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Todays Guitar Chord of the Day is E13 sus4 or simply E13sus. This chord is similar to the regular dominant 13th guitar chords weve played before with the 3rd replaced by the 4th.

13 sus guitar chords use these notes: 1, 4, 5, b7, 9, 13
E13 sus chords use these notes: E, A, B, D, F#, C#
Our guitar chord of the day uses the notes in this order: E, A, D, F#, C#.

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Todays guitar chord of the day, continues our series of Blues Guitar Chords: E9.

This chord is moveable and has its root note on the E string (indicated by the black box in the chord diagram). Heres the fingering for this guitar chord shape:

Blues typically follows a 12 bar pattern based around Dominant 7th Chords:

||: E7  |  A7  |  E7  |  E7  |  A7  |  A7  |  E7  |  E7  |  B7  |  A7  |  E7  |  B7  :||

9th Chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, 3, 5, b7
E9 uses these notes: E, G#, B, D 
Mix up todays chord of the day with previous Blues guitar chords when you play through the 12 bar progression and tune in tomorrow for another guitar chord of the day.

Emajor 13: Stevie Ray Vaughan Lenny Chord
Major 13 chords are beautiful sounding chords to play on the guitar. Todays guitar chord is the day is E Major 13. Weve looked at another very nice sounding Major13 guitar chord here. Todays E major 13 guitar chord is used extensively in the Stevie Ray Vaughan song Lenny, from the Texas Flood album.  Stevie Ray Vaughans rhythm style on this instrumental ballad is heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix.

If you want to play this Major 13 chord in other keys, you can leave out the open string. This guitar chord has the root note on the 7th fret, the top two guitar strings are barred across with the little finger.

Major 13 chords can be played in place of major 7th chords, and often in place of major chords. It can replace I and IV chords.

Major 13 chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, though almost always the 11th is left out.

The notes of E Major 13 are:  E, G#, B, D#, F#, A, C#
Our inversion uses the notes in this order: E, E, B, D#, G#, C#

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What is a barre chord?

A lot of times youll see an advanced guitar player placing one finger across five or six strings and forming a chord with the rest of the fingers. Thats a barre chord. When you remove open strings, (strings that have no fingers on them), everything on the guitar can be moved. This enables you to play the same notes, chords or songs in different sections of the fingerboard.


When do I start learning them?

Many students try to learn too many things too fast, leading to frustration and confusion. I try to get my beginning guitar students to wait until theyve learned the basic chords, can change smoothly and can make them sound nice and clear. Learning guitar is difficult enough in the beginning without making it even harder by trying to play things youre just not ready for.

Whats the difference between barre chords and power chords?

The main difference is that power chords are really not chords at all, but rather what we call intervals. A chord needs to be made up of 3 or more different notes.  Power chords are what you hear in the background of many popular rock songs.

So the take away from todays post is to remember that learning guitar is going to take time. You definitely dont want to have to try learning something only to find out that you werent ready for it.

The guitar neck and frets can be a critical thing for certain guitarist as it will impact the playing capability. If you see for certain guitarist like Yngwie J Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Michael angelo, John Petrucci, Kirk Hammet, eric Johnson or many others, they have their favourite choice.

Maybe for some reason the guitar beginners will think that the guitar neck and frets just a common thing and typical from one to another guitar. They might be right. But actually some neck and frets has their own criteria.

Let see about the neck first. Sometimes you will out that the size of the neck is different, some might big and some might quite small, even the radius as well, you will find that the thickness of the neck is different from one to another. This will impact on how you grip the chords and also on h ow you press the note during solo. Of course, you can do some experiment, try get a Fender Stratocaster 60s and compare it to an Ibanez RG, its different.

Then, the wood, the most identical differences is the color. Some are maple which is bright or Rosewood, the dark color. Some manufaturer and the guitarist agree that different wood gives different tone.

Standard frets count is 21, 22 and 24 frets. Even i have seen some new brand extended the count more than that. So you can exploite and manipulate the notes that you want to play, It doesnt mean the more the better. But how the way you do thing, some people good just with 21 frets.

The size of the frets also, we have jumbo frets, which is consider big. guitarist choose this for heavy metal and rock. Then the vintage fret that normally quite small for blues or country.

So, by understanding this, I believe guitarist will understand what kind of neck and frets they really need. Good tips for you when do shopping, you can straight away ask the salesman, "I want maple neck with, medium radius, with 22 frets on it!"

The C Guitar Chord is one of the essential guitar chords for beginners to learn to play. The C guitar chord is made up of the notes C, E and G.

To play this guitar place your 1st finger on the 1st fret of the B string, your 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of the D string and your 3rd finger on the 2rd fret of the A string. Hold these notes down with your fingertips and listen carefully to each string to make sure that each note of the guitar chord is sounding clearly.

