B. Exercise I

I. The Strings and The Notes

Well, if you look upon the guitar you will see six strings with many of frets in the fingerboard. Before you learn to play some chords it can be more better if you understand “Who are the six strings” that can become a lot of notes in the different fret. Okay, let’s check this out:

E----------------( the first and the smallest string, called high E string)
B----------------( the second string, called B string )
G----------------( the third string, called G string )
D----------------( the fourth string, called D string )
A----------------( the fifth string, called A string )
E----------------( the sixth string, the biggest string, called low E string)

(from the top string to the last string can be spelled as EADGBE)

If we put and press our finger upon the fingerboard between the two frets, we’ll get the new notes from once of the strings. For example in the high E string, if we put our finger in the first frets column we get the F note, in the second column we get the F# note, in the third column we get the G note, etc. We can imagine this illustration as a guitar fret board :

E---F----F#---G----G#---A----A#---B----C----C#---etc---
B---C----C#---D----D#---E----F----F#---G----G#---
G---G#---A----A#---B----C----C#---D----D#---E----
D---D#---E----F----F#---G----G#---A----A#---B----
A---A#---B----C----C#---D----D#---E----F----F#----
E---F----F#---G----G#---A----A#---B----C----C#----

For your next day, this exercise maybe useful for you if you learn about read the musical notation for guitar.


II. Let’s get the beat

If you want to sing along with your guitar, first you have to understand the beat, you have to get the beat’s feel or the groove in order that you can strum your guitar with the right tempos. If you’ve got the beat already, you can sing with the tempo on your mind, maybe the sounds like dum dum dururum dum dum dururum dum … or else.
Now we can learn some simple chords for exercise and get the beat, let’s check this out:
This is called tablature, the line is the string on the guitar and the number on the line is the number of the fret, for example if in the high E string there is 2, it means you can press the high E string on the fret column 2 (two). Just simple.

D Major :
E---2----
B---3----
G---2----
D---0----
A---------
E---------

C Major:
E---0----
B---1----
G---0----
D---2----
A---3----
E---------

G Major :
E---3----
B---3----
G---0----
D---0----
A---2----
E---3----

Now we learn D, C, and G chords. If you feel quiet swift and little bit understand, you can try to play the exercise song (can be named as etude), this song is from Guns and Roses album(Appetite for Destruction), Sweet Child O’Mine, but on “simplify” version. Let’s strum!

D-------------------------------------------C
She’s got smile that it seems to me reminds me of childhood memories

---------G-------------------------------------------------D -->just repeat.
Were everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky


Okay… If you can get the beat it means you can learn other song, and don’t give up learning other chord. The best way to remember the new chord is to use it in the song that we play, so the best way exercising chord is with learn the new song.