Over 50? Start Guitar Here – 1 Finger Blues Lesson

Hey guitar enthusiasts, Lauren Bateman here, and if you're trying to learn to play guitar but you felt it was just too difficult, well, this lesson is for you. I'm going to show you how by simplifying things and just getting some step-by-step instruction that you can actually be able to play music by the end of a single lesson. Now I am going to assume that you already know how to hold your guitar, that you know how to tune tune your guitar. If you don't, I do have a free crash course over on my website that will teach you all the foundational items. But what I'm going to show you in this lesson is how we can play music by just using one finger. Let's get started. So we're going to keep things simple. I'm going to take things slow and explain them step by step. So the finger we're going to be using is going to be our index finger. All right, so if you are right-handed That's going to be the index finger on your left hand. And if you are a lefty, all right, that's going to be the index finger on your right hand. So I will say strumming hand or picking hand, which is whatever hand is holding your pick, all right? And I'm going to say fretting hand, which is going to be whichever hand is holding the neck of your guitar. Now, if you don't have a pick, that's okay. You can simply use the flesh of your thumb. So instead of picking down— so if you have a pick, instead of picking down on the strings, you're just going to strum down on the strings with your thumb. It'll work the same for this video. So I'm going to show you 3 simple chords right now, okay? Then we're going to work on changing between these chords, and then I'm going to show you how we're going to put them together to play something musical at the end of this lesson. So we're going to start with our first chord. Now these boxes here, you're going to see these little metal things, they're called frets, okay? And this little first box is called your first fret. We have our 2nd fret and 3rd fret. Now I'm going to tell you the names of the strings. We have our E string on the top, so the thickest string on the top side of your guitar is E, followed by A, followed by D, followed by G, followed by B, followed by E. Now this is very important because I'm going to be mentioning the names of these strings. Now if you need a quick acronym to remember that, a lot of people remember Eddie ate dynamite. Goodbye, Eddie. All right, so we're going to be starting on the low E string. Okay, we're not going to be putting our finger there. We're actually going to be going one string down to the A string. And I want you to take that index finger, all right, and you're going to use kind of the tip. All right, we don't want to use the pad of the finger. We want to use the fingertip to press into the string on the second fret of that A string. And what you're gonna do is take your pick or take your thumb, and all I want you to do is line it up with the A string, okay, with your picking hand, and you're gonna pick down and just get that note to sound, okay? If you're hearing this, you're hearing like some buzzing or— okay, there could be a couple things, okay? One, you might not be pressing down hard enough, or the other thing is you're pressing too far back in the fret So the closer you are to the front of the metal, the easier it is to press the string and make it sound good. So try to get your finger towards the front of the fret. Okay, so let's just try that. We're gonna press the 2nd fret on the A string. And we're just gonna pick down and get it to sound.

Good.

Now what I want you to do is I want you to try and hit the E string and the A string at the same time. We're gonna try and hit both of them by strumming down. Okay, so you're gonna get a fuller sound. Okay? Congratulations. Congratulations, you have just learned your first chord. This is what we're going to call an E chord. Okay, it's a very simplified E chord that we're going to use for this song. Okay, so that's going to be the E string and the A string at the same time. Okay, and if you're, you know, if you're catching an extra string on this right now because you're new to playing guitar, that's totally normal, totally fine. When you practice, you can work on, on cleaning that up, but right now we're just going to learn the patterns. Okay, so that's our first chord. Okay, top 2 strings, the top one is no fingers on it. We call that playing the string open. And then we have the first finger, our index finger, on the second fret of the A string. Now all I want you to do is I just want you to take that first finger and I want you to move it down one string. Okay, so now your second finger is sitting on the D string. Let's just play the D string and get that sounding good. Okay, remember, if you're hearing this, you're hearing some buzzing, okay, you just might need to move, move that finger a little closer to the front of the fret. Maybe press just a little bit harder. All right, now we're going to try and hit the A string and the D string at the same time. Okay, if you do that, you're going to have what we call an A chord. Okay, okay, so that's our A chord. So we had the E chord with the E string open and our second finger on the A string, and then I just showed you the A chord with the A string open and our second finger on the D string. Okay, let's move it down One more. So now our first finger is going to be in the second fret on the G string, and we're going to play the D string open. All right, so this is going to be our D chord. Okay, so let's just play that G string, get it sounding good. Okay, let's just play it a few times, make sure it sounds good. Fix your fingers if you hear buzzing. Okay, and if you hear buzzing again, totally normal at this stage. Don't worry about it. Let's try and get that open D and the G string together.

