Lesson five in the guitar lessons for beginners series covers a complete minor scale, and asks you to record a new guitar chord progression in a minor key which you will use to play over.  This is the typical pattern for a metal guitar scale.  This lesson covers the fingering positions of the new minor scale but does not get heavily into the theory behind the scale or why it sounds the way it does, nor does it get into other similar scales of different playing styles such as country or blues.  Advanced topics like that are covered completely in the DVD series (preview it here).

The scale chosen in this case was in A minor to help the beginner guitarist who has read this lesson series from the beginning more easily add the notes in the new scale to the pentatonic minor scale taught earlier.  Likewise this lesson draws on the beginner minor chords taught in lesson one – beginner guitar chords (but not used since).

Lesson five is the last “technical” lesson in the guitar lessons for beginner series.  The two bonus lessons cover two important warm up and dexterity exercises that the beginner guitarist can use to improve technique and neck hand dexterity.  This first of the lead guitar exercises covers a single string speed technique - a left hand / right hand coordination exercise. 

The second bonus lesson in the series covers a couple (ok… one exercise played in two directions) guitar scale exercises that will help the beginner guitarist really improve their left hand dexterity over multiple strings – which is a huge handicap for most beginner guitarists.

I hope everyone reading these lessons has found them helpful in learning to play guitar, and I also hope that your appetite for knowledge about learning to play & master the guitar has been fully engaged.  There is much more in depth information available (particularly when it comes to licks and tricks for your leads and solos – as well as chord progressions) on the DVD series.  We’ve taught in this series basically one chord progression (played a couple of ways), two scales (a pentatonic and a full tonic scale), and two chords (major and minor in one fingering positon) but obviously there is much more to learn.  Hopefully you’ve learned enough about playing the guitar to be a little successful and take the next step toward doing something really meaningful with your instrument.  You can preview the complete DVD set here, or buy it directly here.  I also highly recommend the guitar setup and repair course for those of you with electric guitars (you can save buku bucks doing your own guitar maintenance).