This is what you'll get in the Jamorama guitar course - chapter by chapter.As you can see, Jamorama takes you from being an absolute beginner right through to playing some of the most advanced guitar techniques around! Just close this window to return to Jamorama.

Book One - Beginnewrs

Introduction – Here we introduce you to the guitar itself. If you’ve never actually held a guitar before now then we introduce you step by step how to correctly hold and play the guitar. You need to know the tools of your trade before you can truly be a master, and through the use of our high quality diagrams and pictures you will easily and quickly start your guitar learning journey.

Chapter 1 – Before you can successfully learn and master the guitar you will need to know how to keep the instrument in tune. In this chapter we take a close look at the string names and tunes on the guitar. This is an essential step in your learning and why we’ve made a point of touching on the topic so early. Once we’ve completed our understanding of keeping in tune you will learn your first two chords. The A major open chord and the D major open chord. We also introduce you to guitar TAB and our quality Jamorama chord picture/diagrams that you will see throughout the course.

Chapter 2 – The importance of being able to notate and read guitar music is crucial to learning to play the guitar. The universal notation system called Tablature. "Tab" is based on traditional stave music, and shows you which notes on the fret board to play and indicates how to play those notes. Learning how to read and write tab will enable you to notate your songs for others to play. In this chapter we will jam out using the 2 chords we have learned in the previous chapter.

Chapter 3 – In this chapter we introduce basic music theory which will help us understand how music is put together and how it relates to the guitar. The fun starts here with the Jayde Musica game – a great way to work on your note recognition. The jam track gets us playing some single notes on the first and second strings.

Chapter 4 – This chapter begins with a reminder about patience and discipline, and introduces a new chord, the E major chord. We look the first three notes on the third string. Learning how to read music short hand (which enables musicians to avoid writing the same thing over and over) will be a huge help when it comes to playing with others. Music notation directs players when to repeat a certain section of the song.

Chapter 5 – In this chapter we learn the importance of good practice and how to achieve it. Two new chords are introduced and we continue putting together the chords we have learned so far. Your musical ear will continue to be tuned as more chords are learned and played in combination. Notes on the fourth string are the focus of this chapter. The guitar is a very versatile instrument and in Jam Track 5 we hear how single notes played on a guitar in a Dance or Drum’n’Bass style can sound really cool. Learning to play notes on different strings is something that will add variety and spice to your playing and this Jam track certainly gets you doing that.

Chapter 6 – There are different sounding chords which give music different feels. Major chords (which we have learned so far) have a happy feel, where minor chords conjure up more morose feelings. By using these chords we can begin to match the music with feelings and tell a story through a song. There are many songs you will know that invoke a feeling within you when you listen to them. In this chapter we will add to our chord vocabulary by introducing minor chords. Combining minor chords with major chords can create chord progressions which can be played over and over and we look at two such ‘turnaround’ progressions. We also learn three notes on the fifth string.

Chapter 7 – In this chapter we learn how to add some variety to your strumming by incorporating eighth note rhythm patterns which will add emphasis to your playing and give you the ability to change the feel of any song you play. Things get a little tricky when we look at our first barre chord, a milestone for any budding guitarist – the ever elusive F major chord. We take a look at the Chromatic scale and how this relates to the guitar fret board.

Chapter 8 – In this chapter we take a look at a group of chords which can help us move smoothly between certain chords. Dominant 7 chords are often used in blues and it won’t take long for you to see and hear why. The Jam Track in this chapter continues working on single note playing in a Jazz style.

Chapter 9 – This chapter adds more interest to our strumming patterns by including silent strokes which will change our sound by introducing consecutive upstrokes into our playing. We look at the difference between ON the beat and OFF the beat and how silent strokes can help us achieve this.

Chapter 10 – In the next few chapters we continue looking at dominant chords. Things are getting quite involved now with the use of different chord shapes along with down strokes, silent strokes and upstrokes. Changing our strum pattern is a great way to add variety to a repeating chord progression or to change the feel of any chord progression. Instead of playing just one bar of the same strum, we add a second bar with a different strum pattern.

Chapter 11 – Continuing with the Blues, we look at the key of E which uses the B7 chord. You will hear that the B7 chord naturally takes us back to the tonic or chord I.

Chapter 12 – In this chapter we look at playing the Chromatic scale in the first position. The first position on the guitar is the first four frets starting from the nut. You will see more how accidentals work and become familiar with all the notes in the first position and where they are placed on the stave. The idea of Bass note picking is also introduced which gets you playing bass notes of chords along with the chords they come from. This is another great way of working chords together.

