The Lesson Vault

Hi again! I didn’t have time this week for a new lesson (picture me driving my rented Pontiac through the Mojave Desert for a few days in Las Vegas), so I thought I’d remind you of all the lessons I have posted over the last couple of years at GfB and Beyond. They number in the forties now, most of them complete with movie/tab/midi. It seems to be a good way to teach, judging from the nice feedback I receive, so I’ll just keep them coming.

At the bottom of the page is a list of some, not all, of the lessons I have put together, accessible from the Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Lesson page. They could keep a twanger busy for months.

Here is a challenge for you intermediate level twangers: Go to my Soundclick site and have a listen to Blackwood Stroll, a neat little finger-picking ditty I wrote recently. It’s as infectious as they come. It’s in the key of D with a couple of cool (key) changes. I’ll post the tab for it next week or soon thereafter, but in the meantime, see if you can figure it out. Next week you can see how you did. There are many ways and positions to play this but (here’s the hint) mine makes good use of open strings. It’s in dropped D, just the lower E string dropped.

I’ve been pleased to find a couple of threads at guitar discussion forums about my book PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book. They’re always positive; those who have bought invariably recommend others to do same. One is at the Harmony Central Forum,the other at the Acoustic Guitar Magazine Forum. I think the quirky comic-strip approach to teaching this complex subject (how to turn your entire fretboard into familiar territory) is the key to its success. You, the reader, get to listen in as the pro teaches the amateur a very simple way of seeing it all — in plain English. If you fall into that category of player (can play all kinds of stuff … chords, scales, riffs, tunes, modes, but can’t improvise freely or use the whole fretboard), then do yourself the favor. I’ve been playing since 1961 and spent years distilling it all down to this one simple mind-set. Save yourself the time! Click here for a whole site’s worth of info and free lessons.

Here are the lessons, they’re all free, they’re all at Guitar for Beginners and Beyond. Have fun!

Dropped D Romeo
Shufflin’ Boogie
Dropped D finger pickin’
Walking bass line
Unchained Melody
Forbidden Games
An Elvis classic
Ragtime pickin’
Greensleeves – part 2
Greensleeves – part 1
White Christmas
Jingle Bells
‘Stairway to Heaven’- part 2
‘Stairway to Heaven’- part 1
‘Always on my mind’ – part 3
‘Always on my mind’- part 2
‘Always on my mind’- part 1
‘Polk Salad pickin’
‘Summertime’ finger style
Helplessly Hoping – part 2
Helplessly Hoping – part 1
Some more Spanish guitar
House of the Rising Sun
Summertime
Blackbird
Demystifying the ‘ninth’ chords
The related chords
Mr Bojangles – part 1
Mr Bojangles – part 2
Amazing Grace
Lean on Me
Here comes the Sun