Playing rock and roll is the reason a lot of beginners want to learn guitar. If this sounds like you then after reading this article you’ll know the 3 areas to focus your practicing on to become a great rock guitar player.
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.
It will only take a week or two to learn the basics of musical theory then you can refresh your mind as needed.
Guitar Chords
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 pattern that takes advantage of some musical theory and the basic chord shapes to help you navigate your way all over the guitar neck.
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 is an important skill to find chords quickly on the neck and when jamming with others.
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 Should You Learn Guitar??
Some people try to teach themselves from books, while others take private lessons. I like learning from home, but prefer videos, dvds and online lessons over books..
A great course I’ve used and suggested to many beginners is by Steve Krenz and Legacy Learning Systems. 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.
