Having a designated practice space where you can go to do some serious work and make progress is an important part of growing as a musician. In this first pre-lesson, we will walk through some tips for setting up your own little effective practice haven.

One of the most critical parts of success on the guitar is setting up a practice plan and sticking faithfully to it. This second pre-lesson will walk you through how to set up an effective practice plan and some tips for sticking to it.

Knowing how to change your strings on the guitar is like a driver knowing how to change a flat. Every guitarist should be able to do it. It may seem intimidating at first but with a little bit of knowledge and practice, you can apply the methods here to change your own strings.

Tuning the guitar is the first step to sounding great. But just like everything else on the guitar, it takes some practice to get good at it! Dig into this important step as you learn a two-step process for tuning your guitar by ear or with an electronic tuner.

The first pillar of actually playing the guitar is strumming. This first lesson on strumming addresses some critical technical foundations that will set you up for success as you learn how to build and figure out strumming patterns for yourself.

Understanding how rhythm works and how to read rhythms will set you up for success in a lot of areas of playing the guitar in the future. The first step here is to learn how to identify and count the fundamental note values you will see on a regular basis.

The second pillar of playing the guitar is making clean chords. As you learn the two simple chords taught in this lesson, you will also be learning some vital chording techniques that will make all the chords you learn in the future much easier!

Developing good timing is one of the most important parts to sounding great on the guitar. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most overlooked aspects of playing the guitar. Start developing your timing right from the start with some simple yet highly effective exercises and insights.

Take your ability to play clean chords to the next level by adding a few new major open chords to your library. The skills and techniques that you've built in the previous lessons will make this much easier than just jumping in cold.

Continue to develop your strumming abilities by applying the knowledge and technique you've already built to some new foundational strumming patterns. This will get you one step closer to being able to come up with your own strumming patterns and figure out the ones in your favorite songs.

Learning how to change chords smoothly takes more guitarists out of the game than any other hurdle. That's why it's the third pillar of playing the guitar. There are some simple things that you can do to make switching between chords smoothly much easier. We will go over all of those here so you can see the progress you want on the guitar.

Get one step closer to having all of your fundamental open chords down while refining your overall chording technique. This is a big step to being able to play the songs you want on the guitar.

Learning songs is the 4th pillar of playing the guitar and we are getting things started out right by learning the America song "Horse With No Name". It's a pretty simple song that only uses two chords and one strumming pattern.

This final lesson on open chords rounds out this part of your chord library by completing your knowledge of the five fundamental major chord shapes, the 3 fundamental minor chord shapes, and your overall chording technique.

Strengthen the first pillar of playing the guitar by focusing on one of the most crucial concepts to develop your strumming abilities called the Constant Strumming Technique. Along the way, you will learn some new strumming patterns as well.

Expand your song repertoire by learning the classic tune "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison. This is a kind of quantum leap where everything covered so far comes together in a big way. This is a great example of how a handful of chords, a strumming pattern, and some basic technique can create some beautiful music.

Complete your fundamental strumming training by looking at 16th note strumming patterns. Many newer guitar players feel intimidated by 16th notes but there are some very methodical things you can do to make these types of patterns easier on yourself.

Bar chords can be the arch nemesis of guitar players but there are some simple alternatives. These simplified chords allow you to play chords like F major, F# major, Bb minor, and B major without worrying about bar chords. This is a big step to playing even more of your favorite songs on the guitar.

Every guitar player should know how to play at least one Beatles song. Learn the song "Let it Be" and get it to where you can play along to the original recording. Moments like this are why we put in all of the hard work learning new things on the guitar.

Learn how to add some motion and color to your rhythm guitar playing. This is just the first step to learning how to embellish your strumming and chords but it's a vital one.

Take your rhythm guitar playing to the next level by seeing how one of the all-time pros did it. The Hank Williams tune "Jambalaya" is a simple but extremely effective way to apply everything you've learned about the guitar so far.

The words "Music Theory" can be scary and intimidating to a lot of newer players. Never fear! There are some things you can do to make learning the basics of music theory very simple. This will be the beginning of helping you to understand how to tell which chords go together.

Understanding how major keys work will allow you to learn songs much quicker and even start writing some of your own music! Explore a few simple concepts to demystify music theory a little bit more.

A capo is a super useful tool that any guitar player can use with simple chords they've memorized to play in any key. Learn about the fundamental concepts involved in using a capo and gain some valuable and practical experience.

This final music theory session helps you understand exactly how major and minor chords are made. Once you get this down you will have a deeper understanding of why certain chords sound good together. This is a great place to be if you want to springboard into learning more about theory.

Having the basics of strumming down is great, but dressing it up and making it more expressive is even better. Explore some techniques and elements of strumming that can add a whole new layer of depth to your playing.

The song "Take it Easy" by The Eagles is the pinnacle of this entire course. When you can play this song you will have conquered the basic physical parts of playing the guitar! It's the most challenging song covered here but also the most rewarding.

Want to take your rhythm guitar playing to a new level beyond strumming? That's exactly what you will do with this fingerstyle session. Learning the fundamental techniques of this style will give you a whole new color pallet to choose from when playing the guitar.

Crosspicking is another technique that you can add to your bag of rhythm guitar tricks to help take you past simple strumming. It's kind of like fingerstyle guitar but with a whole new set of physical techniques to learn.

Getting the fundamentals of playing the guitar down is epic and critical. But what do you do once you've already done that? That's exactly what we will discuss here. Setting musical goals with specific due dates is a big part of future success.