Ready?

1, 2, 3, 4.

Down, down, down, down.

See, even I hit an extra string by accident. It happens.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

All right, I've been playing guitar for 20 years, 20-plus years, and see, I made a mistake. It happens. So if you're hitting other strings It's not a big deal, okay? You're learning. It's part of the process. All right, so what we're going to do, I'm just going to review those 3 chords quickly, and then we're going to work on changing between the chords because that's where a lot of students find things get a little bit tricky. But because we're using 1 finger, it's less things for you to keep track of. So if you don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman and I specialize in helping older adults, uh, those over the age of 50 learn to play guitar and just have fun with it. And we do it by starting off very, very simple like this and then building from there so that you can play, you know, the songs you know and love and make playing the guitar fun. So let's review the 3 chords. Okay, so the first chord we learned was an E chord, open E string, first finger on the 2nd fret of the A string. Then we have the A chord, which is the open A string, first finger is on the 2nd fret of the D string. Okay, the D chord is open D with our second finger— our first finger, sorry— on the second fret of the G string. So what we're going to do is we're going to play each one 4 times. So we're going to go 4 down picks, whether you use a pick or your thumb. We're going to do down 4 times, then we're going to go to A 4 times, then we're going to go to D 4 times. All right, and then we're going to do that again. We're going to go E, A, D, E, A, D. We're going to do that 4 times in a row. Okay, so I'll count us in. We're going to count to 4. I'm just going to count to give us a 4-count to give you the timing, and then we're going to play together. Okay, here we go. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4. To A. 1, 2, 3, 4. To D. 1, 2, 3, 4. To E. 1, 2 3, 4 to A. 3, 4 to D. 1, 2, 3, back to E. 1, 2, 3, 4 to A. 1, 2, 3, 4 to D. 3, last time, to E. To A. To D. And then back up to E.

One switch before we get into the song. There's one more important switch we want to work on because we're going to need it for our song. It's going to be jumping between E to D. All right, now if you're just getting started— see, I totally messed that up. We're going to work on jumping over the A chord. Okay, we're going to need this in our song, so let's just practice that. We'll go nice and slow.

So we're going to go E chord to D chord to the E chord to the D chord to the E chord to the D chord.

Couple more times.

To the E chord, back to the D chord.

Last time, to E chord, back to the D chord, and end on E. Okay, so that's one. You might want to pause for a second and just practice that a little bit. Um, so that we use it for our song. So this is something that I teach in my 7-Level Guitar System. We take it a little bit further than this, but I'm going to show you the basics here. It is just a simple pattern that if you're a fan of the blues, you will hear it in thousands, literally thousands of songs. All right, and again, we're just going to keep it really simple so that you have something to play with that's fun at the end of this lesson. So all it is is a pattern. All right, and here's the pattern. It's going to be 4 A chords. All right, so we're going to count to 4— 1, 2, 3, 4. We're going to do that 4 times. Okay, then it's going to be 2 D chords. We're going to play each of those with 2 4-counts. Okay, then 2 A chords. Then the end is where we were practicing that jump. We're going to go from an E chord to a D chord to an A chord, back to the E chord. So that last line has the most movement. All right, the first line is the simplest because you've got 4 A chords. We're going to count to 4, 4 times, and then we go to D twice, A twice. So let's— before we start the song, let's just practice that last line. Okay, so it's going to be— we're going to put the chords up on screen for you. It's going to be E, D, A, E, and I'm just going to count to 4. To give us our counting, and then we're just gonna play through a couple times. All right, so let's give it a try. We're gonna go from E to D to A back to E. Okay, so we got 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4 to D. 1, 2, 3, 4 to A. 1, 2, 3, 4 to E.

