Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
🎸 Chords Up The Neck – Start Here!
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LESSON #635 ▶️ Click to watch free video lesson In today’s lesson I’ll teach you recommended first steps for playing chords up the neck. This is a topic four different members on the Song Notes website have emailed me about in the past couple months, so I’m excited to offer this lesson for all those who want to add this ability to their guitar skillset. My aim is to keep this as simple as possible: I’ll focus on major chords, show 3 must-know shapes for each chord, and don’t get bogged down in the rich details of CAGED, triads, or moveable open chords. Don’t miss my print-friendly practice guide… it’s 8 pages worth of rich diagrams and visuals to help you visually connect the dots. I also include several bonus pages I don’t go too deep into during my lesson, including minor shapes and CAGED. I also made five new video jam tracks, allowing you to practice these up-the-neck chords in each of the most common keys. Each of these jam tracks are slow (60bpm), giving you plenty of time to get ready for each chord change. 👉 View lesson #635 – which includes all my related & recommended lessons on this topic! If you are hungry for more on this topic, definitely check out my lessons explaining the CAGED system... which unpacks the five repeating shapes for every major and minor chord. CAGED isn't just about strumming chords or triads. It's helpful for learning scales, arpeggios, moving melodies around the fretboard, and much more. It is trickier to wrap your head around... but the rewards are plentiful once it clicks. View all my other CAGED lessons here » My Favorite Halloween Album Obligatory share in the spirit of Halloween this weekend. Back in 2008, Ryan Gosling and his friend Zach Shields wrote several songs for a stage play that ended up getting scrapped. They did, however, record all the songs — featuring the Silverlake Conservatory Children's Choir on many of them. The album has an amazing un-polished feel. My understanding is they limited themselves to a few takes of each, avoiding any splicing / edits / autotune to preserve the organic quality. Dead Mans Bones is the name of the album, and their stage name as well. It remains one of my favorite albums every October. I love the use of the choir, and the mix of doo-wop vibes with spooky, indie folk sensibility. Name in Stone is my favorite of their songs... it's actually not on the album, but this great one-take video filmed in the Hollywood Forever cemetary: Another good one is In the Room Where You Sleep. This video in particular captures the infectious live-recording spirit... with the choir kids all in their costumes singing along: Fun fact, my #2 lesson ever was for a Dead Man's Bones song... back in 2013. Paper Ships... a song which I love to this day. Their album version of this song is (obviously) much better than my rusty lesson. A final note... after 17 years, they surprised-dropped a new song last week! I've only listened once, without full attention if I'm being honest... but it's here if you want to check it out. That's it for today... I'll catch you all next week ✌️ 🎃 🎸 David Browse all my lessons at songnotes.net |
Song Notes by David Pots
Learn to play guitar with weekly video lessons & print-friendly guides! Learn your favorite songs & techniques with step-by-step tutorials that actually explain how to get from here to there.
When it comes to my Song Notes website & lesson library, one of the things I'm most proud of is my collection of free tools to help folks visualize and hear tricky aspects of guitar & music theory. Today, I'm excited to unveil a brand new web tool. Say hello to Tempo Timer – part metronome, part drum machine, part beat visualizer... and much more! Here's a video tour walking you through this tool, where I demonstrate the various ways you can put it to use with just a few clicks: ▶️ Click to...
LESSON #633"Love Me Two Times" by The Doors ▶️ Click to watch free video lesson In this week's new lesson I’ll teach you how to play Love Me Two Times, the blues-rock classic from The Doors. This song strings together a handful of groove-heavy guitar riffs, which are combined in a few different ways throughout the song. Practice Guide and Bonus Tutorials Also Available! For each of the four riffs, I’ll walk you through a few ways to play things… allowing you to put together an overall...
LESSON #6325 Riffs – Played with Straight vs. Shuffle Rhythm ▶️ Click to watch free lesson (6:32) In today’s new lesson I’ll teach you to hear the difference between a straight vs. shuffle rhythm, using 5 different riffs played using both styles. While you’ll often find the shuffle (or “swing”) feel used in blues-flavored music, it also occurs in various other genres. This is an incredibly valuable skill to have as a guitarist, for both playing and listening to music. 👉 Watch the new lesson...