Welcome

Welcome to Basic Guitar Resource Dump. Although not a 'proper' blog, I do hope that it proves to be an indispensable resource for guitar instructors or kids aspiring to teach themselves how to play the guitar.

It all started when my sister asked me to teach her son how to play the guitar. I readily answered 'yes' not knowing what I was about to get myself into. No, it's not a horror story, but I just assumed that it would be a fairly easy task. I thought that I'd just give him several crucial tips on technique, hand him a fake book, and be done with it. Wrong. Okay, let's make a few backing tracks to make sessions more interesting. Not adequate. I had to make drills to develop his strumming technique (even more backing tracks). I ended up making 21 backing tracks to drill his right hand and 'force' him to memorize a small portion of the fretboard.

But that's not the impressive part. If I advised him to 'practice chords', I know very well that that would yield zero results. So, what are we looking at here? There are 12 notes to an octave (C to B, sharps/flats included), five absolutely essential chords (major, minor, dominant 7, minor 7, major 7), throw in the most practical sus4, sus2, root/third inversions, and we've got 75 chords (12 x 5 = 60, and an extra 15). Upon realizing just how many chords should be included, I started working on the backing tracks (not without some hesitation).

As the name suggests (resource dump), I won't actually be teaching you how to play the guitar (the internet is littered with guitar sites). I will, however, provide you backing tracks to make practice time more fun.

On my next entry, I will be sharing these 'practice chords' backing tracks.