In today’s lesson I want to walk you through some must-know YouTube keyboard shortcuts to help you learn guitar faster. Trust me when I say – if you're still using a mouse to pause, rewind, or fast forward YouTube lessons – you're making it wary harder than it needs to be.

By learning just a few of these shortcuts, you’ll be able to control playback in a fraction of the time it takes to use your mouse & cursor. This removes frustration, increases the time we’re actually playing the guitar, and gets us where we want to go that much further.

I'll also show a few handy shortcuts you can use on your smartphone or tablet to rewind or fast-forward without having to click-and-drag the little red playhead. Here's what I'll teach in the video above, from start to finish:

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:44 Play/Pause
• 1:09 Rewind & Fast Forward
• 2:53 Jumping to a specific point
• 3:48 Frame-by-frame movement
• 4:27 Muting, Captions, Full Screen
• 5:15 Playback Speed
• 6:00 Touch Screen Shortcuts (smartphone and tablet)
• 7:28 Troubleshooting Tips!

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PDF Cheat Sheet Available!

Members on my Song Notes website get access to a print-friendly cheat sheet I made, with all these shortcuts nicely organized on one single page. Print it out, tack it to your wall, or put in your guitar notebook! Get it over on my lesson page »​

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Watch YouTube Shortcuts in Action...

One of my favorite YouTubers is Michael Palmisano, who does "react" videos where he gives his expert musician take on live performances.

He goes into each video blind, knowing nothing – with guitar-in-hand – and it's always impressive to watch him immediately identify what's going on musically.

Something you'll notice in all of his videos:

• He uses YouTube keyboard shortcuts like a pro — exactly as I demonstrate in my video. I recommend his channel in general, but specifically to watch someone go through this loop of watching, pausing, rewinding, watching again — all while he works out what's going on with his guitar.

Here's one of my favorites of his, where he watches Chris Stapleton's breakthrough performance with Justin Timberlake at the 2015 CMA awards – watch it here and see what I mean!

That'll do it for today! As always I hope you all find this helpful, and best of luck with your playing until next time ✌️

David

PS – thanks for being a Premium supporter of Song Notes! For your convenience, here's a members-only link to the PDF cheat sheet for this lesson. Enjoy!