LIVE Q&A with Lauren Bateman

Hello. Hello. Good morning. I got my mic here, so hopefully you can, you can hear me well enough. If this is. I can see picking me up down there. So that's good, that's good. I, I saw a question very early on. Unfortunately I can't see the name, but was asking about the, the basic steps for getting started with playing the electric guitar, which is basically the same as.

Playing the acoustic guitar. So you know, relatively the same, slightly different skill sets between acoustic and electric, you know, acoustic, you're gonna find yourself doing, you know, to be a little stereotypical. You're gonna find yourself doing more of like the singer songwriter, the, the strumming the rhythm when, you know, electric guitar is a little bit more suited for doing, you know, lead guitar soloing. But of course you can do any of those things on, on the acoustic guitar as well. I'm just scrolling down so I can see the chat here for everyone. So it's going to be relatively the same. You'll want to learn the same skills, the chords, the scales. But with electric guitar you might, depending on what genre of music you're playing too. So if you're playing a little bit more like rock, classic rock, you might be heading more into playing a lot more chords, you know, the abbreviated chords versus playing full chords, you know. So if you're doing power chords.

You know, versus a bright and open G chord, you know, rock is a little bit more suited to, to power chords, lead guitar soloing where if, you know, you're a James Taylor fan, you're probably going to want to do more acoustic, more finger picking. But a lot of the skills are the same. Again, you're gonna want to have a great warm up. Good morning from Chattanooga. I've, I've been through Chattanooga. I actually think my accountant is in Chattanooga. Believe that or not. I, I've been to Tennessee one. So there you go. Arizona in the house. Florida, a couple people from Florida. It is cooler this morning here in Boston. I actually went, I was at a concert last night. I went and saw Janet Jackson at the New Boston Garden. I think my first concert. Well, my first Janet Jackson concert was at the old Boston garden in like 94. So I saw Janet Jackson. Last night was an amazing concert. We had a great time. So much fun, so much singing and dancing. Janet's one of my favorites. Hello from Germany. And Australia's in the house. Dubai, Ireland. I think Ireland's our next trip. On, on the, on the docket we're going to be going over to, to Ireland for Megan's 40th birthday. So that will be our trip next year. And I'm hoping I. I saw. I was speaking with someone earlier who's in Italy. I'm hoping I can get back to Italy. I'm trying to actually, believe it or not, I'm applying for dual citizenship, or I'm trying to figure out how to get it. I do qualify, strangely enough, through. Through my great grandfather. So it's. It's been a very interesting process. So maybe I'll get over to Italy this. This summer as well. My family's from southern Italy. Bonjour. Hello, Wooter. Nice to see you. I met Wooter at my event last year. The other event. We have one coming up in August 16, 17, 18. So, Hooter, very nice to see you here. Fantastic. In Canada. Tons and tons of Canadians that follow me. Love you all. I'm doing guitar clinic with Mark Tremonti in July. That should be awesome. Congratulations. Fantastic. Love it. Let's see. How much guitar theory do you need? I don't want to be a shredder. Well, if you don't want to be a shredder, you know, you don't need a ton of guitar theory. And this is where I get in trouble with a lot of these, the online teachers, because I know, you know me, my background is not in music. My degrees are actually in biology and archaeology, which makes me a lot more like you than most of the guitar teachers because most of them went to university and they learned tons of theory. And the way I learned guitar was, was through just having fun and writing my own music. So for me, I will tell you, just on my own personal experience as a musician and a guitarist, I wrote about three albums worth of material without knowing anything about music theory. So it's not that you need music theory to be a good musician. There's many, many musicians. I mean, we're talking Hendrix, we're talking Lennon. A lot of them didn't have music theory. They kind of learned it over time. And. And that was kind of my experience, doing a lot of things by ear. What sounds good, what doesn't sound good. But also, you know, the thing with music theory is it does make you a better musician overall in terms of understanding why things happen. The people, the students of mine that really tend to like music theory are, you know, my engineers, my accountants, the people who. The very analytical people, the people who love math, love theory because theory is. Is very mathematical. There's formulas, there's, you know, theory and all that stuff. So if you're someone that Likes that type of stuff. I do have a Music Theory 101 course and I did put a link somewhere in the chat. Should be the top of the chat where you can click on, you can go get the courses. There is a Music Theory 101 course which teaches you kind of the. The basics of theory skills, scales, you know, where chords get their names from. Why is it a C chord? Because it's got the notes C, E and G and explains like what a chord triad is and all those, all those interesting. What key is my song in? I used to play with my band and I never knew what key my songs were in. I used to have to ask my band members. So that's how much music theory I was playing in a band. I was playing live, I was playing in front of 20,000 people and I didn't even know what keys my own songs were in. But I was writing music, I was performing, I was recording. So it just goes to show, you can do a lot without music theory. You can have a lot of fun without music theory. So. So if, if you're not in love with theory, don't worry about it. Always have fun with the guitar. But music theory will explain a lot of the. Why things sound good in music.

