Guitar Lesson Week 3

Tuning up


The most difficult task that a beginning guitarist faces is tuning the instrument. As it takes time to develop a sense of pitch, I recommend that you use an electronic tuner at first. If you don't have one, go get one. It is impossible to learn to play on an out of tune guitar. You can pick up an electronic tuner for as little as $19.95, and it will pay for itself before the end of this first lesson. Make sure that the sales person shows you how to use it, and pay attention to what they tell you. If the instructions don't make sense to you, DO NOT leave the store until you understand EXACTLY how to use the tuner. If the sales person acts like they have something better to do than educate you on how to tune the guitar, leave a complaint with the management and go buy a tuner somewhere else. Playing in tune is THAT important!



You should start tuning your guitar with an electric tuner,but you should gradually loose it. The ears are the best tuners you get get, and they are FREE! So heres what you do Go here http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/onlinetuner.html and tune your guitar by listening. Then tune your guitar with your tuner to check for preciseness.


Theory



Notes are named after the first seven letters in the alphabet. In order, they are:



A - B - C - D - E - F - G





Between any two notes, except B - C and E - F, we also have a sharp and/or flat note.

These are the symbols that are used to denote sharp and flat: This first symbol is a Flat the second a sharp.






flat







If we list the notes, again, and include the sharps and flats, we get:



A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D - D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab - A



One important thing to notice is that X#/Xb is one note that has two names (The term used to describe this is ENHARMONIC). For example, A# is the exact same note as Bb. Sometimes, one name will be used, and sometimes the other name will be used. We will cover this in much greater detail in a later lesson. For now, it's only important that you know the names of the notes.

Another thing to notice is that after G#/Ab We arrive at A again. This second A vibrates exactly twice as fast as the first A, and therefore, the ear tends to hear it as another version of the same note. The second A is called the OCTAVE of the first A. If we continue after the second A, we get A#/Bb an OCTAVE higher than the first, B an OCTAVE higher, C an OCTAVE higher etc., etc., until we get to A again. This A is two OCTAVES higher than the first A. If we keep going, the whole pattern just repeats over and over until we can't get any higher on the instrument. (If you didn't run out of notes, you could keep right on going until the notes were so high that only a dog could hear them!) The same is true if you travel in the opposite direction. The pattern repeats until you run out of notes, or the neighbors call the cops (whichever comes first).

Here's something to help you remember the sharps and flats. If you sharpen a pencil, you raise a point on it. Therefore, if you play A and then play the next higher note, you would call the second note A#. If you flatten a pop can, you mash it down. Likewise, if you play B and then play the next lower note, you would call the second note Bb. Remember that A# and Bb are the exact same note or ENHARMONIC.

This may be a bit confusing but, you'el get used to it.

All you have to remember is A through G of the alphabet and a #/b note in between every two notes except B - C and E - F (there's no such note as B# or Cb, likewise, E# or Fb. There is an exception to this but, that's way down the road!).

Now, the strings of the guitar are tuned E A D G B E from the lowest sounding to the highest sounding.

What I have for you, is an exercise that uses the A-string to practice playing and naming the notes. Don't worry about the standard music notation right now. Just follow the TAB until you get the idea. Once you get the idea of the exercise, don't use the TAB either. You have to know this stuff by heart.

The idea of this exercise is to start on the OPEN (if you just play the string without putting any finger down on it, its called OPEN) A-string and play each note, in order, up and down the string, while naming the note out loud to yourself. Don't worry about which left-hand fingers to use. Just use whatever seems comfortable. We'el start worrying about which fingers to use later.

(CLICK ON THIS PICTURE TO SEE IT BETTER)



I only took the exercise up to the 12th fret but, you could keep going as high up the neck as possible before heading back down to the OPEN string. (Up and down directions on guitar ALWAYS refer to the pitch of the notes. If you go up the neck, you go from playing lower sounding notes to higher sounding notes. If you go down the neck, you go from playing higher sounding notes to lower sounding notes.)

Once you can go up and down the A-string and name the notes (Don't worry about trying to remember exactly where each note is. That will come later. Just get the pattern of how the notes are named so that you know it by heart.), do the same thing on the other strings.

If you start on the D-string (or any other string), the pattern is still the same. You're just starting in a different spot:




D - D# - E - F - F# - G - G# - A - A# - B - C - C# - D





I left out the flats because I'm tired of typing them, but they're still there, just like before.

