The Fundamentals of Acoustic Guitar in 30 Minutes

rolling what's up everyone so today i have something to tell you i got run over by a moose and i have an injured mcl when i say moose i mean our dog moose ran into me and and i've been hobbling around for the last few days i even got a cane at one point and my daughters were were saying calling me old man it's funny he's feeling better today actually went to the doctor the first time he's like no nothing damaged no surgery nothing looks pretty good just go wear a brace for about three weeks anyways so i've been hobbling around but uh and i have a new screen for the comments it's right here in front of me and i can see them pretty well i think okay uh i want to talk about something that i've done a couple videos on in the past one of my biggest video on my channel ever is on the acoustic guitar but i don't do a lot of acoustic guitar videos and i want to do a basic acoustic guitar lesson because a lot of people as we know from all the guitar companies that are out of stock and have been or backordered for two years it's because people have bought guitars in the last two years which is one of the reasons that my signature guitar i get asked this every live stream every video when's my signature guitar coming out august or so because gibson is so far backed up okay so let's talk about some of the basic things that you would learn in a guitar lesson that these are things that i like to teach and some of the things that i think that teachers really don't get into or they should get into when you start and i want to talk about some of the obvious things like the first thing to do and this is a thing when when i was teaching my daughter lennon when we started was clipping her nails on her left hand okay this was like a big thing now i think personally i don't like to see any white on my fingernails so i clip my nails down so that my fingers get used to having no white so there's as much of a pad as there can be on your left hand assuming you're a right-handed guitar player that what what happens here is that your fingertips will get toughened up faster and you'll have a more consistent uh tone and you won't be hitting the fingerboard with your nail because that's one thing you definitely do not want to do everybody's nail beds are different i happen to have uh kind of low now well if you look at my pinky here or my ring finger there's a lot of meat on the top of it so i can trim that finger down quite a ways a lot of people's nails start right at the top it doesn't matter but uh definitely for me trimming this hand for so many years it just makes it easier to play okay so the other thing i get asked about is my picking hand and holding the pick a lot of people notice that when i hold the pick that i keep my hand closed then they ask why and honestly the reason why is because that's just the way i learned i looked in a mel bay book when i was starting out in 19 whenever was the mid 70s when i broke my ankles yeah injured leg this is the day to teach teach guitar and i found that if i held the pick like this that my hand was much more relaxed i had friends that held their hands out like this and i would always notice that they if they used it as a pivot that uh that they would have very very stiff hands and you get a lot of tension what you don't want to have is tension in your playing right you want to be real as relaxed as possible including your shoulders need to be relaxed that's another important thing when you're starting to play an instrument now the left-hand hand position i want to talk about because you want to always have this kind of a shape to your hand because one of the most frustrating things that people have happen and what makes them want to quit is that they can't get a sound the guitar is a difficult instrument to get a sound out of okay now obviously open strings are easy but once you start putting fingers down you start getting a lot of muted strings if your hands and your fingers are not angled properly okay so i like to start with an e minor chord because it has very few fingers okay now there's a few different ways that you can play an e minor chord i like to start with it with these two fingers because the index finger is the finger on your hand that has the most control but one of the things when you're playing an e minor chord right is that the two fingers need to be locked together i find that this is the best way to teach beginners because it gives the hand stability when the two fingers anytime you have two fingers that are next to each other we're going to talk about other chords those two fingers are locked together this is going to help you when you play bar chords it's going to help you do any it'll help you with everything in the guitar even when you're an advanced player so the e minor chord what you need to do is you need to have that hand needs to be open like a c like that that's the only way you're going to get the other strings below this if my hand is like this you're going to start getting dead strings which is what you just what you don't you don't want these dead strings you need to be able to pivot the hand and keep it open right get a nice even strum on the e minor chord don't even worry about strumming patterns yet we're going to talk about strumming patterns i think e minor is the easiest now you can also play e minor like this with these two fingers and i do it in the same way right the two fingers support each other okay and many times i'll have students just try this to show them that doesn't matter what pair of fingers are together when you have two fingers that are