And it can be helpful in, in scales and songwriting and stuff too. James Taylor had a beautiful voice. I wish I could sing like him, y'. All. He's great. I'm going to see him in September. September. He's coming to Boston in September. So I'll be at that, that show. Here's a question. Why do I suck at guitar? I can spend countless hours practicing and make stupid mistakes constantly. Fingers slipping off strings, etc. Here's the thing, and I did a whole video on this. And, and I didn't say this. It's actually one of my, my guitar teaching friends who said this. And he's like, you have to embrace the suck. Because whenever you're learning something, you're just not going to be good. You're not. It takes time. It takes a lot of time, energy and effort to be good. Now you're saying you're practicing, but it might be what you're practicing and how you're practicing it is the reason you're not getting better. And that's why I always point people over to my seven level guitars. Because the great thing about YouTube, you know, we're all here on YouTube. It's great. There's a lot of free resources, but everything's out of order. Everything's out of order. You practice one Thing, and then you practice this other thing, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden you're practicing like 12 different things, and none of them are sounding good. And what I do in the seven level, and I know there's probably some students here in the chat who've been through my program, is we do it one step at a time, and we build upon things. I always tell people it's kind of like if you ever take a martial arts, it's kind of like the belt system. We learn the white belt stuff first, then the yellow belt, then the orange belt. And, you know, you learn things in a better order, because that's what I found with a lot of students, even myself, because I learned on my own for a very, very long time. And, you know, I find most of my students who were learning on their own, they. They were just learning too many things at the same time. So they were never really getting good at anything because they were just doing too many things. So I really tell students, focus in. If you. If you want to play chords and you want to strum along to songs, really just focus on a few chord changes. I always start students off with G, C, E minor, D, because you can play lots of songs with just those four chords. And then we work on simple strumming. Okay? That's the key. Simple strumming and some chords, and you will be able to start sounding good much faster, versus if you're working on chords, scales, theory, you know, strumming, sight reading, all these other things, the ear training, all these things you could work on. There's so many things you can work on. Bar chords, you know, how to play riffs and licks on the guitar, and that stuff's fun, but you really got to work on the fundamentals to get good. It's just like basketball or sports. You know, they say basketball games are run one off of three free throws and layups, and those are like the most basic skills. It's not whether you can slam dunk the ball. It's not whether you can dribble between your legs, although, you know, you have to be a very good dribbler. It's the. Really the basics that. That make a team so good. So it's the same with the guitar. Focus on those basics and those foundations, and you'll get better much faster. Someone says, have you ever considered getting into bluegrass and doing lessons that lend well to bluegrass? So I'm a very strong proponent of sticking to my wheelhouse. I personally have not played a lot of bluegrass, which is why I don't teach a lot of it here, so it's probably not something I would venture into. If I did a bluegrass course, I would probably team up with another teacher who. That's their specialty. My specialty is really helping beginners through, like, intermediate players, you know, get good at playing, you know, finger style strumming, having fun with songs. I do have some lessons here, like I did Sweet home Alabama, where I'll show you some more intermediate how to go from the strumming to playing the licks and all that stuff. But bluegrass is not like jazz bluegrass, not really my wheelhouse, so probably something I wouldn't be able to do a course on. But if I did, I would. I would partner up with someone who knows that more. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome. You're welcome. For answering your question.

I really struggle with bar chords. Any tips? This is from Peter. So Peter, tips with bar chords, they're hard. So again, it's one of those things you're gonna suck at first. It's one of those things you are going to suck at first. And tips for bar chords, one, don't jump onto them too quickly, because I find a lot of beginners jump to bar chords, and they're super frustrating. You'd be better off playing, you know, just open chords and getting those down pat because, you know, there is a strength component to bar chords. There's also a dexterity component. And usually beginner guitar players have neither of those elements. So jumping onto bar chords can be super, super frustrating for beginners. So if you're an absolute beginner, don't do it. But things that can help. Come to the middle of the fretboard because the strings here much more flexible than up here. Everyone starts with this F bar chord. It's very hard to play, very hard to get those bottom strings to ring through because you need a lot more pressure because of the nut here. So come to the middle fifth fret, seventh fret, where the strings are a lot more flexible and just work on the shapes of getting it to ring through and sound good. Something I tell students to do. Just try creating a capo with your first finger and see if you can get all the strings to ring. Because if you can, then you have enough strength and then you just put in your other fingers.

Now, on barre chords, we never want to play with the finger completely flat. It's kind of at an angle. I don't know if you can see. I'm kind of like twisting my finger here. It's almost sitting at like almost like a 45 degree angle. The edge of your finger is bonier. So it helps a little bit to. To dig into the strings. At least for me, in my hand. That's what I like to do.

The other thing I like to do. So some people like to rest their finger just on the string. When I'm playing six string bar chords, because of the size of my finger, I have slightly smaller hands. I like to extend above. So see how my finger goes above that top string just gives me a little bit more leverage, particularly on these bottom strings. What I found, I did, actually, I did a live event in the uk and the majority of students, the issue they were having was this knuckle. This knuckle was sitting right over the bottom two strings. So they had like a little kink in their finger. So the kink was hitting the bottom two strings. So no matter what they did on those bottom two strings, they couldn't. They had to like completely flatten the fingers. Scoot your finger up just a little bit. This way you can hit more here versus the knuckle. All right, so those are a couple things. If you search on YouTube, search Lauren Bateman. Bar chord tips. I did a whole video on how to make your bar chord sound better. But those are some of the things I talked about in that video as well.

Yeah, Karate Kid. Oh, I just lost it. You've been reading music on piano since I was 5. With that background, I've been able to study the fretboard and learn every fret at a glance. But how beneficial is that? It's, it's, it's beneficial to, to lead guitar playing for sure. And especially if you get into chord inversions and stuff down the road, knowing the fretboard is valuable. I do a lot of stuff by ear. I always have. So even if I'm playing a solo or something, you know, I'll just use my ear to be like, is it a good note or not? So I do a lot of playing by ear. Even when I took piano lessons, I would play by ear. I took piano lessons later when I was adult when we got a nice piano at the music school and my piano teacher would have to give me music I didn't know, because if I knew the music, I could hum the melody and then I would figure it out on the piano. And he was like, no, I want you to sight read the music. I don't want you to figure it out by ear. So I'm that person who's like, I'll just hum it and I'll try. I'd rather figure it out than read it. I'm not the greatest sight reader when it comes to reading melody. I'm very good at rhythm because I took drum lessons and I, I started taking the drums again. So that's been fun. But I, I believe sight reading rhythm is very important because, you know, music is all about. All about rhythm. Whether or not you want to learn to read standard notation is up to you. I don't think it's necessary, but knowing the fretboard is, is a really wonderful skill. I don't think everyone needs it. But if you want to get more into solo playing, chord inversions and all that stuff, it really becomes very helpful to know that stuff. So, yeah. Oh, the, the world's oldest music notation was played on the ancestor of the guitar. Nice. Interesting. Playing video playing with other musicians, that would be good. I did enjoy the uk. It was, it was fun. I actually was back in England in May, so that was, that was a very, very fun thing. Love England and we were in Scotland the first time, so that was good. I can play everything with capo on, but without capo, I cannot play clean. Is my guitar action holding me down? But when I lower action, I lose too much tone. So.

