learn-guitar.org

OK, next up is free guitar tablature… this is just another part of my never ending quest for more great guitar resources that can be found online. As I have have noted over and over in these pages, the Internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread for guitarists. And as a new guitarist I can’t soak up enough of these great online resources.

So it is onward for free guitar tablature…

But first a quick word… for the REAL beginners out there, guitar tablature (also known as guitar tabs for short) is a great and easy to learn way of presenting music for guitar. The best thing is that you don’t need to be able to “read” regular sheet music. Guitar tablature is super easy to read… I taught my 12 year old daughter to do it in about three minutes.

In any case, we were talking about finding free guitar tablature… and I found a bunch of it. In fact, you can find the guitar tabs for thousands of songs online. The first place that I always start with when I am looking for tablature for guitars (and it even has it for bass guitars) is at this site…

The site is great… you can search by song title or artist. If you search by artist it will come up with all the songs by that artist. And the tabs are rated by users, so you can see which guitar tabs are the highest rated by other visitors.

Bottom line, if you are looking for free guitar tablature… that is the single place to start.

I get lots of comments and feedback from visitors, and one request I keep getting is for Christian guitar tabs and chords. Of course, a C chord is a C chord, and a D chord is a D chord… whether they are played by a Christian or non-Christian.

But this request is not really for Christian guitar chords… but for guitar tabs for Christian songs…

As usual, the Internet is the guitarist’s best friend, and it didn’t fail me in this search for Christian guitar tabs. After spending some time searching, I came up with some great resources for tabs for the Christian guitarist (and for the guitarist looking to play Chistian songs.

I even found lots of great resources for free Christian guitar tabs. Here are some of the resources I found:

Christian Guitar Resources is a site that has chords and tabs to hundreds of Christian songs. The search function is a bit week… it uses a form of Google search, but you can’t specify if you are searching for a specific song or a specific artist. Nevertheless, there is a lot at this site for the Christian guitar player.

Here is another site that seems to have lots of Christian tabs and Christian guitar resources. It doesn’t look quite as big, but it does seem to have a better search function. Check this one out for some cool resources.

I also found another site that seems like it would be good for Christian guitar tabs, however, it doesn’t have free tabs. The site claims that it had free tabs for five years, but they now charge for access. What is up with that?

Googlism for: electric guitar

electric guitar is good for the biginers to practice but is worthless for those who can play more than average
electric guitar is a type of guitar with a solid body that
electric guitar is included in its 224 pages
electric guitar is the fender stratocaster…

electric guitar is now officially recognized
electric guitar is perfect for a beginner to learn the joy of playing music
electric guitar is for all intents and purposes an acoustic version of fender’s venerable stratocaster electric guitar
electric guitar is a musical instrument that can give you years of enjoyment when properly cared for
electric guitar is done on purpose
electric guitar is about pot
electric guitar is easier to physically play than an acoustic
electric guitar is the instrument most widely used in modern music
electric guitar is fundamental both from an aesthetic and tonal point of view
electric guitar is usually magnetic
electric guitar is nothing if you don’t have a guitar amp
electric guitar is a logical choice
electric guitar is to find an instrument with good quality wood
electric guitar is that the electric guitar amplifies the vibrating string with an electromagnetic “pickup
electric guitar is too easy
electric guitar is available exclusively at the musicyo
electric guitar is perhaps one of the greatest assets to pop music
electric guitar is passive
electric guitar is the most obvious recent mutation
electric guitar is to position the player in close proximity to their amplifier and turn it up to 11
electric guitar is the musical instrument of the last 30 years
electric guitar is “the” instrument that has shaped modern music
electric guitar is output through special speakers called amplifiers
electric guitar is that it cuts across every line in america?race
electric guitar is familiar to most of us
electric guitar is generally more expensive than starting with an acoustic guitar because of the need for an amplifier and other
electric guitar is the featured instrument and the orchestra complements it
electric guitar is brought in to a court of law the judge and the jury
electric guitar is now equally at home in classrooms and concert halls
electric guitar is run over by a car on the highway am bb gm c this is a crime against the state bb f c
electric guitar is the definition of greatness
electric guitar is a tough decision
electric guitar is right for you
electric guitar is a great choice for the beginning guitarist
electric guitar is kazuyoshi tsuda & gunsaku chiba
electric guitar is required
electric guitar is the most uniquely compelling and alluring
electric guitar is basically the same as it was in
electric guitar is serious value
electric guitar is the only instrument worth fetishizing
electric guitar is that the timbre is entirely up to the taste of the player
electric guitar is a popular instrument whose function relies completely on faraday’s law
electric guitar is also made up of three main parts
electric guitar is probably the most recorded instrument
electric guitar is widely considered to be invented by les paul
electric guitar is a
electric guitar is of usually a young man’s first choice of instrument
electric guitar is now the backbone of the music industry
electric guitar is now a little easier with electric
electric guitar is 6
electric guitar is the best guitar for beginning to intermediate players
electric guitar is made for use with an amplifier
electric guitar is still the backbone of rock & roll music
electric guitar is the most fun you can have with your clothes on
electric guitar is reproduced by the pickups
electric guitar is barely audible by itself
electric guitar is producing in guangju factory of korea
electric guitar is available for less than £ email address
electric guitar is an object
electric guitar is
electric guitar is the one instrument that epitomises rock music
electric guitar is an essential document for space rock enthusiasts
electric guitar is modeled after a popular 1960’s body
electric guitar is a 1985 re
electric guitar is styled superbly on the les paul featuring humbucker pick ups and that distinctive look and feel of the original
electric guitar is bigger than ever
electric guitar is used and you crank up the distortion
electric guitar is another popular kind of guitar
electric guitar is followed from vibrating strings
electric guitar is definitely different from the acoustic one is the slow decay and long
electric guitar is prominently featured in many of the cuts
electric guitar is a fender guitar
electric guitar is that the fingers
electric guitar is introduced into the milieu of classical concert music
electric guitar is simply adorable
electric guitar is far
electric guitar is available in sunburst finish only
electric guitar is an accurate replica of the guitar george harrison made so famous
electric guitar is so central to rock music that even serious listeners and musicians are scarcely aware of it as an affectation
electric guitar is the type of wood used for the body of the guitar
electric guitar is a great choice for electric players in
electric guitar is considerably more expensive than those with bolt on necks so repairing it should obviously be

