Podcast 1: We Have Lift Off!

Welcome to the Learn Guitar Podcast from the National Guitar Academy, the podcast that makes you a better guitarist. We're going to share some of our best guitar tips with you. We'll discuss chords and chord technique. We'll share some lead guitar secrets, we'll tell you how to sound more rhythmic and musical, and we're going to teach you some music theory. I'm your host, Mike Kennedy, and joining me today are Jack Taylor and Andy Hignett. So let's get started with our first segment, Lead Lines.

Before we dive into the show... Please let me just say up front that we really want your feedback on the show. We want to help you tell us what you want to hear. You can email us at podcast at nationalguitaracademy.com. We read every email and we'd love to get your feedback. Lead lines is the part of the show when we discuss lead guitar technique. scales, riffs, solos and other secondary guitar techniques Okay, Jack, this week we thought that we'd have a little quick chat about keys.

and how fundamental they are to a lead guitarist and all lead guitar technique in general. Kick us off, my keys. Talk to me about keys, why they're so important. They're really important for lead guitarists because if you don't know what the key is, you don't know what scales you need to play, you don't know what chords you need to play, they just help inform you.

and help you sound good when you're playing lead guitar great summary Andy from a lead guitar point of view why is it so important for you to know songs key Also just be thinking about keys in general. The key will tell you what notes will work.

And those are the ones you want to be playing. You want to play the ones that will work in the song. Can you just repeat that again? Because that's the secret of lead guitar. Play notes that work and don't play notes that don't work. You just said that. Perfect description. The key will tell you what notes will work. And I think for years and years, I didn't realise that. If you wanted to play lead guitar over a certain part of music, I never knew what to play and it was just a kind of...

It was always a bit fraught, really, because I was just like, I'll try this note, you know, and just hope that it worked. But the sort of breakthrough moment for me was, I don't know, it was literally years before I knew this. was that if you want to know notes that will work over a key, you need to just play. a scale that matches the key of the song. So if a song is in the key of C major, you can play any note within the scale of C major and you know it'll sound okay.

And that was a big breakthrough for me. People are like, oh yeah, it's a bit obvious, like duh. But until somebody actually tells you that, or you figure it out, you don't know. Okay, so a quick example of that. I'm going to play some chords here in C major. Okay, now Jack's going to come in playing some notes from the scale of C major. One, two, three, four...

Okay so we know that they're gonna sound, that they're gonna work together because they're literally like the key you're playing in perfectly matches the key that I'm playing in.

So, Jack, let's imagine that I'm listening to this podcast at home. I'm, you know, you know relatively new guitarist i want to get started with lead guitar but i'm a bit intimidated by like those guitar hero types that you see shredding notes you know just break it down like really really simple someone wants to get started with lead guitar

you know keys are the secret aren't they really to understanding keys what could they do give them some specific steps that they can follow so like one step you could follow is like to try and find out the key of a song maybe look at the first chord and the last chord which will help you determine what key it is so for example if the first chord is C major

and the last chord is C major as well there's a fairly high chance that your song is going to be in the key of C and if it's C major that means you can play a C major scale so you've got a direct link there between key of the song and the scale type that you're going to use. Okay, so step one, if you want to play lead guitar over any piece of music, any song, step one is diagnose the key of the song. So that's like literally the absolute first thing you should be thinking of.

What key is this song in? Now, we'll speak about that in just a sec, but step one is figure out what the key of the song is. Step two is then playing a scale that matches that key. So as Jack said, let's say for example a song was in the key of G, then if you play notes from the scale of G major then you know that will work.

I was going to say as well, I think you can always just use pentatonic scales rather than full major or minor scales because they're a bit more forgiving so if we do take the first chord of the song even if it's not actually the key If we match up the pentatonic with that, it will work. Even if it's not the key proper, it will still work.

Pentatonix, I think, yeah, they're more forgiving, aren't they? They're more portable. You can move them around a bit more and get away with more. They're a bit easier to play physically as well. They don't have as many notes. Oh, yeah. Way, way, way, way easier. Okay, so I hope that that's helped guys. It's just a really quick introduction into getting started with lead guitar. Step number one is...

is figure out the key of the song. Step number two is playing a scale that works with that key. And the easiest way to do that is to just match it exactly. So, right, super quick. Jack, let's say a song is in the key of A minor, what scale would you play? Like A minor pentatonic. Okay, so if the key were A minor, you would play in A minor. Yep. Perfect. Okay. Let's say that there were a track in...