You shouldn't lose a lot of tone by adjusting the, the action because the tone really comes from the, the materials the guitar is made out of. So you're. When you adjust the neck, you. You will loosen the strings. So sometimes it's a balance of putting the right string tension on in the right tone. So your guitar is going to sound a certain way depending on what wood it's made out of. Usually the darker woods tend to have a warmer tone than say like a light wood, like something like spruce. And then you'll have different strings. So I like phosphor bronze because they're a little bit warmer, a little bit balanced, versus like an 8020 bronze, which has a much brighter tone to it. So whenever you're adjusting the, the fretboard, so. So usually you're adjusting the truss rod. Mine, I have a plate, so my truss rod's up here. A lot of people, if you have an acoustic, it's going to be inside underneath the neck. If you have electric, you probably also have a plate like this that you can take off and adjust the truss rod.

So when you loosen the neck of the guitar, you make it more concave like this. So you're actually reducing the tension on the strings, which can make them a little bit floppier. I personally like to get my action as low as possible without the strings buzzing. So that is my preference. So you're gonna have to play around with it a bit because you, you always want a little concaveness to the neck. Typically what you do when you set up a guitar, typically you take all the strings off and you straighten the neck of the guitar. So you take everything off. You clean the guitar, you make sure it's, you know, nice and healthy. You tighten up, you know, your tuning pegs and all that stuff. And then you put the strings back on. Because if you take everything off the guitar and the neck is completely straight, when you put the strings back on, it's going to put a little bit of that bow into the neck. If you're, if your neck is too flat, the strings are going to stop. I can't even make it. They're going to start buzzing against the frets. So. So that's not good. So play around. You know, you might find you need, maybe you need to adjust here the saddle on the bridge. Sometimes especially cheaper guitars, they come with a very, very big saddle. So you. There's only so low you can get that. The action on those. So you know, you could always take it into a reputable guitar shop or luthier, have them look at it and get it set up exactly where you want it. And then from there it's just, it's just minor maintenance at that point. So. Yeah.

Oh, you play a 12 string. Yeah, William. You know, the great thing about a 12 string is a lot of the stuff is, is the same in terms of the chords. The weird thing about the 12 string is, is just having to play two strings per finger. I find picking on a 12 string is much harder. But one of my favorite artists, Melissa Etheridge, played on a 12 string for, for years. And it's such a beautiful, beautiful song. But yes, having a low action helps. So low action means that the strings are closer to the fretboard. So it's less distance that you have to push into the fretboard. Like my electric guitar. The action on that, I tell them, get it as low as you can without the strings buzzing. So the action on my electric is, is very, very low. And it's fairly low on, on the acoustic. So the closer you can get the strings, the less you have to press to get them to sound. So that, that definitely does help. Also.

You can put thinner strings on the guitar. Now there's trade offs. Okay. Thicker strings, you're gonna have more tension. Thinner strings, you're gonna loosen the tension. Okay. So you might have to adjust the fretboard again. But also thinner strings are. They sound a lot more metallic and tinny, and some people don't like that. Now, here's another tip for bar chords that someone mentioned earlier. When I would start students on bar chords, we would change out their strings so that they had extra light strings on. And this way they could build up the strength. And then once they did, we would put the light strings back on. I don't tend to play with medium strings. Medium strings you're going to get. They're the thickest. And you're going to get probably the best sound out of the guitar. But they're also very, very hard to play. I think this Taylor came standard with 12s and I changed it out for 11s. I. I do prefer 11s, just a little easier. And even for me with bar chords, just a little easier to play it. It does, you know, I can hear the slight differences. It does sound better with 12s, but. But for me, it's a comfort thing. I want my guitar to be as comfortable as possible to play. So I play. I really like 11s as, like my string of choice. So, you know, if I were gonna go into the studio and I wasn't gonna do bar chords and I was just gonna finger pick and strum, I'd maybe put twelves on it just to have it that richness and that warmth come out more. But for me playing and do a lot of the tutorials I do here on YouTube, 11s work. Work great for me. So, yeah. Why must the A chord be so difficult? I know, Rob, it's. It's a. It's a pain in the butt chord, that A chord. You know, I go over in my course, you know, five or six different ways to play this because the thing is, everyone's hand is different, so I have a smaller hand. So for me it's, you know, and I don't have sausage fingers, so it's. It's easier for me to put three fingers into the second fret and play an A chord. Some people, your fingers are so big that you can play the A chord with just two fingers. It's harder for me to do that. I would prefer to do it with three fingers, but you could use the second, third, and fourth. You know, the. The first, second, and third. You can do like this little triangle shape. There's a bunch of different ways to play an A chord. You could bar it.

I know some students prefer to do that. The thing that's so Difficult with the A chord is when you. If you do play it this way with three fingers, this first finger ends up in the back of the fret. And when you're in the back of the fret.

You need so much more pressure. I'm using the same amount of pressure on the back as I am on the front. The strings ringing. I come to the back of the fret, not ringing anymore. Now I have to push on the string much harder. And that's what happens with the A chord for a lot of people is they're just not pushing hard enough with the first finger to get that string to ring. So a lot of people, when they play their A chord, it sounds like this, that that D string gets muted because of the finger placement. Another one that's common for me is the G chord. Just because of the way my hand is, I have to play this finger higher up on the fretboard. I can't play a G chord with this finger right on the string because this knuckle, this knuckle, knuckle, this knuckle. I can't bend it enough. So if I play a G chord, like straight on the string, I always mute the A string below. It's just the way my hand is. It's the physicality of my hand. So. So for me to play a G chord and get it to sound, I always have to play. Did you see what I did there? It's very slight. It's not like I'm moving a lot. I just move the finger up higher on the fretboard, so higher on the string.

And it gives me enough clearance to clear the string below. That happens for a lot of people on a C chord. This third finger mutes the string below. And for some people, they just have to move that finger up just a little bit. A lot of times it is the knuckle. But these are different things. This is, you know. You know, everyone's hands different. So you're gonna have to play around with some of these things to figure out what works for you, what doesn't. How do you get your. If you're having trouble with the G chord, how do you get it to ring through? Okay, so it's. It's not. Just put the fingers down on the fretboard and it's gonna sound great. You really have to analyze what's going on. What string am I muting? Why is it muting? Can I adjust my finger? And we're talking about millimeter size adjustments. We're not talking about, you know, centimeters or Inches here. We're talking about millimeter size adjustments to your fingers, but it can make a huge difference in the overall sound and ease of ease of playing.