Guitar scales are something that everyone says you should work on… yet it seems like very few people do. If you have been paying attention, you haven’t noticed me covering any guitar scales so far. There is a good reason for that…

I am just beginning my odyssey into learning guitar, still working on those open chords… but I am definitely interested in guitar scales. I know a piano player that tells me that whenever you see someone heading off on an improvised solo, they are almost always just running throug a bunch of scales. I have a feeling it is the same thing with guitar solos… I bet they are based on scales, and the guitarist is just running through a bunch of scales that his or her teacher shoved down his or her throat.

In any case, I have a lot of interest in guitar scales… so I went off in search of some good resources for them. As usual, the Internet is the guitarist’s best friend - I still can’t imagine learning the guitar in the days before the World Wide Web.

In any case, this site is really cool, it has all kinds of different guitar scales, and you can actually listen to them. HOWEVER, it really doesn’t do a very good job of telling you what those scales are, or how to read guitar scales.

This site was another amazing resource… but again, great diagrams and not much explanation of guitar scales.

So I found a couple of nice sites, but I am still looking for some help on the basics. If anyone comes up with anything great on guitar scales, let me know…

Today I went on a search for a free guitar chord chart. Don’t get me wrong… I am now amassing all kinds of good learning resources, including books that have all kinds of guitar chords. And I also have the fantastic Jamorama program - which I am REALLY pleased with.

But even with all those resources, I just wanted to find a free guitar chord chart that I could print out and have a few copies laying around. Maybe have one in my guitar case, and one downstairs, and one upstairs. Well… once again, the Internet is an awesome thing for new guitar players. Let’s have a look at what I found…

This first site is a bit on the crude side (although I admit that my site is not any masterpiece of design)…. but it does have most of the common chords all on one page, and it is definitely a printable free chord chart. The same site also has a pretty interesting page explaing some of the basics of moving between various guitar chords. That page is here.

This site has some nice free guitar chord charts, but they are not exactly printable. They are spread out over a bunch of pages. The nice thing is that you can hear sound samples of the chords. To tell the truth, I am really not sure how important that it… but it’s sorta cool.

Wow, do I love these guitar tabs. I haven’t been playing guitar all that long, but I am already hooked on all the free guitar tabs that you can find on the Internet. This is the simple formula for doing so…

You can find the guitar tabs for just about any song you want by typing the song title into your favorite search engine (such as Google, or Yahoo, or MSN) and then putting the phrase “guitar tab” after the song title.

The thing about guitar tabs is that there are good ones and some not so good ones. That is one reason I really like Ultimate Guitar… they actually have rankings of the tabs. You can see what other visitors thought of the various tabs. This is especially helpful when there are various versions of a guitar tab for a given song.

One really nice guitar tab I found was for “Rockin’ In The Free World” by Neil Young. This tab went way beyond the call of duty - it had extensive notes on the strum patterns. Not THAT is really useful. All of a sudden I went from playing a few chords to actually having something that sounded like a song!

Wow, my post about Esteban guitars sure drew quite a response. Lots of people have some pretty strong feelings about Esteban guitars - one way or the other. Predictably, most of the feedback was pretty negative…

So here is the bottom line on Esteban guitars - at least what I am hearing and reading from lots of folks who seem to know a lot about acoustic guitars: the quality and playability of these guitars is very poor. And they don’t sound very good either.

Specifically, the action on the Esteban guitars is quite high (I wrote about this when I was writing about the First Act guitars available at Walmart and other discounters). When the action is high, that means it is very difficult to form chords that sound good… and it is also very painful to play.

The other real problem with the Esteban guitars is that they are very overpriced. In fact, since I mentioned the First Act guitars above, it is about three times the cost of the First Act guitars - about $260 versus $90. But what you should be really comparing the Esteban guitars to is something like the cheaper Washburn guitars, or Ibanez guitars, or Yamaha guitars. They all have guitars for similar prices to the Esteban guitars, and the difference in quality and playability is HUGE.

