Many of the songs in popular and folk music are composed from a major scale.  A major scale starts from a certain root and then follows a formula of whole and half-steps to reach the next root an octave higher.  The step formula for the major scale is whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. 

Western music has a twelve-pitch chromatic scale in which pitches are referred to by letter names.  Only seven letters are used, however, because most scales only contain seven notes.  The notes with only a letter name are referred to as natural notes.  The remaining five notes are called accidentals, which are achieved by using a

Now that we have developed proper down- and upstroke technique, we can begin combining them into strum patterns.  We write these strum patterns over the same grid as we did in the previous lesson: 1  +  2  +  3  +  4  + In the previous lesson on reading strum patterns, we observed how downstrokes can

How to Hold an Acoustic Guitar 1. Position your hand underneath and perpendicular to the guitar neck with your fingers and thumb gently extended. 2. Place the pad of your thumb on the middle of the back of the guitar neck, behind the second fret.  Your thumb should be perpendicular to the neck 3. Without

The strongest major key chord progression in Western music is the dominant V (or V7) to the tonic I.  We refer to this progression as an “authentic cadence” for the clear sense of resolution it provides a harmonic phrase, returning from the unstable dominant (V or V7) to the stable tonic (I).  A principal reason

Doug learned this by ear after only two years of playing guitar!