Yeah. What's your thoughts on bonus scent tuning? I don't have much thoughts on that because I don't know too much about it, so. So I don't have much thoughts on that, unfortunately.

New player. Hi, Timothy. Welcome. I just can't get bar chords. All right. So first thing, I can play the open chords most without looking. Okay. Yeah. I just went over bar chords earlier. It's just like open chords. It's a repetition thing. There is a strength component to it. What I recommend, Timothy, is just doing a quick search. Lauren Bateman Barcode tips. Watch my video on that. I do have a whole barcode course. So again, I put a link to my courses. It's Lauren bateman.com forward/courses. Laurenbatement.com courses I do have a bar chord. It's a power and bar chord course. I just dropped my pick on the ground. Sorry. I got a whole bunch of them here. You can go pick that up. I show you my process of how. I used to teach bar chords to students and lessons to help them get comfortable with it, build that strength, and be able to play bar chords a little bit more cleanly. So definitely go check that out. Timothy. If you're interested, B7 was the most difficult chord. Yeah. Great way to practice B7. Paint it black by the Rolling Stones because you can go from E minor with your second and third fingers into B7. Yeah.

Great way just to get your fingers started with doing that transition and learning how to get in and out of. Of the B7 chord. Who is your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle character and why? Is it you? Is it Usagi or Jimbo? I actually have that action figure in a box back there. My favorite turtle. Let's move the turtles around here. Right here. Michelangelo. That's my favorite turtle. Always was. He was the party dude. But if I was playing the video game, you know, in the video game, you always wanted to be Donatello because he had the biggest reach for his weapons. So there you go.

I think Raphael was probably my least favorite because he had anger issues. And I had enough people who had anger issues in the family, so I didn't want. Wanted to stay away from anger issues. Maybe that's why I liked Michelangelo. He was just so happy, go lucky and fun loving. But Yusaki Ojimbo is. Is a very, very cool character. Props to you for. For mentioning that. I know. And I got my. It's funny, I wore my ninja turtle shirt today.

Hi Robin. Nice to see you. You did not miss me. Self taught. Nine years and I'm still a beginner. Still count. You know Donna, same thing I. I was self taught. You know, I got my first guitar when I was 16 and I played guitar for 10 years before I got a single lesson on guitar. And I did it because I really wanted to be a little bit more professional on the guitar. I really did want to improve my songwriting, learn some theory.

And you know the F chord, it's just a pain in the butt. And you probably see, look, I just played it and it muted. See, I've been playing guitar. What now? How old am I? 41? 25 years. 25 years and I just played an F chord live and you all heard me mute it. Okay? If you didn't, I'm confessing it was a bad bar chord. So you can see, even for me it still happens sometimes if I'm not focusing on really, really flexing that finger. Now what happens too? If you play bar chords enough like you really, really get into playing bar chords, you will start to develop a callus on this finger and calluses are harder than flesh. Just like with the open chords when you, you get calluses on the tips of your fingers, calluses are harder than soft flesh. It actually helps you with pressing the string. So even for me, I don't, you know, I don't play as often as I used to. I'm mostly playing here and to teach. So I don't my callus anymore. I used to have a nice callus on my first finger and that will help you getting those bottom strings to sound through better. But again, start here.

Start in the middle of the guitar, work your way down. You do have to build up that strength. So. Hi Wayne. Walking to work is hard. Were you 20?

Oh, Samson from the Netherlands. Awesome. Oh, your help took me to the next level. You play classical guitar from sheet music. How do I start learning to play with a pick on electric guitar? So Erwin, great, great question. So my recommendation so classical and I took some classical lessons a few years ago. So you're doing a lot of finger style in classical and a lot of different type of playing here. So what you're going to do is you're going to replace that with a pick. So you'll want to hold your pick. And I have tons of videos on here on how to hold your pick. But the thing you want to get used to is this pick is almost going to act like your first and second finger. So in classical, you do a lot of alternating. You know, you kind of do first, second, and that's how you get your speed a lot right. So what I recommend is getting used to doing a simple spider exercise just to get control between the two fingers. And again, you can search Lauren Bateman's Spider exercise. I have tons of videos. But you can see here the alternate picking.

Is going to replace fingers one and two. So you just want to start working on coordinating the two hands. And a spider exercise is a great way to do that. And then you might want to get into some scales. I do have a lead guitar 101. I do have a whole bundle. So if you're someone who's not a beginner, meaning like you know your open chords, you know some of your basic strumming. I do have a next level program. Most people don't know that. They think I just have the course for beginners. So if you're someone who's got their open chords, but you know you're still having difficulty with strumming or you feel like you're strumming the same thing over and over again, or you're someone like, I'm getting into bar chords, it's so hard, I can't do it. Or I want to get into lead guitar and learning a little bit of theory. I have. It's my next level program. Lauren bateman.com forward/next level. But if you go to the courses page, laurenbatement.com forward/courses and I think you scroll down, there's like the late beginner to intermediate courses. I have a bundle package that's five courses. It's the expressive rhythm and strumming where I teach you like, you know.

More percussive style strumming. I go over some of the beginner stuff too, just in case you need that foundational work. But I go into more, you know, accented rhythms, percussive rhythms, 16th note rhythms, more intricate rhythms. I actually have a rock module that I just added, I think earlier this year, which is more elect. I do that all in electric guitar. So electric guitar strumming. And then I have the lead guitar 101. Getting into your first scale, learning how to solo. The power and bar chord course, music theory 101 and finger picking. Finger picking is the fifth course, which is one of my most popular courses is finger picking 101. I teach how to do stuff, you know, learn how to do picking so that you can play stuff like Dust in the Wind or Blackbird.

