Did I mention REQUESTS?

You guys--did I ever mention you can totally make song requests here? Any song you want to learn, just let me know and I'll post a video on how to play it; I love figuring out songs and how to teach them, so any requests you want to make just go for it!

I don't care if it has no guitar; whether it's hip hop or top 40 hits or electronica or polka or anything else. If you want to learn it, I can figure it out and teach it. Just post your requests here and I'll get started!

Basic (Tree) Chords

IT'S FINALLY HERE! The video teaching you your basic chords! HOW CAN YOU CONTAIN YOUSELF!? Again, I may make this shorter and repost it in the future time. I realize there's a cliffhanger ending, and the D major will be revealed in another post.

And here's a chord chart! I had  to custom make it since lot of people don't teach chords like I teach Tree Chords. Maybe that's a bad thing? I'll put up some videos for basic ones soon.

HOW TO READ: Envision the guitar vertically. The double horizontal line is the nut, while the 6 vertical lines are your strings (E, A, G, D, B, e from left to right). The rest of the horizontal lines are frets, the dots are where your fingers go. The numbers at the bottom tell you which fingers to use. "0" means don't fret that string and let it ring open, while "X" means don't strum that string and don't let it ring.

Eventually by David Tamaoka (well...most of it)

This one is mainly for Jess, since she's working on incorporating scales into her playing and this song specificially. But, if anyone else feels ready, try this yourself! It's a gorgeous song.

And here's the actual song for reference. Keep in mind, he's using a capo and possibly a chord that isn't E minor for the verse, but the way we're learning it works just fine too! I may repost a better lesson on this in future.

The G major Scale!

Hey guys! This one is mainly for Ryan and Jess who're both working on scales right now, but as always you're all welcome to work on this! I'm thinking about making these a little shorter, so keep an eye out for expedited versions of these videos.

It's the G major scale, and it's really easy! It's in open position, and if you learn it you can play Eventually by David Tamaoka! Keep the proper fretting of notes in mind, and always GO SLOW.

Fretting Finale!

Here's what didn't make it into the first video:

Fretting notes...getting cut off by crappy software

Here's the first of many technique videos I'll be posting for you guys to review outside of lessons. The quality isn't great and the audio acts a little funny, but they'll get better as I get the hang of this. I also don't have video editing software so bear with me on the weird stuff =) it just kind of happens. But you take lessons so you knew that anyways.

This one is on basic note playing, but it got cut off. The rest of it will be posted once I figure out how to work around my hard/software limitations.

Enjoy!

Andantino in G two ways

One more for Joan:

I just wanted to post these to keep you motivated; it's two videos of two people playing the same piece: Andantino in G by Ferdinando Carulli. It's one of the first full pieces I ever learned, and might be your first too! It's very pretty and fairly easy.

Andantino is actually an Italian tempo marking, and 'G' refers to the key the piece is written in; G Major to be exact. But there are a bunch of pieces in beginning classical guitar literature that seem to be named after the tempo markings andantino and andante. I'm not sure why that is.

Anyways, pay attention to how each person plays the piece. Try to ignore the reverb that the second man with the fancy robot microphone uses, and just pay attention to how each person plays. Put any thoughts in the comments, and we'll talk about it next week.

Good luck with getting the guitar situation squared away!