Guitar Lessons For Dick and Jane

Are you one of those that when it comes to playing guitar, the closest you come these days is your guitar hero guitar video game? Guitar hero may be fun, but show up on stage with that thing and you might get booed off. I'm just kidding with you, I know that little plastic guitar can be a lot of fun, but I'll bet if you are reading this article, you are ready to take real guitar lessons, especially if they are free. Well this is the place to be to learn guitar, whether you want to learn acoustic guitar, electric guitar, blues guitar or even bass guitar (coming soon).

If playing the guitar is what you want to learn how to do, just look at the Table of Contents below and find lesson one and start there. At the end of each lesson you will find a link to take you to the next lesson. I've really tried to make this as easy as possible. Guitar lessons are hard enough without making things complicates. Pretty soon you'll learn a guitar chord or two, some guitar tabs and you'll be on your way. And remember you can contact me anytime you want to either through Hub Pages or directly at my main music email address, russmediagroup@gmail.com. Good luck and practice hard and often.

Joe

I love teaching guitar. I love watching the looks on my students faces when the light comes on and they finally understand. I offer these articles hoping to somehow motivate each of you to reach your goals and enjoy the rewards that come with playing the guitar well. Whether you just want to learn enough to play a little where you live, become the next guitar player for Garth Brooks or Bruce Springsteen or become a Rock Star, I would be honored to get a comment from you one day that said you learned at least some of what made you successful from my articles.

Whatever your goals, work hard, practice often and be kind to all those you come in contact with everyday. Keep reading to learn about a great guitar player and to reach my Table of Contents. Have fun!

Buying a guitar is always an important decision. These days there are so many choices and unfortunately, some of these choices don’t involve quality instruments.

As a veteran guitar player, I would advise you to do some research on the kind of guitar you want before you spend any money. Your first guitar should be carefully chosen to be fairly easy to play and tune. It should also be versatile enough for you to be able to play different kinds of music on it.

Ideally, you need to try and create an emotional bond with your guitar. Keep searching until you find one that you just love and must have. Some teachers say things like appearance don’t matter. I disagree. Your guitar needs to be pleasing to your eyes. You are going to have to look at it every dayl You are going to be spending a lot of time with it. Because of this, you need to feel good about your guitar, you should be proud of it.

When looking for your first guitar, you need to avoid anything that might cause you to not want to play your guitar, like an instrument that is too heavy, one that is too hard to play, or one that doesn’t sound good to your ears. Below are some technical points to keep in mind when guitar hunting. But after it has passed the technical requirements, you must LOVE the instrument or you will begin avoiding it and sooner or later you will quit trying to become a Rock Star. Once you’ve quit, statistics say you’ll never go back.

• The neck of the guitar and the fingerboard should be straight and the frets all the same height. Lay a straight edge along the frets and fingerboard. With your head at the top of the guitar site a line from the headstock to the bridge to check for any warping of the neck/fretboard.
• The strings should be about ¼ inch above the fretboard at the nut and about 1/8 inch at the 12^th fret. Strings that are too high will be hard to play. too low and the strings will be in contact with the frets and will buzz.
• Be sure and play every note up and down the neck to be sure there is no buzzing and each note rings clearly.
• When buying a used guitar, look for worn frets, particularly on the 1st to 5th frets under the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd strings. Some wear is normal, but deep depressions in this area could mean a guitar that is hard to play and hard to tune. Having to have a guitar re-fretted is not an inexpensive proposition.
• Make sure all strings are on the guitar correctly. If the strings seem old. Ask the store to restring it before you buy it. If they want to make a sale, they will usually take care of this for you. A guitar with old strings will not tune up to pitch no matter how long you try.
• Check the neck, bridge, fretboard and tuners to make sure there are no gaps and that all are installed correctly. Look the guitar over top to bottom for any scratches, holes or dents before you leave the store.

If you are buying a used guitar, buy the best one you can afford. Older Guitars by companies like Gibson, Fender and Martin are sought after for several reasons but one reason is because woods age and sound better over time. Years ago guitar manufacturers would let woods age for a certain amount of time before they turn the wood into guitars. These days the wood is kiln dried so it can be used sooner.But the good news is guitars in general are being made better and better all the time and their prices are usually very affordable.