So if you're into that type of stuff, like, if you're like, I'm past the beginner level, I've got the beginner stuff down. Lauren. I can play my open chords. I hate bar chords. My strumming still stinks. Then check out the next level program because that's probably going to be a little bit more level appropriate for where you're at, kind of taking you to that next level in your playing. So I would highly recommend that. And if you're into blues, I do have a Blues Guitar 101 course that's. That's very good. I think that's like 50 or 60 lessons that goes into rhythm in blues and it also goes into lead guitar playing. It takes things a little bit further than Lead Guitar 101 does. So it's a really great course. But it's definitely not for absolute beginners. If you're an absolute beginner, start with the seven level program. I do go over 12 bars blues and stuff in there. But if you're a little bit more late beginner, intermediate, check out Blues Guitar 101. It's its own separate course. It's not part of the next level bundle because I, you know, it's a really substantial course. So it's a good one. You know, if you love the blues and you want something just to learn the blues, go get that one. That's a good one. Generally she plays James Taylor. Taylor Swift, not so much. Yeah, I did one Taylor Swift song on here. The thing that's tricky with some of the artists, particularly Taylor Swift, she's a tricky one. Not that she is. The music labels are tricky. They usually flag a lot of Taylor Swift stuff for copyright. Same with the Eagles. The Eagles is very, very difficult to do songs on YouTube because sometimes they outright block the songs, meaning they won't even let us show the video. So I've done recordings of videos, edited them, posted them on YouTube, and they shop as black. Like the copyright owners just removed them. Fortunately, most artists are nice. They allow the copyright to be here on YouTube, which allows us to teach. But I just, even the other day I just got one. It was Roy Orbison, you got it. Now, fortunately, they're going to let me keep the video on, but they said, you know, they're not going to let me make any money from the video. The copyright owner is going to take all the money from the video, which is totally fine. That's great. It allows me to teach here and do what I got to do on YouTube. But just so you know, a lot of these songs and they're like, you could remove it. So what I did. The reason I got hit for copyright in that Roy Orbison lesson. So the Roy Orbison lesson, just so you guys know, it's probably about 15 minutes I sang the Roy Orbison song so you guys could have a playthrough. I sang it for about one minute. So they marked the entire 15 minutes as copywritten video, even though I only used it for like one minute in, in the entire video. So because I use that song for like one minute, the rest of the video gets demonetized. So you can't. So that you know the pluses and minuses of YouTube. But that's how copyright works. And Taylor Swift is one of those ones that's very, very hard sometimes to get songs to go through. And again, I'm not saying it's Taylor Swift, it's the copyright holder. And especially on a lot of her older stuff, you know, it's Sony, Universal, Warner, all those big companies, they're, they're coming after people a little bit harder now because they're not making money off their artists because a lot of their artists are going independent. So. So that's what they're doing. So just a little copyright soiree for your little side track for copyright.

Do you have advanced courses? Hi, William. Yeah, so the most advanced course we have right now, so I would say we have a pentatonic mastery course. I don't teach that course. That's a very. If you're into lead guitar skills, learning to play the blues, that's taught by a very good friend of mine, Charles Long, and I, I had him do it because he's much more advanced in that style than I am. And for me to teach it to you would be a disservice. So if you go on that courses page, laurenpatement.com forward/courses, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you're going to see intermediate and advanced courses. That's the only one we have right now that's a little bit more advanced in terms of theory, scales, application. It's the pentatonic mastery course. I think that one pairs really well with the Blues Guitar 101. So if you did Blues Guitar 101 plus pentatonic mastery, like you'd have a really good, really good course. But that one's definitely. I wouldn't recommend that for beginners by any means. That's the pentatonic mastery course. But it's, it's taught by my Friend Charlie Long, who teaches here on YouTube. And it's definitely, it's definitely more advanced. You got to know a little bit more. And it's a very, very in depth course. I think that one's about 60 lessons as well. So it's a very, very in depth course. Course. Great. If you want to get into soloing, especially in the blues. I know bundles. Am I watching Rick Beato? I know, it's so funny. I see his, I see his ads all the time. I've always had the bundle and it was funny. I got put in Guitar World magazine. I don't know if someone here on YouTube told me, they're like, did you know that you were, you were listed as one of the top 10 online guitar teachers? And I was like, that's super cool. Like, that's so awesome. You know, to, to be on those lists. It's really cool. And you know, Justin's on there, Rick's on there, Marty's on there. All the good guys are on there. But the one thing I got yelled at, they, they called me crude for, for selling my courses. And I'm like, you know, and Rick Beato sitting at number seven and I'm number eight and I'm like, I get ads for Rick's stuff all the time. Like how come Rick can sell his courses in his bundles. Thank you for pointing. You know, his ear training course. I see his stuff all the time. You know that he does a bundle for like, you know, $20 or whatever he's doing. But it was funny because they yelled at me for, for selling my courses. So, so I apologize. I do have to make a living teaching guitar. But, you know, a lot of, you know, I get tons of stuff on here for free on YouTube. I do this stuff here. I've got my website, laurenbateman.com the song section's great. We just updated that this past year so that you can click on I want beginner songs. I want finger picking songs. I want songs that just use the chords E minor C and G. Or I just want songs that use a D and E. You can, you can click on those buttons on the song page and, and learn songs that you know are appropriate to where you're at. Because that's the hard thing with, with music and learning songs online. And something I think I'm really good at and slightly different than, than other teachers is, you know, help people find the songs that are good for them. So it's like if you just know the chords, A D and E, well, what songs can you play well. You go over to Lauren bateman.com forward/songs. Okay. Or just click songs in the navigation, then click on the button that's A, D, E, and F sharp minor. Now, I know F sharp minor is a bar chord, but I teach people you can always play an A chord on the bottom three strings, and that makes for an easy F sharp minor. And then you can play all the songs in that list. All right. You might need to keep the strumming simple, but it helps, you know, like, oh, if I click on this, I should be able to play these songs even at a simple level. So that's great.

