ESSENTIAL GUITAR THEORY

Music theory is an essential part of learning guitar if you want to improve quickly, write complex songs, and impress other guitarists who ignored music theory.

But where do you start? As a beginner guitarist there’s already an overload of lessons and tutorials to take in, how are you supposed to add theory into the mix??

Short answer, watch this video. In it we explore the basic concepts of music theory and how to apply it to guitar, tricks to better understand/memorize the fretboard, and a little bit of music history. ALL IN 3 MINUTES.

It builds off of some of the concepts talked about in my beginner guitarist starter pack:

Have fun and Enjoy! Thanks for watching.

[jordanthomasgray]

I learned guitar so I could buy more guitars.

[sonikj]

So I'm a BEYOND BEGINNER to guitar (I can rotate between 3 chords max) and kind of overwhelmed about all that I still have to learn. This video motivated me. Like, SO MUCH. As a math nerd, you explaining how theory guides the guitar in such a cool way made me feel so much more confident that I can maybe probably learn how to play the guitar. So thank you!

Also I love your sense of humour hehe

[silverkip]

"because without them, you get jazz"
And then there's me watching this video to play jazz 🙃

[kevinh]

2 reasons that casuals like me should learn guitar theory.

1) I'm not creative, and music theory offers clear options you can try out that may sound good if you have no ideas.

2) It makes it easier to remember music if you understand it. Kind of like seeing a mountain as a landmark gives you a reference to understand where a city or town is relative to the landmark. Similarly, knowing where your Am scale notes makes it easier to understand how your barred Am chord relates to it, and what are the chord tones to hit when improvising over that chord. Or even triads to substitute in for some variation. They all give useful reference points so I don't hear a long fancy series of notes and think "wow how can I memorize that?" I can instead think "oh he's just hitting all the pentatonic notes"

[NoelG-IRE]

Thank god you’re back man. We missed you!

[godsperfectfailures]

I've *loved* music for my whole life. When I was younger, before I even knew why I wanted it, I wanted a drum set. As I grew up, I began surrounding myself with music. I listened to it 24/7. Then my interest came to guitar at the age of 13. As I grew older still, my love only deepened. Now, at 16 I got my first guitar. We'll see how this ends up.

[luisguilherme]

Bro you with microsoft paint drawings and 3 minutes are simply teaching and inspiring me more than anything in my last 11 years.. like I play comfortably numb solo 2 on a nylon string acoustic guitar with ease but I'M LEARNING WHAT CHORDS REALLY ARE JUST NOW you're a king man

[pinkeel]

that timber joke is actually going to help me remember what timbre is extremely effectively lmao

[sheep]

0:00 as someone who spent weeks to months learning music theory before owning a guitar I can confirm this was my exact motivation for learning guitar (I just wanted any instrument and guitar was the one I chose)

[frejhedman]

I learned the notes on the guitar by learning a few bar chords at a time.I just knew what the root of the chord was so with the 5th fret A bar chord I could tell you that A was on the 5th fret of the E string. Move that up 2 frets and you got B. I also knew the octaves so with that I could name you the notes of the strings E to G. I then knew that the high E string has the same notes as the low E string (it was an amazing revelation) so all that was left was to learn the notes of the B string. Because of tuning my guitar I knew than the 5th fret must be an E and the rest I honestly just memorised. This whole process took me a few months at least and now I can play over any chord without having to think about what notes I'm playing so it's definitely worth the struggle.

Music theory to me is something that I value having learnt. With soloing for example, if someone plays a D chord I know it consists of D, F# and A. If I then play an E over that, that's the 9th of the D chord. You don't have to learn these things but I think learning intervallic structures and how notes actually relate to one another is a really great asset, so a few years down your guitar journey I'd say these things will really enrich your playing.

[PapaShasta_]

I’m brand new to guitar and just found your channel and I’ve learned more from your quick punchy short videos than I have the endless hours of other people I’ve watched. Incredible.

[davethenerd]

I'm 40 and just started learning. Your videos are great. I'm in the middle of JustinGuitar's first week and your videos are a fantastic break between the stabbing pain my fingertips from practicing.

[pmbonob]

My guitar took theory and now she learned human

[stikdik]

Love the videos! Always a great vibe and good knowledge.

[Pnguin]

These videos are phenomenal they get the point across quick and keep it simple. Great work! 👍

[justjack]

Love your videos so easy and helpful, been playing a while and no one has put it this way, very understandable

[mailo]

OMG I''VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS VIDEO I'M SO EXCITED

[musicianscrub]

I’ve been learning instruments on and off for the past 13 years. I couldn’t call myself a beginner because of how much time I’ve dedicated to them and I have learned a lot and muscle memory is big here..

On the piano theory seemed easy and I learned a lot there..

I picked up the guitar first. I don’t know why I NEVER thought to apply theory. I picked it up again two months ago and I feel like my brain is expanding and I’ve been stupidly playing with both hands tied behind my back by not looking to apply theory to my journey here.. I always assumed it was just insane due to how each string starts differently. I never once had a thought “maybe the guitar has its own way of making it easy”. Ever since I learned how pentatonics work on a guitar, I’ve learned triads and how to change scales based off a chord in a song.. stuff I can see is very basic but it eluded me because I was just too stupid to go look for it

[Jonny]

Your education style is so dope and so fun and so accessible to all languages. Thanks so much for what you do, please keep doing it <3

[kris]

Thank you soooo much for these videos, dude ❤️ Today I had a student who got insanely stuck when I was trying to teach her her first scale. She just couldn’t grasp the idea of notes and note-relations and I in turn ended up feeling like a moron trying to deconstruct the concept of western-music to a child. This video seriously cleared up how I should explain things from now on to my students and how to get that particular student out of her theoretical funk. Soooo appreciated 😊