next to each other and they're on adjacent strings have the fingers touch together to support each other okay this will actually enable you to have nice round fingers and will keep you from muting strings that you don't want to be muting okay so i usually will start with an e minor chord and try and get the student to get the chord cleanly then i like to move on to three fingered chords like a minor for example okay so a minor when you start if you start things like c you start getting into these odd hand positions okay a minor is another one that that you can play where you keep your fingers tall okay when i say tall on that a minor e minor your hand is almost like a c there the a minor the hand comes in like that okay so this is a minor now on a minor we're going to only strum from the a string downwards okay but very quickly in my first guitar lesson i will teach people to mute the bottom string the low e string okay and i will do that just because i find that it's easier once again for them to support the hand and to begin learning muting right at the beginning okay if i'm teaching somebody to play classical guitar that's one thing but if i want to teach people how to play songs the the biggest thing is so that people don't get frustrated you don't want your students to get frustrated okay so my a minor chord i got my index finger here at the first fret on the b string and these two fingers are on adjacent strings and they are touching and supporting each other right so that is a minor if i have my thumb up here it's muting that string and that way the student doesn't have to worry about hitting all the strings because the string even though that no e is actually can be part of the chord you get a nice clean a minor chord and then if i go from e minor to a minor a minor to e minor i can go and i'll go to that second fingering of e minor that i had okay once again those two fingers are moving between the two strings like this so this e minor chord can go to a minor like that now another principle that you want to teach people right off the bat is to keep every finger down when you're switching chords that don't need to be moved if i go from an a minor chord to a c major chord there's only one note that is different between the two chords okay this note a becomes c by me lifting my third finger and putting it up here and this is a c major chord you'll notice that the shape of my hand does not change at all these fingers are tall and they're coming in towards the guitar towards the string towards the fingerboard at a very steep angle right you can see from that direction you can see from this direction very steep angle so i'm literally lifting this finger up and this takes a lot of coordination to do that right [Applause] so another thing about this one of the principles of playing guitar is you want to always fret notes just behind the fret that you're playing this is a thing that teachers don't spend enough time with that i really uh would spend a lot of time with my students doing this i always am reminding them get close to the fret get close to the fret because it takes the least amount of pressure to get a note out if i play this note c here as i move it back it takes way more pressure then you start getting a buzz notes hear how clear the tone gets there tone is not clear there you're the buzz right so on my c chord this middle finger here that's on the note e is right up next to the fret just behind it my index finger that's on the note c is right next to the fret here it's touching the fret really just behind it you get the most leverage and you get the cleanest note okay so there are the three notes there a lot of times i will take my pinky so that my pinky isn't up like this i will tell people just rest it on on your other finger there's a lot of resting of fingers there's a lot of keeping the hand in as compact a position as possible so that you have as much strength as possible this also comes into play when you go to the d chord because i will typically teach the d chord in the first lesson too i usually would teach e minor a minor c major d major and g major those are usually the first chords occasionally i'll teach e major and a major if the students are getting this okay but they all follow the same principles the tricky thing about the d major chord is the finger spacing once again this is a d major chord [Music] now i'm only strumming from the d string down but i could strum from the a string down that sounds perfectly good but if i play that low e string you want to have it muted with the thumb and one of the reasons again that i teach muting right off the bat is because i believe that it helps keep your fingers in a stable position as opposed to this this to me is not a viable thing for a beginner to play yes this is actual correct classical guitar hand position with the thumb of the back of the neck that is correct but i don't believe that beginners i i think the beginner should learn how to play muting strings because these are sophisticated techniques that take a long time to uh to master so you may as well just start teaching them from the beginning now the tricky thing about the d chord is that there are two tricky things about it the first thing is these two fingers that play a and f sharp on the g string and on the e string they are touching each other when i take them away from the guitar they are touching each other once again they are supporting each other uh before i go any further i want to remind people that my sale for today's live stream i always do a sale of all my educational products my biato book my ear training course and