Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Online Guitar Lessons, The Beatles - 3 Tips For Acoustic Guitar Magic

At some point of your guitar playing career, you will discover The Beatles, in fact some players never recover from this intoxicating musical experience.

It's hard to imagine the musical world without this famous group. Whether you are an ardent Beatles fan or a working musician in a cover band it's important to able to authentically play some tunes.

There has been hundreds of articles, books etc written about The Beatles telling the reader "what" the Beatles did, I'm going to approach The Beatles music from a different perspective and look at "why" they did it.

By understanding "why" a particular group chose certain musical resources the guitarist/musician moves from merely imitating a sound to being able to create his or her own sound based on proven time tested musical examples and formulas... and as we all know The Beatles formula certainly works!

As most guitarists own an acoustic guitar the following tips are offered primarily in mind, however these ideas can be applied to electric guitar as well.

Tip 1. Blues progressions ...

Often guitarists underestimate the importance of learning to recognizing blues chord progressions by ear, in fact the term 'Blues' often conjures up images of smokey jazz clubs etc., something that the rock or pop guitarist may have no particular interest in at present.

It's important to keep in mind how groups like the Beatles learnt their craft. Countless hours of jamming with a good dose of blues chord progressions resulting in songs such as ...

Boys/ Chains/ Dizzy Miss Lizzy and Money (That's What I Want)

In addition to these blues based original compositions The Beatles or individual members of The Beatles often recorded cover versions of well known blues based tunes such as Kansas City and Be Bop A Lula (By Paul McCartney -Unplugged Album).

Tip 2. Harmonized scale ...

The Beatles are a very interesting group to study because of their mixture of blues styled songs blended with traditional classical music principals.

Whereas the blues scale is one of the most unique and frequently used scale in pop/ rock music because of it's flexibility and feeling The Beatles were aware of the benefit of using contrasting musical material that stem from European musical culture i.e., the European diatonic scales.

Listen to the final set of chords in "Let It Be" and you will hear a good example of how Paul McCartney harmonized scale in the descending chord progression.

"Let It Be" is in the key of C Major which produces the following chords: C major / D minor/ E minor/ F major/ G major/ A minor/ B diminished

As example of how Paul applies the harmonized scale would be if the basic chord progression is F major to C major, Paul would often play: F major to E minor then D minor and finally arrive at C major.

As you can see he simply played the two minor chords that exist in between the F major chord and the C major.

Tip 3. Slash chords ...

This is a favorite of the Beatles, a slash chord is written in the following manner: A/B

In this example the chord is represented by the first letter whilst the second letter identifies the specific bass note the composer wants to hear.

Therefore our chord would be an "A" major chord with a "B" note in the bass.

Have a listen to "The Long And Winding Road" for a classic example of this ambiguous sounding chord.

After the lyrics ... "The Long And Winding Road", you will hear two chords, that's our slash chords.

There's a wealth of rich chord progressions and musical ideas in the music of The Beatles waiting to be discovered by the guitarist with an inquiring mind. Persistent, patient study will reveal many new sounds that can be applied to all styles of music.

Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at:=> http://www.guitarcoaching.com

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