This first stage we'll keep it nice and simple and not too long... only 18 minutes per session.

Stage 1 Practice Schedule

Video Lesson

Things To Remember

Chord Practice
Remember that the point of this exercise is to get your chords sounding clear and train your fingers to go to exactly the right spot to get the chord sounding great. Start with a strum and then pick each note individually, except any strings that have the X next to them that you don't play. Try to play the notes with the tips of your fingers. Remember that dead sounding notes need to be fixed and the usual causes are either:
a) The finger is too far from the fret.
b) One of your fingers is touching a string that it shouldn't.

Move your fingers around as you pick out the strings until they all sound good and then strum them again, and as you give them the last strums, tell your fingers that this is how you want them to go to next time. It will look a little strange to anyone that is watching you, but it really helps! ;)

One Minute Changes
The object of the exercise is to get your fingers moving quickly. Although you should be trying to get the fingers in the perfect positions that you have been working on in your chord practice, if they are a little sloppy it is ok, we are working the speed here!

The important thing here is to practice the chord changes that you struggle the most with. In your practice schedule you should write in the amount of changes that you made in that practice session. Make sure you use your timer, and push yourself to go as fast as possible.

Songs / Chord Sequences
The idea here is just to have fun and dig on the fact that you can play a song already!! :) Just pick one sequence per practice session and work on getting it as smooth as possible. Memorising the sequence will certainly help if you are able to. You can work on songs or sequences, but I would recommend maybe starting off with some sequences just to get you going.

JUSTIN Training
I have given you some exercises to work on in the last lesson but you will certainly find it easier if you can find a jam buddy to play the chords for you, but you can also use a recorder. I am working on a super duper course but it won't be ready until the end of the year I think...

When to move on to the next stage?

It's very hard for me to describe the point at which you should move onto the next stage. Of you course you should understand the content of the stage, but many skills will develop over the course too...

The real answer is to move on when YOU feel ready. But I know some of you beginners are not able to tell when YOU are ready (and I didn't either when I was learning!) as you move on with the course you will start to feel ready for new info and get a feeling for how the course moves on. If I had to try and write it then you should:

• Know all the chords from memory
• Have them sounding reasonable (not perfect) but with most notes coming out most of the time!
• Have the chord changes at at least 10 cycle changes in a minute (20 actual changes).
• Be able to play one of the songs a bit, not perfectly or anything, but be able to kinda play it through, some stops and stutters allowed ;)

Beware of trying to perfect every stage, that will just lead to a feeling of hopelessness! I'm still trying to perfect simple things, and to be honest - I don't think we ever stop improving, so there is no "end game" - don't wait until every chord is PERFECT, be happy with good, perfect will come later :). That said, don't be moving on if you are sloppy as a wet sandwich either!

Hope that helps you decide when to move on!

HELP!!!!

If you need to ask a question about this lesson - there is a topic set up specifically to help you with this lesson. To help you find it easily you can click the following link and it will take you right the topic. You'll be able to see questions that other people had and ask your own questions! Hopefully one of the very helpful members of our community will be there to help you soon, I do go there and answer stuff too - but there are just too many questions for me to answer alone! So click this link to get help with this lesson!

Justinguitar Beginner's Products

I have four great beginners products that will help you make the most of this course. Most popular is The Justinguitar Beginners Songbook which contains 100 songs arranged by difficulty that perfectly match up with each level of the course. Many people told me they like books more than web pages so we've made The Justinguitar Beginners Course Book (comes with 2 x CD's too!) and many people found being online to watch the videos a pain so we offer The Justinguitar Beginners Course DVD which also means you can watch the vids in much better quality. Together they complete the whole online course and are perfect when there is no internet connection!! Also very popular is Practical Music Theory for those that like to know what they are doing and why!! It covers very basic theory in an easy to digest way and puts it onto the guitar! They are all available in Bundle Packs too where you can save a bunch of money!! Buying products and making donations help keep the site free and growing! :)