Chapter 13 – This chapter starts with some tips on how to care for your guitar. Up until now we have been playing in 4/4 timing, which is a great place to start to get a feel for a constant rhythm. Reducing how many beats we play in each bar but keeping the note value the same we come to 3/4 timing. We get playing a Jam Track using chords we know in this new timing, mix it up with four different strum patterns and also look at Bass note playing from the previous chapter in this timing.

Chapter 14 – For the next two chapters we are back to 4/4 timing, but looking at a new type of chord, the suspended chord. A suspended chord is neither major nor minor in sound. The third note has been replaced by either the fourth or second note of the scale. They are airy sounding chords that can add color to your playing by simply adding or removing one note. We look at the Major scale and learn the formula to make any Major scale.

Chapter 15 – In this chapter we look at the suspended (sus) 2 chord and round off the first book a Jam track using the sus chords we have been learning about. At the back of each book is a supplementary chord reference which shows some of the more commonly used chords plus some ones that you may have seen written down before but not yet learned.

Book Two - Intermediate

Chapter 1 – The first chapter of book two carries on where book one left off, getting right into more minor chords and expanding your chord knowledge. This first chapter also continues working in the 3/4 timing and works on bass note runs.

Chapter 2 – We’ve looked at dominant seventh chords, in the next few chapters we will look at a closely related seventh chord that of the Major seventh chord. This is formed when you take a major or minor triad and add a note an interval of a major seventh above the root note. This type of chord has four notes in it rather than the usual three. Further complicating our sense of rhythm is the introduction of the sixteenth note rhythm in which an eighth note is divided in half again to create a four note rhythm in the space of one quarter note.

Chapter 3 – Taking more chords that you have already learned and adding that major seventh note on the top to form a major 7 th chord you continue adding those sixteenth note rhythms and adding to your growing bag of tricks.

Chapter 4 – We continue our look at new chords in this chapter by learning the B minor chord in open position. By adding new chords to your chord arsenal you will have a great series of musical weapons to choose from. The focus of chapter four however is understanding and using the Eighth note triplet strum. Triplet rhythm is a very commonly used tool in song writing and guitar playing to give a groovy point of difference to your playing. This chapter will unlock the triplet rhythm for you.

Chapter 5 – Major 6 chords are very handy if you are wanting a slightly ‘jazzy feel’ or infusion to your playing. Here we teach you the theory behind creating major 6 chords and give you an opportunity to put them to practice. We also pull apart the A major scale giving you an introduction to lead playing.

Chapter 6 – This is a key chapter in your playing as it’s the first time that we introduce barre chords to your learning. Barre chords, or variations of them, are probably the most commonly used type of chord played on the guitar, regardless of the style you are playing! In this chapter we teach you the ‘BEST’ technique to use when barring across the guitar neck and explain the secret for you to be able to play literally any chord by using this ‘sliding Barre chord’ technique. This chapter alone is worth it’s weight in gold and one that you will remember for the rest of your life, I guarantee it.

Chapter 7 – Percussive strumming is when you use your hand to quickly deaden or mute the ringing strings between strums, this is a great technique that will lift your playing from amateur level to begin to sound very professional. You can literally take this technique and apply it to all the songs, jamtracks, exercises you’ve learnt so far and take them all to a new level. It’s another link in the chain the highlights the importance of the rhythm of the strum and your strumming hand techniques.

Chapter 8 – Just like Chapter 6 with the introduction of the Major Root 6 Barre chord, this chapter now teaches you it’s Minor counterpart. The theory behind this, the technique and shape itself is extremely valuable to your playing. There is a great two bar rhythm exercise included in this chapter which combines the use of open chords and Barre chords. By this stage you’re really starting to progress and excel! And! To top it all off, a great Jam Track combining multiple skills…very exciting!

Chapter 9 – This chapter is dedicated to theory. Although it’s a relatively short chapter, it is a very important one in your music theory knowledge as we introduce the concept of ‘Key Signatures’ and how the ‘Key’ of a piece of music will determine whether, or how many, sharp and flat notes there will be within that key or scale. This may sound confusing, but once you get your head around this then it will unlock a skill that you can use in your own song writing or the beginnings of your lead guitar playing if you are tempted to head that way!

Chapter 10 – We continue looking at different variations of barre chords by learning the Dominant 7 barre chord shape and applying that to some great exercises combining triplet rhythm and percussive strumming to drill that home for you. There is also a section on ‘Music Rests’, what these are, where they’re used and what their musical stave notation looks like. All good music has ‘rests’ or ‘silence’ somewhere in it, it’s what helps create space or drama within a piece and we teach you how to identify these rests when looking at a piece of music, and of course, how to use them.

Chapter 11 – Here we take a close look at the technique of deadening. There are two types of deadening, strum hand deadening or ‘Palm deadening’ or ‘Palm muting’ and Fret hand deadening (the technique used to create a percussive strum). Here we combine the previous chapter’s theory of rests along with a great palm muting exercise to get you up to speed with this very popular technique. Palm muting is used in many different styles of guitar playing from blue grass through to metal guitar.

