My Online Guitar Lessons

Before ever starting my guitar lessons, I was asked what I would prefer to be taught and in which direction I want to head in. Since I was starting up a band in the summer, I inquired about songwriting. My teacher gave me a brief outline on writing lyrics and melody lines, gave me a chord progression to work with, and told me to write.

This type of forced writing took me outside of my comfort zone—not expecting a killer hit single—but getting used to writing lyrics, putting melodies to them, and making them work over progressions.

He told me to start with the end goal in mind; choosing a subject, mood, key, pace and style I was aiming for. I just threw out some random ideas; my subject was going to be about a car, it was going to be a jazzy style, in a minor key, and at a moderate pace.

He gave me a neat little minor chord progression to work with, and I just used a simple minor scale and plucked out a simple melody line. The lyrics were nothing astounding, but he helped me with some ideas. He pointed out which words needed to be accented when sung, as well as the importance of ending on an expectant note when ending a verse or chorus and leading into the next phrase.

There is a well-known phrase out there that goes something like this:

Tell your audience what you’re going to tell them.
Tell them.
Then tell them what you told them.

This applies especially well in lyric writing. There are a whole bunch of more forced writing exercises you can do to help improve writing, but most importantly, you must have a reason for writing.

“…It may seem like an odd thing to do, but it’s worth asking yourself exactly why you bother to write words for your songs at all. Different people will come up with different answers to this question. Some write words to their songs because they have ideas, opinions or stories that they want to be heard by an audience, or because they want to make their audience feel particular emotions, or because they want their audience to identify with them. Others write words because it’s conventional for the style of music in which they’re working to have lyrics, or because the human voice is an important musical instrument in that style and it needs to have some words to sing.” — Sam Inglis, Understanding And Writing Lyrics: Part 1

Check out the rest of this great article here.

There are many great places on music forums for writing lyrics as well as melody lines. The simple and pretty obvious way of creating your own stuff is first looking at some of your favourite artists’ melody lines and lyrics. Pick them apart and see how they do what they do. Listen to your favourite song over and over again, hum or sing the melody line, pluck it out on your guitar and see what key it’s in.

Another great idea is to keep a notepad and personal digital recorder with you or nearby. An aspiring artist should always be ready, and you can never be sure when something will inspire you to write. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but if it isn’t written down or recorded right away, it’s the same as never having one in the first place.

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In my basic guitar theory lesson 2, we learned the pattern that every major scale was based on (remember the WWHWWWH), and in lesson 3 we learned that the 6th note of the scale was the relative minor. Knowing this, we have a new pattern for our minor scale. Before, the C scale (CDEFGABC) had the first formula applied to it. Now that we know that A minor is the relative minor of the C scale (6th note in the C scale), there is a new formula for the A natural minor scale (ABCDEFGA) is – WHWWHWW.

We know that each note in the scale has a certain number value (also called degrees or intervals) assigned to them. Since there are three types of minor scales—natural, melodic, and harmonic—the thing that makes them different are their intervals. The natural minor scale degrees compared to the major (C Natural Minor compared to C Major) would be

C Major:   C D E F G A B C
Intervals: 1  2 3 4 5  6 7  8

C Natural Minor: C D Eb F Gb Ab B C
Intervals:              1 2  b3 4  5   b6 b7 8

The natural minor has flattened 3rd, 6th and 7th notes compared to the major.

C Major:   C D E F G A B C
Intervals: 1  2 3 4 5  6 7  8

C Harmonic Minor: C D Eb F G Ab B C
Intervals:                 1  2 b3 4  5  b6 7  8

The harmonic minor has flattened 3rd and 6th notes.

C Major:   C D E F G A B C
Intervals: 1  2 3 4 5  6 7  8

C Melodic Minor: C D Eb F G A B C
Intervals:              1  2 b3 4 5  6 7  8

The melodic minor has only a flattened 3rd note, however that is only when going up the scale. Going down the scale, the melodic minor is the same as the natural minor.

Here is the most common natural minor scale pattern that I use, the tonic notes filled in.

Practice makes perfect.

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Each of the previously mentioned CAGED method chord shapes has a corresponding major scale pattern, that include all of the notes played in the different chord shapes.

The most common of these patterns is the fourth one, the root notes being the ones that are filled in. The root notes are where you start the scale, the key of the scale depending on the root note started on. Although the 4th pattern (E chord shape) is the most common, while the other patterns are helpful if the root note is not always on the low E string.

