hey, just got off the phone with Will Ripley…
We just recorded a sweet little podcast.

The topic is: 5 Ingredients for Sounding Like a Pro Guitarist.
Take a listen…

if the player doesnt work, or you want to download
the podcast directly, click here.

If you haven’t checked out Will’s “5 Minute Guitar” system yet, GO HERE:

www.GuitarControl.com/5min

Hey. I’m Will. I’m here and working hard in my home studio.
I’m mapping all kinds of different topics for all you guys
and girls out there that are scouring the internet for the
next free guitar lesson tip. So I’ve been working on all
the cures and common mistakes that guitarists make from
learning right here on the internet. I hope you find
today’s tip really helpful.

Today I’m going to talk to you about string attacks,
how we attack the strings, how we plow through the
strings to get the best sound possible. I’m going
to be explaining this from your point of view. I’m
going to be the Guitar Doctor today and let’s check it out.

We’re going to be talking about our string attack.
We’re going to be talking about this hand today.
You’re going to be surprised at this, but basically
what I’m going to be talking to you about is hitting
the strings harder. Why do we do that? Unless you play
really gentle acoustic music, then maybe you want to
play nice and calmly and smoothly and quietly because
that keeps the vibe of the song. But when you’re playing
rock or country or blues or metal or anything like those
styles of music or a combination, what really helps is if
we hit the string nice and hard.

We can change something like this I’m just grabbing my
Led Zeppelin or AC/DC G chord here. I’m just playing a G
chord without my first finger. Now my finger automatically
mutes the A string. So what I can do is just plow through
all six strings.

I can make something transform from this Into something
like this What I’m doing there is I’ve got this pick
plowing through those strings. By the way, I’m using quite
a thick pick. I’ve got a 1 millimeter thick pick and I am
just going for it. Each one of those strings is really
connecting with that pick. What this comes from is we want
to make this body of wood, whether it be an acoustic guitar
or an electric guitar, resonate as much as possible. If we
plow through the strings, we get this whole thing vibrating
and what ends up coming out here is sounding really big and full.

I mean, certainly, there’s a maximum. There will be a
maximum way of just kind of hitting the strings so hard
that they’re just flying out of tune and not really sounding
that good. But if you plow through the strings nice and solid
like that, everything will stay nice and in-tune with your
hard strums and end up sounding really nice.

So what it’s all about here is adding some aggression,
some muscle, some soul, and like some oomph. I don’t know,
whatever you want to call it, just getting that it’s
almost like playing guitar more athletically, more like
a sport. You just transform. It’s just hitting the strings
harder. Pound through those strings.

Really, most importantly, guys, I really have to say that
this is all about breaking down your shyness barrier.
We cant play the guitar being shy anymore because it
ends up just sounding gentle and kind of weak and stuff
like that. If you just get in there and start hitting the
strings harder and just owning it, this instrument is just
going to sound a lot fuller, more powerful, and just way huger.

I hope you enjoyed today’s video. I’m going to be releasing
more videos like this. So until then, keep on ripping it up.

Hey. I’m Will. Thanks for joining me here at my home studio.
I’ve been working hard for all you guys out there that are
learning guitar on your phone. This is good on your guys.
Unfortunately, it’s really easy to develop some bad habits.
So I’m here to cure all those bad habits; I’m here to cure
all the common mistakes that a guitarist makes from learning
on the internet, right here on YouTube.

Today what I want to talk to you about is something that is
so commonly overlooked and is really important and that’s
tuning your guitar. The people that teach on Skype and so on,
they call me the Guitar Doctor and that’s because I’m providing
the cures in your point of view. Let’s spin this around;
let’s check it out.

So like I said, turning your guitar is so often overlooked.
Let me put it to you this way. If you’re playing something
on guitar and your guitar is a little bit out of tune, no
matter what you do, no matter what you play, it’s going to
sound not as good as it should because your guitar is out
of tune. We want to get this thing perfectly in tune.

Guitars are just so finicky, I tell you, man. They go out of
tune by themselves with weather changes and everything. They’ll
just go out of tune like crazy. So I’m going to introduce you
to my little friend called an electronic tuner.

This is a chromatic tuner and it’s going to give you all the
different notes from A to G sharp. However, all we really need
to worry about right now is the names of the strings, which are
E, A, D, B, G and E. Those are the names of the strings and
that’s what we want to get the tuner recognizing to make sure
that we’re tuning to the right note. It’s really easy to
make that mistake.

