I knew if I was going to get involved in music I truly loved, the guitar was where I needed to spend my time. But then I realized that when I looked at the bands I really loved, none of them had full-time keyboard players. The synthesizer was still relatively new back then, and there was a lot of experimentation going on.Īt one point I really wondered which instrument was right for me. Even hard rock acts like Ozzy, Dio, and Def Leppard used keys on their studio recordings. This was the early 1980s, and there were many new-wave and rock bands utilizing synthesizers and keyboards in popular music. Figuring out what kind of music you want to play is important, and this alone may help you decide whether piano or guitar is right for you.įor example, when I was first learning to play guitar I was still fiddling around with the piano quite a bit. What if you are simply excited by a particular style of music? Both piano and guitar are used in many styles, but to varying degrees. So, when it comes to just getting your wheels off the ground, the guitar path is easier and faster in my opinion.
There just isn’t the same volume of music out there, and piano music tends to require more advanced technical skills. That is true of the piano as well but to a much lesser extent. If you learn a handful of chords you’ll be able to play many popular songs literally within a week of picking up the instrument. Because the guitar is so accessible and has become such a staple in genres such as rock, metal, blues, and country, there is a massive amount of music available. However, there are a few reasons I think guitar is, in general, an easier instrument to get started on. With guitar, the same note can be found in multiple spots, which makes things slightly more confusing. Remember, the piano only has one place where you can find each note. In fact, I think no matter what instrument you play it is helpful to at least mess around with a piano from time to time. Everything is lined up in a nice, straight line, and theory is easy to follow. For more theory-related lessons check out our guitar theory, ear training, and reading lessons.Conceptually, I find it much easier to understand music when looking at a piano. Thinking about chord inversions and making your transitions more efficient can go a long way in speeding up your progress on the guitar. And this new D major chord is right on top of our G major and C major bar chords so we don't have to shift to a new position. Since our lowest note is now an F#, we have a D major chord in 2nd inversion. You'll notice this shape is pretty impractical as is, so we'll simply remove our pinky. To do this, you need to move your standard C major shape up two frets and make a bar at the 2nd fret. To take this concept even further and use a chord inversions, we can utilize the top strings of the C major shape to play our D major chord. To minimize the distance you need to move, you could use A major shape bar chords for your C major and D major chords. If you played all these as E major shape bar chords, you would be making giant leaps up the fretboard. In this lesson, we have been using the G major, C major, and D major chords. Using chord inversions along with the different shapes we've learned from the CAGED system will allow us to play chords that require a large jump in easier-to-access positions. If we did the same thing and had D as our lowest note, we would have a G major chord in 2nd inversion. If we had B as our lowest note, but still included all the same notes, we would have a G major chord in 1st inversion. When we play a G major chord, we typically have G as the lowest note. For example, if we had a G major chord spelled G, B, D. You can learn more about it here: The CAGED System Chord InversionsĪn inversion is simply changing the lowest note of a chord to another note from that chord. We'll be looking at how we can utilize the CAGED system to do the same thing and make some chord transitions a lot easier.īefore getting into this lesson, it's important that you have a solid understanding of the CAGED system on the guitar. Piano players tend to play chord inversions so that they don't have to make such large movements when changing between chords. Pianos are laid out linearly, which makes thinking about the notes in a chord a lot easier. The guitar is a unique instrument in that we tend to think in shapes rather than notes. In this guitar lesson, we're going to take a look at how you can play your guitar more like a piano player. Click here to see how Guitareo can help you reach your goals. is now a part of Guitareo, where you'll get carefully designed video courses, play-alongs to apply your skills to real music, and a supportive community of students and teachers from around the world.