Hi, my name's Harry Buerer, and I'm offering this course on playing hymns on the guitar. This course is for people who already know how to play the guitar. If you're just learning, we've got a course called "Hymns on Guitar for Beginners" that will include a lot more information about basics and fingerings. If you're confident that you know the basics of guitar playing, this is your course.

Why hymns? Many churches are having success with a blended worship style in which guitars, drums, and other contemporary sounds are used, and older hymns are integrated into the worship. Unfortunately, hymnals don't typically have guitar chords written in, so it's not obvious what chords you should play. Also, the keys of songs in hymnals are selected for the benefit of the keyboard player, and it's often better for guitars to play it in a different key. We'll talk more about that. And, on the practical side, the hymns that we will use in this course are old enough that there won't be any copyright issues to worry about.

What this course will do is to teach you how to know what chord to play. We'll begin with hymns that use only two chords, and we'll show you how to recognize when to play those. Then we'll expand the vocabulary to 3 or 4 chords. After that we'll show you how to play in other keys using the primary chords in that key. We'll also spend some time showing you how to play by ear. I hope that you'll join us as we learn how to play hymns on the guitar.