Intermediate Guide to Playing Guitar

Need a good guitar exercise for strengthening your hand & finger dexterity? These exercises include working with fingers 3 and 4, which need the extra practice.

Tried chord noodling? No it's not pasta; it's a cool way to embellish guitar chords with melodies. Learn to choose notes that make you sound fierce.

Enhance your guitar style with two new tools! In this lesson, learn the 6/8 feel of Harpsichord Technique and add depth to solos with the Octave Technique.

Keep hearing unwanted notes in your guitar chords? Learn how to mute strings with your thumb and index finger in this important beginner’s lesson.

Are you all thumbs when it comes to guitar? That could work to your advantage. Learn how to use your fret hand thumb to mute or play notes on the low E string.

Think you’re tone deaf? Nice try! You’ll soon find that tone deaf is a mythical concept. Learning how to play an instrument by ear is easier than you think.

Need a tried-and-true guitar exercise for developing your ear? This hum & hunt technique trains your ear and improves your relative pitch, no matter the genre.

In this intermediate guitar technique lesson, Your Guitar Sage breaks down how to do a picking-hand mute to add some rhythm and flare to a basic strum.

Johnny Cash did it with a dollar bill. But we're just going to hit our hand against the fret to create a snare drum sound with this cool guitar technique.

Always wanted to learn how to fingerpick? It may sound difficult, but it's quite easy to learn. This lesson covers basic exercises to develop your technique.

Play in a band? Learn what chord voicings to choose to accompany your band. Watch these finger picking techniques for playing inside & outside the strings.

Guitar springboards help musicians locate notes quickly. In this lesson from Your Guitar Sage, learn valuable stationary and movable guitar springboards.

As a guitarist, you probably know that the low and high E strings are the same note. Discover the benefit of finding and matching notes on the guitar.

Playing the same chord in the same place all the time is a recipe for boring guitar playing. Learn new chord placement possibilities with the Magic Z pattern!

Transposing a song by rewriting all the chords can be a major pain. Let Your Guitar Sage teach you an easier way: The Nashville Number System!

Want to be a better guitarist? Learn how to construct any chord along the guitar fretboard! First, understand the concepts of relative major and minor chords.

If you know the basics, and are comfortable with scales, it is time to practice with a metronome! In this lesson, you learn to keep time while playing guitar.

If you understand counting with the metronome, translate those rhythms into strums on the guitar. In this lesson, practice strumming along with the metronome.

Do you love No Doubt, Bob Marley, The Skatalites, or The Expendables? Learn how to play that famous, upbeat reggae and ska rhythm on the guitar!

No guitar tuner? No problem! Your Guitar Sage will teach you how to use guitar harmonics to get perfect tuning with nothing but your guitar and your hands!

Ready to take your guitar playing to the next level? In this intermediate music theory lesson, you'll learn how to build major chords over the neck.

When you strum a G chord on the guitar, you’re actually playing a major triad! Learn the music theory behind major triads in this guitar lesson.

Now that you understand major triads, it is time to move on to minors! In this lesson, learn what notes to change in guitar chords to shift a major to a minor.

If you know how to shape major and minor triad chords across the fretboard, it’s time to learn how to form diminished and augmented guitar chords!

Building on the basics of guitar chord formation, this lesson introduces suspended chords. Learn to make major chords suspensions by moving the three to a four.

If you plan to play any rock ‘n’ roll on your guitar, you’ll need to know how to play in bar chord formation. Your Guitar Sage teaches you how in this lesson.

The bar chord is a key guitar technique. It is more challenging than playing open chords, but increases chord vocabulary. Check out this lesson and try it!

It’s time to master bar chords! In this lesson, learn the four forms of the tricky F-chord. Master these, and you are one step closer to rock guitar success!

Want to add to your guitar chops? In this intermediate lesson from Your Guitar Sage, you'll learn how to build power chords to make your music rock.

This intermediate guitar lesson shows you how to use the CAGED system to expand your knowledge of chords and patterns up and down the fretboard.

Now that you are familiar with the CAGED system, try it out with a song! In this lesson, learn a practical application of the system playing La Bamba on guitar!

If you understand the CAGED system, put it to work! In this lesson, learn to riff and locate chord variations of G, C, and D while moving around the neck.

Beginner guitar lessons start with the major scale form. Learn how to play fifth and sixth root string major scales, covering both one and two octaves.

Do you want to shred some guitar solos, but don’t know where to start? In this lesson, you will learn about the go-to scale for soloing: the Pentatonic Scale.

Changing your guitar strings the wrong way can make them go out of tune, slip off the tuning pegs, or even snap! Your Guitar Sage shows you how to do it right.

Forget the wire cutters and avoid poking your fingers! In this lesson, you’ll learn a neat technique for cutting strings cleanly at your guitar’s tuning pegs.

Booster pedals do exactly what they suggest: boost your guitar’s sound. Learn about different booster pedals and where to place one in your pedal lineup.

Get freaky with your guitar sound and bring on the fuzz! In this lesson, learn all about fuzz pedals, from different types to where to place it in a chain.

What’s the difference between a chromatic and a polyphonic guitar tuner? Discover the convenience of polyphonic pedal tuners in this lesson.

Thinking about adding a tremolo pedal to your guitar rig? Learn about the effects it can create and where to add it to your pedal chain for the best sound.

Wish you could riff like Van Halen, or play psychedelic guitar licks from the sixties? Learning phaser pedal effects can make your guitar wail!