Do it again. Ready?

4 to E. 2, 3 4, 2, D, 2, 3, 4, 2, A, 2, 3, 4, 2, E, 2, 3, 4.

So you may have heard on one of my chords I only caught one string, so it had, had a little bit more of a higher pitch sound. And some of you might be doing that. If you're not getting both strings right now, that's okay. Again, that's something you can practice on. If you're just getting the one string and it's kind of sounding like this For this stage of where you're at, that's perfectly fine. That's totally normal. What we're working on is playing in time and just waking up our hands and getting them to move around a little bit. All right, so we're gonna take this for— from the very top. Okay, I'm gonna count over it the first time, and then the next time we'll play it again without me counting. Okay, the first time I'm gonna go very slow, kind of that same speed And then the second time through, I'll play through just a little bit faster for you. All right, so let's take it from the top.

Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, A, 2, 3, 4, A, 2, 3, 4, A, 2, 3, 4, and A. Get ready for D, 3, 4, and D, 2, 3, 4, D, 2, 3, 4, to A, 2, 3, 4, A, 2—

here's the big changes, ready?

To E, E, 2, 3, 4, to D, 2, 3, 4, to A, 2, 3, 4, to E.

Let's take it back to the beginning one more time. Ready?

A, 2, 3, 4, A, 2, 3, 4, A, 2, 4.

A, here comes D, ready?

To D, 2, 3, 4. D, 2, 3, 4. To A, 2, 3, 4. And A, here's the big change on the end, we got E to D, 2, 3, 4. To A, 2, 3, 4. To E, 2, 3, 4, and A.

So now I'm gonna play through a second time. We're gonna pick up the speed a little bit because blues is— I mean, there's slow blues, but there's peppy blues too, right? So our speed's gonna be more like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2. So those chord changes gonna be a little bit quicker. Okay, so we got 1, 2, 1, 2. Here we go.

A, A, A, A to D, D, D to A. Now here comes E.

Now in the 7 Level System, I go over like more of like the shuffle and how you can add in more fun stuff over that blues to make it sound a little bit more bluesy, but Hopefully you learned something that was fun and useful in this lesson. But think about it, you just learned something very simple, very fun in a single lesson. So it just goes to show you that by having a system and learning things step by step and just breaking them down into simpler components, it makes the guitar accessible even at a beginner level. And that's That's exactly what I do in my 7-Level Guitar System. It's a bunch of videos just like these lessons put in order, because I know I love YouTube, I'm over here on YouTube, but the difficult thing with YouTube is, you know, YouTube's going to suggest videos, but you don't even know if that's the right video for you to learn next after this lesson. There's something specifically that I would give you after this lesson, like I do in my 7-Level System, and it's basically a bunch of levels, all the lessons step by step what you need to learn in order to become a better guitar player. And like I said earlier, I specialize in helping older adults who have never played the guitar before, or maybe you played a little bit, you know, when you were younger, life got in the way, and now you're picking it up again. So I have a lot of students in their 50s, 60s, 70s, even into their 80s, um, that are learning to play guitar later in life and just having fun with it, because that's the most important part. Is I want you to have fun with the instrument. Because if you don't have fun, you know what happens? It ends up going back in the closet or back down the basement, and then you never play it. So if you've had the dream of playing the guitar and being able to have fun with it, I highly recommend you go check out my 7-Level Guitar System. Put a link in the description below. Feel free to send us an email if you have any questions, but go check that out in the link in the description below. And I hope to see you in another lesson real soon.