Want to practice guitar in the right way ? Just grab a guitar to learn how to play ! It's that easy !
Guitar is my passion and I love to write each word about guitar in particular and music in general. I am an ardent music fan. I have been playing guitar for the past many years. I own a Gibson Acoustic guitar and an Ibanez GRX-20 electric guitar.
The best electric guitar manufacturers are Ibanez, Jackson and Fender.
In this lens I am going to talk about some of the technical details about "practicing guitar" in the right and proper way. This is very important as it will help develop your speed and you will be able to produce melodious riffs.
I will be giving an intro to the guitar basics first and then I will touch on some more complicated stuff. The important thing to remember when you start learning guitar is "patience". Only then you will learn how to play guitar with ease. You may not get everything right in the first go, so keep practicing. Practice has no other substitute. So please hang on and go through my lens to get some interesting details about practicing guitar.
Table of Contents
- Excited to learn the Guitar?
- Now lets talk about "OCTAVE"
- Recommended Guitar Learning Sites
- A Sample JamPlay Guitar Lesson
- Related Lenses
- My Blog
- Watch this Video on Octaves
- Please give me your valuable feedback.
- Check out these great stuff on Amazon
- New Amazon Voting (Plexo)
- Guitar blog posts from Google
- Check out these cool stuff on CafePress
- Your Favorite Rock Band
- The best guitarist in the world !
- Learn Guitar in-depth with Jamorama !
Excited to learn the Guitar?
I hope you know that guitar is a string instrument :))
Let me introduce you to the guitar first:If you always wanted to play guitar like a pro, just get yourself a guitar and then then start off to learn how to play. That's all.
There are many different types of Acoustic Guitars - Acoustic Spanish Guitar, American guitar, Classical guitar with nylon strings - usually played in Spain and South America. A very popular song using this Spanish guitar is Bryan Adams' "Have you ever loved a woman?" You must hear that song, there are beautiful bits of Spanish style guitar playing in that song.
As you can see from the image, that guitar has 6 strings(im not getting into other details as you can see it from the image for yourself), The first string is the thickest and the last or 6th string is the thinnest
Names of Strings:
Each string when played will produce a sound or in musical terms "NOTE". The first string will produce the most bass sound and the last string will produce the same note as of the first string but in a higher tone or "octave" in musical terms.
The strings are counted in a "down-up " pattern or, the first string is the thinnest string towards the bottom and then counting upwards till the thickest string or topmost string.
1st - E
2nd - B
3rd - G
4th - D
5th - A
6th - E
These are called Open Notes, meaning we are not using any fret(see the image) to produce other notes of the octave on a particular string..
Now lets talk about "OCTAVE"
An Octave has 8 notes.
What is an Octave anyway ?An Octave consists of 8 notes, which starts from the root or tonic note or the first note in a scale and goes up till the higher pitch of the root or tonic note is reached. For Eg: If we take a scale that starts at E that is E(open) F G A B C D and E. The last or eighth note is again E i.e. the same note as the root note or first note, but in a higher pitch. That's the only difference.
Let's take the most important and basic scale in music, C Major scale, in this scale root note or first note is C. And the scale progresses in this pattern C D E F G A B C(a.k.a the C Major Scale). You can see that the last note or 8th degree or 8th note in this scale is C, that is called an Octave (Octa meaning 8).
In a a standard guitar fret board, you can produce 2 or max 3 octaves on each string or you can play two octaves using all the six strings.
C Major Scale
In C Major scale C (or the root) is the Tonic, F(or the 4th note or degree) is the sub-dominant and G(or 5th note or degree) is called the Dominant.
See the pictorial representation
Practicing what you have learned till now
First you should practice with the open strings or without using the Frets. You have to use your "Plectrum" or "Pick" to strike each string in the order given below
First downward E A D G B E and then upwards E B G D A E ( you need to practice this till you gain speed)
You should never be in a hurry to gain speed. Patience is the key. So you have to practice the exercises atleast 2-3 hours daily.
When you are conversant with the above open string exercise, then you can try out using the FRETS as given in the picture.
in this order.
