Hello!

My name is Gene Brigham. I've been playing guitar since I was 14 years old. I took a few lessons when I was 15, for about 4 months. But as soon as my parents found out I was taking lessons without asking them, I was told to stop. So I had to quit taking lessons. But that didn't stop my desire to learn how to play this fascinating instrument. I wanted to be a musician! And I wanted to play guitar & sing just like the Beatles. So I continued to plod along, lessons or not.

Believe me when I say that I figured it out the hard way. I bought several music books. But they didn't get me very far at first, because I didn't know how to read music. And I didn't understand how notes went together to make music in the first place. Fortunately, I had a pretty good ear & I could pick out the notes from a song & translate them to the fretboard relatively easily. In other words, it was a love affair that involved hours, weeks, months & years of tiresome trial & error. And a whole lot of plain old dumb luck. I knew nothing about chords or scales or music theory. I only knew that what I heard on the radio & on records was played on guitars & I just happened to have a guitar.

My first guitar was a black Encore Les Paul copy that my grandmother bought for me at a local pawn shop. An electric, of course. And it came with a small Global amplifier with a cheap 6" speaker. Two knobs: volume & tone. And that was it! The thing sounded like garbage, but it did make a sound. And that was good enough for me. I could play along with my records or the radio & hear what I was doing. I could watch bands on MTV & try to mimic what I was seeing & hearing them play. So I thought I was all set.

Well... I thought wrong. There's a lot of technique & understanding of music that goes into playing an instrument. Any instrument! And learning things the hard way, one string at a time in the beginning, is a difficult task. A lot of people would have given up out of sheer frustration. And I wouldn't have blamed them! But it doesn't have to be that way. Learning to play the guitar can be fun & exhilarating! You don't have to stumble along blindly, the way I did. And I can show you how!

After playing guitar for the last 32 years, I have a very good command of the instrument. I can play anything & everything; every style & rhythm, acoustic or electric. And I love it! Let me show you how to do it the right way. In no time at all, you'll be able to play at a level that took me many years to master. I promise you won't be disappointed! It's actually not that hard. Of course, it takes some dedication & concentration & a lot of repetition. But the reward is that you'll have a real sense of personal achievement & you'll be able impress almost anyone you know. And how cool is that? So let's get started!

Welcome to my blog! Think of it as a free series for learning to play the guitar proficiently, taught by a guy who learned everything the wrong way & then had to relearn it all the right way. I simply call it Beginning Guitar!