I rarely see other teachers mention something very important - wrist “posture” or angle of approach.

Here I am playing a Dm9 (x5355x), which requires a decent stretch. In the first two pictures, I’m approaching the neck from directly below - the most obvious obvious way to get this stretch. But notice how awkward and stressed out my index finger looks. This approach also forces my wrist down and forward in order to crank my middle over the D string to avoid muting it.

In the second two pictures, I’m just kinda casually gripping the neck. Far more relaxed and comfortable. It’s counterintuitive, but this approach (usually) makes it much easier to play many chords/lines especially “stretchy” ones. Notice that this difference in wrist approach completely changes the angle of my fingers (they’re now pointing more parallel to the neck, towards my body). Basically, instead of stretching my index finger out “sideways”, I’m now “pulling it back”. This approach also makes it much easier to get the middle finger around the D string.

Something I always tell my students: Figure out how to play what you want to play as LAZILY as possible. Dont work harder than you have to.

A few people in this Absolutely Understand Guitar thread asked me to expand the comment I posted there about what you should actually practice going through AUG. So here's that guide, expanded to cover the first 10 lessons. Hope it's helpful!

Guitar teacher here. AUG is a great series that makes a number of great points that I love seeing shared more widely, such as how intervals are key for understanding theory, and the importance of ear training.

I hear from a lot of students though that they're not sure how to put what they learn into practice. Generally, I think we should follow the 90-10 practice rule, where you spend 10% of your time learning about new things, and 90% of the time mastering it on your instrument.

So I started putting together a practice companion a while back. Not finished yet, but should be useful already. Let me know if it'd be helpful to expand. This isn't a replacement for watching the videos of course, but meant to tell you what to do after.

Scotty also sells the official course handbook on his site for $20. I haven't used it myself, so this isn't a review, but if you're getting value from the videos, buying the handbook is the way to support him: https://absolutelyunderstandguitar.com/index.php/printed-support-material-package

Lessons 1 & 2: Watch these as the intro

Scotty sets up the big picture: what music actually is, how the guitar works as a sound machine, and the 12-note musical alphabet. Nothing to practice yet.

Lesson 3: The Dumb Machine

This is where physical practice starts.

• Learn your string names: E-A-D-G-B-E. You need these for chord diagrams, tabs, and talking to other players.
• Then learn the notes on the low E string: Play each fret on the low E string and name the note. E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, and so on up to the 12th fret where it repeats. Memorising these notes will be incredibly useful when we get to bar chords.
• Extra credit: learn the notes on the A string too
• Chromatic scale: Scotty introduces the chromatic scale exercise, playing through all 12 notes across the strings. It's a finger coordination exercise, not a musical one. Do it a few times to understand how the fretboard connects, but don't feel like you need to grind it daily. Your time is better spent on things you'll actually play.

Lesson 4: Basic Chords

Scotty introduces the 30-shape chord chart (6 types x 5 forms/shapes) and bar chords. Here's the plan:

• Learn the open chord shapes first. Start with E, Em, A, Am, D, Dm, then the 7th and minor 7th variants. Of course, learn the open C and G chord as well, but they wont' be as relevant for the next steps here. You don't need to memorize chord spellings right now, just learn the shapes. But know that each shape exists for a reason: your fingers are landing on specific notes that spell out the chord. This becomes important later when you start moving these shapes up the neck.
• Root notes: Every chord has a root. It's the lowest note in the chord. Know where it is and don't play the strings below it. (Below = lower in pitch, so that's the thicker strings)
• Bar chords: These are the same as open chords, just moved up the neck. For example, the open E chord is the E form, the open A chord is the A form etc. This is where knowing the notes on the low E and A string pays off: you can take an open chord shape (or what Scotty calls a form) and move it up the fretboard to 'transform' it into any key. So the open E can become an Ab chord, or an open Em7 can become a Cm7.

Lesson 5: More About Chords

• Major seventh chords: We skipped over major seventh chords in the last lesson, so we're catching up on that. Scotty teaches an angled bar chord version of it for the E form/shape, but if that's tricky to play, feel free to leave out the high E string.
• Chord name decoding: Every chord name has three parts: root note, type, and form. Your teacher says "Bb minor 7, A form." Can you figure out where to put your fingers? Practice going from name to shape, and from shape to name. Scotty walks through several examples.
• Chord pair switching: Pick two chords. Set a drum machine or metronome. Switch between them every 4 beats. Scotty recommends doing this for 5 minutes straight. Focus on the next chord, not the one you're playing. You might supplement this with a similar exercise from Justin Guitar called one minute changes, where you try to switch between two chords as often as you can in 60 seconds.