Chapter 12 – Again we continue with our look into barre chords and within this chapter we introduce you to yet another ground breaking concept that will unlock the fret board for you even further, the root 5 Barre. Couple this with another rhythm hand technique, this time staccato strumming, and this chapter is complete!

Chapter 13 – For all the chord shapes and learning that we cover, I think its absolutely essential that you put all this learning into an everyday context. There’s no point just learning chord shapes and exercises if they don’t SOUND LIKE songs. In this chapter we break down the extremely popular and versatile 12 bar blues chord progression and unlock the secrets behind how they’re put together and how you can play a 12 bar in ANY key known to man!

Chapter 14 – This chapter gets you playing Root 5 minor barre chords. This will make it easier to play in flat keys as well as give you the option to different chord voicings all over the fret board. A third blues pattern is introduced which will give you the formula to play in the key that best suits you as a player/singer or the singer you are accompanying.

Chapter 15 – Learning to palm mute is an important technique to learn for any rock guitarist. The ability to create a constant chug chug will really put the ‘rock’ into your playing. This technique can also be used when picking out notes in chords.

Chapter 16 – Combining the Advanced rhythm techniques of Palm muting and Staccato strums makes for some very interesting rhythms as you will see and hear in this chapter. Being able to use different strum techniques will allow you to take a seemingly easy chord progression and make it sound quite different with minimal effort.

Chapter 17 – In this chapter we learn the Root 5 dominant 7 barre chord. There are often more ways of playing most chords and by learning more than one fingering/voicing you give yourself options when changing between chords quickly. You will also jam out with the blues in the key of D.

Chapter 18 – This chapter teaches the Reggae strum and explains how this can be achieved by placing the accent on different beats. Usually played in 4/4 time, the unique reggae feel comes shifting the strong beats from beat 1 and 3 to beat 2 and 4.

Chapter 19 – In this chapter you are introduced to the Minor scale. Placed along side the major scale you will be able to see the ‘minor’ difference between the two scales. Playing scales is a great way to work on finger dexterity as well as playing single note melodies.

Chapter 20 – This chapter looks at adding a minor 7 th interval to a minor triad to create a minor 7 th chord. Open chords as well as barre chords are covered and will get you combining a number of different chords that you have been learning.

Chapter 21 – In this chapter we introduce Major 6 barre chords in both root 6 and root 5 positions. These are moveable shapes that can be played all over the fret board. Remember that the name of a root 6 chord comes from the lowest note of the chord.

Chapter 22 – The ubiquitous power chord is the focus of this chapter which will add plenty of grunt to your sound. The unique thing about power chords is that because the 3 rd note is not played, they are neither major nor minor in sound. The technique of palm muting goes hand in hand with power chords so you will apply this technique to power chords using a number of different strum patterns.

Chapter 23 – In this chapter we look at adding accents into our playing to add emphasis to certain beats in the bar. We also take a closer look at compound time and how this differs to simple time, such as 4/4 which we should be quite familiar with.

Chapter 24 – The next few chapters look at some unusual (in the sense that our ears may not be used to hearing them) chords made by modifying different notes in an existing triad and looks at some chords we have already seen and teaches you how to play them in barre chord form. We start by taking the open C chord and creating different barre chords using that shape. These examples are played over a 6/8 timing

Chapter 25 – We’ve seen how to suspend open chords, now we take a look at how to suspend root 6 and root 5 barre chords. Being able to play these types of chords in a variety of ways will add to your versatility as a player, add to your chord knowledge and really help when it comes time to transposing to different keys, with or without a capo.

Chapter 26 – Learning the Root 6 and root 5 major 7th barre chord moveable shapes will help you to play in any key you need to. Having a variety of chord voicings at your disposal will allow you to create unique chordal tones and spice up those tired old chord progressions you normally use.

Chapter 27 – In this chapter we revisit the Dominant 7th chord and add a little twist to create a very Jazzy sounding chord – the added ninth chord, or just ninth chord. We will see how we can have a ninth in a 7 note scale and why it is the correct way to spell this type of chord. These are difficult chords to land first time, but with practice you will have great fun introducing these chords into your playing.

Chapter 28 – This chapter looks at Diminished chords and the root 4 moveable shapes. You will hear how these chords sound very unstable compared to their major counterparts and hear the effect that omitting an interval of a perfect 5 th will have on a chord.

Chapter 29 – In this final chapter we take a look at Augmented chords. By taking a major triad and making the perfect fifth interval bigger again we create an augmented chord. Once again this is a moveable shape but with a unique chord structure that allows multiple chords to be played in the one position.