As you can see, this thing is already picking-up my voice and
stuff like that. So we’ve got a little microphone in here
somewhere. It’s really helpful if you get this thing as close
to the guitar as possible because the sound is coming off right
here. For electric guitars, we have a little input there which
makes it a little bit more accurate.

Anybody who is anybody in the rock and roll or any kind of
guitar world thing, like everybody is using an electronic
tuner. Let me just put it to you that way. So let’s start
with an electric tuner and just trust me, you’ll be able to
develop your ear and then I can teach you how to tune by ear
later on. So that’s the first step, we get this tuner close
to us.

What we want to do here is get this needle right here, right
in the center, right on that zero mark. You only want to
[unintelligible- 03:37]. And then I intentionally put my
[unintelligible- 03:41]. Here we go.

We want to get that needle right in the center. As you can
see it’s on this end. What that mean is it’s flat. When you
see that little B symbol that means that it’s flat. What
that means is my string is too loose to be a true B note.
What we want to do is we want to tighten the string.

Tightening the strings is always counterclockwise. I just
want to show you how much I have to turn it to get it in
that center spot. There we go. That wasn’t very much. That
was like maybe a ¼ turn. Just keep in mind that you want
to have micro adjustments when you’re tuning your guitar,
just small enough. Hit your string two or three times every
second because what happens is when you first hit the note,
that first half a second is when the tuner is the most
accurate and registers it the most clearly. What I do is
I’ll hit my string over and over and make sure that it
hits that green.

Now, it’s okay if it kind of like goes in between red
and green. As you can see it kind of went into the red
a little bit, but that was pretty solid green. So you
get the green light and you move on.

So here’s another flat string. This is going to be a
really small one. There we go. I moved my tuner peg
about that much. That’s where it was. I turned it
counterclockwise to raise the pitch of the note, to
make it into the sharp area. We’re going to sharpen
the note.

So I’m going to be releasing more videos like this.
We’ve got all the cures and common mistakes that a
guitarist makes from learning right here on YouTube.
So until then, keep on ripping it up.

Hey. I’m Will. Thanks for joining me here at my home studio.
I’ve been meaning to do this forever and I’m finally getting
to it. I’ve amassed all these different topics of problems
that I see with my students, especially people who are learning
online. What I’ve done is I’ve got all the cures to the common
mistakes that a beginner or intermediate or pro guitarist is
going to make from learning right here on the internet and on YouTube.

What I want to talk to you about today is the buzz and that
rattle and that nasty sound we get on the guitar. Do you know that
one? Or maybe you’re building a chord and it ends up sounding
like this. Nasty stuff.

So here it comes at you from the Guitar Doctor. That’s what
my Skype students call me anyways. And coming from your point
of view. So let’s spin this around and check it out.

Here is that sound that we just heard. Im going to give
you the tip right off the bat. Just get that finger higher
up on the fret so it sounds nice and clear.

I just want to bring to your attention some parts on the guitar.
Just like these are the tuning pegs and these are the strings,
these silver bars on the neck are called the frets. Maybe you
knew that, but a lot of people get this confused. This area 
say if we’re talking about the 3rd fret. A lot of times they
think that this is the fret, this whole area. So thats like
the fret zone. That’s where you put down your fingers.

Now, I want to bring to your attention the buzz test. If we put
our fingers as low as possible on the frets, just go ahead and
do that for yourself. I want you to intentionally get a buzz-y
sound. There’s that nasty sound. All I want you to do is just
be aware of how hard you’re pressing.

Now, just slide your finger up as high as you possibly can and
apply that exact same amount of pressure, and try it again. Pretty
cool, hey? Same pressure; nasty buzz sound. Same pressure, up
high-up on the fret, out of the buzz zone and there you go. This
is super handy for just making everything that you play sound better.

There are times when we can’t get our fingers high up on the
frets and one of those times is when we’re playing chords.
So I want to show you an E minor chord real quick. Were going
to use our peace symbol fingers and we’re going to grab on the
2nd fret here on both the A and D strings. As you can see it’s
pretty tricky for my fingers to get side-by-side here, right?