• not work
• add a lot of hum to the signal
• be too sensitive to vibrations, so there will be a lot of strange noises (it's because of poor connections)

1. Avoid loops
2. Try to keep „the star shape” (star ground system)
3. Keep it short
4. Make a plan before you start soldering anything. You can also test connections with jumper wires.
5. Don't use old or crappy looking wires. They can be broken inside.

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     For years Ive used and recommended "The Amazing Slow Downer". The software is easy to use, very much like the tape recorders we used before there was all this digital recording equipment. While its still a good program, I recently bought and became an affiliate of RiffMaster Pro.

• Slows down songs and phrases
• You can load in your own song files
• Saves your loops
• Has the ability to record slowed down versions of songs or loops

Ive only had the program for about a week, but the capabilities it has are really good. If you want to learn a song and its way too fast for you, its very easy to slow it down. Their website has short, easy to understand tutorials if you have any questions or problems. You can remove or at least partially remove vocals, make a loop so the same phrase can repeat as often as youd like, and you can raise or lower the pitch. This is helpful if the artist or band tunes down. All in all, its a very useful program for any level of guitar player, beginner, intermediate or advanced. Priced at only $49.00, with a 10 day free trial and added bonuses. I was very impressed with the RiffMaster Pro and I think youll like it too!

Hello again,

As some people ask me online about scale, so today I want to explain about it.

Weve looked at a few basics around the guitar, and discussed what notes are, the very foundation of music. The next step is to start understanding scales. The problem is that when some people are presented with scales for the first time, and realize that they are being asked to play endless variations of these scales for the foreseeable future, it can become a daunting task. In this introductory lesson we are going to explore some of the reasons that scales exist, and why we make such a big deal about them.

What are scales? A Technical View

There are 12 possible notes(E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B, C, C#, D and D#) available for constructing music out of. Western music has evolved such that rules have emerged over how and when you use these notes together. Although this is merely convention, you will be so used to hearing the various common scales that when those rules are not applied, or are applied differently you will immediately notice that something is wrong or different. There is nothing written in stone about the way these things are organised, but we are all so used to hearing music from an early age that incorporates these rules that we dont even think about the alternatives until we start to study musical theory in depth.

As a guitar player, you need to understand these rules if you want to play western style music at all. A fundamental part of these rules and conventions are the musical scales we use.

What is a scale? It is a restricted sequence of notes, chosen from the 12 available, that work together to give a certain desired mood or effect to the music. The best way to describe individual scales is as a list of gaps between the notes, we use the term Tone or Semitone to denote our Half notes or Whole notes, and give the formula using their initial letters, T and S.

Some people use Half and Whole (W,H) to denote the gaps, and another way is to list the number of semitones (1 or 2). Either way, these three are identical and all give the gaps for the major scale:

1. T T S T T T S
2. W W H W W W H
3. 2 2 1 2 2 2 1

Lets see how this works. Picking a scale at random - G# major. This initially tells us two things. First, our root note (or first note in the scale) is G#. Secondly, we will be using the Major scale formula to work out the notes.

So, we start with our G# note, and add the first step of the formula which is a T, meaning a Tone. So starting with a G# and moving up a tone or two half notes puts us onto A#:

G# + T = A#

Next, we start with A#, and look at the next letter in the formula - its a Tone again, so we add 2 half notes to A#, to give us a C:

A# + T = C

Next, we start with a C and check the formula - this time it is a semitone, which takes us to C#:

C + S = C#

If we carry on with this we get the following:

C# + T = D#

D# + T = F (remember there is no such thing as an E#)

F + T = G

G + S = G#

So, we have built our scale of G# major according to our major scale formula to get the notes:

G# A# C C# D# F G

The majority of scales we use have 7 notes in them but that is not a hard and fast rule. For instance, the minor pentatonic scale only has 5 notes in it (its formula is 3 2 2 3 2 - I used numbers here instead of T and S because it has a couple of Tone and a half leaps, which is 3 half notes, and that is more easily written down as a 3 instead of something like "T + 1/2", but it all means the same thing). Some scales have more, for instance the chromatic scale has all 12 notes in it.

So thats how scales work! The formula describes them and we pick whichever root note we want to construct them around. The next step is to convert these notes into a pattern so that we can play it.

Have a nice day.

Continuing our series of major triads, todays Guitar Chord of the Day is a 1st inversion of the G Major triad (the notes in ascending order are B, D and G). Knowing the major triads is useful for soloing and rhythm.



Try playing through a I IV V progression (e.g. C, F, G, F) staying in one position using these 6 major triads weve played so far. You should be able to do this in several positions on the guitars neck.

Tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord Of The Day

Todays Guitar Chord of the Day is B minor 13. This is a nice sounding minor chord with the root note on the bottom E string of the guitar.

