Guitar Lesson: Learn To Play Guitar Tab Solo Morning Has Broken

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You don't need to know guitar sheet music to learn to play guitar melodies. Let's learn Morning Has Broken with guitar tab!

"Morning Has Broken" is a Christian hymn. Cat Stevens has recorded a popular version of the song.

Here is the first verse:

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the world

As I mentioned we will not use guitar sheet music notation. Many people find it hard to read sheet music on guitar.

In order to learn to play guitar melodies we will use another notation system called tablature.

Tablature or guitar tab is a form of musical notation, often with numbers and letters, which will tell you where to place your fingers on the guitar fretboard in order to play a melody.

In this article I will use a type of guitar tab notation with numbers only. The more common guitar tab staff notation you will find on my site.

Let´s take a look at your guitar!

The six strings on your guitar is numbered from the one with the highest pitch. This string is called the first string.

In order for me to tell you how to play the melody on your guitar I will write down which fret to press down with your left hand and which string to play.

If I write 31 it means that you are to press down the third fret on the first string. The first number indicates the fret to press down and the next number the string.

01 means: play the first open string. This means that you play the first string without pressing down a fret.

The first part of Morning Has Broken with guitar tab and lyrics looks like this:

Morning has broken, like the first morning

35 24 03 12 32 02 23 03 23 02 23 03

You will start with the note C here notated 35. That is, press down the third fret on the fift string.

In this type of guitar tab notation you will not have an indication as to the length of the notes. I suggest that you sing the lyrics in order to feel how the melody is to be played.

Let's look at the next guitar tab:

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

35 04 24 03 23 03 24 35 04

In this guitar lesson we will not deal with how to play the strings with your right hand fingers. I suggest that you play the strings with you right hand thumb or some other way you choose.

The next guitar tab looks like this:

Praise for the singing, praise for the morning

03 24 03 12 23 03 24 35 35 04

What about your left hand? You can play the notes with your index finger but I suggest that you assign the notes on the first fret to your index finger, the notes on the second fret to your middle finger and so on.

It might be a little bit difficult at first but in the long run you will find it easier to play melodies with these left hand fingerings if you are persistent!

Now we will continue with the next and last guitar tab:

Praise for the springing fresh from the world

24 04 24 03 23 04 24 04 35

I promised you that you could learn Morning Has Broken on your guitar without sheet music and now you have accomplished this and I have kept my promise. Congratulations!

It would have been nice to hear you play the melody but I guess it is not possible so play it for a friend!

I suggest that you memorize the melody one line at a time so that the reading of this guitar tab will not slow you down when you play the melody in public!

Guitar Lesson - Mastering Arpeggios

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When learning how to play effective lead guitar, there are two areas guitarists must be prepared to delve into - the theoretical side, and the physical side. Theoretical aspects include things like knowing your scales, knowing how certain notes work to highlight particular tensions, basically anything that involves the translation of the creative mind onto the fretboard. The physical aspects include techniques such as hammer-ons, vibratos, tapping, and anything that involves your fingers really working the creativity onto the fretboard.

Arpeggios are no exception - they involve both these aspects.

Firstly, let's define what an arpeggio is: simply, the notes of a chord played separately in a sequence. So whereas with a regular rhythm chord you would make the notes overlap, or play them simultaneously, arpeggios as a lead guitar technique involve the dynamics of one note at a time, with each note cleanly separated from the last. The effect is very different.

As a lead guitar technique, you have the benefit of using slides, hammers, pulls etc. within the arpeggio, giving it even more depth. This is where the physical aspect comes in. However, there is theory (ah, the dreaded T word) to learn before one can master the physical side of this technique.

1) You need to know how chords work within scales

Remember this, if nothing else: Where there is a chord, there is an arpeggio!

Since arpeggios are theoretically the same as chords, we can use the same process to pull the notes we need from scales.

Think of the scales (especially the "natural" major scale) as the pot from which we draw the tones we need to create a particular chord. In the world of lead guitar, this process can also be seen as identifying "tensions" or "flavours", that build up the melodic soundscape.