1st String E(Open note)- F - G
2nd String A(Open note) - B - C
3rd String D(Open note) - E - F
4th String G(Open note) - A
5th String B(Open note) - C - D
6th String E(Open note) - F - G - A
Remember to strike the strings in an "Up - Down" pattern with your plectrum rather than only DOWN strokes. This will help you gain speed. First practice in a comfortable speed, and gradually increase your speed. Don't push yourself hard to gain speed, that will affect your perfection. if you try to switch to an uncomfortable speed sooner than you can, each note that you play won't be clearly audible. Speed should come naturally.
You can check out my other two lenses "Want to get lessons on acoustic guitar ?" and "Learn to build guitar Major and Minor scales"
Pentatonic Scales are the staple of rock music, you can check out my hub to see how you can create Pentatonic scales easily - "Do you want to play Pentatonic solos easily?"
Learning guitar or music is an ongoing process. The more you learn the more you know that you have more to learn. That's how knowledge is. In this lens I have talked about the basic information so that you will be able to go to the next levels pretty easily. If you want to master you guitar skills in-depth, I can suggest you a nice guitar guide to you which is really simple and easy to understand and rich in content.
So all the best in your venture to learn guitar. Learning guitar is like an addiction, the more you learn, you will want to learn even more.!
Recommended Guitar Learning Sites
These guitar learning resources are also worth checking out..
Finding the right guitar tutor often becomes a very intimidating task for most beginners. But ultimately when you find one, it will change every negative perspective of guitar learning that you had till now. So I cannot emphasize enough on how important it is to learn from a professional guitar tutor who really knows his job.
These are some of the other good guitar learning sites that I would recommend. Please do have a look at them.
These are some of the other good guitar learning sites that I would recommend. Please do have a look at them.
- JamPlay
- JamPlay is an online guitar course which has a wide range of genre specific video guitar lessons for beginners, intermediate and advanced guitar players designed in an easy to navigate and easy to follow manner. It also provides many other benefits to it's members like live web cam chat with the instructors, forums and community features to interact easily with your instructors and other members to name a few.
- Gibson's Learn and Master Guitar
- Gibson's Learn and Master Guitar have their learning materials spread out on DVDs, CDs and books which you can learn at the comfort of your home. This course will help you build a strong foundation on the concepts of guitar starting from the beginner level and gradually progressing towards the advanced level guitar concepts and techniques in a slow and easy pace.
- Learn and Master Blues Guitar
- Learn and Master Spotlight Series Blues Guitar will teach you not just few blues licks from here and there, but the concepts in-depth, chords, techniques, and riffs that will groom you into a full fledged blues guitarist. This course will guide you from the most basic concepts till you become a seasoned blues solo player. This blues guitar course is one of the best of the breed in it's class that sets Legacy Learning sytems on a higher pedestal than other online guitar courses.
- Pentatonic Power
- The patterns of the pentatonic scale lay comfortably under the fingers allowing guitarists from the beginner on up to quickly get this scale under control and play lead guitar.This is a specialized Online Guitar Course that claims to teach you the nuts and bolts of Pentatonic Scale in 150 Days of daily lessons.
- Learn and Master Guitar Setup & Maintenance
- Guitar Repair or Luthier Course will teach you how to setup your guitar to make it play and sound the best on stage and at the studios ! he Spotlight Series on Guitar Setup & Maintenance from Legacy Learning Sytems will guide you step-by-step and show you how to set up your guitar at home using a few easy-to-use tools. You will learn to make basic adjustments to your guitar so that you can get a better playing and sounding instrument always.
A Sample JamPlay Guitar Lesson
From my favorite tutor Hawkeye Herman
JamPlay has tons of guitar lessons for beginners, intermediate and expert level players and also on various genres and styles. Check out this blues guitar lesson by one of the most admired guitar tutors in Jamplay - Hawkeye Herman. I love his teaching style.
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The best guitarist in the world !
The world's best solo guitar artist is Joe Satriani, no others can even come near him, What do you think ?
Yes
JoRosa says:
He is definitely one of the best. However, there are more great guitarist, for example good old Jimi Hendrix or Yngwie Malmsteen.
No
by deepakeapen
Hi Guitar players, I am just passionate about guitars, and I have been playing guitar for the past 10 or more years, but since guitar is not my main p... more »
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