Minor 13 chords are usually played as chord i in minor keys, but try playing them in other situations where you might play a minor chord to add some extra colour.

Minor 13 chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, b3, 5, b7, 9, 11, 13

B minor 13 uses the notes: B, D, F#, A, C#, E, G#

Our guitar inversion uses the notes in this order: B, A, D, G#, C#

Subscribe to the RSS feed and tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord Of The Day.

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Happy New Year!

The new year has begun and theres always a lot of soul searching, resolution making, and bad habits that are going to be fixed. That usually lasts anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, then its back to the same old, same old. Here are a few suggestions to help you get started.

New Strings.
If your strings have not been changed since last New Years, nows the time. New strings make your guitar sound better and theyre not rusty or caked with gook. While you have them off, clean the fingerboard. I use Gibson Fingerboard conditioner which cleans the wood and adds a little moisture.

New Books or Songs.
Are you still practicing the same songs you were playing months ago? Congratulations, youve found your comfort zone! The bad news is, youre not making any progress. Yes, its fun to play songs you know well, no, you shouldnt forget about them. Think about how excited you were when you first started to play them and how happy you are now that theyre polished up and ready for public consumption. Get yourself a new book, or pick out a new song and challenge yourself a little. Maybe a different genre or something thats more technically challenging to get you to the next level.

New Guitar.
Is your old guitar kind of clunky? Does it make you want to sit down and play it or have you gotten to where you really dont like that make or model any more? If you can afford it, treat yourself to a new one. Or if you do like it, try something different. Maybe a classical guitar, a 12 string, an acoustic if you only play electric, you get the idea.

So have a wonderful New Year and dig back into playing and practicing your guitar!

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If youre learning how to play guitar chords for acoustic or electric guitar, the D Guitar Chord, is one of the first guitar chords to learn. Reading guitar chord diagrams is easy, each of the 6 vertical lines represent a string, the horizontal lines represent frets and the dots show you where to put your fingers.
The D guitar chord is an easy chord for beginners to learn. Put your first finger on 2nd fret of the G string, your middle finger on the 2nd fret of the E string and your 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of the B string.

There are lots of easy guitar chord shapes for beginners to learn. Look through all of the basic guitar chords and youll know how to play guitar chords that can be used easily in thousands of songs.

Knowing a good range of chords is an important part of every great guitarists toolkit. Each and every day well be introducing a new guitar chord and importantly showing you how and where to use it.

If you new to learning the guitar then learning to understand how to read chord boxes is an important thing to do:

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Virtuoso guitarist Allan Holdsworth was born in Leeds, UK in 1946. Holdsworth is known for his legato lead lines but his chord use is equally interesting. In today’s we’ll start a new series looking at how Allan Holdsworth approaches chords.

• Play a chord inversion, ideally one that is a little ambiguous and not a standard triad or seventh chord.
• Move each note of the chord up to the next note of the scale youre using
• Continue moving the chord through the scale and use all of these possible chords to play

• G, C, D, A to
• A, D, E, B 

Raise each note to the next note in the scale. We change from:

• C, F, G, A  to
• D, G, A, E

• D, G, A, E to
• E, A, B, F

• E, A, B, F to
• F, B, C, G

• C major
• D minor7
• E minor7
• F major7
• G7
• A minor 7
• B half diminished

Youll find more Allan Holdsworth chords in these other posts.

Todays Guitar Chord of the Day is F Major 7. This is a first inversion chord: it has the 3rd of the chord as the lowest note.

Major 7 chords are very common chords, but this is our first Major 7 guitar inversion on Guitar Chord a Day. The major seventh is sometimes written as Δ7, so F major 7, F maj7 and FΔ7 all mean the same thing.

Major 7 can replace Major triads for chords I and IV in Major keys.

Major  chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, 3, 5, 7

F Major 7 uses the notes: F, A, C, E

Our inversion uses the notes in this order: A, F, C, E

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classicjazzguitar.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Christian
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Christian_pickup (pickup)

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Focusing on one thing at a time.

Sometimes learning to play guitar is really overwhelming. There are chords, notes, scales, arpeggios, theory, the circle of fifths, and the list goes on. A common beginner problem is trying to do too many different things and once and becoming overloaded with information. Ive got students who surf the internet for info, then wonder how theyre going to learn all that stuff. Playing guitar is a time art, its not something that you learn in a short period of time. Finding a guitar teacher to help you sort things out is a good first step.

Finding the one thing to focus on.

Be honest with yourself, and assess your skills so far. Theres no need to learn barre chords if you cant play simple open position chords, theres no sense in learning theory until you have a basic understanding of music, you get the idea. Deciding what type of music you want to play will be the easiest indicator of what you should focus on first. If you want to play the guitar and sing, practice chords. Dont buy a chord book and try to memorize 100 different chords, get a song with 3 or 4 chords and learn to play it at the correct speed, with no time lost between chord changes. Too many times a beginning guitar student will proclaim a song finished when it still needs lots of work. Do you want to play lead guitar? Start out with one basic scale pattern and explore it. Play a simple pentatonic scale and try out different note combinations. Once you know where the notes are, try to play something that sounds musical.