Googlism for: acoustic guitar

acoustic guitar is a type of instrument that not only sounds beautiful
acoustic guitar is truly a work of many arts
acoustic guitar is a self
acoustic guitar is well built and affordably priced to give you the best value for a beginner guitar…

acoustic guitar is an indispensable songwriting tool
acoustic guitar is stereo miking
acoustic guitar is a sponsor of international guitar night
acoustic guitar is a 1956 gibson j
acoustic guitar is manufactured specifically for musicyo
acoustic guitar is what you’re probably most familiar with; you’ve seen them played at bars and at concerts
acoustic guitar is hollow
acoustic guitar is probably best for you
acoustic guitar is much larger than the electric guitar
acoustic guitar is adjusted somewhat like a nut in that it has to be filed and shaped
acoustic guitar is great wood
acoustic guitar is the magazine for all acoustic guitar enthusiasts
acoustic guitar is the classical guitar
acoustic guitar is a resonator that amplifies one octave of vibrations centered around 150 hz
acoustic guitar is a magazine for players of various kinds of acoustic guitar music
acoustic guitar is a good idea to begin with because you do learn the basics of how to hold your hand to get the results you want and
acoustic guitar is more suited to
acoustic guitar is the rightful heir to the late lamented frets magazine
acoustic guitar is full of expression
acoustic guitar is the anchor on this collection
acoustic guitar is probably the part most interested in research
acoustic guitar is also used in many musical forms
acoustic guitar is a great choice when it’s time to plug in at an affordable price
acoustic guitar is limited to only 243 handcrafted
acoustic guitar is $149 us
acoustic guitar is relatively self
acoustic guitar is a challenge
acoustic guitar is usually determined by materials; however
acoustic guitar is made
acoustic guitar is used in a song it is either used as a background rhythm instrument and you don’t have to worry much about
acoustic guitar is available in tobacco sunburst finish only
acoustic guitar is built with a spruce top and mahogany back & sides
acoustic guitar is biased towards built
acoustic guitar is featured on kumbhaka kumbhaka audiocd page button
acoustic guitar is present in so many of these scenes that it’s reclaimed a central place in our culture
acoustic guitar is required
acoustic guitar is endorsed by english guitarist gordon giltrap
acoustic guitar is that of an accompaniment instrument
acoustic guitar is designed to be plucked around one seventh of the way along the string from the bridge
acoustic guitar is a monthly american publication
acoustic guitar is
acoustic guitar is a rhythm instrument
acoustic guitar is percussive by nature when played rhythmically
acoustic guitar is a cd
acoustic guitar is an oxymoron
acoustic guitar is not a new idea
acoustic guitar is brought in for a mellow
acoustic guitar is the magazine for you
acoustic guitar is used on stage or off
acoustic guitar is sized just right for kids and makes a great first guitar for picking or strumming
acoustic guitar is a little harder to play because it is harder to press the strings down
acoustic guitar is played and heard
acoustic guitar is a universal solution to the amplification and recording challenges every serious player must
acoustic guitar is a gurian
acoustic guitar is accurately duplicated and amplified
acoustic guitar is the top
acoustic guitar is called a dreadnought
acoustic guitar is with a sanken cu
acoustic guitar is in stock
acoustic guitar is the magazine for all acoustic guitar players
acoustic guitar is a unique document of the new directions in guitar playing that chadbourne helped pioneer in the us
acoustic guitar is a pure
acoustic guitar is an instrument
acoustic guitar is uncomfortable for someone who has learned on an electric
acoustic guitar is the most rebellious
acoustic guitar is an excellent guitar to learn on
acoustic guitar is one of the most challenging sounds to reproduce on a synthesizer
acoustic guitar is old
acoustic guitar is so high
acoustic guitar is generally made of wood
acoustic guitar is packed into this guitar
acoustic guitar is a delicate operation
acoustic guitar is dead
acoustic guitar is an instrument of the highest quality and is crafted to the precise requirements of each individual client
acoustic guitar is still masterbuilt in the tradition handed down by a dynasty of gibson builders – a dynasty started in 1894 by

The “First Act” guitars are really cheap, so I am sure a whole bunch of them are sold every day in Walmart and other similar places. So I thought I would research them just a little bit.

The most popular seems to be the “First Act Discovery". And first off, I want to say that I have NOT played this guitar. I have only inspected it at Walmart and researched it on some of the more reputable guitar sites online. What I learned is NOT encouraging…

Basically, the First Act guitars are more toys than musical instruments. You can get them for less than $100… but you would be better served saving up a little longer until you have $200. Then you can get any number of good guitars - some of them with solid tops.

Now I know that we are talking about spending twice as much money - really more than twice as much (you can get that First Act guitar for about $90)… but if you think you are going to play the guitar at all, well you should spend the extra $110.

For that extra money you will get a guitar that will sound a lot better and that will stay in tune. But most importantly, you will get a guitar that is much easier to play. The “action” will be a lot lower - so it will be easier to finger the strings cleanly, and it will hurt your fingers a lot less.

My advice: avoid the First Act guitars, and go get an inexpensive guitar from Same Day Music.