Guitar Lesson Week 2

TABS


NOTE:DON'T WORRY ABOUT NOT KNOWING WHAT A HAMMER IS AND BENDS AND STUFF LIKE THAT FOR RIGHT NOW THIS IS JUST TO GET YOU STARTED ON READING TABS. IN THE FUTURE I WILL EXPLAIN IN MORE DETAIL HOW TO DO EACH OF THESE PRECISELY.

TAB is simple to read, and should be simple to write if you want to submit
a song you have worked out yourself. The idea is this :

You start out with 6 lines (or four for bass). These correspond to the strings
of the instrument. The top line is the highest pitch string, and the bottom
line is the lowest pitch string. Below is a blank bit of TAB with the string
names at the left.


E----------------------------------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------


Numbers are written on the lines to show you where to fret the string
with the left hand. If a zero appears , this means play the open string.
Like standard musical notation, you read from left to right to find
out what order to play the notes. The following piece of TAB would mean
play the sequence of notes (E F F# G G# A) on the bottom E string by
moving up a fret at a time, starting with the open string.


E----------------------------------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E---0--1--2--3--4--5---------------------------------------------


OK so far ?

Here we have notes being played one at a time. If two or more notes
are to be played together, they are written on top of one another,
again just like standard notation.

In the next example we have a G bar chord.

E----3------------------------------------------------------------
B----3------------------------------------------------------------
G----4------------------------------------------------------------
D----5------------------------------------------------------------
A----5------------------------------------------------------------
E----3------------------------------------------------------------


So this means play all these notes together as a chord.

You might see the same chord written like this :

E--------3--------------------------------------------------------
B-------3---------------------------------------------------------
G------4----------------------------------------------------------
D-----5-----------------------------------------------------------
A----5------------------------------------------------------------
E---3-------------------------------------------------------------


Which would mean strum the same shape starting at the bottom string, so
that each string is hit slightly later than the last string, but all notes
will ring together. Below is am example of the same shape again, but now
the gaps between the notes are bigger - so you would probably pick the
strings separately instead of slowly strumming the shape.


E------------------3----------------------------------------------
B---------------3-----3--------------------------------------------
G------------4-----------4-----------------------------------------
D---------5-----------------5--------------------------------------
A------5-----------------------5----------------------------------
E---3-----------------------------3--------------------------------


You might ask - How do I know how fast or slow to play this ?
Are all the notes supposed to be the same length ?


This is where TAB differs from standard notation. Most often TAB
will *not* give you any information on the note lengths. It is usually
left up to you to listen to the song to pick up the rhythm.

However - don't despair. TAB should give you some indications of
timing. In the example above all the notes are evenly spaced so you
can reasonably assume that the notes are the same length (maybe all
eighth notes or quavers) but this may not always be true - it depends on
who wrote the TAB.

As a general rule, the spacing of the notes on the TAB should tell you
which notes are the long ones, and which are the short and fast ones, but
obviously it won't tell you if a note is a triplet or anything like
that. Again, this will depend strongly on the person who wrote the
TAB.

As an example, here are the first few notes of the American National
Anthem in TAB. You should see fairly clearly that the different spacing
corresponds to the different note lengths.

E-----------------------0--------4--2-0--------------------------
B---0--------------0---------------------------------0-----------
G------1------1----------------------------1----3----------------
D--------2-------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------


Obviously it will be a lot easier to play the TAB for a song you
know well than for a song you've never heard of because you will
already be familiar with the rhythms of the familiar song.



*****************************************
*** 2.1 OTHER SYMBOLS USED IN TAB ***
*****************************************


So far I've looked at what notes to play : which string to hit, and
where to fret it. I've mentioned how to get an idea of note lengths
by looking at the spaces between notes on the TAB, but this can only
be a rough guide. You will always have to check with the original track
to work out details of the rhythm.

A lot of other important information can be included in a piece of TAB.
This includes hammer-ons, pull offs, slides, bends, vibrato and so on.

The standard practice is to write extra letters or symbols between notes
to indicate how to play them. Here are the letters/symbols most
often used :

h - hammer on
p - pull off
b - bend string up
r - release bend
/ - slide up
\ - slide down
v - vibrato (sometimes written as ~)
t - right hand tap
x - play 'note' with heavy damping


That last one, the x, is used to get a choppy, percussive sound.
You usually use your fretting hand to lightly damp the strings so
that when you pick the note it sounds dead.

Note that the use of 'x' is *totally* different from the use of
an 'x' when giving chord shapes.

