What to Learn on Guitar in Order (Complete Roadmap)

Summary

In his video, Kevin Nickens addresses a common struggle among guitar learners: the lack of a structured learning path. He presents a thorough, 10-level roadmap designed to guide learners through essential skills, from the basics of guitar mechanics to advanced music theory concepts. This roadmap covers everything from understanding guitar parts, strumming, and basic chords to mastering scales, improvisation, and complex musical theories. Nickens emphasizes the importance of learning in stages and offers song recommendations to reinforce each level's concepts. His roadmap aims to build a solid foundation for any aspiring guitar player while encouraging individual style exploration beyond the tenth level.

Highlights

• Kevin Nickens addresses the challenge of finding direction in guitar learning. 🎸
• This roadmap consists of 10 levels, from beginner to advanced. 🚀
• Level 1 covers the basics: guitar parts, holding techniques, and simple theory. 🎼
• Learners are encouraged to pick their own songs by Level 5 for greater exploration. 🎶
• Advanced levels introduce complex theories, improvisation, and individual stylistic development. 🎨

Key Takeaways

• A structured roadmap is crucial for learning guitar efficiently. 🎸
• The 10 levels start from absolute basics to advanced guitar theory. 📚
• Level 1 includes guitar mechanics and basic theory fundamentals. 🎶
• By Level 5, learners start exploring their own song choices. 🎵
• The roadmap encourages improvisation and creative expression beyond foundational skills. 🎨

Overview

Kevin Nickens passionately guides guitar learners through a methodical roadmap that demystifies the learning process. In a world overflowing with online tutorials, he addresses the frustration of piecemeal learning, offering instead a cohesive 10-level guide. This guide promises to take players from novices to adept guitarists who are not only technically proficient, but creatively vibrant.

The roadmap initiates with foundational concepts like understanding guitar parts and basic chord mechanics before advancing to more sophisticated topics such as scales, keys, and eventually improvisation techniques. Nickens injects humor and practicality into his teaching, ensuring the journey feels less daunting and more associated with the joy of music discovery. Song recommendations tailored to each level reinforce the learning objectives, making practice both structured and enjoyable.