I just found a pretty fun web site - googlism… and guess what the first thing to come to mind was? Yup, I just had to enter “guitar". This is what I got…

Googlism for: guitar

guitar is music to hawaii visitors’ ears
guitar is a pain in the
guitar is art…

guitar is the song
guitar is hanging to my knees
guitar is currently in stock and available for immediately
guitar is better than a woman
guitar is right for my child?
guitar is smiling
guitar is in absolute mint condition
guitar is broken
guitar is in the paint booth tonight
guitar is a wonderful thing
guitar is my baby / tokyo vr
guitar is my baby
guitar is sound as a dollar
guitar is original
guitar is now officially recognized
guitar is a beautiful thing
guitar is individual like its owner
guitar is the color of gold
guitar is a full guitar method
guitar is an adorable puppy dog
guitar is a monsterjazz/rock/fusion/
guitar is recomended for an
guitar is 40 years old now
guitar is a small
guitar is a pain in the ? part 1
guitar is life
guitar is the song john williams
guitar is just a guitar
guitar is hanging to my knees by blue
guitar is currently in stock and available for immediately delivery
guitar is for sale
guitar is back
guitar is? i just used my brain
guitar is right for my child? age is only a very general guideline
guitar is the shiznitto
guitar is in absolute mint condition except one dent on the back of the body
guitar is in the paint booth
guitar is weapon against landmine tyranny
guitar is wicked
guitar is better than women
guitar is better than a girlfriend
guitar is a way of playing the steel string flat
guitar is a deceptively simple instrument
guitar is as much a mental effort as it is a physical effort
guitar is strong warm and powerful
guitar is held in your lap facing toward you
guitar is still the original 4
guitar is
guitar is as far from the rounded strats
guitar is a half size guitar
guitar is a full guitar method for beginners
guitar is this?
guitar is a monsterjazz/rock/fusion/ska/alternative/country/
guitar is by far the most popular instrument in the world and the classical guitar gives the listener the full spectrum of what the instrument is capable of
guitar is a fretted four stringed instrument
guitar is still an instantly
guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments in use today
guitar is no longer
guitar is always greener
guitar is characterized by the round sound hole
guitar is recomended for an improving begginer?
guitar is sick
guitar is not well
guitar is a stringed musical instrument played with the fingers
guitar is king here’s a rich variety of six
guitar is king
guitar is a simple instrument
guitar is built from only the finest materials available
guitar is on the larger side with a 16 inch lower bout it feels like a smaller guitar due to the tight waist
guitar is best to use?
guitar is a blessing scandinavian people are not normal
guitar is required
guitar is now so sweet you can’t stop playing
guitar is a small orchestra
guitar is an instrument combining qualities of the south indian vina and the steel string guitar
guitar is the dream of any guitarist
guitar is to hawai’i as the flamenco guitar is to spain and the delta blues guitar is to mississippi
guitar is made of the highest grade tone woods
guitar is filled with beautiful metaphors to help us sing and play our song
guitar is nothing more than playing the song we’re all born with inside
guitar is not going to display its potential when played through an inexpensive
guitar is the most uniquely compelling and alluring
guitar is my voice so it can’t just sound like any old guitar
guitar is referred to as the “body” while the thin piece that is connected to the body is called the “neck
guitar is what i started out on
guitar is modeled after the pre
guitar is in great condition and perfect for disp
guitar is a brilliantly executed video
guitar is geared towards learning simple
guitar is similar to the acoustic guitar
guitar is a western musical instrument
guitar is a monogramed
guitar is a

OK… I have some guitar tuning tips - I just had my guitar restrung for the first, and got a good lesson from Ian over at Canyon Music. He had told me that he would re-string my guitar for me, and sure enough he hooked me right up when I walked in the store.

However, I didn’t just want the guitar strung - I wanted to learn how to do it and get some guitar tuning tips. This is some of the stuff I learned:

- Since guitars are wooden (at least MOST of them are wooden), there is some ‘give’ in their structure. And as you tune each string (and vary the tension of that string), then you are actually flexing the neck a bit… and that varies the tension on all of the other strings. And that tension change will change the tuning on those other strings. That is why you can tune your low E perfectly and then go through the rest of the strings, and then when you get back to the low E… it isn’t perfectly tuned anymore.

So here is a tuning tip - it is smart to make several passes through your six strings. Don’t worry about getting each string perfect the first time - get it close to being in tune the first time, or even the first couple of passes through the guitar. Be more exact on the subsequent passes through the guitar strings.

One more hint - besides not sounding great, old strings will get difficult to keep in tune. If you can’t seem to keep your guitar in tune, then go buy some new strings - they are pretty inexpensive, and they will make your guitar sound new again.

Well, yesterday my 12 year old daughter picked up my guitar and started playing some guitar cords.

Of course, she was really playing guitar chords, not guitar cords. But to a 12 year old, sometimes that silent “h” can be a bit of a spelling dilemma… and not something to be overly worried about.

What was really cool wasn’t when she was playing “cords” however. Her fingers had a hard time, and she needs to cut her fingernails (and for fashionable young girls, it is questionable whether playing guitar is worth compromising your style by cutting your fingernails).

