Basic Vertical and Horizontal Finger Movement Exercises

Learning the guitar requires setting priorities at a gradual pace. We also must set our interest at a controlled pace in order for us not to leave out other important factors needed in the skill. Before arriving at a stage where you can simultaneously read and play guitar music sheets or some guitar tablatures, you have to make your hands properly fitted enough to do it. Since you knew already the basic guitar chords, lets have some
finger exercises for more articulate playing.

For our basic vertical movement left hand exercises, you can
1. Start to position your fingers at E major chord,strum a single downward thumb stroke then go to A major, a single downward stroke again then go to D major also at a single strum. After that you can reverse the direction say, from D major to A major and then to E major. Do this at their minor chords alos as in Em, Am, Dm also. D minor chord is somewhat harder to position so better practice it more. Since this is done for every single strum only, start yourself at a slower pace.

For our basic horizontal movement exercise
2.Start yourself with E major chord, then do the F major chord, then G major chord and going back to F major down to E major again for a single strum stroke. Do also the A major chord followed by Bb (B flat major), then the C major chord at the 3rd fret at the same finger position. Reverse the action. Remember the F major and Bb major chord are somewhat harder to execute since this is nearest to the nut of the guitar. Do this also on their minor counterpart like from A minor, to Bb minor, down to C minor. These will require extra pressing force in order not to  leave any strings from being muffled. Practice this at countless times for a better hand grip development.

When doing the barre chord like Fm (F minor), Gm(G minor), support your forefinger by your middle finger to exert more force and  about the Bbm (B flat minor) and the Cm (C minor) chords, this requires constant practice for your wrist to get acquainted with that pressure point since this position is lower and not quite comfortable for the wrist.

The Third Strumming Pattern Lesson

Our third strumming pattern consist of leaving a specific beat empty of action. This strumming pattern gradually makes you play the song with style and somewhat in a carefree mode. Its also good to keep in mind that the first strumming move somewhat gives the impression of a more heavier stroke than the succeeding ones as is what usually happens in any musical score. In our strumming lessons, for the meantime I recommend that you only use your thumb and not the whole four fingers in your downward stroke and use only your forefinger at the upward stroke. If you use the whole four fingers at the downward stroke it will produce a noisy, sharp, dominating tones not ideal to do at an early learning stage because you are suppose to be learning to produce the sound in a milder and observable way. As we go learning different strumming patterns, you also are being brought into appreciating different music genre.
In this illustration below, if you're not still familiar to cope up learning through note representations, you must follow strictly the normal speaking manner of the phrase on the fourth row cause it precisely give the correct strum accent. Notice that the fifth beat which falls always in beat "3" was encircled to denote that its always empty of strumming action. When it says empty of strumming action, I mean you can still perform the movement of your hand in beat "3" in order for you not to loose your beating rhythm or momentum but you must not touch the strings at this point. This may take constant looking at the phrase and with steady repetition to familiarize the strumming style or you can just remember those two words "you" and "buzzed" as the points where you are not going to touch the strings. After constant practice, try playing this without looking at the phrase to gain the true feel of the play.
In this style you will learn how to play the likes of some good country or folk music like "A Horse With No Name by America, "Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by Elvis Presley and many more. When you happened to hear the original version of the music, some instrumentation or some movements may be added to the music so just stick to our strumming pattern in order not to be disoriented. The encircled portion are only shown in order for you to map it clearly where you've been through, to allow you to see the difference between strumming patterns and to acquaint your hand to strumming changes.

First and Second Strumming Technique Applications

In the previous lessons, you were introduced to the very basic movement of strumming and that is the single downward stroke with the thumb at indicated numbers of a measure alone. On our second strumming lesson I introduced you the single alternating downward and upward strumming at every count of a measure as in "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" where at the first beat "1", you will do a downward stroke. On our first strumming technique I already given you the song "Amazing Grace" but now you can try this also at the following songs: I Need You sung by America; I Was Looking For Someone To Love by Leif Garret; Hey Jude by The Beatles; Father and Son by Cat Stevens; Reality by Richard Sanderson. All you have to do is just to adapt your beat and strum to the slowness or fastness of a song tempo.

Now for our second strumming technique you can try the songs like Teach Your Children by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; Blowin In The Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary; I'll Never Find another You by The Seekers. Although these songs might be too old for you, I strongly suggest you first try these songs cause it brings the very basic strumming movements. You can search all of these songs around the internet and from these songs, you will now have an idea where in your array of personal favorite songs these two kinds of strumming fits. Just for a short review i will again post these two strumming note representations.
1. Single Downward Stroke                    
     1     2      3      4  - one measure (4/4 time signature)              

2. Single Alternating Downward and Upward Stroke   
      1   and    2   and    3   and    4    and - (4/4 time signature)

Also, under this type of strumming lies the march time music. This has also the same single downward and upward stroke but the only difference is the musical note presentation or the manner on how you will do on the guitar this accentuated strumming pattern. It goes like this:

In order to help you more in gaining the proper accent in this strumming pattern, I created the rhyme on the fourth row of the illustration and all you have to do is to adapt the movement of your strumming hand to the manner this rhyme is normally spoken. This is in a 2-bar 4/4 time signature measure in marching movement and I suggest you to execute this pattern in a continuous mode to speed up the development of your skills. Many songs including march time songs are fitted to this kind of strumming pattern.

