniques are the same. But the big difference
Our new Guitar Course for Beginners will soon be available from muzictrain.com Learn how to play songs, all the most important chords, strumming. Play along with songs. we have 100s of playalong songs.
I follow a couple guitar beginner forums, and one comment I often see refers to being able to “play songs”. For example, a typical comment goes something like this: “I know enough chords to play a few songs, but I’m not happy with my progress.” What do they mean when they say “I can play
