3 Steps To Becoming A Rock Guitar Player
It’s because of rock and roll many guitarists want to learn to play. If you’re one of them then this article will explain the three areas you must concentrate on to be a great rock guitarist.
Becoming a great rock and roll guitar player isn’t tough but it does take work, practice and concentrating on the right areas. After reading this article you’ll have a great head start.
Musical Theory
This is the back bone of all styles of guitar. Whether you want to front a rock band or play finger style you need to understand the basics of musical keys, note spacing and progressions.
A couple of weeks with musical theory and some frequent refreshers will keep this stuff top of mind for you.
Chords and the CAGED System
All beginners learn guitar chords, but to become a great rock guitar player there’s a particular pattern on the guitar neck you should learn.
The CAGED system is a short cut to memorizing where all the chords are on the guitar neck. It takes a bit of basic chord knowledge and musical theory to get started.
Once you memorize the CAGED guitar chord pattern you’ll easily be able to find any major or minor chord … chords all over the neck. This comes in handy when you’re playing with another guitar player and you’re looking to play a variation of what they’re playing.
The 5 Pentatonic Shapes
If you dream of being a rock guitar player then no doubt you love the solos by guitar greats like Slash, Eddie Van Halen and others. I don’t want to give away these great guitar players secrets but you can play a ton of cool guitar solos just with the pentatonic scales.
The pentatonic scale shapes are the most used rock guitar scales by every lead guitarist.
There are five different shapes for each key. The cool thing is you only need to learn the shapes once then move them around to the different keys you’re playing in.
If musical keys are a little over your head right now, not to worry that’s what the musical theory will teach you.
How Can I Learn This Stuff??
Some beginners use books to learn while some take private guitar lessons. I like learning from home, but prefer videos, dvds and online lessons over books..
A particular course I’m really enjoying is one by Steve Krenz. You can read about it in this learn and master guitar review.
Learn & Master is a 20 DVD, 5 CD and lesson book set that covers everything we’ve discussed here and more. After completing this self study program you’ll be sure to be a top notch rock guitarist.