Scales are essentially what melody lines are created from. Try listening to your favourite songs and identifying which key it is in by which notes in the scale are used. Take the most familiar pattern (number 4) and try and find the key of the song. Looking at our first lessons, we can see that once you find the key, you can find which chords are in the song, and in no time flat you should be able to identify either the melody line, or the chord progression.

Practice some solo improvising using the notes in the scale patterns over its corresponding chord or a simple chord progression. Sometimes you can stay in the same scale pattern throughout a chord progression, while other times you might need to switch scale patterns to the corresponding chord.

The best way to practice these scales is just to play them over and over and over and over again. Work on hitting each note cleanly before ever trying to build up speed.

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I had another lesson this week with my teacher, this time getting a little more in depth with some chord patterns. I learned that there are five different chord patterns that when shifted up and down the fretboard they become another chord. These different patterns allow you to keep lateral fretboard movement to a minimum, essentially maximizing your playing speed.

The five chord types are as follows: C chord pattern, A chord pattern, G chord pattern, E, and then D. Each of these chord patterns is either based on a root note on the low E or A string, which is why it was essential—as mentioned in previous lessons—to memorize the notes on those two strings. These chord patterns are often called the CAGED method, and are very helpful if you want to play either the same chords in different positions on the fretboard, or different chords in the same relative 4-fret region.

If we start off by taking our open C chord shape—where our root note (C) is on the A-string, 3^rd fret—we can slide that same shape up our fretboard, and depending what note on the A-string we are on, that will determine the chord. However, when you slide the C chord shape up, you must barre the bottom 3 strings with your index finger and use the other ones to finger the C chord shape. So it would go from:

Open C chord shape

0
1
0
2
3
X

To

C#

1
2
1
3
4
X

And so on, all the way up the fretboard—the chord depending on which note on the A string you are on.

Moving on to the open A chord shape:

0
2
2
2
0
X

Which would shift up the fretboard to

A#

1
3
3
3
1
X

And so on, all the way up the fretboard—the chord depending on which note on the A string you are on.

The A chord shape is also known as your “powerchord” shape, where you only play the notes of the chord that are on the A,D,G strings.

The open G chord shape is:

3
0
0
0
2
3

And would shift up the fretboard to

G#

4
1
1
1
3
4

And so on, all the way up the fretboard—the chord depending on which note on the E string you are on. This shape is a tricky one to accomplish as you have to barre the middle strings while forming the G shape with your first, middle, and pinky finger.

The open E chord shape is

0
0
1
2
2
0

And would shift up the fretboard to

F

1
1
2
3
3
1

And so on, all the way up the fretboard—the chord depending on which note on the E string you are on. This chord shape is also known as a “barre” chord.

And finally, the D chord shape is

2
3
2
0
X
X

And would shift up the fretboard to

D#

3
4
3
(1)
X
X

This time, the root note depends on where you are playing on the D string, or also, the root note can be found two frets down, and on the low E string.

To practice these different chord shapes, I took a single chord, and tried to find the five positions on the fretboard to play it. When you know which chord shape you are in, the next shape moving up the fretboard is the next letter in our CAGED acronym.

For example, with the C chord. Starting with your open C chord, the next C chord up the fretboard would be the A shape. This A shape is two frets up from the first shape, the root note found on the 3^rd fret on the A string. (This was also the same fret for our root note in our open C chord, and is the note that starts each chord shape.)

The next shape where the C chord is found on the fretboard would be the G shape, now using the low E string for finding the root note. This would be on the 8^th fret of the low E string.

The next chord shape would be the E chord shape. Once again, the root note for the E chord shape is found on the low E string, and is actually the same root note as for the G shape—the 8^th fret on the low E string.

The next shape is the D shape, which can be tricky to find. The D shape chord’s root note is based on the B string note. The root note on the B string is actually 5 frets higher than the root note on the low E string that was previously played in the E chord shape.

Once I knew and recognized how to play a C chord in all five positions, I moved on to another chord and learned the positions. Breaking it up into pieces helped me learn it easier, instead of trying to find all the different chords in all the positions at once.

No matter which chord position you are in, the C-A-G-E-D pattern is a continuous loop. This means that if you are playing a G chord in an E chord pattern, the next pattern up the fretboard would be a D chord shape, then a C shape and so on. This also works going down the fretboard. If you are playing a F# in a G chord pattern, the next pattern going down the fretboard would be an A pattern, then a C shape, and then a D shape, and so on.

Check out this blog for any more help or clarity with the CAGED system here.

For a visual aid on the CAGED method, check out this video.

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