Team Method Guitar
Team Method Guitar is a guitar course put together and taught by a team of guitar experts. They have specialists for acoustic, lead, theory and many more areas. By using a team approach the guitar player learns a variety of methods and styles and doesn't pick up bad habits or any one particular style.
Team Method Guitar is also a MASSIVE course. There are six books with almost 500 pages of information, 10 DVDs and CDs with video lessons and play along jam tracks, several mini courses covering playing by ear and acoustic guitar, and several software games to speed learning.
You shouldn't confuse Team Method Guitar with other guitar sites that offer lessons and tips from different teachers. TMG is definitely a GUITAR COURSE, not just random tips and tricks.
Perhaps the most impressive thing among some very impressive features of this course is that Team Method Guitar offers students live support. In fact you can talk online with the actual team members who helped put the course together. In this day of impersonal internet marketing this personal touch is in itself amazing.
Team Method Guitar is the Rolls Royce of guitar courses. It's hard to imagine anything that these guys have left out. About the only negative is that being the top end of the market means that this course isn't cheap, but you certainly get your money's worth, and if money is an issue they also offer a less-expensive downloadable version.
If you are serious about learning to play guitar then you really must consider Team Method Guitar. In my opinion it's a "10".
By the way, what's the hardest thing about how to play the guitar? It's getting started! You need to take action and begin. If you want to do it...then do it!
Here then are a few lessons to get you started.
Guitar Lesson One - Getting Started
Sitting
Positions
There are two sitting positions for holding
the guitar; classical and casual.
1. Pick up the guitar and make sure that
the guitar body is supported by your leg.
2. Position yourself at the edge of your chair.
3. Ensure that your back is relaxed but straight.
4. Lean the guitar back towards you slightly.
Standing Position
1. Pick up the guitar and place the strap over your shoulder.
Adjust the strap so that the guitar is positioned mid-body.
2. Use your left hand to support the neck of the guitar.
3. Rest your right hand over the bridge of the guitar.
Hand Positions
It is important that you relax your wrists
and hands. Straining them can cause injury.
Front View
Rear View
Warning! Make sure that you never
position your hand like this:
Your thumb should never be placed this
low on the neck of the guitar as it puts
unneccessary strain on your wrist and thumb.
Fretting
When you play the guitar, you use your left hand fingers to press
down the strings on the fret board of the guitar and use your right
hand to pluck or strum the stings at the bridge end of the guitar.
Using your left hand to press the strings on the fret board is called
fretting. Here are some tips you will need to know:
1. Short fingernails are essential.
2. Use only the tips of your fingers to press the strings.
3. When making a chord, be sure that each fingertip is placed directly
behind the fret.
We will cover chords in lesson one.
4. Check each string that it rings clearly and is not muted or buzzing.
As a beginner guitarist, it may hurt your fingers to play. This
is normal. Every guitarist starts this way for the first couple
of weeks. With practice, you will develop guitar fingers (hard skin
on your fingertips).
Holding the Pick
Position the pick between thumb and index fingers like in the diagram
below:
Time to take a break. Well done, you've just completed the first
part of this lesson. Next you are about to learn about chords
and by the end of this lesson you'll have learnt the A Major chord.
Don't forget, for the ultimate guitar learning kit which includes
step-by-step written lessons, video lessons, audio lessons and sophisticated
software games, visit www.team-method-guitar.com
Now you are ready to start your first lesson.
Your aim in this lesson is to learn the A and D major chords and
to introduce yourself to reading guitar tablature. This lesson is
very important, so I want you to really focus.
Remember! It is more beneficial for you to practice
multiple times during a week than to practice for one long session.
This is because your brain processes information in chunks at a
time and it can only hold a certain amount in short term storage.
For example, with phone numbers, it is very difficult to remember
any more than 7 digits at a time. Yet if you give yourself time
between practicing, even if it is just 10 minutes, you’ll
find that your brain is much more efficient at turning your short
term practice into long term knowledge. More information on effective
learning is contained in our Team Method Guitar course.
Ok. That aside, let’s get started on the lesson. To start
with, I want you to have a look at the guitar neck diagram below
and make note of all the relevant pieces of information.
Frets
The guitar neck is divided into what we call frets, making a
fret board. Most guitars have around 20 frets. In this first
book, we will focus on the first four, also known as the first
position. In book 2, we will move beyond that. Notice that we
number each fret starting at 1 at the head of the guitar.
Note: Each string on the guitar is numbered. When
you hold your guitar as you would when using the casual playing
position, the 1st string is at the bottom and the 6th string is
at the top.
Notice also the term, ‘Tuning’ at the bottom of the
above diagram. Tuning refers to the notes that the guitar strings
are tuned to. In the above diagram, I have given a very common tuning
called standard E tuning that consists of the notes E, A, D, G and
B. Strings 1 and 6 are both tuned to the note E. The open 6th string
is called low E. The open 1st string is called high E as it is two
octaves higher than the 6th string open E. I will explain notes
and octaves to you in a later lesson, but for now, you only
need to know the names of the notes in standard open E tuning.
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Guitar Lesson Two- Tuning Your Guitar to Itself
The first step is to get your fifth string in tune with your sixth string. Place a finger on your left hand on the fifth fret of the sixth string. The note that you are holding down is the pitch that string five should be tuned to. Keep your finger in position and pluck the sixth string and let that note ring. As you let the sixth string ring, pluck the fifth string. If the fifth string sounds exactly like the note you are holding on the sixth string, it is in tune. If it is higher, you need to tune down below the note on the sixth string and then bring it back up to match with the fifth fret note on the sixth string. If the fifth string note is lower, you need to tighten the string and bring its pitch up to the fifth fret note on the sixth string. It may take you a while to match pitches exactly but the more practice you get at this, the faster you will be able to do it.
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Guitar Lesson Three - How to Read Guitar Tablature
In the full Team Method Guitar course, both standard musical notation and TAB are used. But for this six day course we will only use TAB. The reason for this is that TAB is very easy to read and you should have no problems learning TAB in a few short minutes of reading.
TAB has some weak points, the worst of which is that rhythm can't be easily indicated. This shouldn't pose a problem though, as I will indicate the rhythm for each exercise using the strum indicators that were introduced in lesson one.
OK. To start I want you to look at your guitar and you will clearly see that it has six strings going from thickest to thinniest. On a TAB diagram, the thickest (or 6th string) is at the bottom, and the thinnest string, (or 1st string as its most commonly called) is at the top. This is clearly demonstrated in the 1st example below.
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Guitar Lesson Four - How to Read Guitar Tablature Continued
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Guitar Lesson Five - Introduction to Chord Progressions
To answer this, we need to look at root notes as they are the base that chords are built upon. If we take the notes of a scale and number them from 1 to 8, you will find movements between notes 1, 4 and 5 consistently sound better and stronger than between any other number. Let's take a look at a scale (for learning purposes we will use the C Major Scale):
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