Dan Thorpe's Acoustic Guitar Domination

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A Fun Little Guitar Challenge to Measure Your Guitar Skills

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Here’s a little test I want you to do.

It’s something I like to do with new students and also with current students every now and then.

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Filed Under: Chord Progressions, Learning, Strumming Tagged With: Chords, guitar challenge, Strumming, test

SABR #3 – How to fix those out of tune chords even when your guitar is in tune

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This is the third SABR video and features an important subject – stopping you bending strings out of tune by accident when playing simple open chords. The difference this can make can be huge and can make your playing sound really amateurish if you are guilty of it – don`t worry we will fix it in this short video!

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Filed Under: SABR Tagged With: Aural Skills, bending, Chords, tuning

8 Reasons Why Using a Capo is Great for Your Guitar Playing

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using a capo

When I was learning guitar, I was always told that using a capo is “for cheats and wimps” and stuff like that. The fact is if I would have started out using a capo, I would be a better guitarist for it now.

I would have learned more songs quicker; I would have jammed more, joined more bands sooner and got bitten by the guitar bug much sooner.

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Filed Under: Equipment, Songwriting Tagged With: capos, Changing keys, Chords, tone

Free eBook – The 10 Chords That Every Guitarist Needs To Know

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10 essential guitar chords

Photo by Kamaljlth K V

There are thousands and thousands of chords you could learn, but the truth is you will never use most of them. In my experience most guitarists will use the same chords over and over again for 90% of their playing.

These chords are the 10 in my free report,  The 10 Chords That Every Guitarist Needs To Know. 

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Filed Under: Chords, Resources Tagged With: Beginner chord, capo, Chords, fingerpicking, Strumming

How To Strum A Guitar The Proper Way (part 1) – 6 Mistakes You Must Avoid

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how to strum a guitar

Photo by Kathi Rudminat

Many beginner guitarists don`t really know how to strum a guitar – not properly anyway. They often `fake it till they make it` but unfortunately that can lead to bad habits.

Check your strumming regularly by ensuring you are not making the following very common mistakes that many guitarists make – especially beginners, but often experienced guitar players too. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Rhythm, Technique Tagged With: beginner guitar, Chords, Rhythm Guitar, Strumming

Killer 3 string chords (part 4) – How to add range and diversity to your guitar playing

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jmarr

Welcome to the final part of our Killer 3 String Chord Series. So far we have learned 4 variations of 1 killer 3 string chord, learned how to apply rhythm to them, created melodies while playing a chord to create the illusion of two guitars, applied the techniques to a super popular chord progression and learned 8 little ditties using the techniques.

Phew…If you missed Part 1, Part 2, part 3, check those out first as you are best to follow this series in order.

One of the secret but massive benefits to learning Killer 3 string chords is that they act as an amazing gateway between open chords and barre chords. This is a concept we have touched on briefly in the series, but will go into more detail on now.

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Filed Under: Killer 3 String Chords, Technique Tagged With: Chords, triads

Killer 3 string chords (part 3) – How to add range and diversity to your guitar playing

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jmarr

Welcome, dear Guitar Ninja, to Part 3 of our series of Killer 3 string chords. So far we have learned 4 variations of a killer 3 string chord, learned how to apply rhythm to them, created melodies while playing a chord to create the illusion of two guitars, applied the techniques to a super popular chord progression and learned 8 little ditties using the techniques.

Phew…If you missed Part 1 and Part 2, check them out as you are best to follow this series in order.

Now, it`s time to expand our repertoire and play the different chord types but now with 2 more shapes. This will allow us to truly free up the fretboard and save us from having to make big jumps up and down to play certain chords.

Efficiency as well as killer sounding chords is the name of the game.

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Filed Under: Technique Tagged With: Chords, triads

Killer 3 string chords (part 2) – How to add range and diversity to your guitar playing

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Killer 3 string guitar chord triads

Welcome, Guitar Ninja, to part 2 of our series of Killer 3 string chords. So far, we have discovered how to play a bunch of Killer 3 string guitar chord triads – 4 different chords all based around G.

The four chords are G Major, G minor, G sus2 and G sus4. In this lesson we are going to step it up and add some interesting rhythm to the chords and change between the chords within in a bar as apposed to at the end of a bar.

This will add a sense of melody along with the chord and to the untrained listener will sound like two guitars going for it at the same time. Cool, don`t you think?

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Filed Under: Technique Tagged With: Chords, triads

Killer 3 string chords (part 1) – How to add range and diversity to your guitar playing

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jmarr

A really simple way to spice up your chord based guitar playing is to learn alternate versions of the chords you already know and then get deep down and dirty with them. Learning alternate ways to play familiar chords will give you a huge amount more range and diversity to your playing that will help make you sound head and shoulders above pretty much 99% of guitarists out there.

During this series of lessons we are going to look at 12 killer 3 string chords – or to call them by their official name – triads. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Technique Tagged With: Chords, triads

One Minute Guitar Tricks – super simple chord trick

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simple chord trick

One simple chord trick you can do today to improve your guitar playing and add some sophistication to your chords is the use of what is commonly called `chord anchors`. This is where you keep some of your fingers on the same fret and same string throughout a chord progression and in this is what we will be going over in this weeks One Minute Guitar Trick.

In the example we are using you keep your 3rd and 4th fingers on the 3rd fret of the 1st and 2nd strings respectively. If that sounds a little confusing, it is very simple in practice and sounds fantastic. Look at the chord charts below to see how simple they are.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: One Minute Tricks Tagged With: Chords

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