Are you thinking about learning how to play the guitar? Let me tell you what happened to Brian. He?s a really hot lead guitar player in a local rock band. They are really making an impact in the night scene around town, and there is serious talk of a big city tour and an album soon. The guys are going so well I?d say the chances are high some great things will happen for them over the next year. But it wasn?t always so positive for Brian. He did a degree. It was an Arts degree. Now an Arts degree is not generally a great choice from a career point of view. Worse, Brian?s grades were a close scrape through at best. From an employer?s point of view, maybe some A grades in an Arts degree would suggest there was something up top to offset the lack of directly relevant job training. But there was no such consolation prize for Brian. He could not find a job. The thing was, he had spent most of his three years at university following what was going on in the music world. His studies took second place, after listening to tracks and chatting or reading about music most of the day, and being out around the clubs most of the night.

Now you would think that Brian should pursue his passion for music, and make a career out of it. You are quite right, of course, and that?s what all his friends and family said too. But there was a catch. Brian knew quite a lot about the music scene, but he had nothing to contribute on the stage. He had never learned to play. Not even basic piano lessons at school. And he was certainly no singer. He couldn?t even read music, so teaching it was out of the question. There was a job going teaching English in Korea. It was a contract for a year. Somebody gave Brian an old guitar and some ?how to learn to play the guitar? book to take with him, and he plucked away in his spare time while he was away. When he came back he knew enough to join in with some band mates in jamming sessions. He wasn?t very good, but the guys were happy to have him along because they liked hearing what he had to say about artists and their music. He is like a music encyclopaedia, you see. Sometimes from his knowledge he could suggest fresh ideas for new songs they were working on. But he simply was not a real guitar player. He had to face up to the harsh truth. He was no more than a likeable hanger-on around the bands. Nobody took him seriously. I?m not sure how it happened, but he then found a guitar-training course on the internet, and started to really focus on using it to learn how to play the guitar.

To be fair, he had made a start while in Korea, but had achieved little. It seemed like just a few weeks after he started with this new course that the results started to come. Somehow he was able to take all that music he had been listening to and play it himself, nearly as well as the real thing. It was as if a connection had been made and everything came together. The secret seemed to be the jamming tracks in the course, music he could play along with as well as following the main written and video lessons. The multimedia and interactive participation approach turned out to be far better for Brian than just learning from a book. Nearly as good as personal tuition, in fact. At last he was becoming a real musician, a real guitar player. Next thing he moved on from the jamming sessions with the band to a few filling-in gigs on the stage, then a permanent place in a band. It was the internet guitar-playing course that made the difference for Brian, and transformed his life. Now he really can live out his passion for music and make a living through playing his guitar. And the rest, as they say, is history. Or maybe we should wait a few years, and history could well have more to say about Brian.

Shelby Wright is in awe of the power of the information available on the internet to change people’s lives. You can read a review here of the multimedia guitar lessons referred to in the article above. Shelby also contributes private label rights articles to PLRWrittenArticles and writes an information products review blog.

I?m on a mission. To convert.

To convert guitar players and aspiring guitar players to open-D. It?s the tuning so important to guitar in the last number of decades, but too often, so overlooked by the mainstream. Standard tuning has a stranglehold on the business of learning guitar. The reason, to me, remains unclear.

As a starting point, an open tuning is clearly the logical choice. What easier way to begin to play guitar, but with an open, major chord? How much more confidence could an aspiring guitarist (of any age, but more on that later) need than to be able to play a nice sounding chord without putting finger to fret? That?s what you get when you start with an open tuning.

My personal story went like this. Frustrated novice guitar player (?novice? for years on end!). Gets nowhere with guitar for years. Does research (i.e. reads guitar magazines). Realizes many of the greats played in alternate tunings (K. Richard, J. Mitchell, E. James, R. Johnson, R. Cooder, J. Page, etc, etc.). Re-tunes guitar until he finds one that works ? open-D. Presto! Light bulb comes on, a better guitar player is hatched.

Open tunings are mentioned, frequently enough, in magazines articles, transcriptions, books and the like. But very seldom or never have I seen an outright promotion of their use as a stand-alone approach to guitar (my god, even Keith switches to standard tuning every now and again!). And open-D, the most logical of all starting points, is rarely mentioned at all. I have yet, in 20 years of public performance, have anyone come up to me and say ? ?How about that ? you play just like I do, in open-D?. People do come up, but the comments are almost always, ?You sure use some funny chord positions? or ?Are you playing in a different tuning?. Amazingly, many guitar players associate ?open tuning? with ?more difficult?. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, to make the transition from standard tuning is a bit of a learning curve, but once you?re there, POW! You?ll never want to play any other way (although just adding proficiency on an open tuning to your standard tuning is a giant leap).

Which brings us back to beginners. No matter what the age, a beginner, whether 6 or 60 years old will find open-D an easier way to start playing guitar. It is so obvious. Focus on the strum without any fingers on the fretboard, and then work your way up to one finger on the fretboard (the basic major chord in open-D is just one finger). What a way to develop early confidence. The truth is, and I am living proof, you would never have to make the flip to standard tuning. But if you wanted to, it?s just small tweak up to standard ? sort of drop-D tuning with three other minor adjustments back and forth, to and from standard E A D G B E, to D A D F# D.

One question that arises ? why open-D, then, of all the potential starting points? The absolute simplest choice may be, for easier understanding of theory, keys and harmony might be open-C C G C E G C, but that gets a tad floppy sounding, as the guitar strings are so slackened. Going the other way to open-E E B E G# B E might be going too far the other way, though it?s used. Open-D seems the perfect choice! For singers wanting to accompany themselves, of course, it becomes an issue of vocal range tied to the guitar tuning. A capo may be in order.

Frank Foxx is a semi-professional guitar player who plays exclusively in the tuning of open-D. He has written a guitar method book, extolling the virtues of what he considers to be the most versatile and easiest of all guitar tunings, entitled Guitar-eze A Simpler Approach to Playing the Guitar. His website is http://www.easierguitar.com. He keeps a blog at http://open-d.blogspot.com dedicated to helping guitarists and aspiring guitarists see the light.