D major, Andy. What key will work? I'd either use the D major scale or I might use a D major pentatonic scale. Okay, and we know that they'll sound ace. Yes. Perfect, okay. And then just one last point to make on that and we'll go into this in much more detail in the future. but you know if you want to lend something a bluesy head then you can play in a minor. So over the track with D major, and you wanted to play in D minor, a D minor pentatonic.

That would often work, but it would lend a bluesy edge that sometimes you don't want. So generally, if you figure out the key of the song and it's D for argument's sake, then we know D major will work. but a D minor pentatonic could be fun to explore too. Okay, so there we go. There's plenty for people to get started with there.

Now if you want help diagnosing keys and understanding what scales work with keys, then you'll find that in the bonus pack for this episode. For each podcast episode, we create a bonus pack that expands on what we've discussed in the episode. Each bonus pack includes video lessons, diagrams, chord boxes, practice materials, basically stuff that expands on what we've discussed in the podcast.

There's only so much we can do in audio form and the bonus pack is basically your way of getting access to our other material that helps with whatever the topic might be. So to download the bonus pack for this episode, go to nationalguitaracademy.com slash podcast one. And now it's time for our next segment, Quick Chords.

Quick Chords is the part of the show when we discuss chords and chord technique. So Andy, you're going to share a cool chord with us this week. That's a D major sus9. Bit of a mouthful. Yeah. I love this chord because it has this complicated, impressive sounding name, but it's actually really easy to play. Give us it again, mate. Let's hear it again. It's got a nice jangly ethereal sound. Really nice. I think it sounds really nice to go to an E.

Now even though it's got a very long winded name, it's actually very very simple to play. We had a bit of a chat about how to elegantly describe chords in an audio format. It's obviously much easier to do some of this stuff in video because you can just show it. But what we thought would probably be the easiest way to do this would be to just spell the tab for the code. So the tab for this particular code is XX0220. Is that right? XX0220. That's the one.

To see the chord box for the chord that we've discussed here, check out the bonus pack for this episode, which you can get at nationalguitaracademy.com slash podcast1. And now it's time for our next segment, Tips and Advice.

about guitar and music culture. If you've got a question for us, please email us at podcast at nationalguitaracademy.com and we'll try our best to help you out. Okay, Jack, kick us off. We've got a couple of emails this week. I wanted to say just take a moment really just to say thank you to everybody I asked for people to send us in questions and ideas for the podcast and we worked just

Snowed under with stuff. It was absolutely awesome. Thank you guys. So yeah, we're going to be working our way through them for months I think. But yeah, Jack, we picked out a couple before we started. So thanks, all right. Cool. So this one's from Bob Chisnow. He says, Hi, Mike.

One thing that could be helpful is how to play my guitar with other players and singers. I play and practice a lot with my drum machine, but I've never played in front of anyone or with anyone. Thanks for including me in your mail. I love what you're doing. So thanks for that. Thanks for that. Okay. Brilliant question from Bob. Wow, I could talk about this one all day. Andy, what do you think? So what advice would you give to Bob?

We'll first need to meet some new musicians. That would be a good start. A great place to do that would be things like open mic nights, jam nights. You should go around and start mingling. You've got to get out of there haven't you? The great thing about something like an open mic night is it's usually a fairly informal environment. So, you know, it's great if you just want to get up and start jamming with people or get up and have a go or... Andy is the open mic king, by the way. Yeah.

Usually the audience won't be too judgmental if you're a bit rusty, if you're a bit new to it, if you haven't played live before, people are usually a bit understanding of that. It's quite intimidating isn't it for a lot of people, the idea of standing up and playing for other people. But open mic nights are a good place to get started.

Without being cruel about it, the standard tends not to be that high. There's always someone who's worse than you. If you're worried about... publicly shaming yourself it's like dude don't worry about it you know well the thing is as well if there's any problems with your performance people will usually give you some positive feedback you know they're usually there for that they'll come and tell you how they

improve whereas at a gig they might not do that they might just leave yeah that's absolutely true I mean the other thing to remember is that you know I mean just to you know go I guess going back to Bob's question there specifically In my opinion, nothing improves you more than playing with other musicians.

You learn from them, but also you have to become much more flexible as a musician to react dynamically to whatever is happening. So, you know, to me the whole end goal of blending an instrument is to play with other people. But I know so, so many of our students are just like bedroom players all the night. They just play at home in the living room and they don't actually get out there.

And I think most of that, I think it's because of fear. I think it's that people don't think they're good enough. But there are some terrible professional guitarists there. I don't think people need to feel bad about it. You've just got to get out there and get in touch with other people.