As learners progress, the focus shifts from strict guidance to encouraging personal exploration and style development. Kevin Nickens emphasizes that mastery in guitar is a continuous journey, not a definitive goal. By Level 10, players have the fundamental tools needed to dive into genre-specific studies, turning the roadmap into a launchpad for lifelong musical adventures.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction This chapter introduces the common challenge faced by guitar learners, especially those who are self-taught: the lack of direction in their learning journey. Despite the abundance of great guitar instruction available on the internet, knowing which skills and concepts to learn and in what order remains difficult. The chapter sets the stage for presenting a comprehensive guitar learning roadmap, which will outline the sequential path of learning across 10 levels. The aim of the roadmap is to provide structured guidance to help learners improve systematically.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Level 1: Basic Mechanics and Theory Chapter 1, titled 'Level 1: Basic Mechanics and Theory,' is an introductory chapter for aspiring guitar players. It provides an overview of the initial concepts essential for understanding guitar playing as a hobby. The instructor emphasizes that this chapter will focus on definitions and fundamentals necessary for later levels. Key topics include learning the parts of the guitar, proper ways to hold the guitar, and how to use a pick. While this chapter is primarily an outline, it sets the stage for more advanced concepts in subsequent levels.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Level 2: Chords and Simple Songs In 'Level 2: Chords and Simple Songs,' the focus is on learning the basic mechanics of playing a guitar. The chapter covers essential skills such as strumming techniques, including down strums and up strums, fretting notes, and picking single notes. It also introduces basic music theory, explaining notes, the number of notes, intervals, and the two most fundamental intervals - half steps and whole steps. The chapter concludes with guidance on tuning your guitar, encouraging learners to master these basics before progressing to more complex skills in the next levels.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Level 3: Scales and Intermediate Songs Chapter focuses on the playful nature of learning the guitar without attaching serious goals like impressing others. It emphasizes the enjoyment of learning. Key topics include understanding what a chord is and learning seven foundational open chords: E major, E minor, A major, A minor, G major, C major, and D major. Open chords serve as a beginner's starter pack. The chapter concludes by introducing the basics of rhythm.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Level 4: Bar Chords and Improvisation This chapter introduces the importance of understanding how to count music and recognize different note values, which are essential for strumming. It suggests applying these concepts to start playing music. The chapter recommends beginning with simple songs that utilize either chord-based strumming or can be played on one string. Specific song recommendations are "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield and "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show. These recommendations are intended to help learners practice and apply their skills in a practical context.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Level 5: Advanced Scales and Music Theory This chapter covers advanced scales and music theory. It starts with a recap of basic songs that can be played on a single string, such as 'Smoke on the Water' by Deep Purple, 'Iron Man' by Black Sabbath, and 'Seven Nation Army' by The White Stripes. As learners progress from level two, which focused on chords, level three introduces scales. The chapter emphasizes understanding what scales are and how they relate to previously learned chords, preparing learners for more advanced musical concepts.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Level 6: Harmony and Rhythm In 'Level 6: Harmony and Rhythm,' learners are introduced to the minor pentatonic scale, which is the first scale to master at this stage. Emphasis is placed on improving right-hand technique through alternate picking, and a foundational understanding of the fretboard begins with learning all notes on the low E string. As for musical practice, the chapter highlights more advanced song recommendations compared to previous levels. These include songs that combine single note lines with strumming chords, starting with Johnny Cash's version of 'Hurt,' followed by 'Sweet Home Alabama.'
• 07:00 - 08:00: Level 7: Seventh Chords The chapter 'Level 7: Seventh Chords' covers iconic songs such as 'Running Down a Dream' by Tom Petty, 'House of the Rising Sun' by The Animals, and 'Highway to Hell' by ACDC. It humorously notes that reaching this level in music proficiency means you'll be expected to play for family gatherings. The focus at this stage includes learning the second position major pentatonic scale, building on the first position minor pentatonic scale learned previously. Additionally, it emphasizes mastering major and minor bar chords with fifths.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Level 8: Modes and Ear Training Chapter 'Level 8: Modes and Ear Training' covers several advanced topics essential for progressing in guitar playing skills. The chapter begins with learning triads and mastering root notes on both the sixth and fifth strings, necessary for developing bar chord proficiency. It emphasizes the importance of memorizing all the notes on the A string, building upon knowledge from previous levels where notes on the E string were learned. For ear training, this level aims to enhance the ability to identify the key of a song. Additionally, it introduces improvisation by encouraging playing guitar solos using songs and backing tracks. Sources like YouTube channels 'Now You Shred' and 'Elevated Jam Tracks' are recommended for backing tracks.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Level 9: CAGED System and Arpeggios This chapter discusses Level 9 of guitar learning, specifically focusing on the CAGED system and arpeggios. It includes song recommendations such as 'Sultans of Swing' by Dire Straits, 'Layla' by Derek and the Dominos, 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd, and 'Whole Lotta Love' by Led Zeppelin. It also addresses the psychological challenge known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where learners at this stage might underestimate their abilities. Moreover, it suggests that at Level 5, learners should become familiar with all five positions of the pentatonic scale.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Level 10: Jazz Concepts and Advanced Theory In Level 10: Jazz Concepts and Advanced Theory, students are introduced to advanced skills necessary for jazz performance, focusing on mastering all the positions on the guitar neck for soloing and full-scale play. The chapter emphasizes learning both the major and minor diatonic scales, which enhance the capabilities gained from pentatonic scales. Alongside practical skills, the chapter covers theoretical aspects, such as understanding the differences between parallel and relative major and minor scales, and the arrangement of half steps and whole steps. These theoretical insights contribute to building and transforming the major scale, forming a crucial foundation for advanced jazz theory.
• 11:00 - 13:00: Conclusion and Future Plans In the conclusion and future plans chapter, the focus shifts towards more advanced guitar techniques, such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, vibrato, natural harmonics, and pinch harmonics, building on the foundational skills learned previously. The author advises that instead of following specific song recommendations, learners should feel empowered to choose any song they wish to play. This approach encourages them to challenge themselves and improve their skill level in the process of learning new, more complex songs.

