Guitar Today

Happy Halloween From Guitar Today! Halloween is pretty much my favorite day of the year. When else can you dress like your favorite death metal band and walk around without getting funny looks from people? Everything about Halloween is a treat for the eyes. Another great thing about Halloween is the creepy music it inspires. It’s the time of year when metal , swing and rockabilly bands prevail over the others as they have the most suitable tunes for everyone to play.

This halloween, take the Halloween party by storm by learning to play a couple Halloween classics. We’re going to link you up to either the tabs or the chords of these fit to fit halloween themed tunes.

Monster Mash - The epitome of halloween songs.

Werewolves of london - Zevon Warren - Awwooooo

Feed my frankenstien - Alice Cooper

Bark at the moon - Ozzy Osbourne

I’m your boogyman - White Zombie

I’d love to hear about some of your favorite halloween songs to play for your friends at parties.

October has been a productive month. We got through all the major chords and even squeezed in some basic theory. I hope to see everyone back on Monday to get November rolling in full swing right away. Until then, carve those pumpkins, dress up in the scariest thing you can find (try raiding your grandmother’s closet) and watch out for spooks. Have fun trick or treating!

The hit song by Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen has been covered and recovered over and over by many different artists. It is said to have taken him over a year to write and went through about 80 verses before settling on the ones we heard in the 1984 release of the song.

 In the section of the first verse that is as follows “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift..” the guitar chords actually move as the lyrics describe. The fourth refers to F, the fifth to G, the minor fall (Am) and the major lift (F). The minor falland the major lift simply refers to the pitch of the melody ‘falling’ to a minor chord, and then ‘lifting’ to a major chord (F). With the fourth and the fifth Cohen is referring to the fourth and fifth of a C major scale.

The general format for scales is as follows:

 I Tonic
II Super tonic
III Mediant
IV sub- dominant
V dominant
VI submediant
VII sub tonic or leading tone

and this goes for any scale. So in the C scale, The subdominant fourth is F and the dominant fifth is G.

Learn to play Hallelujah with chords and tablature.

Well the reviews for Guitar Hero world tour are out and the unanimous decision seems to be that it is somewhat lacking in comparison to its’ copycat Rock Band. Guitar Hero is a multi platform game that plays a lot like Simon with more graphics and guitar shaped controllers. If you had to read that previous sentence you may have been living under a rock on mars with your eyes shut and your fingers stuck into your ears for the last few months. Welcome back to Earth. Not a gamer myself, but the subject matter of this game suits the subject matter of this blog.

The latest version of the game includes drums and vocals, much like the previous version of Rock Band, a somewhat late to the party game that is similar in popularity and gameplay style.

In Kokatu’s Frankenreview of the game, he ponders if Activision has managed to beat Guitar Hero at their own game with Rock Band. It is cleverly called a Frankenreview because it mixes the combined reviews from IGN, BoomTown, TeamXBox and others who all seem to be equally dissapointed with the overblown release of Guitar Hero World Tour.

Honestly, I never got the big hoo-ha with any of these games. I’ve played guitar almost (or possibly over) 10 years and I can barely manage to play this game in co-operative mode or even as a lowly bassist (my apologies to Matt Freeman, Les Claypool and Roger Waters for the term lowly, I hold each of you in higher regard than most of my friends).

Although I do find it intriguing that one company(Activision) was smart enough to see more potential in a a good concept and take it (from Red Octane) furtheronly to have their improvements mimicked by the original.

In the first major chords installment we looked at the main G,C,D chords, then we had a look at the open guitar chords E and A in part 2. In this third and final installment on major chords we will be looking at the last two major guitar chords. They are the B and F guitar chords. These chords require slightly more finger dexterity and strength.

B major

The B chord requires a technique called ‘barring’. Barring is using one finger to cover a fret on multiple. In the case of B you need to cover the first and last strings of the chord meaning your index finger must barre the entire width of the neck starting from the fifth string. You will need to press down extra hard and anchor with your wrists to do this. Place your index finger on the second fret of the fifth string, ring finger on the fourth fret of the third string, then place your pinky finger on the fourth fret of the second string.

F Major

To play the F major guitar chord, place your index finger across the first frets of the second and first strings, your middle finger on the second fret of the third string and your ring finger on the third fret of the fourth string. For this chord your index finger is somewhat barring the beck as your need to place it flat on the two first guitar strings.

When you have gotten past the single notes contained on each of the six strings on a guitar, you are likely ready to move on to chords. Instead of ‘plucking’ single strings at a time, with chords you will be strumming. Strumming is plucking all the strings in unison either by striking them all at once from top to bottom or bottom to top. When you strum from top to bottom, it is called an downstrum, when you strum from bottom to top, it is called a upstrum.

If you only played downstrokes or only upstrokes, your chord progressions would probably sound pretty boring.That is why there are many patterns that you can vary your chord strokes in. Once you have been playing a while it gets easier and more natural to simply sense these pattern. To begin, we’ll look at some easy ones.

Here are some strumming patterns that you can use along with most of the demonstrations and exercises on this website. Use the / symbol to indicate downstrokes and the \ symbol for upstrokes. The demo is also timed for you counting four beats. Tap your foot four times for each bar and strum accordingly to how many strums equal a beat.

$ D D U D U D | D D U D U D

G/ / \ / \ / C / / \ / \ /

1  2  3  4     1 2   3 4

In yesterday’s post we covered the G,C, and D, major guitar chords. Today we will look at two major chords which are also known as open chords chords. They are also extremely easy to play. E major and A major are a little bit tricky because the major and minor versions of the chords form opposing chord shapes. Where E major resembles an A minor on the first string, A major resembles an E minor on the fifth.

E major - The E major chord is as low as you can go on a standard tuned guitar. E is also agreat chord to play a guitar solo to because you have the most distance across the fretboard to work with as it is the first and among the last of the notes on the board. To play the E major chord place your index finger on the first fret of the third string, your ring finger on the second fret of the fourth string, your middle finger on the second fret of the fifth string and leave the sixth string open. Strum at will.

A major - The A major is a very easy guitar chord to learn. To play the A major chord place your index finger on the second fret of the fourth string, your middle finger on the second fret of the third string, and your ring finger on (you guessed it) the second fret of the second string.

The above demo uses the E, A and D major, which is also sometimes considered an open chord. The next two major chords are C and B which get into a slightly more difficult fingering position. But first we’ll be having a look atsome strumming patterns you can use for these examples.