I think what you said before, Andy, about you've got to meet those other musicians, that's the starting point, isn't it? You've got to get out there. Whether it's finding people online or locally, you put an ad in your local guitar shop.

where you go on Facebook, you go along to events. I think you have to be proactive about it. It's not going to just happen. You have to make it happen. You have to go out there and do it. I think as a side note as well, if you don't really feel like you are ready for... going out and playing live, like take some videos of yourself and upload them to a social media platform like Facebook or Twitter or like another one that I've done recently is do like Facebook live stream because it's

essentially like a mini gig and you don't really know who's going to click on live and it's kind of like playing a gig in your bedroom. So that's a really great way of doing something and preparing yourself for the live environment. Brilliant idea. Absolutely love that one. Okay, so I hope we've given you a few tips there, Bob, that are sort of practical, that can help. I mean, I think overwhelmingly we all think it's a fantastic idea to get out there and play with other musicians.

And I can't emphasise strongly enough how much better it makes you. I don't necessarily think that's what a lot of guitarists go looking for when they play with other people. I think they go to have fun and have that experience. I don't think people actually go to that, most of them, to become a better guitarist. But wow, it really does make you a much better one. Yeah, for sure.

Okay, cool. So we've got another question there, Jack. Take us on to the next question. Yeah, so this next question is from Michaela Letova. She says, Hi, Mike. Congrats on getting the podcast started. The one problem I have is... Getting from playing notes on the guitar to playing music.

How do you make for the transfer over? Michaela, thank you so much for asking this question. This is something that I've been asked a lot of times over the years. I think first and foremost what we have to do is kind of define... You know, because it's kind of, it's a little bit vague, isn't it? Michaela's email is like, how do I get from notes to music? So I think lots of people don't necessarily understand when they first start learning guitar.

this is why I prefer people to be chord focused so for me every guitarist in the world should begin learning chords and I don't believe people need to think about notes when they first start playing. I don't think it's important at all. I think it holds you back. I think chords are the best starting place for a guitarist to begin. You learn in a more balanced way and you become a better and more well-rounded guitarist if you begin with chords.

So I guess to answer Michaela's question directly, I would try and stop thinking about the guitar as notes and start thinking about it as chords and start stitching some chords together, playing songs that you love. you know you guys both know. My whole teaching philosophy really is built around people playing music that they love. Not rubbish that they get given by the guitar teacher like Happy Birthday or Twinkle Twinkle and Star. Pick songs that you personally love.

I think the problem is when I was in school anyway I started off learning clarinet and saxophone and stuff like that and none of those instruments can play chords but when people think about music they put guitar in this category and they think oh you must learn all the notes then because that's what everyone else is doing but 99% of the time in my own real world work as a guitarist

I've only had to play a handful of notes. Mostly it works as chords. It's because you're one of the only instruments that can actually do it. So stick with chords and play music you love. And that's a great way to start off. Yeah, I think it's a great point, Jack. Generally, what I would say, generally, there's no absolute rules in music, but in my experience from all the guitarists that I've seen, they tend to progress to more note-based stuff as they get more advanced.

So I think to begin with people want to be thinking about chords and of course they want to start learning the lead guitar and scales and stuff like that as they get better. I think what happens is As you get more skill with the instrument, as you start understanding music theory a bit more, naturally your focus can become more note-focused rather than chord-focused. But that's definitely not something I think a beginner guitarist needs to worry about.

Andy, what do you think, mate? What advice would you give to Michaela? Yeah, I agree as well. Chords are easier to play as well. To play a single note on a guitar, we have to be really careful with our picking hand. To be accurate, yeah. get straight into it and play all the strings so it's a little bit easier to do and once we get a little bit more articulate with our hands then we can start doing things like playing single notes and picking out melodies and so on.

So I think just to give Michaela some absolutely specific step-by-step things that she can follow, I think step number one is make a list of five songs that you absolutely love. So not tracks that you think are okay. Pick five songs that you absolutely adore. Step two, go on the internet, go to Ultimate Guitar or somewhere, find out what the chords are for that track. So I don't know, let's say, for argument's sake, it's I don't know.

Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N' Roses or something. You might just want to type Sweet Child of Mine chords. into google and then you know you'll find the tab for that on ultimate guitar probably and then practice those chords with that track, you know, and just, you know, make sure it's music that you, the good thing about it if it's music that you really love is that you'll enjoy your practice time, but also it's music that you know well.

