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
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
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
A common way of talking about the use of guitar chords in pop songs is called Basic Chord Theory. It is also referred to as the “1-4-5” or (in Roman numerals) “I-IV-V”. Another term you will sometimes hear is the “Nashville System”. I prefer the name “1-4-5” so that’s how I will refer to it
It may not make sense to you at first, and you might just never think about it. But the guitar is tuned the way it is for at least one very good reason. As far as I can tell, it comes down to this: You have four fingers on your fingering hand. So the guitar
I know, I know… playing scales over and over again is boring and may seem pointless. But here are 8 good reasons to work on scales every day. First, here’s the obvious stuff: 1. Playing Scales helps improve finger dexterity, strength and speed of your fingering hand. 2. Playing Scales helps improve the accuracy, speed
