Fender Presents: Getting Started on Acoustic Guitar — A Guide for Beginners

Paul Lamb — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:35:12 +0000

Published by Fender, Hudson Music and Hal Leonard
DVD

Description
By far the most comprehensive DVD ever offered for the beginner guitarist—well over 3 hours long! Over 50 Interactive Lessons! Step-by-step lessons incorporating clear, easy-to-follow 3-D graphics and unique play-along tracks teach the viewer the essential chords, scales, and techniques used by acoustic guitar players in every popular style, including rock, blues and country. This DVD is separated into two major sections: 1)The First Step: tuning up · string name… More >>

Fender Presents: Getting Started on Acoustic Guitar — A Guide for Beginners

Follow Along DVD Guitar Lessons Reviewed

Paul Lamb — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:15:46 +0000

Here’s a review of a step-by-step lesson incorporating clear, easy-to-follow 3-D graphics and unique play-along tracks teach the viewer the essential chords, scales, and techniques used by acoustic guitar players in every popular style, including rock, blues and country. This DVD is separated into two major sections: The First Step: tuning up – string names – essential chords and scales used by all players – music reference section (notes, rhythms, chords and scales) – practice tips – fretting-hand technique – picking-hand technique – backing tracks for play-along – animated 3-D fretboard graphics. I learned much, especially scales and modes, which are not covered on this CD-ROM. Bad guitar habits are hard to shake, but with practice my playing has improved, thus adding at least some anecdotal support to the “it’s never too late to teach an old dog new tricks” adage. Greg starts off by plucking the strings one at a time as a tuning reference for the student, and then goes straight into an explanation of simple pentatonic (five-tone scale) runs in the key of E Minor. Tablature is displayed at the bottom of the screen as Greg plays the licks and leads, so it’s easy for the student to follow along.

They give you the suggested scales to solo with. With this alone you’ll have hours of fun jamming away! You will need to have a working knowledge of scales to take advantage of the instruction right out of the box. But for every aspiring beginner, to have access to this collection would probably be just the motivation to hunker down and learn the scales in order to catch-up with the proceedings. Lessons logs, common chords and scales, and useful tips are also included.

Ha! I went to bed mentally visually playing and practicing the scales, and feeling the difference – Amazing! As far as the lesson’s musical figures go (all TAB and standard notation), all the exercises, licks, rhythm guitar passages, scale fingerings, etc. Meanwhile, the MP3 audio files for this lesson were useful. The methods of computing the pitches in our 12 tone musical scale have a complex but interesting history as we talk about harmonics, overtones, and intervals.

On the other end of the scale, the first string refers to the bottom one. Not only do these provide a roadmap for scales and arpeggios but also provide an easy starting point to memorize all other chords which are built from these forms. Instead of having to constantly refer to huge guitar chord books to find a particular guitar chord, a knowledge of the CAGED system and chord construction formula, simply explained in the Ultimate Guitar Lessons, enables an easier way to permanently remember not just these chords but all major, minor and advanced chords. The new scale directory provides fingerings, recordings and variable-speed MIDI for over 200 scales. Additional accessories include an automatic tuner, digital metronome, recorder and 1000-chord dictionary with audio playback.

Guitar Lesson Review » Acoustic Guitar Players

Fender Presents: Getting Started on Acoustic Guitar — A Guide for Beginners

Follow Along DVD Guitar Lessons Reviewed