In any case, the cool thing was when I showed her the basics of guitar tabs (ie, guitar tablature). She actually knows how to read music from her piano playing, but she didn’t even need to apply that knowledge. I showed her the basics of guitar tabs and she was able to immediately get through a basic lesion of “Ode To Joy” and “Jingle Bells".

That is the really cool thing about guitar - in just a few minutes, armed with the basic guitar “cords” or guitar tabs, you can actually play recognizable music. Now I just need to find some more really easy tabs - we will hold off on the guitar cords for a while.

So I figured it was time for new guitar strings… so I went back to Canyon Music and bought some Elixir guitar strings. The best part was that Ian put them on my guitar right on the spot… and he even spent the time to show me how to string my guitar.

The result… the guitar sounds GREAT with those Elixir strings. I had been playing my guitar for about three or four weeks, about an hour a day so I sort of figured it might be time for new strings. And since I didn’t know how long those original strings were on the guitar before I bought it… well the string change might have been long overdue.

In any case, I am really happy with the new strings. I guess the Elixir guitar strings are pretty different from everything else on the market. Ian tells me they will last three or four times as long as any other strings. He told me that they would probably last me three months.

There is a price to be paid… the Elixir strings cost me $14.00… which I guess is about twice as much as other strings cost. But if they last three times as long, the math still works.

Maybe in another article I will spend a bit of time on what I learned about stringing a guitar. By the way, you can get good deals on Elixir strings at samedaymusic.

Guitar tabs are a at your fingertips… literally. And I am going to show you…

I just love guitar tabs. My 12 year old daughter, who plays piano but had never picked up a guitar before, was able to just pick up a guitar and start playing “Ode to Joy” after I taught her the basics of reading guitar tabs.

Now we aren’t talking about a virtuoso performance. And I imagine there are a lot more complex versions of this guitar tab out there… but STILL - it was amazing. To just pick up an instrument that you have NEVER played before and start having a recognizable tune come out of it in minutes… well, that is a magical thing.

That is what guitar tabs do for you. They give you a super easy, super understandable way to read guitar music. And the good news is that those tabs are available all over the Internet for FREE. To think that maybe 10 years ago, you would not have been able to find ANY of this music, and now all these guitar tabs are available for free if you can use your callous-tipped fingers to navigate a search engine! I simply can’t believe it.

So this is how you find those tabs: The easiest is to go to this “Guitar Tabs” page on my site and look at my favorite places for guitar tabs. I will try to keep adding to that page. The other way is to go to Google.com our Yahoo.com and type in the song name followed by “guitar tab” and then do a search.

OK, I am looking at the Taylor 210 guitar. That is one nice looking guitar - not a dreadnought, but a Grand Auditorium.

I already wrote about my Walden guitar - a Christmas gift less that a month old… but I am already starting to eye those Taylors, especially the Taylor 210. When I bought my guitar I was comparing it to the Taylor 11o… which cost about $200 more than my Walden. And basically… I really didn’t think the Taylor 110 was worth the extra money.

I didn’t think it sounded much better, and I didn’t like the fact that there was no bracing inside the body of the guitar. So I went with the Walden D610, and I have been happy with it.

But I have been playing ever day, and I think this is something I am going to stick with… so now I am starting to think I should have looked a little further up the Taylor line. The next in line are the Taylor 210, which is a dreadnought, and the Taylor 214, which is very similar… but it is a Grand Auditiorium.

Next time I am in Canyon Music I am going to spend some time playing these guitars. One thing about them is that they are ALL solid wood. Mine is a solid top, but the sides and back are not solid.

One other thing I suppose I should spend some time looking at are those carbon fiber guitars. After all, if I want a guitar for river trips, those have to be near the top of the list.

One of the thing I love about learning guitar is the wonderful free resources out there - like free guitar chord charts.

There are so many wonderful resources online for learning guitar, and for me, when it comest to learning guitar I think about chords. And you can’t learn chords unless you know what those chords look like. That is where those free chord charts come in.

I was recently doing some research into songs with easy guitar tabs, and one of those songs have a Bm7 in it. I had absolutely no clue how to make a Bm7, so I went to my favorite online chord chart site and figured it out in a jiffy. Here is a link to a really comprehensive one. That is a good chart… I like how it is all on one page. However, that is also a negative for this particular chord chart… it is pretty hard to read since everything is crammed together on one page and the chords are so small.

So naturally, I have other sites I like to use when looking for guitar chords. This site is sorta cool. It allows you to select the chord chart you want form a selection box. The site will then display the chord and give you a color diagram of the chord. Now that is a nice free chord chart!

In fact, I am still trying to figure out all the features of that site… it even includes stuff like alternate tunings…

Well, I just saw the the esteban guitar infomercial on late night TV. Actually, make that early morning TV… I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up and started flipping channels. I had heard about the Esteban guitar from the online guitar forums - it isn’t hard to find opinions about it.

Every guitar forum out there seems to be full of people asking what guitar to get for their first guitar. And there are also quite a few threads out there with people asking about this Esteban guitar they bought off the Home Shopping Network. And the reviews are not kind. From the sounds of it, the Esteban guitars are really poor quality - and even worse, you end up paying more than $260. There are some pretty darn nice guitars out there for $250. One that a lot of people seem to like is the Washburn D10s, which only costs $200 at SameDayMusic.com.

