What Should I Learn?

Intro:

Hello, and welcome to a CPDmusic…article. That’s what today’s “lesson” is going to be; an article. I got a request write a lesson on what an absolute beginner guitarist should learn, in order. Before I start, two things. First of all, to me this isn’t really a lesson topic, more of an article topic, which is why this was published in the article section. Second of all, there is no real “this is the order you have to learn this in”. What you should learn and when changes from individual to individual, and is based on where that person sees themselves as a guitar player. If I wanted to be in a death metal band, I would probably focus on different things than if I wanted to be the next great jazz guitarist. Sure, there are similarities as far as skill goes, but there are also some huge gaps. So, I will cover the basic of things, and then try and give a few paths one could take, and what skills are recommended.

Starting off:

Now, as surprising as this may be, the first thing you should learn when playing the guitar, or any instrument for that matter, does not require you to even pick this instrument up. The very first thing you should know before attempting to play any instrument is basic music theory. Learn the music alphabet, how to read the staff (in guitar, you just need to know the treble clef, but it’s a good idea to learn the bass clef as well, as they are the two most common clefs.), key signatures, note durations, etc. If you have a firm grasp on the basics of music theory before you begin learning a specific instrument, you will learn at a highly accelerated rate in comparison to someone who is juggling both music theory and their specific instrument.

Starting with the Guitar:

So now that you know basic music theory, you are ready to begin learning your specific instrument, which is most likely, if your on this website, guitar. The first thing you should learn with the guitar is the notes on the fret board. This is an example of how already knowing basic music theory will help you learn at a faster rate. If you already knew the musical alphabet, you knew the sixth string open was E, and you knew that each fret increase the pitch by a semitone, you could easily tell me that the 1st fret on that

Once you understand the fret board, start learning basic songs (I know…boring…but important!) that involve you just picking singular notes. Try and keep these songs in-bounds of first position, and try not to have any tricky notation or anything (i.e. triplets). Once you have a grasp of the singular notes, try learn the basic first position major and minor chords. You don’t necessarily have to learn and suspended, seventh, diminished etc. chords just yet, but you should have chords like G major or A minor memorized. Build up your chord playing. Start by just strumming the chords to make sure there are no muted notes or anything. Then, work on changing between chords quickly. A way to help with this is to look for notes and fingerings that stay constant. There is no need to move EVERY finger when switching from D major to D minor, for example. Then, build up basic chord progressions and try different strumming patterns. Once you have these skills, extend your knowledge past first position, and be able to comfortably play up to the twelfth fret. You should also learn some of the basic guitar scales, that being the major scale, minor scale, major pentatonic scale, and minor pentatonic scale.

Branching off:

Now, those are the bare basics of what you need to know as far as the guitar goes. From here, guitar players start branching off in their learning. Some want to focus on composition, others want to learn new skills. It all matters on what you want to do musically. Usually, at this point in time, the two main branches would be the ones I said before: composition and skill. You should venture down both paths at one point or another, but I will give you some examples of what you should learn for each.

Music Composition Path:

If you want to go down the path of music composition, you will have to spend more time away from the guitar as you dust off your old theory textbooks from before. I’m not saying to STOP playing guitar, as you should be playing as often as possible. But if you want to write original works, you’re going to need to get to the technical aspects of music. The more you understand theory, the better.

Something you should learn early on is intervals. Intervals often come up in music theory, so they are a good aspect to learn early on. You should at least know major, minor, and perfect intervals, although it is also a good idea to learn diminished, augmented, and compound intervals.

Another crucial thing you should learn is to go beyond the standard major and minor chords. This will also give you an opportunity to broaden your guitar playing skills. Learn seventh chords, diminished chords, suspended chords, augmented chords, as many chords as your brain can handle. Also, you should be getting a grasp of how the chords “feel”; the atmosphere they create. You should be noticing, for example, that major chords sound “happy” and minor chords sound “sad”. This is important if you want to compose, because if you said “I want to create the happiest piece of music in the world!”, you probably don’t want to base your entire song off of the D minor chord. This doesn’t mean you CAN’T use minor chords in a happy song, it just means don’t write in a minor key. You should also learn chord theory, so you know that root plus major third plus perfect fifth is a major triad, while root plus minor third plus perfect fifth is a minor triad, etc.

Once you learn more chords, you should probably learn more scales too. Depending on how you want your songs to sound, you will probably want to learn different scales. But, some scales you should know are the melodic minor, harmonic major, and whole tone scales. You should also know the theory behind these scales, like how a major scale is tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone, for example. It is also a good idea to learn how to play scales as chords, as this will help immensely when harmonizing chords and scales.

From there, venture into more time signatures and notation. It is a good idea to understand unusual time signatures, even if you do not plan to use them in your work. You may have only looked at 4/4, 3/4, and 2/4 time signatures thus far. You should start to make yourself comfortable in time signatures like 6/8 and even really weird ones like 10/8 time. As far as notation goes, look into triplets and all forms of ratio notation. Also, if you haven’t already, learn about things like dotted notes. You should also learn things like crescendos and decrescendos, fermatas, and rasgueados. Finally, you should also be comfortable with key signatures, and the general feel each one has.

One final thing you should do is start training your ear. A good composers most powerful tool is his ear, so if your ear isn’t strong, you better start taking it to the gym…of music. Be able to identify intervals, and whether chords are major, minor, etc. Who knows, maybe you are lucky enough to be born with perfect pitch, in which case I am immensely envious of you.

Guitar Skills Path:

Maybe you don’t want to start writing your own pieces yet, and instead want to further your abilities at the guitar. This will limit you to playing other peoples songs, but can support your composition once you go down that route. Now, once again, what skills your learn are based on what type of music you want to play, although it is important to have a grasp on as many skills as possible.

The most important thing is to always expand what you already know. Learn more chords or scales, or be able to play your individual notes faster or more precise. You will never be THE PERFECT guitar player, there will ALWAYS be room for improvement. But, you should also learn some brand new techniques as well.

One generally good skill to have is the ability to play harmonics, as it covers a vast amount of genres. An acoustic guitar player will probably use natural harmonics the most, while an electric guitar player more focused on rock music, especially metal, will probably lean more towards artificial harmonics, such as pinch harmonics and tap harmonics.

Another broad skill to learn is two hand tapping. The majority of the time, this is done on the electric guitar, mainly in rock music. But “new age” acoustic players, lets call them, have brought this skill to the acoustic guitar as well. Just start tapping slowly on one string. Gradually speed up once you get the hang of it, and add more notes. Heck, once you’re an experienced tapper, add more strings. The sky’s the limit!

Now, while there are so many more important techniques to learn, I will focus on one more specifically. This skill is probably the most encompassing skill to learn, genre wise. It is the skill of improvisation, or, simply put, making it up as you go. It is recommended that you broaden your knowledge of music theory prior to doing this, and understand the key elements of your genre. For example, a blues improvisation will probably be based on a blues scale, and use techniques like “double stops”. On the other hand, a metal improvisation will probably use arpeggios, two hand tapping, sweeping picking, and alternative picking.

Outro:

Well, that’s all for today! There is your impromptu list of what to learn on the guitar. Just remember, don’t feel restrained by this list in any way. In the words of Fleetwood Mac, you can go your own way! It doesn’t matter what any music theologist says, the most important aspect of music is individuality, so BE YOURSELF! If you would like to learn something from this list, just send me a message, and if it can be done in a text lesson, I’ll give it my best shot. (Thing like two hand tapping, though, can’t be properly taught through text, so please don’t ask.) Anyways, that’s it, goodbye!