my quick lessons pro guitar course the uh rb 101 is the discount code 60 off my biato book 40 off my uh ear training course and 40 off the quick lessons pro and by the way check out my youtube shorts that's not really connected to the algorithm you you don't get uh notifications but follow my youtube shorts if you get a chance and follow me on instagram and just follow me on youtube shorts forget about instagram um okay so d major if these two fingers are not next to one another and and they're not stabilized it's very difficult when you are going and trying to play the chord quickly in a song right if i'm going from c to d it's a real different hand shape that you're doing right there's really nothing common your hand is going this direction for c major and then it immediately has to go in a very different direction for d major but one of the keys for d major is that you stay up in the frets again okay my third finger is playing that note d at the third fret of the b string and if it's back too far it's gonna sound like that you're gonna get really really uh a lot of buzzing same thing with these two fingers this is typically how beginners will play d major chords but if i just simply slide up and get them as close to the frets as possible you will get a nice clean tone this is something that that i found i would get my students to play chords and be able to change chords quicker by using other fingers to give the give the hand position strength by by actually keeping the fingers together like that whenever possible adjacent fingers together and by staying up in the frets okay so you've got e minor two fingers together i jump to a minor the same two fingers are together right they just hop they never ever leave that position [Music] my fingers my fingers are pretty much glued together i've always played like that and this is how you get a really consistent and powerful sound okay now the next chord that's difficult to play is g major i like to teach g major as a four finger chord like this and i'll tell you why a lot of teachers will begin with this g major chord the reason i don't like this is because the pinky is very weak and i always would find that this is a really first of all it's an uncommon chord to play you play it in folk music a lot but um it's it's difficult for beginners to play because you're not using your dominant finger your index finger which is your one that actually has the most control okay so i like to include it in as many of these chords as possible okay so i teach g major like this that have these two notes here once again those two notes the third and fourth finger when i take them away from the guitar my fingers have been locked in that shape for 45 years or so the entire time i've been playing they are married right there those two fingers from that g chord i not only use that for g use it for d sus4 if you look at my pinky and ring finger my ring my pinky is right up next to that finger right these two fingers are right together my fingers are always touching whenever possible on the g major chord these two fingers are touching they are these two fingers are touching they're locked together like they are super glued so if i'm going from g to d which is very common because they are in the same keys if you're in the key of g major or d major they both have g and d right so when i go from g to d which is a the most common move you always want to keep down any common finger between chords okay that common finger between a g major chord and a d chord is this note d here okay that note does not move watch my hand watch watch this finger keep your eye on and watch how the pinky is right there ready to strike like a cobra [Music] you need to be able to master those moves in order to play songs right your ability to switch from chord to chord the speed at which you can switch from chord to chord will determine whether you can play a song and how quickly you can play a song right so always keep down common fingers when i'm going from a minor to c there are two common notes so you're only moving one note so i take this note from the third fret of the g string and i move it to the fifth fret i'm sorry from the second fret of the g string to the third fret of the a string okay so these other two fingers watch them they do not move and you want to you want to practice those moves over and over you can be watching tv doing whatever i would do that uh for hours that's how i learned to play these chords g to d to g to d g to d now notice something else when i go from g my thumb is here over the the guitar neck and a lot of you classical guitar teachers out there be like that's not the way you should learn well we're not learning classical guitar we're learning to play the guitar so we can play songs okay so g and then d so not only do i keep this finger consistent to keep it down [Applause] my thumb comes around and mutes that low e string that's muted there now uh the other two chords that i like to teach are a major and e major now there's one thing about a major that i have noticed for example when i interviewed tommy emmanuel tommy emanuel plays an a major chord very differently than i do tommy manuel plays everything a lot different than i do tommy manual is amazing if you haven't seen my interview with them you should definitely check it out tommy has massively thick fingers right he's big guys six foot four probably when he plays an a major chord he has to play it like this with with a d major fingering i call it i call it d major fingering because it's the same shape i play an a major chord like this because i can fit my fingers in the frets