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Articles & Books From Hal Leonard Corporation
A one-stop resource to the essentials of owning and playing the guitar If you’ve just bought a guitar, or you’ve had one for a while, you probably know it takes some time and effort to learn how to play the popular instrument. There’s so much to know about owning, maintaining, and playing a guitar. Where do you even begin?
The key to fast and fun piano proficiency! Whether you’re a wannabe Mozart or are an experienced hand at tinkling the ivories, the latest edition of Piano For Dummies has what you need to take you to the next level in making beautiful music using this much-loved and versatile instrument. Working as an introductory course—or as a refresher to keep those fingers nimble—you’ll find information on getting started, improving your technique and performance, and the best ways to practice until you hit finely tuned perfection.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-10-2022
Learning to play the guitar is a lot fun. Use this cheat sheet to help you get started with your guitar finger placement and guitar chords. If you need help with finger placement on your guitar, use tablature (tab) and fingerboard diagrams.Practice playing the most common open-position chords on your guitar to get that “jangly” sound, and make sure you know the notes on the neck of your guitar to change starting notes in scales, chords, and arpeggios.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-16-2022
On this Cheat Sheet, you find handy reference material that you can print and place conveniently in your practice area. Included are an explanation of guitar notation as it translates to actually playing the guitar, 24 common guitar chords, a fingerboard diagram showing all the notes on the guitar up to the 12th fret, and a list of essential tools and accessories that facilitate trouble-free and versatile music-making on guitar.
Video / Updated 11-09-2022
Open chords are chords that fall within the first four frets typically using open strings. They sound twangy because they include unfretted strings that are permitted to ring open. This chart represents 24 of the most useful open chords you use to play guitar:
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
You can mute with your right hand on the guitar (using the heel of the palm), but this produces a different effect than left-hand muting. In right-hand muting, you still hear the sound of the fretted string, but in a subdued way. You don’t use right-hand muting to stop the sound completely, as you do in a left-hand mute; you just want to suppress the string from ringing freely.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Following are chord diagrams for 96 of the most widely used guitar chords. The chords are arranged in 12 columns from C to B, for all 12 notes of the chromatic scale. Each of the eight rows shows a different quality — major, minor, 7th, minor 7th, and so on. So if you're looking at a piece of music that calls for, say, a Gsus4 chord, go over to the eighth column from the left and then down to the sixth row from the top.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Like the A form, the E form is a standard barre chord shape. On the guitar, you use it to form major chords for notes along the 6th string. You can form it into some unique chord voicings, especially when you use the extra note found in its arpeggio pattern.
Credit: Illustration courtesy of Desi Serna
You add only one note to the E form shape to complete the arpeggio pattern: a 3rd interval on the 5th string.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
Before you break down the C form into smaller and more useable chord voicings on the guitar, add to it in the form of an arpeggio pattern. An arpeggio is a technique in which you play the notes of a chord one at a time like a scale rather than simultaneously as a chord.
The verb arpeggiate describes how players pick through the notes of chords individually rather than strumming them all simultaneously (think of the opening to “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals or “Everybody Hurts” by R.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
The D form is unique in that it’s the only CAGED form that isn’t rooted to either the 6th or 5th string on the guitar. Instead, its root is on the 4th string. It’s awkward to finger and technically isn’t a barre chord. As with some of the other CAGED forms, you don’t usually use it in the same way that it appears in the open position.