What to Learn on Guitar in Order (Complete Roadmap) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I think the biggest problem guitar players face when they're learning is not having any direction you know at this point the internet is so saturated with great guitar instruction that I'm sure you could find a good lesson video for just about any topic you wanted to learn what's still really hard especially for self-taught players is taking all the skills and Concepts you need to learn and putting them in order so that you can actually get better to help solve this problem in this video I'm going to list everything you should learn on guitar in order this is the complete guitar learning road map it has 10 levels so let's start at level one but before before we get started I want
• 00:30 - 01:00 to be clear that I'm not going to be teaching all these Concepts in this video this is just an outline to give you some guidance anyway level one in level one I want to welcome you to playing guitar it's a great hobby the one big downside being that the last day you're ever going to be happy with your guitar playing was yesterday to be perfectly honest in level one we're going to cover a lot of definitional stuff stuff you got to learn so you can kind of understand what we're talking about in the later levels you should start with learning some really basic stuff like what are the parts of the guitar how do I hold the guitar how do I hold the pick
• 01:00 - 01:30 you should learn the basic mechanics of playing starting with strumming you should learn how to do down strums and up strums you should learn how to fret notes you should learn how to pick a single note which is different from strumming getting right into the basics of theory you should learn what is a note and how many notes are there you should also learn what intervals are and the two most fundamental intervals which are half steps and whole steps and finally you should round off level one by learning how to tune your guitar learn all that stuff and then move right along into level two if you've decided to stick around I can tell that you're either trying to impress a potential
• 01:30 - 02:00 romantic partner or earn the respect to your father learning to play guitar won't achieve either of these goals but it will be fun so let's learn about level two level two is all about chords you want to start off by learning what is a chord then you should move on to learning your first seven chords ever these chords should be E major E minor a major a minor G major C major and D major these are called open chords and that's your first starter pack after you get those chords under your hands you should learn the basics of Rhythm
• 02:00 - 02:30 basically how to count music and different note values and then you should learn how to apply these two concepts to strumming finally you should start to learn your first couple of songs I'm going to give you some song recommendations here and these are going to fall into one of two categories these are either going to be really simple chord-based strumming songs or they're going to be songs that can be played all on one string the two simple chord heavy strumming songs that I recommend are for what it's worth by Buffalo Springfield and Wagon Wheel by Old Crow Medicine
• 02:30 - 03:00 show famously covered by Darius Rucker and the songs that you should learn that can all be played on one string should be Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple Iron Man by Black Sabbath and Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes and that completes level two all right level three at this point your skills are improving and you're probably becoming popular in local basements whereas level two was all about chords level three is going to be mostly about scales you should kick this level off by learning what is a scale and now that you know what a scale is and chords from the previous level then you should be able to put those two together to understand
• 03:00 - 03:30 what is a key the first scale you should learn is in this level that is the minor pentatonic scale next you should learn the right-and technique of alternate picking and you should start down the road of learning all the notes on the fretboard by learning all the notes on the low E string as far as the song recommendations go in this level they're going to be a little bit more advanced than they were in the previous level the big difference here is that I've picked songs that incorporate single note lines with strumming chords the first song recommendation here is hurt uh the Johnny Cash version not the 9in nails version next is Sweet Home Alabama by
• 03:30 - 04:00 Leonard skinnard Running Down a Dream by Tom Petty House of the Rising Sun by The Animals and Highway to Hell by ACDC level four this is the level where at family gatherings you're going to start getting requests from your grandma to play us something this of course will be the most awkward experience of your entire life in level four you should learn the second position major pentatonic scale this Builds on what you learned in level three which was the first position minor pentatonic scale you should also learn how to play bar chords in this level you want to focus on major and minor bar chords with fifth
• 04:00 - 04:30 and sixth string Roots as sort of a subo to learning bar chords you should also learn what Triads are here you should memorize all the notes on the a string which is a continuation of learning all the notes on the E string in the previous level and as far as ear training goes you should be able to identify what Kia song is in at this level the final thing you should do in level four is start trying to improvise some guitar solos right now you should focus on doing that by playing over songs and using backing tracks a good source of backing tracks are the YouTube channels now you shred and elevated Jam