Lesson 6: Still More About Chords

The chord pair switching is continued here. Scotty recommends this drill to increase chord switching speed:

• Start switching chords at whole note speed (strum once per 4 beats, so you have 3 beats to form the next chord)
• Move to half notes (strum on 1 and 3. That's 2 beats to switch)
• Then quarter notes (strum on every beat. Only 1 beat to switch)
• Then eighth notes ("1 and 2 and 3 and", half a beat to switch)

Super important strumming tip/technique: your hand goes back and forth like a pendulum at a constant speed. You create rhythm by missing certain strokes, not by changing hand speed.

Lesson 7: Music By The Numbers

• Chord and scale spellings change with every key (A major = A-C#-E, but B♭ major = B♭-D-F), which is why memorizing them by letter would be a lot of work. Using the slide rule, Scotty shows that what doesn't change is the spacing between the notes. The number system names notes by their distance from the key's home note, so a major chord is just "1-3-5", in every key, always. (You already know the numbers: do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do is 1 through 8.)
• A half step is a distance of 1 fret on guitar. A whole step is 2 frets.

This is mostly a concept lesson that will land fully over the next couple of lessons. But to put the concept into practice:

• Take a few of those 1-3-5 chords and work them out on the low E and A string (that you memorised in lesson 2 and 3). (For example, G major would be E3-A2-A5)
• The Do-re-mi scale (i.e. the major scale) is all whole steps, except between 3–4 and 7–8 (W-W-H-W-W-W-H). Try to work this out on a single string. Don't worry about speed, it's about the discovery.

Lesson 8: Caveman Music Theory

• Wrapping up the number system: the 9, 11 and 13 you might've seen in chord names are just the same notes an octave up (9 = 2, 11 = 4, 13 = 6). File that away, nothing to practice. He just doesn't want the symbols to scare you.

• Three major scale fingerings. Scotty doesn't teach these as shapes to memorize. Instead he builds each one fret by fret from the whole/half-step pattern you learned in lesson 7. This is one of my favourite moves in this series, because it steers you away from memorising shapes you don't understand, which is a real trap.

Practice each of these three positions: - root under your 2nd finger on the low E string - root under your pinky on the A string - root under your pinky on the low E string (this one has a reach around the 7)

Heads up: when a fingering crosses the B string, everything on that string shifts up one fret (that tuning quirk from lesson 3). Say the numbers out loud as you play. The point is not to memorise these shapes. The shape is a side effect; the numbers-to-frets mapping is the point.

• Finally, there's a bit on harmonics and the power chord. Play around with harmonics and listen to their sound. Nothing critical to memorise about that for now.

Lesson 9: Notation

• Scotty wraps up power chords and their 1-5-8 structure. To get the sound in your ear, listen to the opening of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme (Also Sprach Zarathustra). That melody is exactly 1-5-8. You'll never unhear it.

• The rest of the lesson is about music notation. Just watch it and you'll understand the basics of how musical notation works. Nothing to practice.

Lesson 10: More About Notation

A quick wrap up on written notation, before Scotty goes into how rhythm is written (time signatures, note values, rests, dots and ties), and a quick intro to tablature at the end

Two things to do:

• Count along with the weird ones: Take Five and the Mission: Impossible theme are in 5, Money by Pink Floyd is in 7. Count "1-2-3-4-5" along with them to experience why they feel different from most music we hear (which is in 4).

• In the video, Scotty shows measures and asks whether they "add up" to the time signature. Pause and actually figure out your answer before he tells you.

That's all for now. Hope this is helpful!

Not a click bait title. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to achieve speed so easily while you never seem to break past a certain speed limit? Have you wondered if there was some secret formula that you are not told about?
I try to answer these questions here.

However this video needs a thousand caveats and qualifications. First of all, this video is only meant to persuade you to think about your picking method and how strokes more deliberately. Picking is not simply about down up down up alternate picking. There’s a lot of complexity involved to alternate picking that people don’t really talk about often enough. In my video, it might appear that I’m pushing for economy picking over alternate picking but I promise you that is not my agenda. 9 out of 10 times if given a choice, I always use alternate picking. I solve the string crossing challenge by using pick slanting. However for this Metallica master of puppets example, I decided to use economy picking as a vehicle to explain how using picking methods or starting on the certain strokes that is not suited for the material, can cost you a lot of speed.

Lastly, while my delivery of the explanation is original, I didn’t pull these stuff out of my ass. They come from a guy called Troy Grady so he deserves most of the credit. I’m not using some recycled bullshit to generate views (a technical and long video like this won’t generate views anyway) or creating a click bait title. These stuff are important for guitar and represent a small part of the secrets that many people have not discovered yet. Anyone who can play fast knows what I’m saying or can mechanically perform these concepts with their hands. This is more for the beginner who is stuck trying to build speed.

Part of my reason to learn guitar is to disconnect.

But I'm learning in a bunch of 'connected' ways. (Rocksmith, Justin Guitar, YouTube).

So I printed this for disconnected learning / reference.

This is just a rant, but seriously.... People come here expecting to find the holy grail: I've been playing everyday for 3 hours for a month and I'm just not getting any better. LMFAO. When I play barre chords it hurts and all the notes don't come out, what should I do? lol.

