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This is less of a lesson – more of a stream of consicousness – it took me a while to wrap my head around this lesson – so you, the reader are made to suffer too… sorry about that.

The basis of most western music is the C major scale (also called the Ionian scale)

C D E F G A B C
1  2  3  4  5 6  7 8

Major scales follow the pattern of
Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step | Full Step | Full Step | half step | Full Step

Chord formula for Major Chords 1, 3, 5 – so if we take the C scale above and extract the 1, 3 and 5 notes we end up with C E G – the notes that make up a standard C Major chord

A major 7 adds in the 7th note – so for the above example the B is also added bringing the chord to C E G B

Wow I am not sure where to start on this one – we covered a bunch of stuff tonight, I’ve really got my work cut out for me. I guess I will start with pentatonic scales since that is the bulk of what we covered. There are really only 5 shapes that cover all pentatonic scales – learning them will be the tough part.

Tonight we covered starting with an E root note for the scales – acknowledging that simply shifting the root note up or down the neck totally changes what scale you’re playing – and based on where you start the shape changes weather it is a Major or Minor Pentatonic…fun stuff even though a bit heady.

so 5 shapes.

Shape One: (for the E pentatonic the root notes on this are simply the open strings)

Shape 2:

Shape 3:

Shape 4:

Shape 5:

The sixth shape to complete the octave is really just the first shape played again.

A couple of noteworthy things here.

1. The back notes of one pentatonic are the front notes of the previous – they all fit together much like a puzzle (a really really complicated puzzle)
2. Here’s where it gets really heady – the root note separates the major from the minor so on shape one for example – playing the open E string first makes the scale an E Minor Pentatonic – Playing the G note on the E string (3rd fret) first makes it an E major pentatonic

We also dealt with writing the scales out tonight – all 12 of them – but I need to wrap my head around that one a bit more before I dive into trying to”explain” it.  So stay tuned for the “Guitar Lesson 3a” post.

Ran across this link after posting – worth checking out.

This week I am to build on the C-Major Scale that we addressed last week.  Last week was to be played in quarter, half, and full notes – this week we add eighth notes via “perfect alternate picking”.  The pick is to continually move up and down – never up twice – never down twice.  By the end of the week, I should be able to tap my foot, keep rhythm and have the pick move up as my foot moves up – the pick move down as my foot moves down.  Sounds easy…it’s not!

In addition we covered the G Major Pentatonic scale:

|----------------------0-3--|
|------------------0-3------|
|--------------0-2----------|
|----------0-2--------------|
|------0-2------------------|
|--0-3----------------------|

And how based on which root note is started with (the 0 or 3 on the low E string) this pattern can either be a G Major Pentatonic or an E minor pentatonic scale. I believe that it has to do with the notes that are played and how they correspond to the notes played within the chord (G Major or E minor). I will find out next week for sure.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the ‘net over the past month or so reading, watching, and listening to tutorials on how to play the guitar.  I though that I’d post these “How to play the guitar” links for others out there that may be searching.  Let me know what you think.

Videos

Marty Schwartz from Guitarjams.com has a great channel on Youtube.  He goes over how to play songs of all levels and he updates frequently.  Check him out here.

Aaron Gallagher is almost entirely self taught (and he’s not even been playing all that long) he runs a great site called Free and Easy Guitar that has a HUGE how to video library.  Pick a song from the drop down list, and Aaron will teach you how to play it.

Justin Sandercoe is a London based guitarist who runs the site justinguitar.com.  His site differs from the others in that he has highly structured lessons that you can follow along with.  The site is donation based.  I’ve been spending a good bit of time making my way through his Basics Course.

I also just stumbled upon a site called Guitar Noise.  I’ve not used it too much yet, but it has many tutorials as well as guitar related news.

Tabs

The best site i have found for guitar tabs is hands down Ultimate Guitar their index seems to be near bottomless, so much so that I feel no need to reference any other.

Other Resources

• Online metronome
• Guitar Scales & More Scales
• Guitar chords & More Chords
• All about the fret board

And just to humble everyone out there – remember kids – John Mayer plays better than you with only one hand.