• 04:30 - 05:00 tracks and the song recommendations are great songs to learn and they're good songs to practice soloing over they are Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits Lila by dererk and The Dominoes Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd and whole lot of love by Leed Zeppelin level five at this point you're really getting to be pretty decent although unfortunately this is the level where you're going to start to think that you suck more than anybody who's ever lived the Dunning Krueger effect kicks in hard here in level five you should learn all five positions of the pentatonic scale which is really easy because you've already learned the
• 05:00 - 05:30 first and second position you just got to add the final three positions and real quick that's super important that'll be the first time you're able to solo and play scales across the entire neck you should also learn the major and minor dionic scales in this level that's a step beyond the pentatonic scales kind of in that vein you should learn a bit of music theory you should learn what is a parallel versus a relative major and minor scale another theory Concept in this vein is you should learn how half steps and whole steps are arranged to build the major scale and how the major scale is modified to create the
• 05:30 - 06:00 pentatonic scale this is the level where you really want to start focusing on your stylistic techniques I'm referring specifically to hammer on pull-offs bins vbr natural harmonics and pinch harmonics now I don't have any more song recommendations starting at this level and there's a good reason for that at this point I'm going to turn you loose and tell you to learn whatever song you want to learn if you think that your skill level isn't high enough to learn a certain song at this point then you should increase your skill level is a part of learning that song what I'm saying is at this point I would stop seeking out songs that are specifically good for beginners or specifically good
• 06:00 - 06:30 for intermediate players for example I'm just going to say it quit being afraid they're just songs anyway that completes level five level six in this level you're a little better than you were in level five but instead of thinking that you suck now you think that you're God's gift to man you're wearing sunglasses at night you own fur your couch is wrapped in leather and your bed sheets are cheetah print this is your whole personality and you love it in level six the most important thing you're going to learn is the first thing and that is how to harmonize the major scale this is
• 06:30 - 07:00 sometimes informally called learning the chord scale but this is going to reveal to you all the chords that are available to you when you're in any given key right alongside that you should learn the Nashville number system next you should learn about functional Harmony and what function different chords have in context and that concept actually leads into the next ear training concept you should learn which is in this level that is you should be able to use functional Harmony to be able to hear and identify different chord changes and finally you should just familiarize yourself with some really Common Core
• 07:00 - 07:30 progressions in this level actually one more thing this doesn't fit anywhere else in the road map it's kind of a one-off thing but you should understand compound time signatures here and that completes level six all right level seven uh to be honest I don't really have a joke for this level I'll just go ahead and tell you we're going to learn about seventh chords in this level so you know seventh chords in the seventh level that's kind of clever I guess it's not really a joke but this is a hard video to write so just let me have this one in level seven we're going to expl expand on your understanding of Triads
• 07:30 - 08:00 from level four by adding a new note to those by adding the seventh is what we call that note the big implication of this is that now we can play a kind of chord called seventh chords there's several kinds of seventh chords but you should focus on Major Seventh chords minor 7th chords and dominant 7th chords with roots on the E string and the a string as a bit of a footnote to this level you should learn how that dominant 7th chord relates to the harmonization of the major scale that we learned in level six level eight in this level the band is broken up you've been to rehab
• 08:00 - 08:30 you've written the tell all autobiography and you're starting to think the violence theme last name looks pretty bad on the divorce documents but life is still worth living because you can still get better at Guitar level Eight's another one of these levels that's short that doesn't take long to explain but to master this stuff takes a lifetime here you should learn all seven dionic modes you should learn all the scale intervals and you should use that knowledge of intervals to help develop your ear so that you can hear guitar solos and Melodies and be able to play them by ear like I said it's a short level one thing I want to point out is you know starting in about level eight
• 08:30 - 09:00 and especially as we move into these upper levels don't be afraid to move on before you've totally mastered this stuff when we get into these Concepts that are more related to creating music so improvising and writing music like uh like dionic modes for example that was mentioned in this level it's hard to say what Mastery of this stuff even looks like that's more of a creative thing than anything else guitar players who have spent a lifetime with the instrument would probably tell you that they haven't even mastered one dionic mode out of the seven but speaking of moving on to level level 9 now if you've