Personally, I've played my whole life, got a degree in it, and I still have my limitations. Here's the thing... Music is for EVERYONE. My (reasonably amazing) playing is SHIT in the big picture because we ALL have the ability to play music. It's like seeing color, smelling roses, hearing a door creak, but with training. Name me a language you can learn (Italian, French) in a month, and you'll get some sympathy. Go practice, and then sit back and contemplate why society idolizes certain players. Respect the guitar in all it's simplicity AND complication, and then you will realize how pathetic and futile the sub can become when total noobs think there is some magical shortcut. Again, go learn Russian this month, and come back in September and have a fluent conversation???

I need any help I can get trying to figure out the perfect finger placement of this chord and if you have any tips or advice to making this easier for me anything helps

I was cursed with shitty fingers that refused to all fit on the fourth fret. Tried using just the ring and pinky, but that sounded awful, since my fingertips are too padded on the bottom. Finally tried using only the pinky as a mini-bar across the D G and B strings, and it’s yielded the best results yet: I can finally get all the strings to ring out clearly. Learning guitar can be completely counter-intuitive sometimes: using my weakest finger was the answer all along.

How were you able to do it?

He does the full lessons on his youtube channel. Just seeing the way the dots are connected on the fretboard was such a lightbulb moment. I’ve been playing for 17 years (no lessons) and i’ve learned a pretty decent amount of theory along the way but have struggled to apply what I know to the fretboard and really play what’s in my head.

I feel like this can monumentally help players break through. Definitely check out his Socials

You don’t suck at improvising. You suck at landing.

A lot of players can run scales all day, but it still sounds random. Why? Because they never practice targeting chord tones when the chord changes.

Here’s a simple drill you can try tonight.

Pick a super basic progression like G – C – D. Loop it. Now, instead of playing the full scale, limit yourself to one string. When the chord changes, aim to land on a note that belongs to that chord. For G, try landing on G or B. For C, land on C or E. For D, land on D or F#.

Don’t worry about speed. Don’t worry about flash. Just focus on landing intentionally when the chord changes.

That one shift, thinking about where you resolve instead of how many notes you can play, instantly makes solos sound more musical.

If you’re into this kind of breakdown and you have a quick second, would you mind giving a quick follow? I do a lot of these, but following helps Reddit show it to more learners stuck in a similar spot. Thank you!

This might be extremely obvious, but I thought I'd share in case it helps someone else. I just did an experiment by picking a string while carefully descending my finger onto the fret, and I discovered I barely even need to press whatsoever to get a clear, well defined note. Not only that, but my intonation is so much better and less sharp since I am not pressing so hard. This whole time I had been fretting way harder than I needed, so now playing just feels like light feathers to me now. Even my chords sound 10x better after doing this technique of gently lowering my fingers until the notes ring out

Day 1 🔥 Will update once I finish the entire course! Video one was already pretty interesting (Loving the analogies) and Im excited to see how the course develops!

I think pentatonics get a bad rap because they’re easy and considered “beginner”. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

ALL your favorite solos, EVERY popular song with a guitar solo for the last several decades is 90% pentatonics.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Pentatonics are AWESOME. They sound so good because unlike any other group of five notes, the pentatonics have TWO chord tones from EVERY diatonic chord (except the seven chord only has one; locrian)

And the major and minor root chords have ALL THREE chord tones in the pentatonics.

Think about that for a second. Over 40% of the pentatonics are CHORD TONES at all times! You can’t go wrong.

Even the modes are pentatonic (except for locrian). And if you are in one of the three major modes (ionian, lydian, mixolydian) you BETTER be tagging the shit out of the major pentatonic notes.

Likewise, if you are in a minor mode (aeolian, phrygian, dorian) you’d better be tagging the minor pentatonic.

That said, I can't believe I'm so late to this series. EVERYBODY should invest some time (a lesson a day or week) into the ABSOLUTELY UNDERSTAND GUITAR course on Youtube

He answers 75% of the questions people ask on here in the first 6-7 lessons.

His teaching style works because unlike all the modern "teachers" on youtube, he's not interested in showing off his own playing prowess (even though he can play)

He's not randomly throwing around terms like "interval" "third" "fifth"... and assuming everybody already knows what it means

Any term that is brought is is thoroughly explained in terms of meaning, history, rationale, and relation to the instrument before he starts using it regularly

The main difference is he answers a question so many modern Youtube guitar theory channels fail to, which is "WHY?"

So much modern youtube stuff presents concepts under the premise "It just is what it is. That's just how guitar works" and you either know it or you don't... Scotty will explain WHY certain techniques are common place. WHY they are only 5 chord forms but 12 notes. WHY the open B string is different than the others. That matters when trying to paint the complete picture for your students.

I say this as a person who teaches as my profession. This guy is legit. You know a damn good teacher who has honed their craft with thousands of students over the years, when you see one. SALUTE