For example if you wrote the chord of D, you would see :

EADGBE
xx0232


where the 'x's mean do not play this string.

In tab it is implicitly assumed that a string is not played if it is not
marked. So the same chord in TAB would be :



E-----2-----------------------------------------------------------
B-----3-----------------------------------------------------------
G-----2-----------------------------------------------------------
D-----0-----------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

with no 'x'. The x is is only used in TAB to represent a heavily
muted string which is picked/strummed to give a percussive sound.

There are a number of other symbols for things like whammy bar bends,
pick scrapes and so on. There seems to be no particular standard
way of writing these - details should be given in the TAB to explain
what the symbols mean.

Bass TAB will probably need a few extra symbols to cope with the
different techniques used in bass playing - for example slapping
and 'popping' the string with thumb or middle finger.
You could use 's' for slap and 'p' for pop as long as you wrote
them *underneath* the lines of tab to distinguish them from slide
and pull off which would be written *on* the lines of tab.


****************************************
*** 2.2 HAMMER ONS AND PULL OFFS ***
****************************************


With hammer-ons and pull-offs you might find things like these :


E----------------------------------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A---------5h7-----------5h7--------------------------------------
E---0--0----------0--0-------------------------------------------


which would mean play the open E twice, then hit the A string at the
5th fret and hammer on to the 7th fret.


Pull offs look very similar :

E----3p0------------------------------------------------------------
B---------3p0-------------------------------------------------------
G--------------2p0--------------------------------------------------
D-------------------2---------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------


Here we have a descending blues scale using pull-offs to the open
strings. For each pull off you only pick the first note of the pair
with the right hand - so in this example you would pick all the
notes on the 3rd and 2nd frets, and the open strings would be
sounded by pulling off.


Because you give the string an extra bit of energy when you hammer on
and pull off, you only need to hit the first note with the picking hand.
You could even have a long string of hammer-ons and pull-offs like
this :


E----------------------------------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------------------------------
G---2h4p2h4p2h4p2h4p2h4p2----------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

In this case you only pick the first note.



**********************
*** 2.3 BENDS ***
**********************


When bends are involved you need to know how much to bend the note
up. This is indicated by writing a number after the 'b'.
For example, if you see this :

E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------7b9-------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------


it means strike the B string at the 7th fret, then bend the note up
two semitones (one whole step) so that it sounds the same pitch as
a note fretted at the 9th fret would do. (Sometimes the bend is
written with the second part in brackets, like this ---7b(9)--- )

Something like this :

E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------7b9--9r7--------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------


means play the note at the 7th fret, bend up two semitones, strike the
note again whilst it is still bent, then release the bend so that the
note has it's normal pitch.

You sometimes get a note which is bent up only a quarter of a tone or so.
In this case it would look a bit strange to write :

B--------7b7.5--------

if you have to bend it up half a fret's worth.
Instead it's written as :


bend up 1/4 tone
E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------7b--------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

with instructions on how much to bend written above the note.



**********************
*** 2.4 SLIDES ***
**********************


The most common symbols used for slides are / for a slide
up and \ for a slide down.

You might also see 's' used to mean slide.

You don't always need separate symbols for 'up' and 'down' slides
since a line of TAB reading :

E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------7/9-------------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

is clearly a slide *up* from 7th to 9th fret. However you might
also see things like these :

E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------/7-9-7\---------------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

where the exact start or finish of a slide is not given. Here you
have to know whether you're sliding up or down. In these cases use
your judgement to choose the starting or finishing fret. The effect
usually desired is to have a note 'swooping in' from a lower pitch
or dropping suddenly in pitch as the note fades.


You could have a whole series of slides running together, like this

E----------------------------------------------------------------
B------7/9/11\9\7\6\7--------------------------------------------
G----------------------------------------------------------------
D----------------------------------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------

which would mean you only strike the first note with the pick using
the sustain to produce the other notes.




***************************************
*** 2.5 NOTE LENGTH INFORMATION ***
***************************************


Occasionally you will find TAB which includes information on all
of the note lengths. There seems to be no particular 'standard'
way of doing this, but it usually involves a line of letters or
symbols above the TAB.

See below (Section 3.2 part 6) for more details.

If the explanation of the timing symbols is not given in the TAB
then you've got a problem !
In this case a quick email to the author to ask for enlightenment
is the only way forward.





