Everybody who learns guitar wants to learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that's true for all of us! And while there unfortunately are no shortcuts when it comes to learning guitar, there is one thing that can really help you learn things more quickly, and that is understanding just a basic amount of music theory. It may not sound as immediately gratifying as plowing ahead with more licks, tricks and techniques, but as soon as we get into it I'm sure you'll quickly realize how much these basic concepts can help you accelerate your overall learning.

So in this chapter we'll explore some basic music theory and look at how it applies to our acoustic guitar playing. This is extremely useful both for learning songs as well as writing your own, and it'll help you learn anything new more quickly, because you'll see the bigger picture and the larger framework behind it all. So in this first tutorial I'll show how chords are made from a scale and how that translates into basic triads and full chord voicings.