• 09:00 - 09:30 made it to level 9 you're one of three people college professor musical reptile or 8-year-old on YouTube who's been sent here to demoralize us all in level 9 the first thing you want to learn is the Caged system the next thing you want to learn are what's called arpeggios specifically the arpeggios that are related to the Caged cord shapes that you just learned the next thing you want to learn is why we're focusing on the cage system and arpeggio so much you want to learn how you can use chord tones in a Solo or a Melody to accentuate chords that are already being played in a song once you got a good
• 09:30 - 10:00 handle on that you want to modify the arpeggios that you learned earlier in this level by adding the seventh that note that we learned back in level seven to the arpeggios we're going to round off level 9 with an ear training concept that is that you should be able to hear different harmonic parts of a song so we talked before about being able to hear a general chord structure now you want to develop your ear to the level where you can tell if there's an instrumentalist that's maybe not following the mainline chord progression of a song you know is the bass doing something different is a piano player doing something different if you can identify and understand that
• 10:00 - 10:30 kind of thing you're pretty much at the highest level of being able to play by ear and that takes us to the final level which is Level 10 the final level if you complete this level you will be able to discover new notes just like Dave Gro what key is this in L sharp you found a new musical note H yes I did in level 10 I want to be honest about the fact that a lot of these Concepts really start to
• 10:30 - 11:00 skew towards Jazz but they are the natural progression of topics that we've talked about so far so I wanted to include them in this road map at this point you should understand chord extensions beyond the seventh the most important among these are going to be 9ths 11ths and 13ths it's at this point that you should learn What's called the harmonic minor scale as well as its modes in arpeggios next you should learn the melodic minor scale as well as its modes in arpeggios and real quick at this level you should seek to understand how the natural minor harmonic minor and melodic minor scales fit together into a
• 11:00 - 11:30 trinity of minor scales that all serve slightly different purposes at this point I can't recommend any more complex scales you know we're getting into the world of exotic scales now and there are no longer any more really obvious natural progressions whatever you want to learn here it's going to be a pretty radical departure from the stuff that we've learned so far and in fact that doesn't just apply to scales I think that applies to everything on the road map so I'm going to go ahead and call this the end point although of course there isn't actually an end point you never get to a point on guitar where where you look at it and say yeah I
• 11:30 - 12:00 learned how to play guitar now I've completed that task at this point go ahead and specialize I think part of the reason this is a really good stopping point is because everything we've talked about so far really applies to pretty much every guitar player on the planet and if you want to progress Beyond this you really have to start getting very genre specific so do that progress in whatever genre you think is awesome pick a style or a couple of styles and go become a guitar wizard but I hope this road map has kind of given you a good idea of the the fundamentals that I
• 12:00 - 12:30 think everybody should learn hey you guys editing Kevin from the future here I can't believe I forgot to mention this in the video but I don't just make lists I teach all this stuff on this channel I'll add a card for the video that I made that fully explains and teaches level one if you want to start there now longtime viewers of this channel will know that I made a video very similar to this a while ago and before you guys get all mad and roast me for kind of retrying a lot of the same ground I want to explain why I did this first of all this road map is super important right now it's really the Lynch pin of this guitar learning meth that I'm putting together for you guys and you know I'm
• 12:30 - 13:00 in the lucky position that there's a lot of new subscribers but there's a lot of people who haven't seen the road map and so it's not a terrible idea to go back over it also on the previous road map you guys gave me a lot of great feedback and you helped me realize yeah I missed some stuff I wanted to add some things and change some things so that this road map the update would be more complete and flow a little better than the previous road map you'll notice that that road map has seven levels and this has 10 levels and on top of both of those things honestly I'm just better making YouTube videos now than I was when the original road map came out so
• 13:00 - 13:30 I'm not just going to be remaking this video every time I feel like I want some views but I will be updating the road map if I feel like the content of the road map needs an update or if the you know the film making the communication of these ideas could be you know of higher quality in this case I think both those things were true so that's why you got an update I promise I'm not just view farming but anyway I hope you liked it this time around good luck learning guitar and as always thank you for watching