Guitar Noise

Just when you thought we were done with walking bass lines, along comes another song where they play an important musical role! Plus, we’ll take a look at getting started on barre chords (and also look at making substitutions for them to cut us some slack!) and learn a cool little guitar riff.

This is another Easy Songs lesson that is geared to the close to absolute beginner. We’ll take basic chords that we already can play, add a very simple strumming / picking pattern and before you can say lunatic you’ll be playing a very cool song.

Here’s another Easy Song for Beginners’ Lesson, using our continued study of walking bass lines to help us create an arrangement where the bass line also helps us move the song along by shadowing the melody. Once the basics are in place, you can make the rest of the arrangement as simple or as complicated as you’d like.

David returns to the pages of Guitar Noise with another Easy Song for Beginners lesson. Work on your chord changes and strumming with not one, but two great country classics.

As you learn more and more techniques, you should start trying to incorporate them into the songs you already know. We’ll take a very easy song and come up with some interesting things we can do for arranging it for the single guitar.

This is a back to basics lesson, taking a simple, two-chord song and focusing on changing chords and strumming. You’ll also get a practical introduction to slash chords and, if you still need more to learn, there are a couple of fun and easy riffs for you to add.

Here’s proof that David knows some songs written in the last few years! And while it’s a very easy song to learn, he does have to go and throw some lesson material in such as drones and moveable chord voicings (and capos!) and such. Oh, and it’s in open C# tuning!

Let’s kick off this year’s Easy Songs for Beginners Lessons with a classic Neil Young tune. Have fun learning something about chord voicing, strumming, Drop D tuning and even a little ear training on the side. Plus, we’ve a bonus MP3 especially for all you twelve-string guitar players!

You’ll learn the basics of this song so quickly that I had to throw in a lot of fun and challenging stuff. Let’s put your chord melody training to good use and create an instrumental to include in this easy arrangement. Plus, pick up some new chords and a bit of theory while you’re at it!

He’s baaaaack! The vast song catalog of Neil Young once again graces the pages of Guitar Noise. Here’s a fun and easy song from his Harvest album that you can learn in practically no time at all and still spend ages on practicing in order to get the kinds of sounds you want. Songs like this never get old.

Who says you need a piano to play a song? Many guitarists avoid certain pieces, labeling them as piano music. This doesn’t have to be you! Let’s look at taking a typical piano song and arranging it so that you can play it on a single guitar. Plus, we’ll have a look at seventh chords and using rhythms to make hooks.

So, so you think you can tell? Learn about freeing up your strumming, making it a bit more natural and a little less mechanical. In this lesson we’ll get the basics of this classic Pink Floyd song down so that we can tackle the second guitar part in the upcoming Intermediate lesson.

Johnny Cash had an incredible gift for arranging and performing other people’s songs. And today’s lesson, a powerful, yet sparse take of Hurt by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails will give you more than enough proof of this.

While the focus of this lesson is on switching chords smoothly, you’ll also learn some cool flourishes and riffs and strumming patterns and even find a good practical use for that pesky C major scale!

Neil Young’s Heart of Gold is a classic guitar-harmonica song. Take a four chord song, add a few simple touches, and you’ll be amazed how cool you sound!

There’s a lot of fun to be had with this song as we work through straight strumming, a little bass-and-chord work and even toss in some arpeggio playing.

Let’s take advantage of the MP3 files and do a lesson focusing on strumming. Here’s the opening song from Dylan’s classic album, Blood on the Tracks.

Silent Night is a classic three-chord song. Here is a simple yet elegant, single guitar arrangement of this beautiful Christmas song.

Sometimes the simplest of songs present the biggest of challenges - how do we take a basic song of four or five chords and make it memorable?

Check out our arrangement of this Rolling Stones classic for the single acoustic guitar, made possible by the use of open G tuning and a cool driving rhythm.