Simplified Chords in Musical Notation

I think that the title of that lesson is just hilarious. It's the name of the lesson I'm using from the Standard Guitar Method by Dick Bennett in my classes. It sounds very cerebral. I guess it really gives away the book's 1965 copyright. I'm not a big fan of the method but I do like the way Dick breaks down the simplified three string chords.

He notates little chord-building exercises in standard notation. For example, on C and G7 chords:

E E E E - - - - - - - - E E E

- - - - C C C C - - - - C C C

- - - - - - - - G G G G G G G

These have been pretty effective even with my really struggling 6th graders. It's at least an easier way to teach a whole class chords without walking around and manually moving 6 or 7 students' fingers.

Hal Leonard Guitar Method

I found this old Hal Leonard Method Book at the school yesterday . While looking through it I discovered that it has a lot of the same exercises found in the Essential Elements Method I wrote about in a previous post.


The Essential Elements includes the bulk of the material found in the first two Hal Leonard Method books with the newer songs and a new snazzy layout. I haven't looked at a newer edition of the HL Method to see what's changed over the years.

The one I found has a 1977, 1980 copyright and included this vinyl record!

Again, I think the main difference is that the Essential Elements book has a lot more copyrighted popular music in it.

How to Hold the Guitar!

...just in case you were wondering.

I can't believe I found this! The next time you're feeling down just check out the picture on the right. You just can't be unhappy looking at that.

I found it while looking through some old guitar method books at the school. The photo came from "The Standard Guitar Method" by Dick Bennett.

Actually, I really like the section on "simplified chords in musical notation". It's the three-string chords we've been trying to learn anyway. The exercises are written out almost exactly like what I had written on my dry-erase board anyway.

Essential Elements for Guitar Review

Now that I've kind of babied my students with the slower-paced band method, I'm beginning to include some stuff from an actual guitar method. They've already learned E-F, B-C-D and G-A on the first three strings. Now I'm using this book to introduce G on the 1st string. I also thought that it would be a starting point for the numerous new students I've gotten in the last few weeks.

Maybe I won't have to go back to square one completely since it's the "beginning" for this book. We're using the Essential Elements for Guitar book. For those of you familiar with the band method, they're not really comparable. This one's pretty similar to the standard method books with a few refreshing differences.

They begin with chords and note-reading at the same time. You'll have a page of chord-strumming and then a page of note-reading. They kind of alternate between the two throughout the rest of the book. At the beginning students learn 3-string versions of the chords C and G7 and E, F, G for note reading. The lessons progress almost exactly like every other guitar method though some don't introduce chords and notes simultaneously.

The big difference with this book is that it's published by Hal Leonard and they throw in a lot of great pop, country and rock songs. Whereas most method books use inexpensive public domain songs to teach both chords and notes, this one has you strumming Hound Dog, Sweet Home Chicago and Jumbalaya (On the Bayou) to learn the beginner chords. For note-reading you've got "Rockin' Robin" pretty early and later a great duet arrangement of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight". In future posts I'll let you know how it goes in class.