E.g. if we wanted an A major flavour, we would pull out the Root (1), 3rd (3) and 5th (5) from the A major scale. Of course, the A major scale appears across the whole fretboard - you just need to know where these tones are situated in relation to the scale.

If we wanted an A minor flavour, we would pull out the Root (1), flat 3rd (b3) and 5th (5) from the A major scale. No, that wasn't a typo - minor chords are still referenced against the natural major scale. That's why we label a "flat 3rd" as "flat" - it is flat in relation to its natural position in the major scale!

Once you learn how to pull chord tones right out from their fuller scales, you'll know how to use exactly the same process with arpeggios.

2) You need to be able to make the fingering of these "chords" more appropriate for lead guitar phrasing

Regular chords are naturally created to be "boxed" in, to allow all the tones of the chord to be reachable, with your static fretting hand. However, lead guitar is about dancing your fingers across the fretboard and creating more kinetic phrasing.

This is where knowledge of ascending and descending scales comes in. A lot of scales we learn as guitarists are presented in "boxed" format, spanning only 4 frets, but what you need to realise is that the tones used in these boxed scales recur across whole fretboard (this is a whole lesson in itself!)

So if you can get into the mindset of learning broader scale patterns, you'll be able to give your fingers the "breathing space" to embellish slides, hammer ons, pull offs etc. into your arpeggios. Whereas regular static chords devote one string to each note, arpeggios across wider scale patterns can accommodate more than one note per string, which allows hammer ons, pull offs and other physical lead guitar techniques to be used.

3) Finally, make sure you know how to incorporate arpeggios into your regular solos

Let's say your solo is in the key of A major - would you keep it all simple and just play an A major arpeggio?

Or would you spice it up a little and use the rules of modal music to play an arpeggio from a different chord, but still within the key/scale of A major?

If we look at the modal scale (or "chord scale") of the key of A major, these are our basic options:

(I)A Major - (ii)B minor - (iii)C# minor - (IV)D Major - (V)E Major - (vi)F# minor - (vii)Ab diminished

So for example, we could play an F# minor arpeggio over an A major key solo and it would still be compatible. This is all about knowing what your options are, experimenting and seeing which one suits the emotion you're trying to convey. This is essentially what musical creativity boils down to.

So, if you follow this process of learning, you should become confident with not only the physical side of playing arpeggios, but also the creative and improvisational side.

Enjoy the learning experience, take your time, explore the fretboard and above all... experiment!.

Guitar Lesson On DVD - 3 Ways You Benefit From Learning Guitar At Home While Saving Money

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I'll admit, I used to think that there was no better way to learn to play guitar then by taking private lessons. I figured how could anyone learn to play from a guitar lesson on dvd as well as from an instructor in the same room. That was until I bought my first guitar lessons on DVD and discovered that there are big advantages and big savings to be had.

1.) Money: The first benefit you get from learning to play from a guitar lesson on DVD is you save money. How do you save money? Let's assume you pay $10 per half hour lesson, and you take lessons 50 weeks a year (everyone gets 2 weeks vacation right?). That means you spend $500 a year on private lessons.

Trust me when I say you wouldn't spend half of that buying a guitar lessons DVD, and you'd still get at least a years worth of guitar lessons.

2.) Speed: This benefit isn't going to effect everyone but it did me. I found that when taking private lessons I lost interest, I wasn't learning as quickly as I wanted, and because of this was stopping my practice.

As soon as I bought my first guitar lesson on DVD I found I could process more lessons in a week, and in turn I practiced eve more. I was learning at a greater speed then I ever would have in private lessons, unless I stepped up to more then one lesson a week.

3.) Quality: While some people argue that because you don't have someone in front of you to show you how to play guitar you won't get the same quality of instruction. I have to disagree. After being on both sides of the fence, I always found that my private instructors wasted time, or went off on tangents during a lesson when they didn't need to.

In contrast, a guitar lesson on DVD has been pre-recorded. It is what it is, and the instructor isn't going to get off track, they aren't going to start talking about what they did last weekend. It's all about the lesson. In my opinion this gives a guitar lesson on DVD a better quality then a private lesson.