Now let's look at some accessories you might need for your guitar lessons. 

 Whether you are here to learn acoustic guitar, electric guitar or maybe even bass guitar (coming soon), you will find everything you need in these lessons to become the guitar player you want to be.

There is more than one way to learn the guitar. Most towns and cities have their fair share of real human guitar teachers, but we all know the Internet is full of online resources when it comes to guitar lessons. Video has gotten very popular for any and everything on the Internet. Guitar instructors have really latched onto this medium as a way for delivering lessons. Youtube (www.youtube.com) is chock full of great and sometimes not so great videos for teaching as well as just showing off. Guitar and guitar theory can sometimes be confusing and Youtube videos can be extremely helpful in getting the information across to new guitar students.

The guitar is much more than just an instrument. It is a symbol, an icon in our generation. For acoustic guitar lovers it represents a tool to write songs that come out of your soul, something to help you woo that damsel you long for by a campfire light on a summer weekend night. When we think of acoustic guitars we envision James Taylor, John Denver maybe even Jimmy Buffett.

The electric guitar on the other hand drums up images of Eric Clapton, B. B. King or maybe even Molly Hatchet, Lynard Skynard or Kiss. It's more about freedom and rebellion against all that is holding you back from reaching your potential. 

Now let's get into your first lesson. If you will look at the picture above of the hands, you will see numbers by them. When it comes to playing guitar, each finger is given a number 1 - 4, starting with the index finger and moving to the pinkie. Many guitar charts for chords, will give you these numbers so you will know which finger to use to play the note or chord. When you see these numbers, you will use that finger to play the assigned note on the guitar fretboard.

And speaking of a fretboard, I think it's time to go over the parts of a guitar just so you will know. So...on to the next lesson.

Although there are many different types of guitars (acoustic, electric, classical, electric-acoustic, etc.), they all have many things in common. The diagram above illustrates the various parts of a guitar. At the top of the guitar in the illustration is the "head" or "headstock", a term which describes the part of the guitar that is the top end of the instrument. On the headstock are "tuners", which you will use to adjust the pitch of each of the strings on the guitar. Play with these tuners and get used to which way you turn them to raise the pitch and vice versa.

At the point at which the headstock meets the neck of the guitar, you'll find the "nut". A nut is simply a small piece of material, usually either plastic or bone, in which small grooves are carved out to guide the strings up to the tuners. Each groove is cut to accommodate the thickness of the string which will rest in it. Just below the nut begins the fretboard sometimes called the fingerboard. It is the top, surface section of the neck, the long wooden structure between the headstock and the body and is usually constructed of maple (light wood) or rosewood (dark brown wood). You will place your fingers at different points on the fretboard to form notes and chords.

About 2 inches toward the body from the nut begins a series of 22 to 24 metal strips running across the surface of the fretboard from one side to the other. These pieces of metal are called "frets". You will also read and hear the word "fret" referred to as the space on the fretboard between any two of these metal strips. The frets, metal strips, are inserted at progressive points on the fingerboard or fretboard. The frets, the spaces between the metal strips, get progressively smaller as you go up the neck toward the body. *The reason for this has to do with the mathematical formula used to divide the total sound spectrum into notes. The metal strips are placed at the points they need to be in order to make the musical formulas work out, or in other words, so all the tones can be correctly placed. If this formula wasn't followed when the guitar was built , you'd never be able to tune your guitar so you could stand to listen to it.

As you place your fingers at various points on the fretboard, you are changing the length of the string your finger is sitting on. As the string gets shorter the pitch becomes higher and vice versa. * A man named Pythagoras discovered the ratios of frequencies that make up the musical scale a long time ago. Basically it works like this. When you play a string on a guitar, the string vibrates, causing the air around it to vibrate. These air vibrations move outward from the source of the sound (the guitar string). When they reach your eardrum they cause it to vibrate. You detect the vibration and "hear" the note. For a more detailed explanation of this theory and the Well Tempered Scale just click Tempered Scale at the bottom of the page.