there but one of the problems with playing a major like this is that a lot of times you get a buzz on that note in the second fret of the d string but if i play it like this you get a lot more leverage on it and you'll notice it's it's actually further up in the fret like that but but the solution to that i don't think that that's a great solution to that unless you have massively thick fingers i like to go like this with a major to me this is a better fingering for it and the reason this one works better is because your fingers are smaller okay so that so the middle finger is actually further up in the fret than the index finger is here because these fingers are skinnier but what do you notice right here glued fingers my anytime you watch me play those fingers if you watch my top 20 acoustic guitar intros whatever your whatever you're seeing me do you'll notice that my fingers move as a unit and when i if i just go like this i know that that's an a major chord i don't have to be near a guitar i can be away from a guitar for 10 years and i know that that is an a major chord it is locked there forever for a major okay so once again you want to be able to keep those fingers whenever they need to be together put them together okay you always want to have a strong left hand you want to be have those strings depressed uh with that left hand firmly okay so they're right into the fingerboard with a lot of downward pressure now you don't want to get tendonitis but you might have good downward pressure so you don't get any buzzing buzzing is bad right buzzing is the thing um somebody said why not just bar open a this is an interesting question okay so there is um you can't play a like this but when you start getting into barring like this this is typically what you would do for rock is this how you'd play an a chord when i'm playing rock i would play an a chord like that because i don't care about and i don't want to be hitting this high e string so i'm going to be muting that high e string if i'm playing ac dc or something i'll play my a chord like that you'll notice i don't hear the the third i mean it's i'm kind of muting it on purpose i'm playing a power chord really not really playing a major but when i want it to ring out i want i want all those notes to ring clearly right then the last chord is the e major chord now the e major chord is the same shape as a minor everything moved up one string when i say up it's really down one string but i mean up towards the ceiling okay that is your e major chord once what do you notice again those fingers are glued together right there now i don't know why i never read things like that in books which i always thought was weird is that um that people don't talk about that that much i i never find that maybe they do and i just don't read those books the other thing is that the uh e major and a minor chords can also be played with these three sets of string fingers okay same thing so you can play a minor like that and e major like that okay i don't like to begin with a beginning guitar student with those fingerings those fingerings however are going to be useful when you play barre chords because you're going to need to be able to use them in that way to play barre chords and play them cleanly so you're going to need to know those same fingerings like this what you want to understand though is you want to understand what the finger shapes are how they're how to play the notes cleanly how to angle your fingers with the left hand the left hand is really one of the trickiest things to get this is what honestly this is what makes people quit is the left-hand stuff um i find that that that's that's when you lose students you typically would lose them in the first few weeks they don't practice enough they don't have enough consistent playing so they get they don't get callouses it takes honestly probably i'd say five days of playing every for at least 20 minutes a day to get callouses so that uh so that your fingertips don't hurt but your fingertips are gonna hurt um that's that's just the fact the fingertips are going to hurt for a few days they just have to that's just part of the part of the thing um having a well set up guitar is also very important there's nothing that is more demotivating as a guitar player as a beginner than having a poorly set up guitar with high action okay so that's one of the first things that you want to make sure before you even go in for your first lesson you want to get as good a guitar as you can afford you want to make sure the guitar is set up properly so it doesn't have gigantically high action and making the guitar more difficult to play than it is okay uh the next thing is the strumming okay strumming is one of the really uh difficult things to do somebody said b7 uh b7 please but is it buzzy said that bazi said b7 please uh b7 is a chord that i usually don't teach right at the beginning b7 is is in songs but [Music] that would be a b7 chord right there but that involves all four fingers and you don't find a lot of b7s unless you're playing like an e blues or something right off the bat most folk songs uh will have will be in the key of d key of g things like that and you'll use these particular chords that i've talked about g major d major a minor e minor a major e major c major those are the chords that you really want to learn right at the beginning if you can play those chords you can pretty much play most songs especially if you have one of these which is a capo this capo can allow you to play chords without uh without learning bar chords you can change keys if i put this at the second fret right