Someone says, I cannot do the spider exercise effectively. I can't keep all down at the same time. So there's two ways, Lisa, to practice that spider exercise. I literally just recorded a video on this yesterday. It's the top five mistakes people make when they're playing the spider exercise. So there's two ways to play the spider exercise. There's this way where you keep all the fingers down. And this is great because it really helps you stretch your hand. But the other way is to focus on relaxing the hands. So lift the fingers as you go. I don't know if you can see me. I'm lifting my fingers as I go down this spider. So one way is to do it this way. The other is to keep the fingers down, and you work more on the stretch. And if this is too much, if 5, 6, 7, 8. If that's too much, come up to 7, 8, 9, or 9, 10, 11, 12. Which I find for some people, this is a bit much, because some people you're starting to get close to where you don't have a couple cutaway. I also think it's a weird angle. My recommendation is to either start 5, 6, 7, 8, or 7, 8, 9, 10, if you can. Okay. Because these frets are thinner, so they'll be less of a stretch. So if you're working on stretching your hand.

You can start walking the spider exercise down the fret.

Okay. As you get down.

You see I'm moving down a fret every time I come. There we go right there. Boom. Move to fret, coming down to the bottom. Now move back a prep so you can see I'm. I'm moving. There's so many different ways to practice this spider exercise, but now I'm all the way down to the first fret. So I started here, and I went down, I moved back, I came back up, I moved down, you know, so tons of ways to this spider Exercise. I know it's so simple, but such a great exercise. There's so many ways you can do it. I mean you can do.

You can get into really intricate things with the spider exercise. When I was doing my electric guitar work and I finally took electric guitar, I had to do these in all kinds of patterns. I had to do like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 3, 4, 2, 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 4, 3. I had to do this and in every single configuration you could possibly play with four fingers on a scale. So you can do a lot with that stuff. So good exercise. Just go slow with it. Take your time. Guitars say should a way to use pressure from strumming arm to make bar chords. Do you know that trick? Yes. I mean that's another thing.

That you can do. Nirvana. Nirvana sometimes is. Is tricky with copyright. Zeppelin is. ACDC is. I'm lucky because I sing without track. So I get away with a lot more than most people did. But yes, you can leverage the body of the guitar with bar chords. I don't particularly do I. I don't need to. I don't feel like I need to. But you can see when I'm pushing and I'm over exaggerating, you wouldn't want to kill it that much. But if you push with your forearm here, it will put. See, watch what happens. See how it's the. The fretboard's moving forward. So if you're playing a bar chord, you can lean into the guitar. I don't. I personally don't do that.

But I know some students do. They find it helpful. Because now I'm changing. Look at the. I'm changing the pressure on my guitar, which I don't particularly like. Because then if I go from a bar chord to an open chord, I have to like quickly release that pressure. So it's a little bit more of a balancing act. But if you're playing a song that's all bar chord, say you're doing like a Tracy Chapman song.

You know, you're doing something like that. All bar chords, great. But it's a little bit of a balance act. But you have to find what works best for you. And that is a legitimate way to get a little bit more leverage. Hopefully over time as your hand gets stronger, you'll be able to just do it with your hand and you won't need. I almost feel like it's a little bit of a crutch. But in the beginning, if you need that to get it to sound good, great. And as your hand gets stronger, you'll eventually be able to play the bar chords without being able to do that, but. But thank you for bringing that up. That's great. Is the Gretch behind you in tune? Could you play it? I don't know if it is, but fortunately, I have a tuner.

And I don't have my amp. I bring. You really gonna plug that one in. I play that. The Blues Guitar 101 course is done entirely on this Gretch, so. So if you wanna check out the Gretch, it's in Blues Guitar 101. I use that for that entire course. I don't know if she's in tune, though.

She's not.

It's not horrible, but it's. It's definitely not in tune, so.

Oh, thank you, Robin. Don't apologize. Your knowledge is worth every penny. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.

Let's see. Yes. You like how I played the simplified chords? Yes. No, that's it. The simplified chords, you know, and a lot of people say it's. It's a detriment or it's teaching you the wrong muscle memory. It's not. It's in the way I teach the chords. I teach you with the proper muscle memory. So, like, I teach a C chord like this, and they're like, well, you taught them the wrong muscle memory. I'm like, no, they just have to. It's the same. These fingers are going to the same spot. They're learning the same muscle memory. Same. If you play like a D sus 4 versus a D. All right? When I teach the chords, I teach you the right fingers. We're just gonna add more. We're gonna add more fingers in down the road. So don't ever. Don't ever let someone make you feel bad for simplifying something.

I just did a video on this, I think, a couple weeks ago, and it was a teacher, and he seemed like a really nice kid. He seemed like he was younger. He's probably in his 20s. And he had a, you know, a video that was very. Well, he was a great teacher, you know, but he was like, I'm not going to teach you any simple tricks. Like, I'm just going to throw you in on this C chord, this G chord, this D chord, the C minor chord. And he's like, you know, because I'm not. We're not going to do any cheats. We're not gonna. It's not cheating. It's. It's absolutely not cheating. This is a legitimate C chord. If you play the bottom four strings, it's the note C, E and G. It's what we would call an inversion. It's a chord inversion. It's still a C chord, okay? And yes, my G chord is a G6 chord. Who cares? Okay? Who cares? It's a G6 chord. You know, I get a lot of people like, that's an A minor seven. I'm like, yes, play it as a five string chord. It is an A minor seven chord. And yes, this is a dsus, not a full D. But most people, most people, you know, a three finger chord for a beginner is hard, especially as you get older. You know, my, my younger students when I taught live in person, you know, my 20 year olds usually could pick up on the cords. Their fingers are a little bit more nimble. But once my students started getting to around, I would say around 40, which is my age now, their fingers were moving noticeably slower. And this is, this is years of testing, okay? So years of testing because, you know, I'm a scientist, you know, my background is biology and archaeology. So if I saw something wasn't working with a population of students, I'd say, let me test something. So when I first started teaching, I was like that young kid and I was like, everyone, like, it's. So I was in my 20s and I was like, we're gonna teach everyone C, G, D, E minor, full chords. All right, we're just gonna jump right into this. And hands down, and again, this isn't 100% because there's always exceptions to the rule. Hands down, my older students always had such a hard time, and not that it was impossible, their time to do it well was much longer to the point where they got frustrated. Okay. And that's something that you don't want on the guitar because if it gets frustrating, you don't want to practice because you're not enjoying it. It's frustrating versus enjoyable, right? So I said, let me test this. I taught for maybe a couple years like that. My retention was like, I keep losing these adult students. Like they're not having fun, they're not enjoying it. Which most teachers will say, well, it's the student's fault. Where I said, maybe I need to do something different. So after teaching for about a year or two, I'm like, I'm going to test for my younger students. I'm going to put them right into three finger chords because nine out of ten times they could handle it no problem. Okay? We practice them for a few weeks, we'd be fine. We'd be good for My older adults, ages 40 up, I said, I'm gonna teach them two finger cords first. So we would do that for a few weeks, and then I would graduate them to the three finger cords. And there was a dramatic change. My retention with my adult students went from about three, three to six months to five to 10 years.

