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Guitar Chords – Traps of learning chords from Guitar TAB sites and how to avoid them

By Mike Hayes | August 10, 2009

Want to learn your favorite song on guitar? It’s simple these
days; simply Google a guitar TAB site, type in your song title
and out pops your song … sound to good to be true and as any
experienced player knows … if it sounds to good to be true,
it is!

People who only want to use the guitar as a prop i.e., somewhere
for them to put their hands when they’re not jumping off amps and
smashing drum kits etc., won’t ever be bothered by the inherent
problems associated with learning from TAB sites.

However, it’s essential for any serious player to ‘nip the musical bad habits in the bud’ before they become fatal to their musical growth.

How do you avoid these traps? The first step is to identify them.

Trap 1 : Songs that only have lyrics with chords symbols placed
over the top of the lyrics.

Problem: Without proper order and structure you can only have
chaos. i.e., without a defined number of measurable beats on each
chord whereby you can identify precisely where the chord change
occurs, you have a situation where the song structure can be different every time.

In other words, if everybody in the band is waiting for the
vocalist to sing a particular word before they can change to
another chord then they’re all at the mercy of the singer who
usually hasn’t got a clue how the song goes in the first place and cahnges the phrasing everytime they sing it.

Playing music without structure or order is a one-way ticket to a musical disaster with the only possible outcome being…sloppy and messy playing in disorganized amateur groups.

Solution: Only work from music scores that are written in bars.

Ex 1.
| G / / / | C / / / | etc

In this example it is clear that the G chord is played for four
beats; then you change to C chord for four beats. There’s no
guesswork here everyone in the band is on the same page; no
random chords with erratic timing.

By the way, all professional musicians use this format as the most
basic information required to communicate musical ideas.

There absolutely no point concerning yourself with the lyrics if
you guitar playing is all over the place!

Trap 2: Power chords shown as three note chords on the bottom
three strings.

Problem: This is a popular way of notating power chords
… unfortunately it’s incorrect; it makes playing fast songs very
difficult as you are required to make a lot of unnecessary finger
movement.

Solution : Learn the names of the notes and their location on the
fretboard that way you will be able to identify the notes
duplicated on the power chord shapes.

Now that you know what you are up against you can take positive
steps to improve your guitar playing without any costly detours,
remember once you have learnt something the wrong way it’s a
BIG project to re-learn it!

Until next time have fun playing your guitar.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com

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