Hey guys, with Christmas coming soon, I thought it would be cool to share with you one of the most beautiful Christmas Carol called “O Holy Night.”
In this fingerstyle arrangement, we will take a look at O Holy Night played in the key of G major. I did my best to arrange the song as simple as possible. I am not sure, though, whether we could call this arrangement easy or not.
The rhythm and the chords are pretty basic without too many harmonic and melodic embellishments. Christmas is in a month, so I was going with something that would be easy-ish to play.
As you will see, most of the notes of the melody are played within the chords. The G major key is perfect for this song as we can benefit from playing simple and familiar chords.
The tab is written in 6/8 (six notes per measure) in what we call a “waltz-feel” tempo. However, the song is mostly played with “Free tempo.” This way of playing allows you to interpret the song without following a steady rhythm. Free tempo is also known as “Rubato” or “Stolen Time.”
In this guitar lesson, I will show you how to take basic chords to the next level. I call these chords the “No Pain No Gain” chord because they are beautiful and very challenging.
There are two things that we can do to transform a chord from basic to advanced:
Make the chord harmonically more challenging.
Make the chord technically more challenging.
In this lesson, we will explore both of them. As you will see, as we add more notes to the chords, the chord shapes will inevitably become more challenging to play.
One of my favorite chords in this lesson is the lovely Cmaj7 chord played with a not quite simple shape.
In this guitar lesson, I will show you how to play a lovely neo-soul chord progression in the key of D minor.
We will explore the Min7 chords and learn how to add rhythm and a melody to the chords.
In this neo-soul chord progression, we will be using a simple fingerpicking pattern to play the chords. The goal is to diversify the tone and rhythm of the chord progression.
The melody will be played between the chords. As the chord progression is in D minor, we will wisely select the notes from the D natural minor scale to create a simple and unique neo-soul melody on the guitar.
The neo-soul chord progression is this one: Gm7 | Am7 | Dm7 | Dm9.
The Min7 and Min9 are some of the most popular neo-soul chords. Once you learn this chord progression, use the concepts you learned to create your music.
Don’t just copy the chords; instead, use this lesson to learn new chords that you can use to compose your music.
Hey guys, in this fingerstyle guitar lesson, I will show you how to play a lovely Spanish chord progression in the key of D minor.
The most popular Spanish chord progression is the i VII VI V in the minor key. If we play these chords in the key of D minor, we will have the D minor chord, the C major, the Bb major, and the A major.
Each chord can then be changed into more colorful chords. For example, we can change the C major chord into a Cadd9 or the Bb major into a Bb major #11.
The fingerpicking technique will then be able to add a lovely rhythmic pattern to the chords.
This Spanish chord progression can be played in many different ways. I recommend that you learn the one I show you in this video and then try to come up with your version.
Hey guys, welcome to another fingerpicking guitar lesson. Today I am going to show you how to play a lovely fingerstyle melody in A major.
The melody was written over the last couple of days while chilling on my couch. As a result, the melody sounds quite relaxing, positive, and bluesy.
Different musical elements can make this melody challenging at first. The rhythm and the thumb-slap technique, to mention a few. For this reason, we will take things step-by-step and begin by learning the chord progression.
The chords are pretty simple and beautiful to play: A Amaj7 Bm E7 E9 A Bm E.
Once you familiarize yourself with the chords, you will then add the melody and, eventually, the thumb-slap technique.
There are a lot of different ways to embellish a chord. One of the easiest ways is to move one of the notes of the chord up or down.
You can listen to this approach in the instrumental I played at the beginning of the video. I was able to transform the simple G major chord into something more interesting, rhythmic, and melodic.
In this example, I am moving the 3rd of the chord down to the 2nd and back to the 3rd. This way of embellishing the chord is simple but very effective.
We will use this approach on three major chords and one minor chord.
The embellishment always occurs in the same place, so once we know the interval structure of the chord, we can easily apply the same concept to the other chords of the key.
In this video, I am using my electric guitar PRS Single Cut Trem. I am going through the Line6 Helix amp and speaker simulation. I am also using a compressor, reverb, and delay.
You don’t have to have the same gear. Just bear in mind that the reverb and delay help sustain the chords a lot, so if you can, add some to your guitar. Any reverb and delay, as well as any other pedalboard or plugin, would do just fine.
As always, take it, step-by-step guys.
Enjoy the lesson.
Sometimes, a simple melody can tell more than a hundred notes.
In this fingerstyle lesson, I want to show you how to play and interpret a melody in A minor.
The goal is to show you a bunch of expressive tools that you can use to make anything that you play more musical and expressive.
Of course, with a simple melody such as the one we will learn today, it will be pretty easy to apply these expressive tools. However, you can try to use them in other chord progressions and melodies.
We will talk about the vibrato and ritenuto technique and a thumb technique that will help you emphasize the notes of the melody.
Hey guys, in this electric guitar lesson, I will show you a lovely chord progression in the key of B minor.
I am finally back playing some electric guitar, so I thought I would share with you the things I am currently playing to get my technique back to a decent level.
This chord progression is beneficial for many different reasons:
Great for the picking hand. The picking pattern forces you to move across different strings.
Interesting rhythm. The pattern is played over a group of 3+3+2 notes.
Captivating chords. The chord progression in B minor works great with open strings.
In this lesson, I am using my electric guitar PRS Single Cut Trem. I am plugging in the audio interface Universal Audi,o and I used a Marshall Plexy plugin set up with a very low gain.
Strumming is one of the most popular guitar technique along with fingerstyle. With the strumming, you can brush the strings rhythmically to play chords.
It’s a very intuitive technique, and so many of us started playing the guitar by strumming simple chords.
When we start learning guitar, we are told to strum the strings with a guitar pick. You hold it between the thumb and index, and you strum up and down.
Using the pick is fantastic, and it works all the time. However, today I want to show you how to diversify this technique by strumming with the fingers.
The sound and tone of your fingers are very different than a guitar pick, so once you master this technique, you can decide when and in which song use it.
This lesson aims to show you how to get started with strumming without a guitar pick.
We will be mainly using six strings chords so that we can control the strings better.