That is statistically significant if you are. If you know science, that is statistically significant. I went from retaining adult students on an average of three to six months to five to 10 years. I had some students who took lessons with me in person for over 10 years. I had a student, she ended up going on to Berkeley and everything else. And so it's really crazy just making one simple change and me recognizing that. It's frustrating in the beginning, and students need something that's going to encourage them to learn. Right? So just by adding in that extra step, it gave those adults the feeling, I can do this. This is possible. And then we would graduate. So that provided two things. They could do it, and they graduated. And when you graduate, that means you're making progress, right? So that was one of the biggest changes I made in my teaching in my late 20s, and it made a huge difference for my adult students. So if you are someone, you know that's using the cheat cords, go ahead. Let someone make fun of you that you're using the cheat cords. Let them tell you that it's teaching you the bad muscle memory. I've been in the classroom, okay. I taught in person for over a decade with mostly adult clients. I didn't really teach kids because I don't have a program for kids. And I personally didn't like teaching kids either. Just being honest here. I love my older students.

And from real life experience. And as someone who comes from a science background, I tested it, and hands down, doing the two finger cords worked so much better. And I had the data to back it up, too. So if you don't let someone make you feel bad that you're starting, you know, one step backwards, it's okay. It's fine. So just a little dexterity. Exactly. Dexterity plays a part 100%. Is it possible to do low roar tutorials? I don't know who low roar is, but that sounds like an amazing band. I'm gonna. I love all kinds of music. I listen to Metallica. I was at Janet Jackson last night. I'm gonna go to James Taylor in September. But I really love, like, if I'm playing drums, I was like a Guns and Roses, Smashing Pumpkins person. I love emo all that stuff. So I. I'll have to look into that band because I. I don't know who they are, to be. To be honest, so. Hi, Lauren. If I was famous entertainer, as soon as a song of mine is no longer top 20, I would allow you and other teachers teach my songs. Oh, thank you, Ken. That's very nice. And, you know, I think there's a lot of musicians out there who would. Again, I. I really don't think it's the artists. I know Simon and Garfunkel are very bad, and I don't know if it's Paul Simon. Could be Paul Simon, but they're. They're a band that's. That's really, really tough to. To teach sometimes. I know, I know Rick Beato has gotten copyright strikes, and strikes are really bad. If you get three copyright strikes on your channel within 90 days, they can shut your entire channel down. And the interesting thing was this Simon and Garfung, I think it was Sound of Silence, the Simon and Garfunkel song. But he published it two years ago, two years prior, and it was fine. And then all of a sudden, overnight, it went to not being fine. And that can be the dangers and the trickiness of teaching here on YouTube and why we. We do have to be careful. And why, you know, moving forward. I probably won't do any more Eagle songs because they're, you know, Don Henley's. He's a mean man. I've taken all the Eagle stuff off the website, like the lyrics, the chord charts. I just, you know, I. I don't want to go up against Don Henley. He's. He's on a rampage. So we won't do that. Do you have Looping Experience tips? Videos? I don't have any. I do have a looper. I used to use one live on stage. So there was a song I used to do called Unsung Hero that was on my second album. And we used to do this thing where I would loop my guitar so I could put the elect. The acoustic down, and I would pick up the electric guitar, and then I would play the guitar solo. So it'd be me, my other lead guitar player, and the violinist, all three of us playing this solo in kind of. Of unison, because it was my one fun time. Like the one song I played electric guitar for, and it was to play the guitar solo, which was cool. So I have used loopers, but not probably in the way that you want to use a looper. Someone who's been doing that a lot recently, Melissa Etheridge, I've seen her live a lot and she uses a looper a lot. She'll set up the drums, the bass, the piano. So she does some really cool stuff. I'm sure you can find some cool videos of hers using her looper. She does really, really cool stuff for that. I know someone just came out. I can't remember which guitar guru it is. Came out with a looper one. I always forget his name. He has a beard. God, I'm totally losing who he is right now. But he's one of the big ones. I think he just came out. Daniel Daniels. I can't remember. So sorry, I'll have to look it up. That had a looper course that. That just came out. So definitely go check that out or search that. That'd be great. Let's see. Do you know if violin playing is similar to the guitar fretboard? The tuning is different. I know that. So the way a fretboard works and. And violins don't have frets. So on guitar we have these metal and you can have a fretless bass or a fretted bass. Usually violin is a fretless instrument. So you're. You're going a lot off of ear and. And tactile. But the fretboard itself is a little bit different because the tuning is different. So the guitar reun. You know, E, A, D, G, B, E. A violin is only four strings and it is tuned a little bit different so it won't be identical. But how it works is. Is similar. So which website do you prefer for printing out songs? Printing out songs, I usually use Ultimate Guitar. I have no affiliation with Ultimate Guitar, but they do have a great. I think it's their Ultimate Guitar Pro. Now I do have a program called Guitar Pro where you can download PDFs, a little bit of an intricate program. But Ultimate Guitar has their own little thing. It's not that expensive and they're always running a sale. I think it's like 60 to $80 a year. And I subscribe to that because it's really nice because with the Ultimate Guitar Player Pro, it has a little looper in there. It has. You can use a backing track. It's a very, very useful tool. I have no affiliation with them. I don't make any money off of recommending them. But if there's one tool I would recommend getting. Go to ultimate guitar.com and just buy. Create. Create an account and buy their pro version. You get access to all of their. Their pro versions of these songs and. And some of them you know, I wouldn't say all them are, are 100%, but the official ones are. That's a really great program. Great question. That's what I would recommend. Yeah. And I think with the membership, because you were paying, you can print them out, which, you know, a lot of places you can't because that's because of copyright. That's why even on my website we don't do printing because that's against copyright. So you can't do that. So that would be my recommendation for that. And I'll take one more question here from Patrick. He says how often do you recommend a 55 year old to practice per week? That's a great question. So I usually recommend if you're absolute beginner. Oh, thank you, William. I appreciate. Okay, I'll answer your question too, because you just gave me a $14 chat, so I appreciate that. I recommend 10 to 15 minutes to start. As you develop your calluses, you can work up to 15 to 30 minutes. What I tell people is spend five to 10 minutes working the fundamentals, do your warmup, five minutes on your warm up with your spider exercise, and then do strumming exercises for about five minutes, chord changes for about five minutes. And then if you want to throw a song in at the end for five minutes, go ahead. That's a great 20 minute practice. Five minute warmup, five minute doing chord changes back and forth, back and forth, working on some strumming patterns, tie it all together with the fun song. In the end, it's a great, great practice routine. And then as you learn more and more stuff, you can expand that. I recommend trying to practice three or four times a week. Okay. And, and, and doing the shorter practices keeps your brain fresh. So if you're doing, you know, a 15, 20 minute practice three or four times a week and really focusing on just a few things, I'm not. Don't practice 20 things. Pick a few things. All right? Pick chord changes, start with those four chords, pick a few strumming patterns. Okay. Get really good at doing the foundational stuff and then you can grow from there. But 15 to 20 minutes, three to four times a week is a great starting point. And when you develop your calluses, you can, you can go forward from there. So, William, thank you for your chat donation. I appreciate that. You're the best. How could Lennon and McCartney write so many great songs without knowing music theory? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if McCartney knew theory. I think McCartney, one of them definitely didn't. I feel like it was John. I know Hendrix did it for sure. What you do, it's a lot on ear because again, I didn't know any theory. And it's what sounds good together. So some people have a better ear than others. And I'm very fortunate that I could tell when something sounded good versus bad. So if I threw some chords together.