So that tends to really help with your timing. You don't want to be learning something brand new, a piece of music that you've never heard before. So I hope that gives you some specific tips there Michaela that you can follow to get started with that because of course the aim is for you to be making music as quickly as possible. Okay we're going to move on to the next section of the show now which is rhythm section.

part of the show when we discuss how to boost your rhythmic ability and make your guitar playing sound more musical. Now this week we're going to discuss very quickly just getting started with finger picking. Andy what is finger picking? Well, finger picking is one way we can play guitar rather than using a plactrim or a pick to strum the strings rather than strumming one big block of notes, we can separate the notes out.

more rhythmically like that using the fingers to pluck the strings rather than a kick it's giving us much more texture isn't it yeah so rather than kind of as you said you know like presenting chords in a block of notes while taking the time to articulate individual notes from within that chord Jack, when you think about finger picking, when you explain it to your students, how do you sort of present it to them?

I kind of think of it as like it's a more delicate way to kind of approach guitar playing just gives you kind of more options from a practical point of view I always just think you can use your thumb first finger and your second finger and if you're getting started that's all you really need to use for the first kind of six months once you've kind of done that expand and using your third and your fourth as well so finger picking is probably when I play so it's just at home

Most of the time I'm finger-picking, to be honest. Years ago, that wasn't the case, but now I tend to mostly play without a pick, just because I like feeling that connection with the instrument, just playing with my fingers. But I definitely, you know, think beginners, it's always best to start off with a pick. But I always encourage people to play with their fingers as well, you know, just to get that connection with the instrument.

Just to reiterate the point you made before, Jack, that I think is super important is lots of people get overwhelmed when they start trying to learn finger picking because they try to use too many fingers. And when I've sort of gone through it with students, when they first begin playing, I just get them to literally use their thumb and their first finger. And just get used to that kind of alternating pattern of thumb, finger, thumb, finger, thumb, finger.

and then broaden it out to include the middle finger. And exactly as you said, I just tell people to just stick with that for months and months and months. Just get comfortable seeing what you can play with your thumb and your first and middle finger.

and you can create some crazy like really really intricate you know nice patterns just using those three fingers and then don't worry about introducing your ring finger or your little finger until way way way later I think another thing that, you know, thinking of questions that students always ask me about finger picking. They think there are set patterns that they need to play.

and there are some patterns that work over each corner But what I'd say is, something that maybe a lot of people don't realise is that when you hear somebody fingerpicking all they're actually doing 99% of the time is just playing the notes from within that chord so let's say for example the chord sequence was C to G Do me a favour, Jack, any timing. Just play it, just bounce back and forth between a C and a G at a strumming, not as finger-picking, please.

So what we've got there is chords being presented as blocks. So now literally make any order you want, any pattern you want, just pick those notes out instead of strumming them all in one. Nice. So when you were playing there, you were just literally just picking out any note. Yeah, basically, yeah. There was no specific, special pattern you were playing. You were literally just pulling notes out.

And I think that's a really important piece of information that most people don't realise. There's no special, like, secret way, you know. You're literally just picking out, you know, notes from that chord. And there are some notes that work better than others, but none of them will sound bad. And I always encourage people to just play around with it and just get their fingers moving because it feels so weird to begin with.

Andy, if you had a student that wanted to get started with fingerpicking, like specifically, what's the first step that you would tell them to do? There is a sort of very traditional classical pattern, which is just... here yeah and then And then the three highest. Yeah. For sure. If you keep that pattern quite relentless you can change the chords as long as you've got a root note on the bottom.

And the great thing about that is the picking hand doesn't have to do a lot of thinking. You can just keep that pattern going around by bringing like a left hand or a fretting hand. And we can change the sound of it quite a lot just by putting a chord on. Yeah, because you're basically getting the low end and the high end there on you. It's got a nice dynamic to it, I think, on that particular pattern.

Okay, I hope you found that useful guys. It's given you some new things to think about to get you started with finger picking. Fantastic technique, really good ones. To get more materials that will help you understand fingerpicking and get started with fingerpicking, download the bonus pack for this episode, which you can find at nationalguitaracademy.com slash podcast1. We are going to move on to the next section of the show which is Theory Tips.

Okay, Theory Tips is the part of the show where we share some bite-sized music theory tips. Most guitar learners are a bit intimidated by theory, but this is where some of the best breakthroughs come from. Okay, this week we're going to talk about time signatures. We're going to keep this quite brief because we don't want the podcast to get too long. Give us an overview mate. What a time signature.

