Chords for Start Here for Your First Guitar Lesson | Fender Play

[E] _ _ Hey everybody, [Abm] Scott Goldbaum from Fender Play here, and in this video I'm going to
give you your first [Gb] virtual guitar lesson.
We'll be touching upon the essentials, including how to hold your guitar, the anatomy of the
[F] instrument, how to use a pick in order to strum chords and play single notes, and we'll
even start working toward memorizing the strings by their letter name.
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Alright, so the first [A] step we want to be mindful of in this lesson is posturing yourself to
hold the guitar.
Make sure you have a straight back, [Abm] you're relaxed, you're not hunched forward or leaning back.
I see that happening [A] too often and it creates some really weird wrist angles.
When it comes [F] to holding the guitar, remember this is your fretting hand.
You never want to [Abm] hold the neck like a baseball bat or something like that.
The positioning [A] and the balance comes from resting the bottom of the guitar [Gb] on your lap
or your thigh, and then this part's going to rest against the body, and I like to have
my forearm, some people like to use their elbow, just over the top.
Your wrist is going to drape over the strings right here by the time we get ready to pick
and strum some strings, but this is the general place you want to be at.
Don't rely on your fretting hand to balance the guitar.
Again, it's the body, the lap, and then a little bit of the forearm or the elbow just
[Abm] on top of the guitar here.
Now let's talk a little bit about the anatomy of the guitar.
It's valuable for you to know what these parts are [Ab] called, and it shouldn't be too surprising.
Generally speaking, we have the [A] head or the headstock.
Contained on this headstock, you have the tuning pegs that we use to make sure your
strings are in tune.
As you go from left to right, you see [Db] the neck or the [F] fingerboard, the fretboard, and
you have all these different little metal frets that separate notes [B] into different pitches
up and down the strings when [E] you apply pressure between them.
As you continue to go [Gb] from left to right, we encounter the body.
And within the body of the guitar, we've got a lot of things to point out.
Perhaps we'll start with the bridge right here.
[Eb] The strings are coming out of the bridge and going across the fingerboard all the way to
the tuning peg over here [F] at the headstock.
You've got these pickups.
You've got pickup selector switches.
You've got a volume knob, a tone knob, and that's a pretty good overview of the anatomy
of the guitar for now.
In addition to that, we want to talk about holding [B] the pick.
So the biggest [F] mistake I see people make is they use too many fingers when they grab this pick.
In addition to that, not wanting to use three fingers, I also see people have the pick in
the same direction as the tip of their thumb.
Let's go ahead and try something different.
If you put your thumb out like this and you place the pick [E] perpendicular to it, so the
tip of the thumb is going upright and this is going off to the side, you can then take
the side of [F] your index finger and catch it like this.
So that by the time you have your hand resting over the strings [Em] as you were to strum all
strings down, for instance, your pick is making contact.
[Abm] Now there are nuances to holding the [E] pick with these two fingers, but what's most important
is that you're not using three fingers and that you're not trying to duck build [B] the pick
on your index finger to where everything is pointing in the same direction.
You want to go ahead and have this perpendicular to your thumb and use the side of your index finger.
If you get [G] a little bit of the bass, that's fine, but mostly we just [E] want to have the
side of that index finger so we can strum and play single notes.
All right, let's get to the string [A] names.
You've got six strings and often we can think of them by their number [D] names, six, [E] five,
four, three, two, and one, but it's even more useful to know them by their letter name.
E, A, D, [Em] G, B, and E.
You notice that [E] I said E here and E here.
Well, this is a low E, right?
And this is a high E.
So we talk about them being low and high based off their pitch,
not in terms of like proximity from the ground.
Again, this is your low E, this is your high E, and to help you remember all the strings
in between, we'll come up with some sentences.
What are some popular ones?
We've got, um, Eddie ate [G] dynamite.
[E] Goodbye, Eddie.
What's another [D] one?
Eat a darn good [E] breakfast every day.
I had a student come up with another one recently.
It was every animal [B] drinks Gatorade [Em] before eating.
[E] So be creative.
Come up with your own, whatever keeps it to your memory of E, A, D, G, B, E.
If your teachers are ever delegating instructions and saying something like, take your pointer
finger [G] to the high E string's third fret.
You want to know what we mean by that.
[Abm] So let's go ahead now that we've taken this overview into consideration [Gb] and start making some noise.
