Music is a mystery. The deliberate organization of sound waves into something that can stir your soul is one of the things that’s great about being alive. Taking that music and adding lyrics is one of the highest art forms possible as a human. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach… all of those guys understood the marriage of music and words.

Think about your favorite songs, what is it that you like the most about them? The lyrics? The vibe? The music? The combination?

I challenge all of you to start writing your own songs using simple chords. All you have to do is strum a steady beat and start singing. Write down the words that come out. Then re-write them and change them, then change the chords that you play. You’ll discover a way to express how you feel, and someone just might be moved by it.

It’s not really enough to just sit around and practice playing the guitar. You gotta make music your own, learn from the artists that have touched you, and then try to do them one better. You can. So can I.

Warning: it’s addicting, takes an insane amount of work, dedication, persistence, and the ability to handle harsh criticism.

But that’s how you know it’s worth doing. Your soul needs exercise. Go write a song.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

The numbers are the frets, and the lines going across are your strings. Play the right number (fret) on the correct string, and you can’t go wrong.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

1.) Boulevard Of Broken Dreams–Green Day
VERSE: Em, G, D, A strum each chord twice
CHORUS: C, G, D, Em strum each chord twice
–end of chorus is the B7 chord.

2.) Island In The Sun–Weezer
VERSE: Em, Am, D, G strum each one twice
CHORUS: same
BRIDGE: D to G (4x each), D to G again (4x each) C 4x, Am 4x, D 8x
then back to chorus.

3.) Brown Eyed Girl–Van Morrison (simple down strums, not the actual strum pattern)
VERSE: G, C, G, D strum each chord twice
Pre-Chorus: (the … “do you remember when” part) D strum 6x
CHORUS: (sha la la’s) G, C, G, D strum each chord twice.

Remember when you’re trying to switch chords, don’t stop strumming. Make your strumming hand tell your other hand what to do, NOT the other way around. You may make mistakes, and it may feel awkward, but ultimately, keeping a steady beat is more important than playing all the right notes all the time.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

An electric guitar has pickups. They’re mounted between the end of the neck (where the frets get really really small) and the bridge, (where the strings are stretched from at the base of your guitar).

These pickups are actually electro-magnets that produce a magnetic field around your strings. (Remember, the strings are metal, right?)

So, when you pluck the string, and it vibrates up and down really fast, the metal string is creating “vibrations” in the magnetic field. It’s these vibrations that are transmitted through your pickups as a signal that goes to your amp.

This signal is very weak, but it’s there. Your amp takes that signal and force feeds it a Red Bull, Monster, And Double Shot Espresso all at the same time, and gets it full of energy, therefore making it louder.

Then that louder signal gets passed to your speaker (which is a big magnet attached to a cone), and the speaker vibrates that SAME signal from your string, only now it’s loud enough to annoy your mom, or your neighbors.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

There are alternate tunings for the guitar, the most common of which is called “Dropped D” tuning. To get to Dropped D tuning, simply loosen your top string, E, down a step in the musical alphabet to D.

Sidenote: if you don’t know about the musical alphabet, it’s — A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, G with the sounds getting higher as you go forwards. If you look at E in the chain of notes, notice that D comes before E, therefore D is a lower sound, and that’s why they call it “Dropped D,” because it’s literally lower in sound.

There’s also tunings where you take EVERY string and lower it by a step in the musical alphabet, so E becomes D, A becomes G, D becomes C, etc.

Here’s a list of alternate tunings you can experiment with, you’ll need a guitar tuner! Remember the first letter in the series is your TOP string, the thickest string. You’ll have to think about how to get to the letter. If you start with an E, you’ll be going LOWER to get to C, because the alphabet is A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Notice that C is two steps LOWER than E. Give it a try!