What Factors Others Find Useful in Guitar Playing

As a learned and experienced guitarist, i had been into lots of group playing and individual playing encounters. Some guitarist who are good at mathematics seek the help of their speedy mathematical ability in identifying the chords to take especially when it comes to song transposition or on the spot accompaniments. This really helps i agree. Some people are naturally gifted by ear to dig the right chords to take and some find visual forms as a big help in transposition and accompaniment.What I mean by visual form is they learn it through as physical formation and sequences of their fingers.
For me, not only on guitar playing but in any other musical instruments, I recommend to learn it all by ear, learn it by finger formation/position, learn it through mathematical calculation and learn the instrument by feelings and emotions and of course by watching how other players play.
First thing is to find which of these fields gets you more speed in acquiring playing mastery. If you're good at mathematical way than acquiring the right chords by ear, enrich it. If you're good by ear so improve yourself at this field. The beauty of doing such self-help improvement is that you will find yourself not stopping to acquire the next skill after the other.

Learning Basic Chord Sets

Today we will deal with the most frequently used chord sets in many beginners songs. Just to review what we previously learned, i already introduced you the major chords like A, C, F, Bb, G, D and E. The minor chords are Am, Bm, Fm, Em, Dm and also some of the seventh chords like A7 and B7 chords. Of course these are not complete arrays of all the chords but what's important here not to neglect are the basic uses or sets of chords that a beginner must familiarize with before he go any further.

The three-chord set goes usually this way: A - D - E and back to A again. On D major key it usually is D- G - A and back to D. On G major key, its G - C - D and back to G again. On C major key, its C-F-G and back to C. On E major key its E-A-D and back to E. What's important here is for you to acquire a grasp of your first melodic flow of tunes. You're starting to build a certain frame of melodic flow in your mind.

Another set of chord is the 4-chord major-minor chord combination playing. As a beginner guitarist, as i mentioned before, we must established some skeletal framing of tunes as what usually happens in most of the songs. This is not the only tune framing that we will tackle here but lets just begin from the basics. Lets begin with key of C.

Here they are:
on C major its C-Am-Dm-G-C,
on D major its D-Bm-Em-A-D
on A major its A-F#m-Bm-E-A
on G major its G-Em-Am-D-G
on E major its E-C#m-F#m-B-E
on F major its F-Dm-Gm-C-F
on B major its B-G#m-C#m-F#-B
on Bb major its Bb-Gm-Cm-F-Bb
For the moment, try to practice a simple alternating downward-upward strumming method for every beat in a time signature as in- "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" so this means a downward stroke for every number indicated and a upward stroke for every "and" indicated in the measure. It will be better if you continuously do some limitless counting in order to familiarize your strumming hand.

Learning The Barre Chords

One of the important part of beginner lessons in guitar is familiarizing our fingers to the barre chords. These chords are important to learn in order to be able to play music in all its path. We have to exert patience and effort to execute these chords as these requires combined efforts of pressing the strings, checking correct finger positions and producing the clear tones. It really pays to be patient here cause at the end you will make your musicality reach its point of versatility. As you get familiar with these well, you will find it later that you're not exerting effort anymore and so the full freedom of achieving good performance is just a few steps away.

Lets start with the F major chord. This is the complete chord in F major and the number on the side indicates first fret of the guitar where the chord will start to form.

  

But for the meant time if you want a much easier chord position in Fmajor, you can do this one below.

As you can see your forefinger here is pressing two strings simultaneously. The first and the second string at the first fret. Learn to apply an extra pressure on these 2 strings to make it sound clearly. Don't let your forefinger be placed on top of the metal line because it will muffle the strings. Your middle finger here is pressed at the third string, second fret and the ring finger at the fourth string, third fret. The two "X" signs signifies those string not included.

Another frequently used chord as a beginner is the F#m (F#minor) chord. In the following illustrations are the complete version of the chord which is done at the second fret as indicated by the number beside the box.

  

Now here again is the more simpler version of F#m if you wanted a more gradual or easy learning. Check that the pressing force you apply to your forefinger is enough to let those 3 strings soundly clearly. As you practice this frequently be observant on the equality of all the tones produced. When you've familiarized your fingers in executing this barre chord, i recommend to shift your playing to a more complete chord version as the one posted above to be able for you to achieve some fuller and heavier tones in playing.

Another frequently used is the Bm chord (B minor). Here's the complete version

  

And here is the more easier one. Curve your fingers middle, ring finger and small finger a little to make the fingers apply a perpendicular direction of force upon the strings and to avoid muffling other strings.

Now here is another form of barre chord that is also important to learn as this form can be adjustable anywhere in the fret board. This is the Bb chord (pronounced as B flat major).

  

Another important thing to keep in mind is all the barre chords can be adjusted in either high or low which means you can move it a fret lower or higher without changing the finger positions. In this case you can know all the corresponding barre chords by analyzing it. 

In the guitar fret board, at the first fret, we can do two positions of barre chords and these are the Bb major position and the F major position. If you're on Bb major position, you can see at the table above that if you adjust your position on the fret board higher by one fret (means you're at 2nd fret), you are now doing a B major chord at that unchanged finger position. The rest of the chord names on the table follows as you move in the next fret and so on. Here you will find that another form of D major chord in this finger position is at the 5th fret and E major at the 7th.

The same goes with the F major position on the first fret. If you look at the table, adjusting this position to the next fret will give you the F# or Gb major chord, G major on the 3rd fret, A major on the 5th and so on.