From Wikipedia… “Rivers of Babylon” is a Rastafari song written and recorded by Brent Dowe and Trevor McNaughton of the Jamaican reggae group The Melodians in 1970. The lyrics are adapted from the texts of Psalms 19 and 137 in the Hebrew Bible. The Melodians’ original version of the song appeared on the soundtrack album
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.
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
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
You want to play along with a song but you don’t know what key it’s in. How do you figure it out? The simple fact is…most popular or traditional songs end on the root note of the major scale they are written in. This is known as the “anchor tone” around which the song is
I recently saw a question on Quora which was basically asking “If a song is in a key too high for me to sing, how do I adjust my chords so I can hit the high notes? Should I just tune my guitar strings down a tone or semi-tone?” Many people responded to this question
If you’re thinking of getting started playing guitar, here is some information that may be useful. You can find reviews of two other starter guitars on this page: Buying a Starter Guitar. The most important factors for most people just starting out on the guitar are: First, the size of the guitar. If it is