Just a note here about necks and the woods they are made of. Guitars made of different woods produce different tones thus different sounds. Maple necks produce a brighter tone and are popular by guitarists playing Country, Rockabilly or Classic Rhythm and Blues. Necks with rosewood fingerboards tend to produce a warmer sound and are popular with jazz and some rock guitarists.

On the fretboard are "position markers", simple circular "dots" on most guitars. On higher end guitars these position markers may be bird shaped markers, stars or other icons. The neck of the guitar adjoins the "body" of the instrument. The body of the guitar will vary greatly from guitar to guitar. Most acoustic and classical guitars have a hollow body, and a "sound hole" in the center of the body, designed to project the sound of the guitar.

Most acoustic guitars have a definitive "figure 8" type shape, two large sound sections called "bouts" with an indented section in the middle called a "waist," or a narrowing. This waist is where you rest the guitar on your knee. The upper bout is where the neck connects, and the lower bout is where the bridge attaches. The size and shape of the body and the bouts has a lot to do with the tone that a given guitar produces. The two bouts also affect the sound: The lower bout accentuates lower tones and the upper bout accentuates higher tones. This design worked fine until guitarists started needing their guitars amplified to compete with the volume of other band instruments. 

There are several ways to approach a course for beginning guitar students. I could just tell you what the names of the strings are, teach you how to tune your guitar and then start showing you some chords so you could get right to playing some songs. But I’ve learned through my own experience that really understanding music theory and other musical dynamics has helped me become a better musician and prepared me for the time when I lived in Nashville and needed that education in order to work in that environment.

Now you may have no plans on moving to Nashville, New York, L.A. or any other major city but my intention is to give you all the tools you will need to be a well rounded musician and to be able to be productive, work as a professional musician and have a lot of fun no matter where you choose to live.

Entering these lessons, you will find that I have set up 2 different paths you can take. The green lessons are for all those who just want to learn some chords so they can play some songs and jam with their friends. This group can get along without a lot of music theory or knowing all the details about what they are playing.

The blue lessons on the other hand are for those that want to be master guitarists. This group wants to learn everything about the guitar because they harbor dreams of going on to bigger and better things. The Blue lessons will teach you not only chords, but chord theory, modes, scales, and even the Nashville Number system, the charting system used by the session players in Nashville, Tennessee.

Although I will expose you to sight reading on the guitar, I won’t go very deeply into it mainly because in today’s musical society, sight reading is not necessary unless you want to become a Classical Guitarist. Everything is done by ear. With the right training and a good ear you can do anything on the guitar.

Playing by ear comes easier to some than others. But except for those who are truly "tone deaf" the ear can be developed and I will teach how to listen and play, listen and play. One more time, LISTEN AND PLAY! 

In the picture above you see the names of the open strings on your guitar and how the strings are numbered 1-6 from the bottom up. You are also given a mnemonic to help you remember them (Every Adult Dog Growls, Barks, Eats). The second picture shows you how to tune your guitar with itself.

There are several ways to tune a guitar, but first we will learn to tune it to itself as in the 2^nd picture above. The first thing you need is a source where you can hear the beginning note, low E. You can use a pitch pipe, piano or another instrument. Once you have the low E string tuned to pitch proceed as follows:  1. Make sure your sixth string is in tune  2. Play the sixth string, fifth fret (A), then tune your open fifth string (A) until it they sound the same.  3. Play the fifth string, fifth fret (D), then tune your open fourth string (D) until they sound the same.  4. Play the fourth string, fifth fret (G), then tune your open third string (G) until they sound the same.  5. Play the third string, fourth fret (B), then tune your open second string (B) until they sound the same.  6. Play the second string, fifth fret (E), then tune your open first string (E) until they sound the same.  

Look at the 2nd picture above as you follow these instructions and it should begin to make sense to you. When you are finished, strum your guitar and see how it sounds. Try detuning your guitar on purpose and retuning it several times until you are comfortable with this process.  Listen to, and play the first note. While the note is still ringing, try humming that note. Continue to play the note, until you've managed to match the pitch with your voice.  