So we're going to start playing some open strings and [Ab] some fretted notes on those strings,
beginning with our open low E string.
So what I want you to do, holding the pick correctly is make [Abm] contact with that low E string.
Try picking it four times.
It doesn't have to be a big follow through pick or, or strum pattern.
[E] Just a small picking radius like this, _ _ just like that.
Doesn't take a lot.
You're going to be building spatial awareness as we move from the low [Abm] E string up to the A string.
Again, [E] when we say up, when we say low E string or high E string, [B] that's all relative to pitch,
not like [E] proximity from the ground.
So we're going to go ahead and from the low E string, move up to the A string, play that four times. _
And as you continue to do this, you're building spatial awareness.
If you accidentally go up to the D string [D] and hit the G string or multiple strings,
that's perfectly fine.
We're [Abm] building our familiarity with the distance between [D] strings.
Let's go ahead and hear that D string four times.
One, two, three, four.
Let's [G] try taking it to the G string.
One, two, three, four.
You might notice I'm stopping the sound of the strings with the help of my fret hand
or my picking [A] hand just by resting this part of my fingers or hand or palm on the ringing string.
Let's bring it [B] to the B string.
One, three, four.
[E] And then finally, the high E string.
One, two, three, four.
We're just making contact, okay?
Next [Ab] what I want to try is bringing some fretted notes into the mix.
And I want to assign very [E] specific fingers on your fretting hand.
The tendency for beginning players, especially if [Abm] you're self-taught, is to accidentally
use one finger for everything.
We're [G] going to try to use our pointer finger or our first finger on the first fret [F] of our
low E string.
Then we're going to [Abm] lift that finger and use our middle finger or [Gb] our second finger on
the second fret of that low E.
Following that, we'll take our third finger or our ring finger
to the third fret [G] of the low E string.
And then your pinky or your [Ab] fourth finger to the fourth fret of the low E string.
[Abm] Now let me take a moment to comment on [A] when you're fretting.
You want to fret on the rightmost side of that space.
So if I were to take my pointer finger to the first fret of my [F] low E string, notice
how I'm right next to the fret.
I'm not too [E] far to the left, otherwise you get some buzz.
[F] And I'm not on top of the fret, otherwise you get some muted sounds as well.
So as I go from one [Gb] to two [G] to three to four, [Ab] with my first, second, third, and fourth fingers,
[F] I'm trying to have the most optimal sound by being close [Gb] to that fret on the rightmost
side of that space.
Now as we continue to do this little spider [F] crawl from the low E string all the way up
to the high [Abm] E string, make sure your hand isn't too stiff or rigid.
Allow your thumb to move [G] along as you move up from left to right on the [Bb] fretboard.
That's perfectly normal.
You'll see your [C] thumb and your whole hand is shifting a little bit to [E] aid you with the
reaching as we just get used [Gb] to waking up these fingertips.
[Ab] Doesn't have to [A] sound perfect, just a quick little overview [B] of what I want you to practice
as you begin to make contact, [Dbm] not just with the open strings, but with fretted notes on
these strings [F] and all the way to the high E string.
_ [Abm] _ Okay, finally let's go ahead and [A] try merging these two ideas.
We'll do a little exercise [E] that features open strings and fretted notes.
And for this time we're going to go ahead and start on the high E string, okay?
I want you to play the high E string.
After that, I want you to take your pointer finger or your first finger [G] to the third fret
of that string.
Then use your ring finger to the fifth fret [A] of that same string, and then play that string open again.
[Em] You're creating a melody.
You have the open E, the third fret of E, the fifth fret of E, and then [E] your open high
E string again.
Let's hear how different that melody [B] is when we do that exact same routine on the B string.
Open B, third fret, [D] fifth [E] fret, [B] open B.
Let's hear what it sounds [G] like over the G.
Open G, [Bb] third fret of G, fifth fret, [G] open G.
All right, three more strings to go.
[D] We've got the open D, third fret with our first finger, [G] fifth fret with our third finger,
and then open.
On [A] the A, [C] notice we're getting lower in pitch as we continue to go down the strings.
And [E] then finally on the open low E string, third fret, [A] fifth fret, [E] open low E string.
_ So having a [B] good, albeit quick, grasp of these concepts, it's going to lay down the [A] foundation
you need to build [E] the rest of your learning upon.
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