Starting a Band part 1: the Guitar

In this lesson, Matt teaches some guitar basics and shows how you can easily begin playing with your friends using a guitar and a bass. You will learn a little about how a song is constructed and the difference between open and barred chords. Matt will show you some features of the guitar to help you navigate while you are playing. To teach you how to play with other instruments, Matt also introduces the bass guitar to his friend, Andy, who has never played. With just three simple chords and notes, A, E, and B minor, Matt and Andy begin playing Louis, Louis. It's easy to learn how to play with other people!

I am a guitar player and in a band. I am here to teach you lessons about how to play the guitar and how to start a band.

Excellent Basic Guitar/Bass

06/01/2007

~ gleingo

I thought this was an excellent lesson for me. I have been teaching myself to play and have a basic knowledge of open chords. Matt put more into teaching me how song are built and how to make barre chords. I feel more comfortable around my friends, when we sit down and jam.

I feel like I could start playing already!

03/22/2007

~ matt

This lesson is really great, I was amazed at how easy it was to start playing a song and felt like I could easily get to playing with a friend.

The shots of the fingerwork on the frets are really helpful. Thanks and I'm looking forward to part 2!

Love this concept to learning guitar and Matt i...

03/11/2007

~ Jason

In this lesson, Matt who is obviously a decent musician, shows how to learn guitar by trying to play a basic 1,4,5 chord song with a friend. The song they play is Louie, Louie which uses the chords E, A and B. To make it even easier for beginners, Matt shows how to play these chords as Barre chords making it easier to transition between the three and giving it more or a rock sound. The main focus of this lesson is showing the way to play those three chords on the guitar in the fashion that sounds like Louie, Louie. At the end of the lesson, Matt shows his friend Andy, who has never played Bass, how to play along with him. I love this video which shows how most f the great players learned how to play, on their own jamming with a friend. Really cool lesson. I hope Matt makes more like this!

Room for improvement: Content-wise, I think the part showing Andy how to play a B on the bass must have been cut by accident. There are a few productions quirks as well -- the camera goes from normal to squahsed widescreen and back a few times, and the sound makes some obvious changes as well -- but they're minor distractions and overall the video resolution at 640x480 is very clear.

Minor stuff. Great lesson!

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