Here is a lesson from Steve Krenz with Gibson’s Learn & Master Guitar.  It is a lesson from his monthly video Newsletter on how to get more out of simple chord progressions.

He starts the lesson by taking a look at a very simple open chord progression of D Major, G Major and A Major.  If you have been playing guitar for a little while now, chances are you have played this chord progressions many times in the basic open position.  How about trying something different with basic chords today?

For starters, we could take the same open D Major chord but instead of playing all of the strings in this chord, try playing just the top 3 notes.  For the next chord in the progression, the G Major, you would do the same thing by starting with a G Major Barre Chord shape but only playing the top 3 notes, same with the A Major.  Steve will demonstrate this in the video lesson below.

Another variation, on the same chord progression, would be to sort of arpeggiate the notes of each chord. This is just a fancy word for playing the notes of the chord one at a time as opposed to strumming the notes all at once.

Instead of playing the top notes of the chords in this chord progression, you could reverse it and play the bottom portion of the chords and rock it out with some power chords.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as chord variations are concerned. There is much more you can do and Steve will demonstrate this in the video lesson below.  Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0jfbOy0JPo

A really big thanks to Steve Krenz and the folks over at Legacy Learning Systems for providing this free video lesson.  If you haven’t already taken a look at Gibson’s Learn & Master Guitar, then I highly recommend you consider doing so today!

Winner of the 2008 Acoustic Guitar Magazine Players’ Choice Awards, two Telly Awards and an AEGIS Award for Excellence in Education, Learn & Master Guitar is widely recognized as the best home instruction course for learning guitar available anywhere. It consists of 20 professionally produced DVDs, 5 Jam-Along CDs, a 100+ page lesson book, and a free online student support site.  It is the only instructional package you’ll ever need on your journey toward mastery of the guitar. All you provide is the practice!  I personally own this course and feel it is one of the best home study courses for learning how to play guitar on the market today and it is entirely taught by Steve Krenz, the gentleman in the video above.

Check out my review of Gibsons Learn and Master Guitar here for more information.

If you have any questions about the course before ordering, I will do my best to answer any questions that you may have.  You can drop me an email by using this contact form.  This course is extremely affordable when you consider how much private lessons cost.  It will also save you a ton of time as you won’t have to scour the Internet searching for beginner lessons. Everything you need to know in order to become the guitar player of your dreams is in this course.

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By Ricky Sharples

Guitar chord progressions are like baby brothers – you cannot escape from them and they take some explaining. Let us do some analysis on the term “guitar chord progressions”. In case you did not know, any time two or more notes are played, this is referred to as a “chord”. You probably know that certain guitar chords sound good together. These are called guitar chord “families”. Guitar chord “progressions” are certain sequences of chords that sound so good together that they are used as the musical basis of songs.

Chord progressions are derived from musical scales like C D E F G A B C. This is the C major scale which is used very often in music. It is just a sequence of notes with no sharps or flats which makes it easy to use to teach music students the principles of music. When we study chord progressions we think of these letters as chords instead of single notes. If we number the chords from one to seven we can work in a practical way with the chords in any key because the basic principles are the same.

If we write out the chords as numbers we have the problem of getting the numbers denoting the chords confused with numbers that are used in the names of the chords. If we are working with the chord B7 we do not want to have to stop and think what “77″ means so we use Roman numerals to number the chords. That way B7 is named VII7. To a newbie that might still be confusing but it is a good way of fixing the problem.

So, now the chords are named I II III IV V VI VII. To save us from getting too bogged down in musical theory, let us take some simple ideas for granted. First, in any key the chord that the key is named after is always the I chord. So now you can go back and look at the notes in the C major scale and check out the new names of all the notes. Not that it will mean much yet.

Another thing we are going to take for granted is that I IV and V are the three most important chords in the scale. When you learn a song or instrumental piece, the chances are that you will be starting the song with the I chord and when you end the song, the chord you finish on is also the I chord. There are exceptions but there is no need to go looking for them. So we can take that fact for granted.

That is all the basic theory we need to learn guitar chord progressions without blundering around like an elephant in an outhouse. There is more you could learn but we are more concerned with playing the chords than explaining them. Now we can take a look at the some chord progressions. The most common progression you will come across as a guitar player is I IV V. You will find these chords referred to in music theory as “tonic” “subdominant” and “dominant”.

You have probably heard that pop musicians only know three chords. This may or may not be true but they do mostly work with one chord progression consisting of three chords. The main variations come when for effect the composer or interpreter of a song might use the V7 or IV7 chords.

This chord progression is the basis of almost all pop, blues and rock songs. Many songwriters have made departures from this basic progression and jazz musicians have long ago abandoned sticking to this, or any basic form.

So there you have your basic chord progression for modern popular music. Other progressions that you could benefit from experimenting with are: I IV I V, I IV V IV, I V VI IV, I V IV V, I VI II V and I VI IV V.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

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Here are the chords you will need to know in order to play these chord progressions:

A Major, A Minor, C Major, D Major, D Minor, E Major, E Minor and G Major

If you are not sure how to play the above chords, click the links below for lessons on how to play each chord:

A Major, A Minor, C Major, D Major, D Minor, E Major, E Minor, G Major

I have also included videos below which demonstrate how to play these chords.

A big thanks to Justin Sandercoe for sharing this great video lessons.  Justin is an exceptional guitar teacher.  You should definitely check out his Website when you have time for more awesome lessons like the ones below.

The A & E Chords:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf_9ygMjaJ8

The D Chord:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsikHXIkk7g

The A Minor, E Minor, D Minor, C, G

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ7YMK1JpS4

Watch the videos above and practice those chords first. Then start practicing the chord progressions below.

For the chord progressions, strum each chord 4 times with a down up down up strumming pattern. Or you can take a look at a post I put together on strumming patterns to make these chord progressions a bit more challenging.  Go very slow in the beginning so that you will be able to change chords smoothly and accurately.

You can test and see if you are playing each chord accurately by playing one string at a time on the chord. If you hear any buzzing , or if any of the notes sound muted, you are either not pressing down hard enough, or one of your fingers or your hand is touching another string.

Here are the Chord Progressions:

G -- C -- D -- G

G -- Am -- D -- G

D -- G -- A -- D

D -- C -- G -- D

D -- E Minor -- A -- D

C -- Dm -- G -- C

E -- D -- A -- E

I know this all seems very difficult in the beginning, and it may seem that way for some time.  The most important thing to remember is to never give up.

Eventually your hands will become stronger, your chords will sound cleaner and your chord changes will become faster.

Enjoy and Happy Guitar Playing!