Electric Guitar Lesson 15 - Reading Music

The first few lessons covered how to read music and TAB. This lesson is going to give you a few examples to play as well as audio clips, so you can ensure that what you are playing is correct. Learning music takes a lot of time to solidify the material. In some cases, you may be learning so quickly that you just don’t take time to make sure you're doing things correctly! So consider this your chance to take a deep breath and review things.

 

Riff 1

This example is mainly to practice strumming patterns with chords. If you are unfamiliar with these chords, make sure you go through each measure and get comfortable with each shape. Try making the shape and moving it around the neck, up and down. Keep strumming as you move it around and make sure that your fingers are in the correct shape. These are all common chords, so you should either find them familiar or learn them anyway. Make sure to give the dotted quarter notes a full beat and a half. A beat and a half is when your foot goes "tap-tap-up."

Riff 2

This example uses the Dmaj scale to construct a short 4 bar solo. Make note of the slide up in the first bar and the slide down in the 4th bar. Also the D note that holds over to measure 2 is a great note to hold out because it is part of the Dmaj arpeggio. This example shows basic solo techniques like using scales, slides, arpeggios and emphasizing notes by playing them multiple times. Measure three is an Em arpeggio. It is easy to play because it contains notes that are all within the Dmaj scale. From this we can conclude that the chords Em and Dmaj work well together because of the notes they have in common.

 

Riff 3

Here is a great finger style exercise. It is in the key of Amaj. The chromatic walk up in the second measure adds a great little funk feel to the whole piece. As short as it is, it makes for a good rhythm part. If you have a friend that plays guitar, try having just one person play this, and the other person play around with the Amaj scale, then switch. This could be used with hybrid picking, but it is also great with fingerpicking. Use your thumb to play the bass lines and use your index and middle, or your middle and ring fingers, to pluck the higher strings. Together it will add a great syncopated rhythm. Don’t forget to "chuck" the strings when the x’s come up. Just hit the strings with your plucking hand so that they hit the frets and make a chucking sound. Make sure you aren’t fretting anything to get the right sound

 

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