- So are you an intermediate guitar player?
This is a tough question to answer and I get this question
from guitar players all the time that say,
"Am I an intermediate guitar player?"
or they say "Hey, I'm an intermediate guitar player,"
and I have to break the news to them like,
you're not an intermediate guitar player
because you can't do these things.
And that may sound a little bit harsh,
but I don't think it is
because the guitar is so expansive,
you have rhythm guitar, lead guitar,
then you get into styles, jazz, rock, blues,
whatever it is, finger style,
and on some of these things, I've been playing guitar
for what 26 years, something like that,
and I still feel like a beginner at some of these.
So in this video, I wanted to put together
a resource with your help in the comments below,
as kind of a standard
of what an intermediate guitar player should do.
And, like I said, the guitar is so expansive
that we really have to define what we're talking about here.
When I talk about this,
I'm talking about what are the basic things
that don't necessarily cross stylistic boundaries
that, you know, the core abilities
that you need to have down as a guitar player
to consider yourself completely out of the beginner level
and just into the intermediate level of playing.
So here's the list.
It's quite long, so you can take notes if you want on this
and then add your things that you think I left out
or things you think might not be necessary.
The first thing is be able to go right
to your eight fundamental open chords cleanly.
So no, no one finger at a time kind of stuff.
You need to be able to go right to your open G, C, D, A, E
D minor,
A minor,
and E minor chords, right to them.
Next you need to be able to change between
those open chords smoothly without a blip, so.
Like this, instead of like this.
With that little pause in between, so.
That's a really important factor in playing songs,
which we'll get into later.
But that's the next thing.
And kind of right in line with this
is you need to be able to play your power chords.
Power chord shapes.
At least for the low E and A string shapes,
and move them around the fret board smoothly as well.
The last little thing as far as chords go
is you need to be able to play
your fundamental bar chord shapes,
so two major and two minor bar chord shapes.
The E shape for major.
The A shape for major.
And the E minor, shape.
And then the A minor shape, that's the two.
And you also need to be able to move
those around the fret board.
So here's a really good test to see if you can play
or use your bar chords in a way that's, you know,
getting to intermediate level.
If you can play
through like a one, five, six, four progression,
or G, D, E minor, C progression,
then I would say you have your bar chords down,
those core ones pretty well.
Okay flowing kind of from the power chords
and bar chords thing
is I think that you need to have the notes
on the low E and A strings memorized.
And this is really cool because as you work
on your bar chords and power chords,
this is gonna kinda occur naturally,
because in order to know where to put these chords,
you have to know, for example,
that this is a G on the low E string,
or that this is a D,
on the A string.
So just have the notes on the E and A strings memorized
is really important.
And when you have your little E string memorized,
you have your high E string memorized too,
and that's half of the guitar.
Okay, moving away from chords and more onto strumming.
In order to be an intermediate guitar player,
I think you need to have a decent amount
of strumming technique, as far as down strokes,
and up strokes going,
and you need to be able to play through
some basic eighth note strumming patterns,
and be able to pick some basic strumming patterns out
of some simple songs.
And a really good test for this is if you can play
the really common strumming pattern down, down, up,
up, down, up, like this.
(guitar music)
One really critical area for any musician is timing,
and this flows kind of right with strumming.
You need to have some decent time
if you wanna consider yourself an intermediate guitar player
and the way to do this is maybe
just put on a metra noma, 70 beats per minute,
and play quarter notes.
One, two, three, four,
then go to eighth notes,
two, three, four.
Then 16ths.
Back to eighths.
Back to quarters.
And if you can keep up with the metronome
and stay on beat,
then I would say that you're on your way
to having an intermediate level of timing down.
Let's get into some mirror training areas.
One thing that's important for a guitar player to do
is to hear a chord and just tell
whether it's major or minor.
So if somebody plays a chord,
you don't have to know what chord it is,
but if somebody plays this, (strums guitar)
you should be able to tell, hey,
is that major or minor just by hearing it.
Or if somebody plays this, (strums guitar)
you should be able to tell, hey,
is that major or minor.
And kind of the next level for that
is being able to find the tonal center,
the key of a song.
So if somebody is playing this for example, (guitar music)
brown-eyed girl, right?
You need to be able to like hear in your head
or sing out (hums)
that's the root note, or the tonal center, (strums guitar)
of that song.
And, you know, you can hunt around
on your guitar fret board.
And be like, oh that note is a G.
Having the ability to match pitch like that,
and just basic, pick out the basic key
for some easy songs is really important.
As someone who loves music theory
and loves to study it and find out new things about it,
I think it is important that you,
as a guitar player,
especially if you wanna consider yourself
an intermediate player,
have a basic understanding of music theory down.
And I'm not saying you have to understand
everything there is about music theory,
or be a jazz music theory specialist,
but it is important that you understand
the basics of how major keys work,
and then what chord's occurring actually,
and major keys.
You don't have to know all your keys,
but getting a basic understanding of that down
will really help you learn songs faster.
And that's the next point.
In order to consider yourself an intermediate guitar player,
I think it's really important
that you're able to play through a few really simple songs
like Brown-eyed Girl, Knocking on Heaven's Door,
things like that, Let It Be.
The reason for that is because
if you can do that,
play through some simple songs all the way through
without stopping, all the things we've talked about so far
kind of reverse engineering this,
you will be able to do.
So that's kind of your Litmus test.
Can I kind of play through these hand,
or this handful of songs that I like
and I wanna be able to play.
So far everything we've talked about
is kind of rhythm guitar related,
but I wanted to give you some points for lead guitar too.
Some of the things we already talked about,
like ear training theory,
apply to lead guitar as well,
but I wanted to give you some,
like, specifics that you can kind of lean on to know
hey, am I an intermediate guitar player or not.
I think it's important to have one of each
of the following types of skills down.
A blue scale, a minor pentatonic skill,
a major pentatonic skill, a major skill,
and then just a natural minor skill as well.
And they can all be in the same position,
so if you have like an A blue scale,
(guitar music)
and then A minor pentatonic,
then A major pentatonic,
A major,
and then A minor.
Those are the foundational kind of,
even if it's just one position, like I said,
there's foundational skills
that are really good to have down
as a beginner player that's, like,
graduating to intermediate.
And then, of course, going along with that,
you need some lead guitar technique,
like being able to pick alternate pick through a scale,
even if it's slow like this.
So alternate picking.
Bending.
Or sliding.
Those types of skills.
Just having the basics of those down is important.
The last thing that I wanted to go over here with you
is probably the most controversial one,
or the most devicive one,
that's reading music.
And trust me, not every guitar player
needs to learn how to read music.
I've known world-class players that can't read music,
but some players, depending on what your goals are,
do need to learn how to read music,
'cause it's important for them to advance with those goals.
So this one is really subjective.
It's up to you.
It's really good to have the basics
of reading rhythms down, I will say that.
But as far as reading notes on a staff,
yes or no, it depends on your personal goals.
Once you can do all the things I listed here,
you're gonna be in solid intermediate territory,
and the cool thing about this
is that you're gonna be in a great spot
to go pursue other things,
like if you wanna pursue finger style,
you wanna go learn more about jazz,
or if you wanna learn more about metal,
you have the core skills that you need to do that.
So what do you think?
Did I leave out some things that are really important,
or did I include some things you think, eh,
I don't need to learn that.
I can get by without it.
What do you think is absolutely necessary,
or unnecessary, to be considered
an intermediate guitar player?
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
I'll see ya later.
(soft guitar music)