Five Practice Tips for Beginner Guitarists

Backing track and notes




As promised in the above video, here are a few nuggets of information you’ll hopefully find useful:

1. Chord Windows & How to Read Them

The diagram below is what is known as a “chord window” and it’s literally a simple illustration of your guitar’s fretboard.

As indicated, the six vertical lines represent your guitar’s strings. Going from Left to Right we have low E (the thickest string), A, D, G, B, and high E (the thinnest string). The horizontal lines represent the frets and the thick line at the top represents your guitar’s nut. Pretty straightforward, right?

Now we know this, here’s what an open E minor (Em) chord shape looks like in “chord window” form.

The dots tell you where to put your fretboard hand fingers and the number below each string with a dot on tells you which finger to use. 1 = Index finger; 2 = Middle finger; 3 = Ring finger; and 4 = Pinky. The “O” above the low E, G, B, and high E strings tells you to play those strings “Open.” Once again, pretty straightforward, right?

But wait, there are a couple more symbols to learn: X and (X). We’ll learn what these mean by looking at the chord window diagram of D major (D) shown below.

As you can see, in addition to our fingering dots and an O over the D string, there’s also an (X) over the A string and an X over the low E. Here’s what these two symbols mean:

(X) = Try not to sound this string, but if you do it’ll be OK! 

X  = Do NOT sound this string because if you do it will sound awful!!!

Make sense? This just leaves two other things promised in the video.

2. A Simple, Silly Phrase That Will Help You Remember String Names

As I’m sure you know, making sure your guitar is in tune is pretty darned important! And from low to high (or thick to thin), the strings are tuned as follows: E, A, D, G, B, E. Furthermore, the strings are named accordingly, with the two Es being referred to as low E and high E respectively – the “low” and “high” meaning their pitch. That said, remembering E, A, D, G, B, E can be a little daunting at first, but fret not! Enter the instantly memorable acronym: 

Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good-Bye Eddie!!

Yep, as mentioned in the video, this phrase is so silly that once you’ve heard it, you won’t forget it – string naming problem solved!

And that just leaves us with the chord windows for the other two chords used in the video, in case you don’t know them yet – C major (C) and A minor (Am)

I hope you enjoy the video. Here’s wishing you safe and fun travels on your guitar-playing journey!
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