and i want and i play a d chord then that is really an e chord because it's transposes the guitar that's what capos do and there's certain songs that you can play i was going to play a beatles song but i'll get demonetized for it if i do uh there's songs that you that many songs use capos capos change the key the guitar and allow you to play allow you to play the same basic chord forms but in a different key okay i like this particular capo i'm not endorsed by them but this is one of the this is a superior design it's called the g7 superior designed capo has a little lever on it if i was going to go out and buy a capo and i have many capos uh one of which i don't want to mention the name the brand but i scratch my guitar neck here on my 1957 gibson right here you can see it's been repaired but that was from a capo that was that i didn't realize it had a um somebody had cut part of it off and there was a rough spot on it and it really scratched my guitar and it bum me out heavily anyways the next difficult thing is the right hand the right hand okay we've hit 30 minutes here ah okay i don't want to go too much further with this strumming is a really difficult thing what i would typically do with the students is having have them do four down strokes the first week and focus on the left hand because that's the thing that is going to give you have two different segments of learning guitar you have the left hand segment where you have to develop some calluses all right and then the right hand part which are strumming patterns destroying patterns are very difficult for people because you have you're changing chords and you're involving you have two different movements going on so if i'm playing on [Music] now that seems very simple but [Music] that change from g to d man to try and get somebody to do that to actually keep their hand going when they have to change the chords is extremely difficult for beginners not extremely difficult it's difficult difficult especially if they have pain in their fingers so what i will do is i will have people just do four down strokes and change chords so i'll go you know maybe [Music] and i'll have them switch between combinations of two chords usually it'll be a minor to c where you'll have two notes that are in common and have them keep really good time and then go g to d [Music] the reason i haven't do down strokes is because most of your strumming patterns that you're going to do you want to always maintain this down down up down up down up strumming pattern if you don't do down strokes what do you need to do to do an upstroke well you're doing an upstroke if you do two down strokes in a row you have to do an upstroke in order to play the next down stroke this is how strumming patterns work right always want to have your always want to have your hand moving like that right this is the hardest thing to teach people because they're usually trying to focus on two things at once switching the chords and then they're trying to incorporate the right hand in there and it's difficult it's kind of like when you're learning the drums to learning how to do an open hi-hat for example or learning how to play your bass drum in between two hi-hats these are really sophisticated things to do the people drummers take for granted but they're the hardest things for beginning drummers to learn that's very similar to learning how to strum and change chords at the same time because it requires a lot of uh hand independence difficult for your brain um okay discount code for today's live stream is rb101 if you want to support the channel and learn how to have a better ear how to play things on guitar music theory i have my beato book i have my ear training course and i have my quick lessons pro guitar course okay 60 off my 700 page biato book pdf bundle um 40 off the ear training course of 40 off my quick lessons pro if you don't uh play an instrument you want to just donate to the channel there's a link to donate to the channel as well in the description uh or you can sign up for the biato club uh so i would say that um stick with it if you bought a guitar here in the last year or so and you want to learn how to play you it's better to practice ten minutes a day six days a week seven days a week five days a week than it is to practice five hours one day a week it's about consistency it's not about how long you sit down for one day all right consistency is the key to learning anything okay cool uh have a great weekend check out my latest videos follow me on tik tok if you want but really check out my instagram short or my my youtube shorts if you don't ever look at shorts there's really there's not a lot of guitar shorts people out there i'm trying to convince my guitar player friends that are youtubers to make shorts and they don't want to make them because no one watches them because they don't get served up to people but if people start watching them then they will start doing short so i'm trying to convince all my youtube friend guitar player friends to start doing some more shorts anyways you guys are awesome thanks so much have a great weekend see ya

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 517,136

Keywords: everything music, Beato Ear Training, Beato Book, Quick Lessons Course, Music, Rick Beato, music education, guitar lessons for beginners, how to play guitar, how to play guitar for beginners, how to play, beginner guitar lesson, fingerstyle guitar (musical genre), acoustic guitar, beginner guitar, guitar lesson 1, guitar lesson 2

Id: CNdKfUI6iEI

Length: 35min 24sec (2124 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022