- CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED -

Thank you to everyone who entered this contest! It truly is inspirational reading how much the guitar means to so many of you.

Well, time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

There were a total of 487 contest entries, and winning comment number is #126 -- Joshua B!

Congratulations Joshua!

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That’s right -- I’m hosting a contest right here at GuitarTipsWeekly.com! Read on for more details… this contest is so easy to enter your neighbor’s pet squirrel could have a good chance at winning!

(Video Not Working? Watch it on YouTube)

Why Have A Contest?

I thought a contest would be a cool way to attract new people to GuitarTipsWeekly. There are already a lot of great people getting the weekly lessons, but the more, the merrier! So enter yourself, and then tell your friends and get them to enter as well!

What Do I Win?

The prize is a $50 gift certificate to Musician’s Friend. Just as their name implies, they’ve got an incredible selection of pretty much everything a musician might want. Tons and tons of cool guitar stuff, yours for the winning.

Note: If you live in a part of the world where Musician’s Friend doesn’t deliver, I will contact you before arranging the prize, and we’ll work something out. So wherever you are in the world -- feel free to enter!

How Do I Enter?

Entering is easy -- all you have to do is leave a comment at the bottom of this page, and tell me why you enjoy playing guitar. It doesn’t have to be an epic long story (though it could be, I guess if you want!), but please make it at least a sentence! Make sure you use a real email address, because that’s the one that I will use to contact you if you’re the winner! Don’t worry -- nobody else can see your email address, only me. By entering, you’re not signing up for anything, and you won’t receive any emails (unless you win of course!) -- all you’re doing is leaving a comment on this page.

NOTE: If you want to sign up for the weekly guitar tips, you’ll need to do that separately, using the form at the top right corner of this page.

How Is The Winner Chosen?

The winner will be picked randomly from the entire list of comments. So if I end up with say 71 comments/entries, then I will choose a random number between 1 and 71 using a cool software program I have. It’s pretty simple and straightforward!

What is the DEADLINE?

The contest officially ends on April 30th -- sometime on May 1 I will choose the winner from the comments below. Even if there are only 3 comments! So get your name in the hat while you’re here on the page!

UPDATE: I’ve been reading all your comments as they come in -- every one! -- and thoroughly enjoying them. It’s truly inspirational to see so many people’s love of the guitar shining through! Keep ‘em coming!

If you’re looking to learn or try something a bit different on your guitar, experimenting with alternate tunings can be a great place to start. It’s amazing, but by changing the tuning of just one string (let alone more), you can dramatically change the possibilities and the sounds that come out of your guitar.

This lesson is on Drop D -- as opposed to Open D. Drop D is when you simply tune the 6th string (low E) down a whole tone to D.

In open D, you actually change more than just one string… but we’ll save that for a different day!

The trick here is that you can’t play any of the chords you’re normally used to playing that use the 6th string. For instance an open G is out… you have to find a new way to play the G chord.

Keys that revolve around the D chord are great for this tuning, as you can use the D drone in most of your chords that way. So D, or even the fourth or fifth of D (G and A) work well too… and if you wanted, you could even use some minor keys.

Anyways, without further rambling, here’s the lesson! Let me know in the comments at the bottom of the page if you’d like to learn more on alternate tunings…

Video Problems? Watch directly on YouTube

Click here for the lesson on D form triads.

If you’ve been following along with the lessons, then we’ve already covered a few different scales, including the pentatonic minor scale, and the diatonic minor scale. Well, today we’re going to take a look at the diatonic major scale.

Try to think of the minor scale and the major scale as just different positions to play the same notes… this may seem strange, but if you look at it, the same notes are in both scales. The only thing that is changing is the note that you start on, and of course the position on the neck where you’re playing.

So the upshot of this is that if you’re wanting to solo, you can use either the major scale, or the relative minor -- they are both equally valid choices.

Personally I prefer the minor scale, as the guitar is tuned minor and works extremely well in the minor, however you need to know both as you’ll need them to cover the fretboard.

If you’d like to learn more about the various scale patterns found on the guitar, I’d recommend checking out my Guitar Scale Patterns lesson.

Last time I made a lesson on how to use a guitar capo, I left out an important bit of information: how to transpose properly so that you remain in the same key as the rest of the band.

Today that’s what we’re talking about.

Random Fact: Did you know ‘capo’ also means a mafia boss? Ok.. back to guitar.

So the rule of thumb that I get into in the video is basically this:

If you move the capo UP X number of frets, you need to transpose your chords DOWN by the same number of semitones. Follow that? Each fret is a semitone, right? so in order to maintain the balance, if you go up with the capo, you need to go down with your open chords.

Click Here To Shop For a Capo on Amazon.com

This might be a bit confusing, but keep in mind you’re not actually changing keys. The only sense in which you’re changing keys is in that you’re changing to the open chord formations of a particular key. The whole idea is to remain in the same key right?

Hopefully that becomes more clear in the video. Any questions… you know what to do.