Free Guitar Video Lessons

OK, you've learnt a few songs, a few chords, you have some familiarity with the concept of scales, where do you go from here? Do you want to be out front leading he band? Are you attracted by the glory? Does the idea of picking up a guitar and playing a riff or a melody that's never been heard before appeal to you?
If you want to create the music start with the a basic five note scale shape called the pentatonic scale. The major pentatonic scale is a good one to start with. It contains only whole notes (no semitones): C D E G A. Not only does this scale have notes, it also has the material you need to practice with to develop your physical relationship with your instrument. That's right - practice a simple scale on a regular basis, get to know it, get to know yourself, the way your fingers work.
Working with this pentatonic scale shape in different positions on the fretboard will open up the possibility of playing improvised guitar solos in many keys over any song. Experiment a little with your favorite songs. Find out what key a song is in and fool around with your scale shape in that key.
Another thing you need to work on to be a lead guitar player is getting a collection of well-known licks and breaks together to use as a basis for writing your own material. It's your choice - use Smoke On The Water or Twinkle, Twinkle - either one will start you off on a career as a lead guitarist.
One tool which will help you to train your ear to recognise what key a song you want to learn is in is the AP Guitar Tuner. It's free to download to your computer, and if you have it open while a song is playing on your computer, it will show you what notes are being played.
These video guitar lessons will explain more about scale shapes.

Here's a link to two free guitar video lessons: A free video guitar lesson from Brad Henecke - "Blues and Scales" featuring rock, blues, and scales - And a free video guitar lesson from Steve Eulberg - "Introduction to Finger Picking".
Both lessons come courtesy of Jamplay

Here is another page of free video guitar lessons featuring lessons on Barre Chords, Open String Names, Hammer Ons, Tuning Your Guitar, Bluegrass Licks, Finger Tapping, Chromatic Passing, Tremelo Picking. There are also lessons on learning these songs: Back In Black, Cowboys From Hell, Cat Scratch Fever and Under The Bridge.

A testimonial for Jamplay
(Wished to be Anonymous)- 6/2/2007"Comments after a few days. Signing up was easy -- didn't have any problems. Actually, I put in my credit card number wrong at first, but it was all setup to try it again, so that went smoothly. I like that it went right to creating my profile and then right to the main page of jamplay -- felt like it was guiding me through things. The layout of the site is awesome: I instantly knew what I needed to click on to go where...
In all honesty, I like everything about jamplay and can think of nothing I don't like. The layout of the site makes complete sense 2 seconds after you see it. The video quality is high. I use the progress bar for the lessons to see where I left off and what I need to work more on. The few times I've thought "I could use this", I looked and it was there (like when I was wishing I had a diagram of a chord Steve was using, and it was there in the page below the video or in the suplimental section). Even the price seems great: $20 a month seems more then fair for what's offered."

Another testimonial for Jamplay
Kristofer Hamrick (3/10/2007)"It's like nothing I've ever encountered as far as it's content is concerned. Just this morning I went into a music store and somehow I ended up on the "musical instruction DVD" aisle only to become suddenly more grateful for the site's existence. For music+text combos about 90 minutes in length and with focus on a single style of music they were asking about 40$. Compare that you JamPlay's 4 instructors, each with hours of instruction and pages of printable reference material, encompassing all the essential genres for less than half that; I can't help but feel like I got a f***ing deal."

It looks like many people believe that practice is the principal thing involved in studying guitar playing. that kind of makes sense but once you have gained a little bit of experience you will find that practice is just one of many elements of the guitar playing landscape. To be a guitar player you also have to have the ability to plan ahead and you need patience and persistence to put your plan into action. Too much philosophizing and daydreaming is not good when you need to fool your day or part thereof with practice.

But don't make the mistake of being so patient that you never actually get around to doing anything. And don't be so persistent that your guitar practice becomes a rigid ritual rather than a joyful exploration. It is true that practicing the guitar is a discipline, but for all that, it can be fun.

Write your plan down and put it somewhere where you will see it's often.

Originally guitar slides were made from the necks of bottles or the blades of knives but nowadays you just go into a guitar shop and buy a metal or glass cylinder that you slip onto your finger and that immediately changes your status to slide guitar player. But you could take into account that a homemade slide will give you a rep for being an innovator . . . get the rest of the video lesson on slide guitar at How To Use A Guitar Slide