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This article is a piece of a longer look at how to better understand the fretboard and how to use that understanding to further your knowledge of all of the key centers. By visualizing how key centers relate to one another, we can begin to move away from reliance on specific patterns or positions and gain freedom on the entire neck of the guitar.
To begin, I’m going to show you a very different way of playing a major scale than you may be used to. This is not a practical fingering for most players, so don’t worry if you have to play it very slowly or if it feels awkward. This is to give you the best visual representation of how a major scale is constructed.
See Figure 1.
This the C Major Scale in one octave (from C to C), played with four notes on each string. Play the scale up and down a few times. Chances are good that you’ve at least heard this sound before, and you’ve probably played major scales in other positions or with other, more practical fingerings. You might even sing “Doe, a deer, a female deer...” along with it. Or not. This fingering splits a major scale into two equal halves. Piano players get to “see” scales and chords in this very transparent way all of the time, but on the guitar it can be a little more opaque, given all of the redundant notes and the way the strings are tuned. From a purely physical pattern-oriented view, we can see that the two halves are identical. The notes on each half are spaced as follows: note, a fret in between, the next note, a fret between, the next note, and the fourth note (with no fret between). In musical terms, we would describe this as: a note, the next note a whole-step above, the next note a whole-step above, and the fourth note a half-step above. On a piano, a half-step is the interval between notes that are on adjacent keys (C and D-flat), and a whole-step is the interval between notes that are 2-keys apart, C to D or E to F#.
On the piano, the black keys represent sharps and flats, and the white keys represent natural notes. We can see that all of the white keys are separated by a whole-step (with a black key in between) with the exception of E and F, and B and C. These are separated by a half-step.
See Figure 2.
On the guitar, a half-step is the interval between two notes that are on adjacent frets, and a whole step is the interval between two notes that are two frets apart. So if the open sixth string is E, then the first fret is F, the second F-sharp (or G-flat), the third is G, and so on.
See Figure 3.
So now, looking at the C Major scale on two strings again, we can see that the pattern for this scale, described solely in intervals is whole-step, whole-step, half-step, whole step, whole-step, whole-step, half-step. The interval that occurs with the switch from the fifth to the fourth string may the most confusing, but it’s really just another whole-step (from F to G). You could just keep going up the fifth string and...

Guitar Tips with Steve Krenz
Some of these tips will make you play better, some will make your guitar sound better...some will just make playing easier!
This is a 'sound better' tip...
Learn & Master Guitar Secret #2:  The $6 Guitar Tune-up!
One thing I have found as a professional player that NEVER fails to improve a guitar's sound is... that's right... put on a new set of strings.
Nothing puts the sparkle and punch back into your sound like a fresh set of strings.  I'll never forget when I found out how often studio players changed their strings!  I thought, "How do they afford that?"
Well, it's their gig!  They either show up sounding great or they don't get called back!
Here are a few hints about guitar strings:
1.  The brand of strings isn't as important...

Guitar Tips with Steve Krenz
I'm gonna show you some things I wish someone had taken the time to show me when I was just getting started!   Let's go...
This first secret is THE most helpful thing I can tell you about learning to play.  It can take years off your study time and give you constant motivation to keep at it.   It's very simple.  It has nothing to do with how you hold the guitar or your hands.  It has nothing to do with which amp you buy or how often you change strings.   Here it is...
Learn & Master Guitar Secret #1:  FIND A PLAYING PARTNER! (or a whole group of them!)
Now don't dismiss this as 'too simple to be useful.'  Here's a story for you... 
When I was a junior in high school, my friend Arnold invited me to a local Jazz club in San Antonio, where we lived (called the...

In this video, my student, Jacob Friedman, and I read through Mariah Parker's chart of her composition, 'First Flight.' I encourage my students to...

How to play pinch harmonics on the guitar....

These 10 tips will help you to master the guitar as quickly as possible. Many students wish they would have known and implemented these earlier in their guitar playing careers.
Have a System
Once you learn some guitar chords and can play a few songs you want to develop a system for mastering the fretboard and guitar soloing. For example learn the names of the notes on the fretboard in the key of C major and the 5 CAGED shapes. Then learn arpeggios within each shape and focus on chord tones to make really melodic solos.
Master One Thing at a Time
Guitarists are famous for buying tons of guitar lesson books and never mastering anything in particular. Make sure you master one thing and absorb it into your playing before moving on.
Use a Metronome
Many guitarists never use a metronome, but it's a great way to monitor your progress especially for building speed. By making sure you play cleanly, you can build speed without getting sloppy. Many solos are too fast to play instantly, so you need to practice slowly and speed it up while remain accurate. Metronomes also help your sense of time especially for when you start playing in a band with a drummer. It's amazing how you will tend to rush...

Here are 10 of the most popular Christmas songs for guitar. They are pretty easy and playable by most beginners if you know your open chords and can strum a little. Play these at Christmas parties and you will be golden!
Jingle bells
Joy to the World
Frosty the Snowman
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
The First Noel
White Christmas
We Wish you a Merry Xmas
We Three Kings
O Come all ye Faithful
Deck the Halls
 
Here is the song...

(From the Columbia Chronicle, written by Brett Marlow)
Workers downtown aren’t just going out to grab a bite during lunch; they’ve got their hands on guitars.
For Scott Corley, guitar is on his menu for lunch once a week. Corley, who works at Wideload Games, a video game studio in the West Loop, wanted to learn how to play guitar, but could never find the time. After he started working in the Loop nearly a year-and-a-half ago, he thought he might be able to squeeze in guitar lessons during his lunch breaks. With a day job and two kids at home waiting on dinner and story time each night, it wasn’t impossible to take lessons in the evenings or weekends, just a bit hectic.
Five months ago, Corley found exactly what he was looking for—a guitar instructor who taught lessons to people with busy work schedules.
“This way I can sneak away and do it,” Corley said. “I do my lessons on Fridays, and it’s a nice break from work.”
Corley’s instructor is Jim Lenger, who teaches guitar lessons and runs Guitar Chicago, a professional musical instruction school at 150 N. Michigan Ave., to business professionals, lawyers, and students who have busy schedules but can find a time to come in throughout the day. He also has students like Corley, who come in on their lunch breaks and after work.
Guitar Chicago is in a downtown office building where Lenger has office space geared with a computer, a mixer and other audio equipment where...

(From the Chicago Sun-Times, January 2007 by Mike Thomas)
High above the city, in a bland triangular conference room with grand views of Millennium Park, Lorena Ramos clutches an unplugged Fender electric guitar and earnestly plucks out notes. Now in her third month of lessons at the almost year-old Guitar Chicago, her chops -- honed at home on her own pink Fender -- are gradually improving.
"I've always liked music," Ramos, 37, says later. "I have three boys and they're a little bit older, so I have a little more time. I figured, well, it's now or never. Before I hit 40, I wanted to try and master something."
It won't be easy.
"I never realized how tough [playing guitar] was until I actually did it the first time," says Ramos, who works nearby at the Secretary of State's office and had never played an instrument before. "My fingers would not move, they would not budge. I was aching the first couple of weeks. And he was just very cool about it, letting me know to take my time. I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix."
The "he" to whom she refers is her patient instructor, a good- natured former high school jock named Jim Lenger, who's catering his guitar studio to just such potential players. He's banking on the prime Loop location to lure downtown dwellers who yearn to strum but have little time to venture far from work or school.
A guitarist since childhood, he's acutely aware that playing this alluring but perplexing instrument well or even semi-well takes considerable effort.
"If...

I'm pleased to announce the release of my latest music CD. It is called "Strings of Praise" due to the fact...