Now I haven’t seen an actual Esteban guitar, much less played one… but from the sounds of it, you want to stay away from it. And for the same kind of money, or possibly quite a bit less… you can get a nice first guitar. In fact, that Washburn guitar is a solid top guitar - which is really the first hurdle to getting a quality guitar.

If you still like the looks of that Esteban guitar informercial… take a look at some of the forum discussions like this one.

When I wanted to buy my guitar, well the best thing that happened was fining Guitar Center…

It was my friend Mynders who convinced me to go out looking at guitars… and that is how I ended up at my Guitar Center. Up until then I had just been talking, talking, talking to folks who played guitar. I was trying to get data points before I bought my first guitar, and I was just trying to soak up as much info as possible. So I probably talked to 10 or 15 different friends and acquaintances and asked for their opinion.

I also did all kinds of research online, looking at what people recommended for a first guitar. On almost every guitar forum out there I found several threads of people wondering what do buy for their first guitar.

But then Mynders told me to just go and noodle around with some guitars in the various music stores. And that is what I did. The third store I walked into turned into what I am calling my Guitar Center. It is Canyon Music on 2nd Avenue in Durango, Colorado. What a sweet store - huge selection, lots of little nooks where you can sit down and play the guitars. And they are very welcoming of folks just stopping in and playing.

So that was what I did, even though I really only knew one chord. Actually, the sales guy there - Ian - taught me a second chord. So I sat there for hours (on three different occasion) and played the guitars. And I ended up with a really great buying experience and I am really happy with my guitar.

So go out there and find YOUR Guitar Center.

Well, I just bought this course recently, so I thought I would give a quick Jamorama review…

First off, you get a bunch of stuff when you buy Jamorama, so you have to download all kinds of stuff. That isn’t a real problem at all… but just make sure you stay organized so you get everything. And so you don’t lose it somewhere on your hard drive once you download it.

What you get with Jamorama:

Jamorama Book one - beginners, intro to strumming, intro to chords, reading tabs, first string notes, easy chords, healthy learning, various dominant chords, and a whole lot more. This is a killer introduction, and the 52 included audio clips let you hear what the lessons are supposed to sound like. This is great stuff for a true beginner.

Jamorama Book two - intermediate, including sight reading, bass note runs, major seventh chords, various strum patterns and chord progressions. And intro to scales, and lots of different chords. You also get 61 audio clips that let you actually hear what things are supposed to sound like.

Jamorama Book three - advanced, including minor scales, barre chords, power chords, ninth chords, diminished chords, and augmented chords. This book also has 31 audio clips to go along with it. The audio clips are downloadable MP3 clips that you can play on your computer or anywhere else you can play an MP3.

In addition to the three books and all those audio clips, you get a whole bunch more… including an ear training game and guitar tuning software. This course is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED… you can check it out by clicking here.

File under: Jamorama Review

guitar, jamorama guitar course, learn guitar chords

Tuning a guitar can seem like black magic to guitar newbies, but it really doesn’t have to be. Lots of folks struggle through “relative tuning", but there is an eaiser solution…

The easy way, the way even most pros use, is to get an electronic guitar tuner. These things are brain dead simple to use, and they are surprisingly inexpensive. We are talking as little as $15 or $20 bucks. It is the absolute first accessory I would recommend when you get a guitar.

Relative tuning your guitar basically means that you get the low E string in tune (this is the string at the top of the guitar - the fattest one that makes the lowest sound)… and once you get that one in tune, you use it to tune the rest of the strings. For instance, you hold down the 5th fret of that E string and compare the sound to the sound of the next string - the A string. So you adjust that A string until it sounds exactly the same as the E string that you are fretting at the 5th fret.

Then you follow the same basic strategy with each string (with one slight variation). This means that if your ears can perfectly judge the tone AND you really did get your low E string perfectly in tune, then you have a guitar that is perfectly tuned. Or you could just buy an electronic guitar tuner and in achieve the same thing in a few minutes with no headache or heartache.

Now here is something that didn’t exist a few years ago - an online guitar tuner! Back in the days when I first picked up a guitar, tuning your guitar seemed like black magic. I certainly couldn’t comprehend it. But now you can just fire up your web browser and use an online guitar tuner.

These online guitar tuner things are so brain dead simple it is almost funny. You go find one on the web, and click the button to hear the right note - bingo, you have a true E. Then you tune your E string to the sound coming out of your computer speakers - you do this by comparing the sound coming out of your computer speakers (from the online guitar tuner) with the sound of your computer speakers.

Of course, you are trusting the web site to really have a true EADGBE… and you are dependent on your computer speakers to deliver a true sound. AND you are dependent 0n ears doing a good job of matching the sound of your guitar string with the sound of the online guitar tuner.

In other words, this is NOT a perfect system. But for someone just starting out, this is a quick and dirty way to get your guitar in tune. Or, if your electronic tuner went on the fritz or your batteries ran out and you have access to the Internet (in other words, you are not in the woods sitting around a campfire) and an online guitar tuner - then you are all set.