Next, play the second note, and again, hum that note. Repeat this - playing and humming the first note, then follow that by playing and humming the second note.  Now, try humming the first note, and without stopping, moving to the second note. Did your voice go down, or up? If it went down, then the second note is lower. If it went up, the second note is higher. Now, make the adjustment to the second note, until they both sound the same. 

If you have access to a piano then please follow this lesson so you will know how to tune your guitar to a piano. If it is a traditional full size piano, right in the middle above the keyboard should be the label of the manufacturer. On the keyboard at that point find the C note. From that point, go to E 2 octaves below. In other words, from the C, go to the left to E and then on to the next E. This one is the pitch that will match the low E string on your guitar.

If you are using an electric piano, start with the C right in the middle and go to the E note right below it. Tune your low E string to that note. Now look at the picture above and tune each string of your guitar. Match each string to the sound of each note on the piano.

The Intellitouch PT-1/PT-2 Electronic Tuner This is so easy it should be illegal. You simply clip the tuner to the headstock of your guitar and turn the screen so you can see it clearly. Next, push the button that turns it on. Play your high E string and watch the screen. The note made by the string you are picking will show up in the center of the screen. You will see sets of 3 arrows on either side of the note name.

You are "in tune" when you consistently have 3 arrows on each side of the note name. The tuner will "hear" any note you play. This lets you tune standard or even altered tunings. What I love about this tuner is that it doesn't care how loud things are where you are tuning. Loud jukeboxes and rowdy crowds will not interfere with tuning your guitar. In the picture above the Intellitouch is the one right in the center of the picture.

Hopefully, you've found, bought or borrowed a guitar pick. If not, you'll need to buy yourself some. Don't be stingy, go and pick up at least 10 of them - guitar picks are easy to lose (they often don't cost more than 30 or 40 cents each). You can experiment with different shapes and brands.

Picks come in different thicknesses. Some are sold in millimeters and some just thin, medium and thick. Experiment with different ones until you find ones you are comfortable with. Personally I use thin picks with acoustic guitars and medium picks with electric guitars, but you need to make that decision for yourself.

The following instructions explains how to hold, and use a pick. Keep in mind that your "picking hand" is the hand which is nearest to the bridge of the guitar.

1. Open your picking hand, and turn the palm to face you.

2. Close your hand to make a very loose fist. Your thumb should remain beside your index finger.

3. Rotate your hand until you are looking at it's profile, with your thumb's knuckle facing you.

4. With your other hand, slide your guitar pick between your thumb and index finger. The pick should be located approximately behind the knuckle of the thumb.

5. Be sure the pointed end of the pick is pointing directly away from your fist, and is protruding by about a half an inch. Hold the pick firmly.

6. Position your picking hand over the sound hole of your acoustic guitar, or over the body of your electric guitar. Your picking hand, with thumb knuckle still facing you, should hover over the strings.

7. Do not rest your picking hand on the strings or body of the guitar.

8. Using your wrist for motion (rather than your entire arm), strike the sixth (lowest) string of your guitar in a downward motion. If the string rattles excessively, try striking the string a bit softer, or with less of the pick surface.  

9. Now, pick the sixth string in an upwards motion.

10. Repeat the process several times. Try and minimize motion in your picking hand: one short picking stroke downwards, then one short picking stroke upwards. This process is referred to as "alternate picking"

11. Try the same exercise on the fifth, fourth, third, second, and first strings.

Some Pick Tips:

1. Holding a pick will invariably feel awkward at first. I suggest keeping a few in your pocket all times. Take one out and practice holding it when you have the time. Pay special attention to your picking hand whenever you are playing your guitar.

2. Practice this until you get a "feel" for how tightly you should grip the pick. Believe me this can really affect the sound/tone of your guitar. As you develop you will begin to "know" how to change how you hold the pick to get different sounds but for now just hold it "comfortably firm".

3. Try and create fluidity in your alternate picking. Your downstrokes should sound virtually identical to your upstrokes.