Open C: C, G, C, G, C, E
Open D: D, A, D, F#, A, D
Modal D: D, A, D, G, A, D
Open D Minor: D, A, D, F, A, D
Open G: D, G, D, G, B, D
Modal G: D, G, D, G, C, D
Open G Minor: D, G, D, G, A#, D
Open A: E, A, C# E, A, E

The word “open” in this case means that all of your strings are tuned to sound like a nice chord without having to put your fingers down on any of the frets. Modal is a word in music theory that basically means a shift in starting position in the alphabet. So, instead of starting on A, you could rewrite the alphabet like this, F, G, A, B, C, D, E

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

Ha ha! Gotcha!

What are you doing reading this???!!!

Go practice!

Tongue-In-Cheek,
The Musician’s Toolbox

But the most commonly used chords are probably:

G, Em, C, D, Am, F, E, A, and Dm.

Start with those first and then fill in the blanks as you go along.

Of course, you should order the Learn Guitar Chords DVD to learn over 100 of the most commonly used guitar chords!

But, we’re biased.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

Harmonics are naturally occurring places on the string that when lightly touched split the resonating string into different proportions and produce new sounds. These places along the strings are called “nodes” and they are easy to find because they are mathematically and visually easy to understand.

Learn To Play Guitar Harmonics

Here’s what I mean:

For example. Play your E6 string. (The big, thick one). Now, lightly touch the string right over the 12th fret (don’t actually press it down, just lightly touch it) and pluck the string. You should hear a humming tone, it’s not too bright or jangly, but your guitar string should sound a little more mellow. What you’re hearing is the octave harmonic, you’re hearing the next E up the scale from the lower “open” E string sound.

Guess what? The 12th fret is the halfway point of your string stretched from the bridge to the nut (the two points from which the guitar string vibrates to produce sound). The halfway points (12th fret) on each string will produce the octave harmonic.

There are also “built-in” harmonics on the 1/3rd and 2/3rd’s points of the string. Can you visually divide your E string into thirds? About where would the harmonic node be 1/3rd of the way up the string? If you guessed the 5th fret, you’re smart.

Ok, bla bla bla, just tell me where all the harmonic nodes are!

You can find the tones on the 3rd (difficult to hear, takes practice), 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 17th frets. There are more, but you’ll have to experiment to find them. Use your ears and listen for sounds on top of sounds.

Remember, just lightly touch the string, don’t press it down into the frets. You should hear glorious tones, not jangly steel strings.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

Learn to play your guitar by actually practicing. What a thought. Everyone else will tell you that all you have to do is this “trick” here, or just subscribe to my “I’ll Make You A Guitar Hero In 10 Minutes” blog.

Oh, Please.

That kind of advertising may have worked on our parents, but not us. We know better. Yes, Yes, we KNOW it actually takes work to get good at something. Just look at the Karate Kid. Man, did that guy have it rough for a few months. But you know what, that Crane Kick move was pretty epic, and he got the girl. How?

Practice.

Alright, so, here I am, yelling it from the rooftops, and there’s only one thing left for you to do. Stop surfing the mindless web (except of course for when you read our fabulous blog to get a kick in the, well, motivational area…) and go practice for a half an hour.

You’ll get better if you do.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox

1.) There are different strings for electric and acoustic guitars. They come in packages of 6 because there are 6 strings on a standard guitar. Buy your strings accordingly.

2.) There are different gauges (thickness) of strings. The thinner they are, the easier they are on your fingers, but they don’t sound quite as full or “deep” as thicker strings. If you are a beginner, stick with lighter gauge (thinner) strings until your fingers get used to it.

—–a.) Acoustic Guitar: Light, Medium, Heavy are the terms for thickness. Stick with light if you’re a beginner.

—–b.) Electric Guitar: 8’s, 9’s, 10’s, 11’s, 12’s are the terms for the thickness. 9’s or 10’s are what you probably want if you’re a beginner.

3.) Change your strings often, and more importantly, learn to do it yourself. It will save you money.

4.) A pack of strings will cost you anywhere between $4-$12 or more depending on the quality or brand.

Ok, so now the opinion section:

What brand should I buy, and from where?

1.) RotoSound strings. They’re an epic company based in the UK and make high quality strings that are perfectly priced. StringsAndBeyond.com is the best Guitar Strings website.

Much Respect,
The Musician’s Toolbox