*********************************************
*** 3.0 WRITING TAB - GETTING STARTED ***
*********************************************


Perhaps one of the most important things to do before you start
typing up a piece of TAB is to decide exactly how much information
to include in it. The trick is to convey the right amount of
information in a clear, easily readable form.

Questions you can ask yourself are :

- Is the song played using mostly chords ?

- Are there a number of riffs which appear throughout the song ?

- Is there a clear verse/chorus/middle bit structure ?


By planning ahead a little you should be able to produce a clearly
structured TAB which will not only be easier for others to read, but
also easier for you to type in.

There are also choices to be made when deciding what package to use
when typing the TAB in. All you really need is a simple text editor,
however a mouse-driven editor will probably make things easier.

When you start typing in it saves time if you draw out one blank stave
and then make 8 or 10 copies of these before you start typing in
the fret numbers etc.

If you use a more complicated package like Microsoft Word then
make sure that the characters you use are all the same length.
If an 'm' character is wider than an 'i' character then your TAB
is going to look very strange on another text editor. Choose a font
where all charcters get the same width - Courier usually does the
job.




(This lesson was brought to you buy Written by Howard Wright)
H.Wright@astro.cf.ac.uk

Guitar Lesson Week 1

!!!!!!!BEFORE WE BEGIN HERE IS MY TWITTER SO I CAN KEEP YOU UPDATED!!!!!!!!!!!

----------->www.twitter.com/guitarguru17<-----------

Lets Begin week 1 with the basic parts of the guitar.
There are two types of guitar, the first one is acoustic. We will start with it first.


Now as you see in the picture the acoustic guitar has many parts, but don't worry if you don't remember them in 10 minutes, its easier if you learn them over time because you'll find you can recall them easier.

OK, lets start at the top. First we have the head of the guitar, then we move down a little and you see the tuning keys. The tuning keys are pretty self-explanatory, they tune the strings on your guitar. If we move down we come to the nut. Now if you look at the nut you will see it has six grooves in it; those grooves hold the six strings in place on your acoustic guitar. Lets keep moving downward. We now come to the frets. These will come in handy when I teach you how to read tabs. Basically what the frets are for is to keep your barrings when your playing. Next is the finger board, the part that you play on. And then the neck is where the fingerboard, frets, and nut are all located. Now we come to the body, it's the part where most of the sound is generated from. As we move down we come to the sound hole. This is where the sound resonates when you play the strings. Move a little further down and we are at the strings, The things you pluck to make sound loll. Continue to move down and we see the bridge, now the bridge is what holds the strings on. And finally we see the pin, This is to hold your strap on.



OK now that we have talked about the Acoustic guitar lets move to the Electric!
Now as you see below the electric and acoustic guitar are very similar in parts but they both have a different sounds and they have a few different parts, lets check it out!
OK, Now you see the head, tuning pegs, nut, fret, fretboard, and neck are the same as the acoustic, they do the same thing. Now if we move down a little we come to the neck pickup, middle pick up, and the bridge pickup. Now these are different on different guitars it just depends what kind you have. The general purpose for these is to pick up the sound from the strings and the bridge. If you continue to move down we see the bridge, the body, and the pin, all of these do the same thing they do on the acoustic. Now as we come around we see the output jack, this is where you hook your electric guitar up to an amp; now some acoustic guitars come with these too. Keep coming around and we get to the volume and tone knobs, these control the volume in you guitar and the the tone quality. As we move on we see the selector switch, what this does is let you switch between about 4-5 different kinds of guitars. (depending on what guitar you have) Finally we come to the whammy bar, the purpose for this is for the effect similar to vibrato. When you hook your guitar up to an amp and play something you wiggle it back and forth (different speeds sounds different) you get a vibrato sound. When attaching this in to a new guitar it should be really loose you don't want it to be tight or else it will break (I learned from experience)

And there you have it! All the parts to the Acoustic and Electric guitar! Please feel free to donate and thank you for reading!



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Introduction

!!!!!!!BEFORE WE BEGIN HERE IS MY TWITTER SO I CAN KEEP YOU UPDATED!!!!!!!!!!!

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Hello fellow guitarist! Welcome to my Blog On how to master the Basics of the Guitar. Like all guitarist we have to start somewhere. When I began the guitar I looked all over for free lessons online. So many of them said free, but had hidden charges. I am here to teach you the beginning chords, a lot of beginners songs, how to read tabs, and much much more! The best part of it is its all for FREE!!! I will be accepting donations though because it does take time to make these lessons, but its not required. Follow me on twitter to get the latest Guitar lessons

Thank you !