Intermediate Guitarist Map

This article is a follow up article to the beginner guitarist map. The point of this article is
pretty simple, to give intermediate guitar players a guideline to follow in their learning so that
they can continue to improve if there access to a teach or resource is limited."

If you are beyond the late beginner stage you should be able to do/ understand the following:"
     1) Have a knowledge of open chords and be able to put them together"
     2) Have knowledge of the pentatonic and an ability to play them together/how to use them"
     3) You should understand the basic power chord shapes and how to use these figures."
     4) You should have a solid level of rhythmic knowledge, up to 16th notes"
     5) You should understand how to write in any key necessary"
     6) You should be able to play some basic leads/melodies at least at 300 bpm"
   

     If you can do all this, you are, in my opinion a late beginner. The purpose and focus of
the late beginner stage is to really be able to start playing some music and have a fundamental
understanding of music."
    The intermediate level of guitar has a different focus. In fact, most guitar players never
leave the late beginner stage. Which is alright if you’re okay with having just rudimentary skills.
If you want to dig deeper than keep reading."
     In order to become a truly intermediate level guitar player you must develop the skills
necessary for an intermediate level guitar player. To truly be an intermediate level guitar player I
would study and understand the following:"

Lead playing:
    Ideally with lead it would be best if you could play at a max speed of at least 500 bpm
comfortably and consistently. This means that your actual playing technique is fairly smooth.
You should start to understand the concept of guitar phrasing, although you will probably still
have a rudimentary knowledge of this skill. "

Chords :
    Your chord knowledge is going to need to start expanding. You should study extended
chord shapes, such as sus2, sus4 and 7th chords. I would also spend time learning Barre
Chords and three string adjacent triads."
     You will need to understand how to play these chords properly and how to use these
chords together to form interesting chord progressions."

Scales:

     The name of the game at this point is learning how to incorporate diatonic scales and
their modes into your playing. Have you ever heard the term Phrygian or Locrian and were
unsure what these meant? Well, now is the time to figure it out. You will need to understand the
scale patterns, the harmonic patterns (the chords that change for each mode) and how this
material integrates with your old scales and knowledge (the Pentatonics

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Rhythms:
You will need a more advanced knowledge of rhythmic patterns, you
should have the following rhythmic patterns internalizes and mastered:"
- All sixteenth note patterns"
-basic triplets"
- Basic six tuples shapes"
- Time signatures 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8 should be finished."
For those of you who are out looking for a guide to playing guitar at an intermediate level, this
is it. I hope it helped you and look out for article 3 on how to play guitar on an advanced level. "
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About the Author:"
Chris Glyde is a guitar player dedicated to progress. If you’re looking to make more progress
check out more of his articles and his website for his guitar lessons in Rochester