So a time signature, if you ever look at a normal piece of sheet music or whatever, you'll see usually two numbers at the beginning. And usually you're going to see a four on top of another four. Sometimes you might see something like a three on top of another four.

And the bottom number, the bottom four, isn't what we need to worry about so much. It's the top number. And that tells us how many beats we have in a bar. Okay, that sounds scary. I'm terrified right now. Okay, this is getting really complex. The easiest way to explain it is to play it, really. Let's say we were in 4-4. That means we have four beats in a bar. Nice. So that might sound on guitar. It might sound like...

What you can hear there is every four strums we're getting an emphasis, we're getting a boulder sounding chord. so the beats are coming out as in fours whereas if I strum it like this What we notice there is we're getting threes, we're getting an emphasis every three, so that's in three, four. So how does this benefit us, Jack? How does understanding a song's time signature, why does it matter? It's really useful for your rhythm playing.

It's kind of like the rhythmic equivalent of what the guitar is. If you don't know what the time signature is you're going to really struggle to play a coherent strumming pattern. The same way if you don't know what the key of a song is you don't really know what notes to play. It's the rhythmic version of that, really. Okay, and in my experience, like, most popular music is in 4 and 4. Yeah, most is. Not all, but most of it is.

And I always think it's useful for people to kind of think in fours, if you know what I mean, in terms of the timing, in terms of the strumming, just in terms of how they... count and kind of divide songs up. Yeah. But yeah, I think, you know, understanding time signatures or at least just being aware of them is really useful if you're looking at, you know, like a musical stave, you know, and you want to see how something's laid out.

If we're playing in a group as well, if you're counting in, we want to make sure we count in the right number of beats. So if everyone's starting at the same time, we want to make sure we all know what beat we're coming in on. So that could be quite helpful. Perfect. Okay, I hope you found that useful guys. Just a quick theory tip.

To see an example of how time signatures work and how you can recognise them, download the bonus pack for this episode, which you can get at nationalguitoracademy.com slash podcastone. And now we're going to move on to the last segment of the show, which is One Last Thing.

Perform! Okay, one last thing is the part of the show where we leave you with a parting gift, so something randomly cool or interesting about music or guitar culture. Jack, what have you been up to this week, mate? Do you have one last thing to share with our audience? Yeah, so this week I've been practicing basically my girlfriend as a singer and I've been tasked with the challenge of working out.

It's a really intense jazz tune. It sounds like you're enjoying that. You're being tashed with the challenge. So you felt happy really enjoying it. It's really difficult. It took me about a month to just work out one minute of the song and my ear's pretty good so it took me a long time. It must be pretty hardcore because you're an advanced... accurate player, so that must be pretty tough. I'll give you a quick snippet just to see so you can hear what I've kind of been doing.

So just to be clear there, I haven't got a secret second guitarist in my pocket playing all the bass lines. That's me. pretty brave actually to act like to play something you're learning you're actually learning around the podcast yeah so all of those like weird bass line stuff it's like you need an extra finger or something don't you to do that really really tricky

Andy, what have you been up to this week? Have you got one last thing that you'd like to share with the audience? Well, over the weekend I went down to London to watch a concert. I watched the senseless things. a rather good indie rock band from the early 90s and who have reformed quite good I can see you sporting the hood oh yes you went to the merch stand yeah that was a great gig very good and I think my my one last thing for this episode would be

would be to encourage people to check out Roger Waters. So Roger Waters was the primary songwriter. yeah sort of driving force behind Pink Floyd or behind like Pink Floyd's best periods in my opinion and his solo stuff is really really overlooked and it's so cool I've just been listening to it a lot lately

So Radio Chaos, the pros and cons of Hitchhiking, Amused to Death, they're just brilliant albums. If you're interested in any of Pink Floyd's stuff, those three albums are superb and I've kind of rediscovered them lately and really enjoyed them. Okay, I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the podcast, guys. Please, please give us your feedback. You know, this is your show. You know, we've spent quite a long time trying to put it together in a format that works.

But I very much see this as something that will evolve as time goes by. We can ditch segments or... add different segments we can make it shorter or longer or whatever but please give us your feedback so we know what works for you please let us know your thoughts on the show by emailing us at podcast at national guitar academy.com we want to help you so please let us know what you want to hear And also let us know what you think works well in the show and what could be better.

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Each bonus pack includes video lessons, diagrams, chord boxes and practice materials. Basically, lots of stuff that builds on the things we've discussed in the podcast. To download the bonus pack for this episode, go to nationalguitaracademy.com slash podcast.