A better alternative is to just buy an electronic tuner. These things are suprisingly inexpensive, and they work GREAT. It is my firm opinion that EVERY guitar player should have one of these tuners. You can find a really good selection at this link.

You have just got to love free guitar tabs. I have been on a search for guitar tablature since I got my guitar on Christmas day… and I have really gotten hooked on free guitar tabs.

I have found lots of sites with guitar tabs for free. And I have a list of them built up that I am going to post.

When I really got the guitar but was this past October, sitting around the campfire on a river trip. I think it is sort of funny how people talk about campfirYou have just got to love free guitar tabs. I have been on a search for guitar tablature since I got my guitar on Christmas day… and I have really gotten hooked on free guitar tabs.

I have found lots of sites with guitar tabs for free. And I have a list of them built up that I am going to post.

When I really got the guitar but was this past October, sitting around the campfire on a river trip. I think it is sort of funny how people talk about campfire chords - somewhat disparagingly - and those are the chords that hooked me and convinced me to get a guitar.

Anyway, of of the folks on that river trip that was playing guitar said “you can get the guitar tabs for any song you want online for free". I didn’t know what he meant at the time - I didn’t even know what tabs were.

But now that I have learned all about chords, and tabs, and such… I know what he means - there are free guitar tabs all over the place. Sometimes I just go to google and do a search for the song name and then add in “guitar tab".

For instance, if I am searching for a tab for “Stairway to Heavan", I will do a search like “Stairway to Heavan guitar tab” or “Stairway to Heavan free guitar tab". Bingo, that usually lands me my free guitar tab.

I just love easy guitar tabs… the question is how to find them. There are lots of great tab sites (I have already written about some of my favorites here). And plenty of those sites have easy guitar tabs (ie, tablature).

Those sites usually let you search their tabs for a given song or a given artist. Those search facilities are truly great… it is amazing how many songs you can find really fast. Whenever I spend five minutes there, I find so many songs I want to play… well it is just incredible. But inevitably, I end up searching through those songs looking for easy guitar tabs - lots of those songs are songs I want to play… far fewer are songs I can play.

What I would really like is an “easy guitar tabs” site - the best would be a site where I put in the chords I can or I want to play, and the search engine spits out the songs that can be played with those chords. For instance, I love the Em (e minor). I love the way it sounds and I think it is the easiest chord to play. The C chord is a close second. And the G chord is awfully sweet as well.

So I could envision an easy guitar tabs site where I go and put Em, C, and G in the search box, and it would give me the songs with just those chords or tabs. Sweet idea, eh? And it would really not be very hard to implement…. I will have to give that some thought.

Where there are guitar tabs, and there are guitar song chords. It seems like lots of times people use guitar tabs and guitar chords as interchangeable terms… but there is a difference.

And then lots of times, when you look at song guitar tabs… they also have the guitar song chords. That makes me happy, because at this point I am pretty much just playing chords. As far as I can tell, guitar tabs are more for playing leads and/or playing some additional bass rhythm. At this point, I have a hard enough time getting the song chords down.

I mean, when I am just noodling around, I don’t have any problem playing the chords on my guitar. But when it comes to playing song chords… then everything falls apart.

In any case, if you (like me) are really looking for song chords for your guitar… just go check the guitar tab sites… and you will likely find the chords right there side by side with the tablature.

Now if I could just find a search engine that can search by what chords I can play (or I am WILLING to play).

(And by the way, am I the only person in the world who has SO much difficulty with the spelling of the word “rhythm"? I don’t even try… I just go straight to my spell checker!!!)

UPDATE: I nailed an F chord a few times yesterday. Not consistent by any stretch of the imagination… but I got it a few times.

Wow, there sure are a lot of great places to learn to play guitar online, and lots of them are even free. In fact, I wonder how beginners even got by before they had so many great resources to learn guitar online.

Of course, that is silly. People have been learning to play guitar for a very long time… long before computers even existed. Nevertheless, the amount of online resources for guitar players is incredible.

What I am finding is the key thing I need is to maintain focus as I learn to play. The guitar is not the most complex thing in the world, but I have really become amazed by all the nuances. There are so many styles and techniques for playing, it is just amazing. And there are just as many teaching and learning styles.

So back to focus - like I said, there are some great free resources - one of them that I keep running into is Guitar Noise, with its beginner lessons. I will probabaly do a short review of Guitar Noise at some point… but it sure looks like a great site at first glance.

OK, let’s get back to focus. I can already see that with so many great free resources out there, the problem is that not many of them are really complete. They give you a lesson here, a lesson there. But I haven’t found much that can really take you by the hand and walk you through a system. And that means your focus suffers. And for me, efficient learning suffers when you lose focus.

Of course you might not be interested in efficient learning. You may be willing to just noodle around. And I will agree, noodling can be fun. But right now I want to get good enough with my guitar to play with others… and I want to get there FAST.

Here is one course I have bought: Jamorama… review to follow.

OK, we already talked about guitar tabs (ie, guitar tablature). And I said that some day I would get back to it. Well that day is here… but this isn’t all about theory. Actually, it isn’t about theory at all. This is about where to find guitar tabs for free.

