1: The Foundation – K.I.S.

So what the heck are the basics?

The basics are the foundation techniques and knowledge you need to master when you learn a new skill.

Just as you need to build a solid foundation when building a house – you need a solid foundation to build your guitar playing skills upon.

Unfortunately, most beginner guitar players never get to know or understand what those basic skills are.

Guitar Basics:

The basics concern two distinct areas – your HEAD and your HEART.

1. Basic Play Guitar Technique – how to hold a guitar – how to use your hands and fingers for maximum efficiency and ease – basic picking and strumming techniques – playing in time – feeling – expression of emotions
2. Ear Training -  learning how to recognize chords and notes when you hear them – to be able to recognize chord progressions, keys, and scales by ear – to be able to learn songs by ear – to be able to go to a jam session and play along with ease
3. Transposing Songs – being able to play any song you learn in any other key
4. Knowledge of Basic Music Theory – the 'system' used to create scales and chords that are made from notes in the scale – the basic building-blocks of modern music

The Head & Heart of basic guitar skills

The 'BLUE' items represent things you need to know and understand – I call these the 'head' things. Cool, calm and collected.

'RED' is the physical performance of basic skills on the guitar. You could call this the 'heart' things. Intense, gentle, playful, fierce, fiery, angry, locomotive, seductive, happy, graceful, awkward, sloppy, precise, legato, staccato, pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, hard, soft, loud, quiet, whisper, spooky, eerie, disturbed, waterfalls, streams, – emotions.

Without the brain, the heart stops beating.

I.e. Without knowledge you won't be able to play guitar and express yourself as you want.

90% of being a good, happy guitar player is to do with the 'head' stuff. The other 10% is the physical execution (heart) on the guitar when you play – the way you express yourself.

K.I.S.

The whole idea about learning guitar is to keep it as simple as possible!

That means start with very simple basic skills and work on them until you have them perfected and can play them with your eyes closed without mistakes. It's easy… just don't rush it. Relaxed, slow and accurate.

Your goal is to master the simple things so they become effortless and require no conscious thought. That way, you can then focus your attention to how you play those simple things to express the feelings and emotions you want.

Your focus will be on the quality of the 'sound' you are producing. (The sound you produce comes from your basic picking and strumming techniques that you have developed with regular muscle-memory training/programming.)

Better that, than always trying to control your fingers by watching them to make sure they go to the right place. Getting paranoid about mistakes will cause mistakes. Watching your fingers will take your attention away from where it should be – on the sounds you are creating and the quality of those sounds.

One note, two notes, three notes…

If you can play one note and make it sound good, you can play two notes and make them sound good, too. Then you can add another note. Then change the way you play those 3 notes to create a huge array of different emotions, feelings, and sounds.

It's always the sound you're after. The 'emotions' attached to that sound.

Play simple things with conviction and emotion and people will pay attention. More importantly, you will be in the right mood to play good… always.

Remember that.

Tortoise Guitar is all about mastering the basics and learning how to play guitar by ear. I sincerely hope you get some real value from this site and these free lessons.

If you like them, then you may like to consider joining Fretboard Domination where I go into these concepts in much more depth.

Is this your Stairway To Guitar Playing Heaven?