yourguitarteacher

1 buy a good guitar but not expensive one

2 Learn how to Hold the Guitar.
Remember to breathe. It’s easy for your body to get tense when you do something as awkward as playing guitar for the first time. This tenseness builds up without your even realizing it. Take a break every so often, and just breathe. Even if you do everything right, playing might seem uncomfortable at first. It should not be painful, though. If you sense any pain at any time, stop immediately. Before long, your desire to play will make not holding the guitar feel uncomfortable. Choose a chair or seat with the right height. You’ll know it’s the right height because, when you sit, your thigh will be angled just slightly upward. Some players pick any chair and raise their guitar knee by putting their guitar foot on a stool or stack of phone books. The point is to raise the guitar high enough so your hand can get to the frets. It gets real tiring to play by putting your guitar foot on tiptoe all the time. It also gets tiring when you hunch your entire upper body over so you can see the frets. If you’re right-handed, put the guitar on your right knee. Note: classical guitarists would use their left knee. It’s tempting to tilt the guitar so you can see the frets, but don’t do it. Keep the guitar straight. The neck of the guitar should be angled slightly upward as it extends away from your body. Now for the fretting hand. Practice making what I call “the claw“ with your left hand. This means putting your left thumb halfway between the bottom of the guitar’s neck, and the top of the neck. It’s tempting to grab the guitar like you were grabbing a hammer, with the thumb wrapping over the top, but you won’t be able to hit all the notes that way. To make the claw, keep the thumb at that halfway point on the neck, and crook your wrist as if you were trying to make your finger tips hook over the top of the neck. If all of this seems too complicated, go for these simplified instructions: look at pictures of how other guitarists hold their guitar, and do what feels comfortable for you. By the way, some great guitarists, such as Jeff Healy, hold their guitar flat on their lap.
3-

Tablature and Chord Diagrams

Tablature

Tablature is a way of expressing music on paper. A page of tablature tells you what notes to play to make the song happen. Standard music notation is another way of communicating songs on paper. Classical musicians usually have to know this kind of notation. We’ll stick to the basics and just describe tablature in this section. You can read an intro to standard notation in the Appendix.

Let’s look at a piece of tablature:

Play one after the other.

Play at the same time.

str. 1 str. 2

(rest)

1 (rest…)

str. 3 0 0

str. 4

str. 5

str. 6

Tablature One

Standard notation

(Notice that the standard notation is included here, just in case you’re interested in how it matches with the tablature.)

Look at figure Tablature One. Each of the long lines going from left to right represents a guitar string. The top line is the high E string (the thinnest string), the next line down is the B string, and so on. The numbers represent frets that you play, not the fingers you use.

The first group of notes is played one at a time. The second group of notes shows the notes stacked on top of each other, which means you play them at the same time. This group of notes played together is called a chord. The first group of notes is called an arpeggio. Think of arpeggios as a busted up chord.

The numbers tell you which frets to press. A “0” means you play the string open, or unfretted.

Some tablature, or “tab” for short, also tells you which fingers to use. Keep an eye out for finger indicators in the tabs shown in this book. Knowing which fingers to use is

important to prevent confusion.

There’s not much else to learning tablature. You can learn more about it through these resources:

Sunday, 18 October 2015