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I feel like the special skill I was given in life was not playing the guitar but breaking down complicated things into easily digestible steps. Just happened that I also love guitar, and so that's where my superpower expresses itself :)
To help you understand the steps, I created a grading system of 9 grades. I color-coded them along the lines of a Karate grade system which will help you quickly identify lessons or songs at your level.
🎯 The JustinGuitar Grade System boosts your online learning experience. You always know where to head next and where to look back when you need to! :) Also, you can easily identify the best song tutorials for you. 👌
I recommend that beginners follow the course and get a decent understanding of all the essential skills you need to make music, then figure out what things you like best and then focus your further study in those areas!
If you've been playing for some time, you will likely want to dip in and out of different courses or pick a specialization that interests you. Exploring the All Courses Page and the All Lessons Map is the best way to overview all the content I have available for you.
🎂 JustinGuitar turns 20 years in 2023! I still think it's crazy I've got over 2,000 lessons for y'all. Imagine how that would be without a Grade system to organize them! :)
🥋 Each Grade has a color. :) If you ever wondered why my song tutorials have different color thumbnails, it's because of the Grade's color! I'm describing the lesson stuff here - the song grade decisions are a bit personal, and while I do my best to work out the 'minimum grade needed to play a basic version of the song,' some will find some songs easy and others hard...
⚪️ Beginner Grade 1 - Easy Open Chords and Basic Strumming
🟡 Beginner Grade 2 - Open Chord Embellishments, Power Chords, Fingerpicking, and more!
🟠 Beginner Grade 3 - Further development and consolidation of beginner material and developing self-development and style focus!
🟢 Intermediate Grade 4 - Intro to barre chords and positional playing. Modules on Blues, Jazz, Transcribing, and many more.
🔵 Intermediate Grade 5 - All essential bare chords and further style development modules
🟣 Intermediate Grade 6 - Complete CAGED System for chords, scales, and improvisation.
🔴 Advanced Grade 7 - Modes of the Major Scale, Minor Scales, Chord Extensions, Playing over changes, Jazz theory, and more.
🟤 Advanced Grade 8 - Not started yet* Modes of Minor Scales, Chord Alterations and substitutions,
⚫ Advanced Grade 9 - Not started yet* All other complicated fun stuff!
* It's more important that I get the beginner grades well sorted before working on the last few - the people who reach those grades will (or should be!) aware of the things they need to learn and be able to find the info elsewhere until I get to them ;)
👉 Each Lesson is inside a Module, which belongs to a Grade. This is what the Beginner Course looks like, for example:
📽 A Lesson is one single tutorial, almost always a video. Sometimes, it will be an article. Especially when you're in the Playground, exploring things like Food for Thought.
🥄 I ensure to spoon-feed my beginners, so they build a strong foundation. Things get a bit more flexible from Grade 4+! You will have to make more decisions about how you spend your practice time, but if you've been learning with me from the Beginner stages, don't worry: you will surely know what to do!
♻️ If you haven't learned to play with me from day 0, revisiting some Beginner lessons might be a great idea. All the basics are there, and my best tips for a solid rhythm feel. :)
JustinGuitar.com will always be a work in progress - I'm always thinking of new ways of making it all better and easier for you! Also, some of my older content might not be as up-to-date as it should be.
We're a small team, and keeping over 2,000 free lessons up to date is quite a big task. But we do our best to make sure everything is as slick as possible; if it's not, please know we're doing our best to get there, and donations help us work faster. :)
You're missing Strumming Dynamics, and all great techniques that add a percussive hit to your rhythm guitar!