Stages of Mastering the Guitar

Monday, February 25 2008 @ 12:01 PM GMT

Contributed by: masterofguitars

There is much to learning any instrument, and each will have it's own logical path(s) to follow through in order to become proficient in both the playing of the instrument and the theory of music. This is a set of steps, or rather tick boxes that guitarists should aim to practice and master.

You may find that you have completed only some of these steps and in a different order. Well that doesn't matter. All you need to do is go back and fill in the gaps. Doing so will answer many questions for you and make many things become much more clear.

Some, if not all of these tasks will take you a long time to master (months and years rather than days and weeks) if you are a beginner, unless you are incredibly smart or a true virtuoso. Here they are:

Learn the basic chord shapes, A, D, E, C, G, Em, Am, Dm and practice changing between them quickly. I will make a list of songs that use the chords for you to practice. For now though, you can get these chord shapes from here
Learn how to bar these chords and play them at different places up and down the neck of the guitar. You can also play the whole bar, just the top 2 or 3 strings, the bottom 2,3 or 4, or whatever. There are no rules, just find out what sounds good. This has been referred to by some as the "CAGED" system.
If you know whether you wish to become a finger-picker, then practice some finger picking techniques. If you are only interested in using a pick, then practice alternate picking and jumping between non-adjacent strings.
Learn the minor pentatonic scale. It sounds good when played over songs in the key, or over the top of a song in the same named key, but major for a blues type effect. Also, the major pentatonic scale is exactly the same shapes as minor, but shifted down 3 frets.
Learn a basic major scale in any position and practice it to see what it feels and sounds like. It will then help you to know that the pentatonic scale (which you've already learned...!!!) is just the major scale without the semitones. It is a major scale in 5 tones (hence "pentatonic").
Learn how chords are constructed, of the 1st, 3rd and 5th tones in a major scale.
Build more chords from the [2nd, 4th and 6th] notes, [3rd, 5th and 7th], [4th, 6th and 8th] etc... until you have looped round and are playing the 1st, 3rd and 5th again. Play each of the chords you have constructed in order and this is the Major Scale Using Chords. An absolutely invaluable tool. Learn how to play the chords in order using various open and bar chords to progress through the scale. Then try playing the chords in different orders to start to discover how many songs are written in a particular key. That key is the root note of the scale.
Minor keys are built up of the same chords as the major keys, but starting from the 6th degree of the major chord progression. Which is, wait for it, 3 frets down from the 1st. See Relative Major and Minor Keys, Chords and Scales
Learn how to create jazz chords, such as major and minor 7th's, 5th, diminished chords, sus4's, etc...... You will start to find that some of these chords can be used interchangeably with major and minor chords that are similar. So a minor 7th can be played of the root major chords, or the 6th degree minor (relative minor).
Learn the circle of fifths. This will help you from a theory point of view if you need to learn about key signatures. But it is also a great tool for figuring out how to change key during a song. It may also help you to learn and understand the concept of modes. Modal playing and scales are valuable to understand as you will begin to understand how different modes sound when used as a melody, lead riff or solo.
Work on more specialist techniques such as sweep picking, tapping, flamenco rhythms, open or modified tuning etc.....
By the time you get this far, you will have learned a lot of music theory, I'm sure. Here is a list of some common musical definitions to help clear up any confusion (work in progress)
Also, I hope you would have gained some interest into why all of this is the way it is. As I'm sure you can imagine, this is a very difficult subject to sum up in a small space of time, and as in good scientific practice, every answer simply raises more question. But here is my feeble attempt at beginning to explain some of the science behind all fo this. Introduction to the physics of music theory
You will never stop "learning" the guitar. There will always be something else to discover or learn or improve upon. So you may as well accept this and just enjoy the adventure!

This is another article that will be improved upon over time. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I will expand upon all of the above and create more specific resources for learning as time goes on.

http://www.theguitarmaster.co.uk/article.php/mastering-the-guitar