5 Things Every Beginner Guitarist SHOULD Learn

[Music] hey everybody I'm Rick pianos today is everything music I'm gonna do something a little different we're gonna talk about five things every beginner guitarists need to learn now I don't usually do videos like this the reason that I'm doing this today is because my kids can't take lessons now because we're stuck at home so I decided I'm going to teach my two daughters how to play the guitar now I've taught a lot of beginner guitar lessons before I'm going to teach them things right from the beginning that they're gonna eventually need to know and it's better if you teach beginner guitarists this right off the bat now I've taught many beginner guitar lessons before I talk it's harder here in Atlanta from 1994 to 1999 I had fifty students a week and many of them were beginner guitarists so I am very well-versed at teaching beginning guitar okay the first one I want to talk about is the basic strumming pattern this is really the basis of all rhythm guitar playing and and it will help your rhythm just in general if you can learn the simple pattern we're gonna do it with an E minor chord here in open position all of the things I'm going to talk about today are going to involve open position chords okay so I'm going to use an E minor coil right here now this throwing pattern is this down down up down down down up up down up what this does it get your hand moving in an up-down pattern and you play down strokes on down beats and up strokes on up beats and it's going to be the basis for alternate picking for all the scales so you're going to learn later on and it's going to improve your rhythm but it's not an easy pattern for beginners to guess so your hand has to never stop moving like this down down up up down up down down up up down up you notice my hand never stops moving like this [Applause] number two when you're learning your basic chords learn your G chord with the third finger on the B string I'll tell you why you'll see in a lot of books that the G major chord is taught like this [Music] the open B string the pinkie on the high E string I don't like that one of the reasons is that if you go from C to G it's actually pretty easy to play that chord voicing the problem is that when you go from G to D you have to completely lift your hand up all the fingers and replace them on the D chord which typically beginners find very difficult the third finger if you play it that note D there in the G chord and you go to a D chord you use that as your anchor point to play DS so watch my hand and that's a good thing to practice right there to learn how to change chords without lifting fingers that are common between the chords C at 9 G that chord progression is in a million songs and see at 9:00 is really a substitute chord for C major now if you want to learn every song on the radio if you add an E minor chord but keep these two fingers here and put your two fingers where they would go on an E minor chord you can pretty much play any song on the radio those four chords four one six five you pretty much put him into any order and you get any Sun that you've heard over the last 15 years that's pop or country if you put a capo on you can really play with any song on the radio because it changes the key same shapes and I'm doing my same strumming back down up down up down Oh number three is muting the low e-string many chords like D see my thumb here my thumb is going over the top a lot of guitar methis will tell you to have your thumb behind the neck this is the proper position for muting the low e-string thumb around the neck and block that so I'm muting that string if I don't mute that and I have my thumb back here and I hit that low E string by accident the chord sounds really bad because it's not even the right chord that no e is not in that D chord correct or you may as well learn your D major chord right off the bat muting the low E string same with a major even though a major does have that note in it that low E it sounds bad [Music] [Applause] so right there those three things are incredibly important and you should learn right from the start when I teach my girls how to play guitar today the first thing I'm going to do after I teach of a minor in the strumming pattern probably I'll teach them tomorrow how to mute that low string you need a smaller guitar to do that for a child but my daughter Lennon can do it on this guitar definitely so that's number three number four is changing chords seamlessly so this is a trick that I would always show my beginner guitar students it's playing your last upstroke with no hands on the strings okay so let's say I'm going from C G to D okay so each of these chords now the DEA has that one note that is common between them from C to G even if you play G like that but I like as it sounds better so I'm gonna play [Applause] that last upstroke in the pattern you'd lift your hand up you play the open strings and that gives you enough time once you practice it for a few days to change chords right so I'm going down down up down that little thing there you don't even notice it right that I'm playing all the strings open and it again right [Applause] [Music] that will improve your guitar playing and enable you to play songs in rhythm and change chords quicker and I would simply just I practice that a hundred times until you get it number five is a simple flat picking exercise that I would always teach my beginning guitar students the reason I teach this is once again to practice alternate picking so this will eventually come into play when you're playing scales any type of lead guitar playing you're gonna have to know how to skip strings and isolate the particular single strings with your pick without hitting the wrong one so I usually will start with the D chord and I will play this pattern D string and D string g string D string so that's the pattern [Music] so I'm going down up down up that's the pattern [Music] if I go to a see at 9 chord I use the same pattern but I just start with the fifth string on this note seed [Music] you notice what I did there when I change from D to C at 9:00 I added that note to give me time it's the same thing as I did using the open strings I added that note to make the transition sound smooth [Music] now I go to the G chord I'm doing the same pattern except I'm playing the low G and then going way down to the B string and what that does is it gives you a feel for where the strings are this particular flatpicking exercise will help you play in isolate strings properly that's all for now please subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel if you're a first-time viewer don't forget to ring the bell if you're interested in the Beato book go to my website at wwlp.com you can find it there follow me on instagram at rick be out of one check out the new be out of ear training course that i have if you go to be out of ear training com watch the introduction video that's how you get so you develop a great ear so you can figure out songs by ear and if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the piatto club thanks so much for watching and stay safe [Music]

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 1,683,039

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, guitar lesson, beginner guitar lesson, beginner guitar lessons, beginner guitar songs, how to learn guitar, how to play guitar, beginner guitar chords, beginner guitar, beginner guitar exercises, guitar tips, how to play, guitar lessons for beginners, guitar tips and tricks for beginners, 5 things, guitar tips for older beginners, beginner mistakes, top 5

Id: 2FTndcu891g

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/FlamingBagOfPoop]

That strumming pattern is very versatile. I use it a lot, the other one I go to is a simple down up down up pattern but I put an accent on Beats 1 and 3. Those are the two patterns I use if I’m practicing some chord changes and not really playing any certain song.