What we need to make sure is that as long as one of the fingers,
in this case, it’s my 2nd fret on the D string, is high up. See
it spilling over; it’s looking good. As long as that guy is in
good shape, then this one will follow. But if this one down,
then this guy just gets right in that buzz zone. Just make sure
all your fingers are nice and high-up on the frets when you’re
making chords and I promise you that there’s a D chord for
instance. You just snug those guys up nice and high up on the
fret and you’re going to sound great every single time.

I’m going to be recording more videos like this, some more
cures to the common mistakes that a guitarist is going to make
from learning right here on YouTube and the internet.
Until the next one, keep on ripping it up.

Hey. I’m Will. Thanks for joining me today, guys.
I’ve got another cool, free guitar lesson that’s
lined-up for you and another cure to common mistakes
that guitarist make when learning right here on the YouTube.

Today I’ve got something really cool for you guys.
It’s reading tablature. Maybe you’re heard of it as
reading tabs. What a tab is, is it’s basically guitar
player sheet music. We don’t have all those fancy notes
and stuff like that and the staff, but this is a way for
guitar players to read music. So after this lesson you’re
going to be able to go online and start tracking-down some
of your favorite songs and start attacking them, learning
how to play them. I’m going to show you how to read tabs
from your point of view. So let’s spin this around and
check it out.

The first thing to understand about how tabs works is you
figure this out. You’ve got six lines here. Each one of
those lines represent a string. What the string names are,
I have them written over here: E, A, D, G, B, E. What’s
helpful here is that we’ve got a big E and a small E. Now,
if you look down at your guitar, you’ve got a big E and a
small E. Those are the names of those two strings.

What’s confusing about tabs is that it’s like we split
the guitar up and then have it facing us. This is the big
string and there’s the small string. There’s the big E;
there’s the little E. So that’s kind of the first thing
to kind of understand about tabs, is that that counts read.
It feels backwards but you get used to it pretty quick.

The cool this is that those numbers are the frets. We can
start reading this stuff right away. As long as we know what
frets are and stuff like that, and now I’m talking about
that in my buzz video. So make sure to check that video if
you haven’t already.

All we’ve got to do is we’re just going to read left to
right just like we’re reading a book or anything like that.
Let’s work through this riff together. Let’s start with
that very first note.

So we’ve got a number 5 on the low E string. Let’s come
over here and find the 5th fret. See if you can beat me to it.
I’ll give you a tip: play it with your 3rd finger.

Now, let’s look back up here. Oh, okay, we’ve got two 5s in
a row. So what that means is we hit this low E string twice.

The next note. We’ve got 3rd fret of the A string. Now if
we go back here, okay, so that would be the next string up.
Okay, got it. See if you can beat me to it. Play that with
your 1st finger, 3rd fret. And then we go back to the 5th.
So that’s pretty easy, right? Five, 5, 3, 5, with the 3
being on the A string. So it looks like this.

Now we’ve got 3, 1, 0, all on the low E string. The zero
would mean you hit that string, but you don’t actually
have any frets going on. Another way to think about zero,
you can think of zero as always being open. So that’s
kind of the rundown of working through a riff.

Now, what gets a little bit confusing with tabs is reading
chords that are tabbed. What I want to do is I want to grab
a basic G chord. Here’s the thing, when we’ve got multiple
things playing at the same time they’re all lined-up on the
same line. You can see that we can draw a line right through
there. Now unlike this, where these are all single notes,
we’ve got multiple notes going on. So let’s work this one out.

Third fret on the low E string, just reference this again.
I’ll give you a hint; play it with your 2nd finger. Second
fret on the A string. We’ve got a couple zeros for opens.
So we don’t have to worry about those. And then we’ve got
another couple of 3s on the top string. So let’s go over here.
And now we have that other 3, grab this guy and put it on there.
That’s what a G chord would look like on a tab. That sounds like that.

So that’s really the only kind of confusing thing about tabs
is when we’ve got multiple numbers lined-up on the same line
and then we’re playing more than one string at the same time.
That’s the basic rundown on how to read single notes and read
chords in tabs.

Now there are just a couple things to remember about tabs.
Tabs do not tell you a couple of things. It doesn’t tell you
rhythm, it doesn’t tell you which fingers to use and those
are some pretty big things a tab doesn’t tell you.

Now, as you can see, in some of these 9ths we’ve got tabs,
we’ve got – we do have some rhythmic notations. So in the
case that you know how to read rhythmic notations, this stuff
will come in pretty handy.

I hope you enjoyed today’s video. I’m going to be releasing
more of them like this. So keep on ripping it up.