Understanding Chords: Where's the Root Note? Guitar Lesson

Understanding Chords: Where's the Root Note?

Jessica continues her "Understanding Chords" mini series by explaining how to find the root note within commonly used chord shapes.

Taught by Jessica Baron in Basic Guitar with Jessica Baron seriesLength: 15:26Difficulty: 1.5 of 5

Supplemental Learning Material

Basic Guitar with Jessica Baron

Jessica Baron, founder of Guitars in the Classroom, brings her very own unique series to JamPlay. In this highly interactive, easy to follow set, Jessica invites students of all ages to journey through fun, song-based instruction taught in ways she feels we best learn.

About Jessica Baron View Full Biography

Jessica believes in making your introduction to the guitar easy and pain-free. She is a developmental educator who understands how positive early experiences can motivate us to keep learning. Jessica Baron founded and serves as Executive Director for Guitars in the Classroom, an organization that brings music making to education by integrating singing, strumming and songwriting with learning throughout the school day and across the curriculum. Jessica created the first developmental guitar instruction method and she has written six groundbreaking books in the field of music and guitar education. She believes that we are each unique musical and creative beings with individual pathways we can choose to discover and follow if we are given instruction in the ways we best learn. This vision informs and fuels her dedication to service through teaching.

Jess spent several years in California teaching music in public and private schools; she also worked for a long time as both a human development educator (at Crossroads School of Arts and Sciences) and as a private educational therapist treating children and teens with learning disabilities. These experiences, combined with Masters level training in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University helped her develop an approach to teaching music that creates access to musicality through people’s dominant learning styles while helping them strengthen the others. This, combined with her philosophy that musical learning can be fun and stress free, define her work as an author, teacher, and non-profit leader.

In addition to her years teaching in the classroom and counseling young people, Jess co-authored the highly successful MusicMakers curriculum for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, as well as the International House of Blues Foundation’s Make an Impression guitar program. Her best-selling guitar method, SmartStart Guitar as well as her parenting book, YOUR MUSICAL CHILD: Inspiring Kids to Play and Sing for Keeps (Hal Leonard, 2004) are soon to be followed by The Green Songbook & CD from Alfred Music Publishing. This compilation of music for living lightly on the Earth is now available at www.greensongbook.com.

Jess lives in Encinitas with her teen-age son, Elias, their three birds, two lizards, and one ridiculously adorable dog named Homer. You might have known Jess by her published and formerly married name, Jessica Baron Turner, a last name she went by during her marriage to Eli’s dad, luthier, Rick Turner. These days she goes by Jessica Anne Baron. Jess is also an incidental songwriter, an enthusiastic gardener, a vegetarian, and lover of literature.

Additional Lesson Features Available to Members

While we have attempted to provide you with an accurate rendition of our video lesson experience, there are some features which
require a membership with us!

Custom Progress Reporting

At JamPlay, we give you the ability to monitor your own progress for any lesson! If you watch one of our lessons and feel as though you understand around half of it, mark your progress at 50%. This adds the lesson to your customized Progress Report, and gives you an incredible ability to document what you need to work on, and where you left off.

Progressive Bookmarking

With thousands of lessons at your fingertips, JamPlay can be a touch intimidating to a first-time user. With Progressive Bookmarking, we give you the ability to systematically bookmark sections of any lessons you are working on to quickly access later. After all, what is the point of all this content if it isn't easy to use?

Save Your Notes

JamPlay also gives you the ability to leave notes for yourself on any lesson. Just like in any educational system, taking your own notes while learning gives you the ability to highlight the instruction that is important to you. Leave your notes, and we store them in our database for you to reference each and everytime you come back to the lesson.