The main thing is to be advancing your playing and moving forward.

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Todays guitar chord of the day is a nice minor11 inversion.
This chord is moveable and has its root note on the E string (indicated by the black box in the chord diagram).
This chord can be played in the place of most minor chords and can replace chord ii, iii and vi in major keys. Minor 11th chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, b3, 5, b7, 9, 11 though its really common to leave some notes out - our inversion is missing the 5th and 9th.

Bm11 uses the notes: B, D, F#, A C#, E

Our inversion uses the notes in this order: B, A, D, E, A

Tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord Of The Day.

Todays Guitar Chord of the Day is F minor 13. Minor 13 chords are usually played as chord i in minor keys, but try playing them in other situations where you might play a minor chord to add some extra colour.

Minor 13 chords use these degrees of the major scale: 1, b3, 5, b7, 9, 11, 13

F minor 13 uses the notes: F, Ab, C, Eb, G, Bb, D
Our guitar inversion uses the notes in this order: F, Ab, Eb, G,  D

Tune in tomorrow for another Guitar Chord Of The Day.

Continuing our series of posts looking at Allan Holdsworths Guitar Chords, today we look at another inversion than can be taken through a chord scale.

Rather than using standard chord voicings, Allan Holdsworth views chords as being a member of a "family", the family name being the name of the scale from which that chord is derived. Any grouping of notes from that family can be substituted for the standard chord voicings, depending, of course on your own taste and the context in which they are used. For example, if the harmony calls for an Cmaj7, rather than playing a standard voicing, various combinations of notes all drawn from the Cmajor scale can be used.

Here an inversion is taken through the C major scale. As any of these chords can be used over any of the diatonic C major chords no chord names have been given. Although this inversion is taken directly through a scale, bear in mind that Allan usually uses a more complex approach moving between different inversions.


Moving each of the chord to the next scale note gives us the same inversion starting on the 3rd fret.

Moving each scale note up gives us this inversion

Moving each scale note up gives us this inversion thats an easier stretch than the last chord.

Moving each note up again takes us to our original chord inversion starting on the 8th fret.

And again at the 10th.

Finally a different inversion is created by moving each scale note up again.
Moving the chord notes up to the next scale note would give us the same inversion we started with 12 frets higher.

Try taking other inversions for a walk through a scale and substitute these for regular inversions that you might have used. Listen carefully to interesting melodies and check back soon for another guitar chord of the day.

If you liked like this post you might also be interested in the Frank Gambale Magic Chord posts.

Are you slowing your progress with negative thinking?

I have a new student, hes been playing for 4 weeks, and he must have used the word "frustrating" no less than 15 times at his lesson! Are you doing that too? Yes, beginning guitar lessons is very hard at first. Your fingers feel fat, they wont go where your brain tells them to go and to add insult to injury they hurt when you play. Wow, no wonder he was frustrated.

How to overcome the beginning guitar player blues?

• Accept the fact that youre a beginner. No one starts playing the guitar or any other instrument without feeling frustrated. After a couple lessons you realize its not a short term project.
• Make it a game. See how many times you can play song, exercise or scale without a mistake. Set the metronome to painfully slow, play the music, and when you can do that perfectly, in time, without stopping, kick the beats up a little. Key words, a little.
• Record yourself.  Many beginning guitar students cant hear any progress, so one technique I recommend is recording yourself. Do that, listen to it, then put it away for a few weeks. The next time you listen to it you should be amazed at the progress youve made, provided youve been practicing in between.
• Get feedback from your teacher. When your guitar teacher suggests something or points out a problem area, pay attention! The goal before your next lesson should be to fix whatever the problem area is so you can move forward.
• Be extremely patient. I know, easy for me to say! Learning guitar is all about muscle memory and unfortunately its not something you develop instantly. While practicing does help, the process really cant be accelerated that much. Playing music is definitely a time art.
• Lose the negative terms and thinking. Attitude plays a major role in your ability to progress. Dont allow your "lizard brain" as Seth Godin calls it get the best of you. Think positive thoughts and look at learning the guitar like the challenge that it is.

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Our next chord in our series of 12 Guitar Chords you should know is another G7 chord, this time with its root note on the guitars B string.


This dominant chord uses the notes of G7 is this order:

• B (the 3rd)
• F (the b7th)
• G (the root note)
• D (the 5th)

Tune up and tune in tomorrow when well be continue our series of 12 dominant 7th guitar chords you should know with the last dominant 7th inversion on the top four guitar strings.

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