You're like, oh, that sounds good. I can write a song off of that, right? But now if I throw something else in the mix.

You know, C sharp wasn't horrible. If I did C sharp minor, it'd be a little bit more dissonant. But you go through and you're playing and you're like, oh, that sounds good. And then you're like, like, ah.

Doesn't sound horrible, but it doesn't sound as. As good as the other stuff did. So you're like, okay, I won't play that. And that's how you figure it out. You know, in music. There's only 12 keys in music that you can write in. And the most common ones are, you know, the key of G, key of C, key of A, E major, D. So you're using a lot of open chords and, you know, there's only so many chord progressions that you can use. And again, that's where we get into some. Some copyright stuff. But a lot of people were just going off what sounded good. You know, I remember I read the Keith Richards book and it was when the Rolling Stones were touring with Ike and Tina Turner. And Ike used to play in an open. He used to play five string and I think in an open G tuning. And Keith Richards was like, what? What are you doing? Like, what is that? Can you show me what you're doing? So I think, you know, for a lot of older musicians, they pick stuff up on the road too, when they will play with other artists and. And Keith Richards wrote tons of songs in this open G5 string tuning. And. And that's why, you know, to get some of that quintessential Rolling Stones sound, you gotta. You gotta tune your whole guitar to the way Keith did it. So that's. That's the cool thing about that. So I think a lot of musicians, you know, they learned other people's songs and they're like, well, you know, if GCD works for Taylor Swift or if GCD works for Ed Sheeran or the be Beatles or John Denver or whoever, if it works for all these other people, it's probably gonna work for me too. And that was, that was me a lot. I was like, oh, you know, like a, D, E. Those sound good together, you know? And I have so many songs that are written with the chords G, C, D, and E minor. And what you change up is the style of it. How do you sing the tempo?

Are you picking a song versus strumming a song?

You know, are you palm muting it?

Are you swinging it? There's so many different things you can do. So just based on my own experience of not understanding any music theory and being able to write songs, I. I literally just would play and I'd start singing and humming, and if it sounded good, I would keep going with it. If it sounded off a little bit or bad, then I wouldn't. I wouldn't continue down that. Down that pathway. And that's why sometimes you get weird things that happen in Beatles songs. Like there's these really harsh or weird key modulations. And it might have been because at the time, you know, they didn't know how to transition. There's. There's ways to change keys. We call that modulation in music. There's ways to change keys that sound a lot smoother. And a great example is Country Roads, John Denver, the way he transitions his bridge back into the chorus. He uses a D7 chord, which in music theory, we call it, you know, use the 57 of the one chord. It's. It's like a secondary dominance thing, which is a really cool technique when I learned about it, but it's a way to get in and out of keys without it being so sharp or jarring. But if you don't know how to do that and you change keys in the song, it's like. It's very abrupt, but also, if you do that, it could also have a very dramatic feel to the song. So one of my songs, Rose Full of Thorns, and I don't remember it off the top of my head what the progression was, but I went. I changed very harshly on the bridge of the song into a different key. It's very harsh change, and it kind of like wakes the listener up. But when I changed back in to the chorus, I kind of did a John Denver thing where I use this, you know, this transition to get back into the chorus a little bit more seamlessly. So it wasn't as edgy or jarring. So there's things you can learn that will make your song sound better. But I think for a lot of people, Hendrix and stuff like that, I think it was a lot of experimentation and just training your ear to what sounds good and what sounds bad. So there's there was a long answer to to the final question. Thank you so much. For those of you who've been on. We've been on for about an hour. Holy smokes. You guys like to keep me on live for a long time, but thank you so much for being here. If you want to support the channel, you know, go over to laurenbatement.com forward/courses, pick up a course today and and feel free to support. You can grab one of the bundles. Or if you're an absolute beginner, I highly recommend the seven level guitar system. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being a supporter. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate you watching my videos, showing up here live. I'll see you all in a lesson video real soon. Have a happy Saturday and practice hard. Bye everyone.