Here are some sites I found that have guitar tabs…

Ultimate Guitar has a huge listing of tabs. Best of all, it has a really nice search function, so you can search by band and song title. Many songs have multiple versions of tabs. And there is a review/ranking system so you can see what other people think of the tabs. And it just keeps getting better - the site designates whether each listing is guitar chords, tabs, or bass tabs. What a cool site!

Here is another site to look at - TabRobot.com. This site isn’t as nice as Ultimate Guitar… it is more like a search engine that searches other tab sites. But it does give a whole bunch of results from lots of site. For instance, I did a search on “I Fought The Law", and it came back with all kinds of results from probably 20 different sites.

The funny thing is that a lot of these tab sites seem to have the same copies of the same guitar tabs.

Just found a pretty cool site, and it got me thinking about guitars. Here is the site:

43things.com

Sorta hard to explain what it exactly is, but if you spend a few seconds there, you will instantly get it. Basically, it is a site where people can post things that they want to do with their lives. The things that people post can be really big things (such as “see the Democratic Party reinvent itself and take back America!") or really little things (such as “clean my room").

In any case, the first thing I thought about was… guitars!

So I did a quick search on guitars, and this is what people want to do:

1. play better guitar - 2 people
2. learn how to play guitar - 2 people
3. learn how to play the guitar professionally - 1 person
4. learn to play guitar - 12 people
5. break a guitar - 1 person
6. practice on my guitar more - 3 people
7. learn to play a bass guitar… I’d look wicked cool - 1 person
8. buy a new guitar - 1 person
9. play guitar without music - 1 person
10. Translate “Slide Away” and play it on guitar - 1 person
11. learn to play my acoustic guitar - 1 person
12. learn guitar with Ivan Opalka - 1 person
13. Do more piano and guitar practise - 1 person
14. play guitar - 6 people
15. learn how to play the guitar - 7 people
16. Buy an acoustic guitar - 1 person
17. play guitar more - 1 person
18. Learn to play acoustic guitar (to entertain my children and myself) - 2 people
19. play even more guitar - 1 person
20. Buy: A cheap, used guitar - 1 person
21. Learn to play the guitar - 27 people
22. learn how to play my songs on a guitar - 1 person
23. take jazz guitar lessons - 1 person
24. Learn guitar - 3 people
25. play guitar very better than now - 1 person
26. Learn to play the classical guitar (better) - 1 person
27. actually learn to play my guitar - 6 people
28. play more guitar - 2 people
29. Play guitar in public - 1 person
30. Play the guitar everyday - 1 person
31. learn to play eletric guitar - 2 people
32. buy an electric guitar - 2 people
33. buy a classical guitar - 1 person
34. play guitar in a really heavy band - 5 people
35. Play bass guitar in a digidub band - 1 person
36. Play my guitar more often - 1 person
37. Buy a Gibson ES-135 sunburst guitar -1 person
38. Learn to play piano, guitar and mandolin - 1 person
39. improve my guitar playing - 1 person
40. Start playing guitar again - 1 person

So it looks like I am not the only person wanting to spend a bunch of time in 2005 playing guitar…

Well, I am still trying to piece things together, but I know what open chords are now.

Open chords are sometimes called campfire chords - they are some of the rally basic chords, like the G chord, C chord, and D chord. There are a few others, and once you learn them, then you can play an awful lot of songs. They are called open chords because when you strum them you leave some of the strings open.

This makes them easier to play than barre chords (a subject for another day).

That term, campfire chords, I think is supposed to be somewhat disparaging. Open chords are pretty much the first thing that most guitarists learn, and I think that once people get good at guitar they sorta look down their nose at open chords.

The funny thing is that I really want to sit around the campfire and play open chords. I mean, I can certainly imagine a time when I am working on more complex skills, but my real inspiration for learning to play came from sitting at a campfire and watching a bunch of people play simple songs with simple open chords.

So right now I am just working away at my open chords… really trying to nail down the Key of G, and every now and then adding a chord that might be just a little more complicated.

I suppose there are lots of places to start when you are learning to play guitar… but most people start with some basic chords. And that is where I am starting.

I have a book, and it has lots of chords. It is a really lousy book… it’s title is something about easy learning methods for guitar chords, but it is really just a bunch of chord diagrams. No instruction, no method… nothing but diagrams of chords.

I am another book, a really good book called the Skeptical Guitarist. That book walks you through chord by chord. It starts off with the E minor chord (that is written like this: Em). I really love that chord, and not just because it is one of the easiest guitar chords to play. I just love the sound of Em… it is definitely a melancholy sounding chord.

I am going to digress a little bit… because I am writing this blog on learning to play the guitar, you might have the crazy notion that I am a musician, or that I have some type of musical talent.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes I suspect that I am tone deaf… but I really don’t know what that means.

In any case, when I play that Em chord… I can hear that it sounds melancholy. The book says it is going to, then I play it, and sure enough… that is a melancholy chord. THIS is the kind of thing that gets me excited - if I can recognize that, maybe there is some hope that I can be SOME type of a musician!!

OK, I will get back to guitar chords another time. I might be write about the key of G… I sorta have an inkling of what that means now!