Tabla de contenidos para Guitar For Beginners 8th Edition en Guitar For Beginners

Notes form the tapestry of guitar playing. All music is made up of notes, and a note is just any pitch made by a musical instrument. Every note is symbolised by a letter, and the musical alphabet is made up of 12 notes: A, A#/B , B, C, C#/D , D, D#/E , E, F, F#/G , G, and G#/A – after which the sequence goes back to the beginning and starts at A again, only an octave higher. The fretboard of a guitar is laid out so that you can find the notes on the neck by fretting the strings, and the same notes can be found at multiple places along the neck. When learning where the notes on a guitar neck are located, it is useful to know…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar audio guides Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar Put simply, barre chords hurt – at least they will while you’re learning to play them, because they require you to contort your fretting hand into all kinds of unnatural positions as you press down on multiple strings with one finger. There are two main categories of barre chords: those that use shapes from the family of open E chords (E major, E minor, E7 and so on) and those that use shapes from the family of open A chords. The E-shape barre chords are probably the most popular, mainly because they use all six strings…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar For a hammer-on (also known as an upward slur), a note is plucked and then a second note is sounded by slamming (or ‘hammering’) another finger onto the same string at a higher fret. For example, if you place your index finger onto the first string (E) at the fifth fret, pluck the string with your strumming hand and then ‘hammer’ your middle finger down onto the first string on the sixth fret, you will perform a hammer-on and, in the process, create a pleasing sound between the notes. A pull-off is essentially the opposite, so using the previous example, you will start with your index finger on the first string at…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar Sliding is a common technique used in many genres, enabling the guitarist to move between notes or power chords without lifting his or her hand from the guitar’s fretboard. All you need to do in order to execute a successful slide on your guitar is to play one note, then, without taking your fretting finger off the fretboard, slide it up to another fret. You won’t have to pick the second note if your slide was good. As its name suggests, the effect it produces is a sliding sound. This technique makes a much smoother sound than what…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar It’s easy to dismiss amplification when first starting to learn the guitar, putting all your faith in the make and type of instrument you buy instead. In reality, the two have to work in perfect harmony to achieve the sound you’re looking for. Beginners are best starting off with a ‘combo’, an amp that combines the head and amplification cabinet into one, making it both easier to setup, understand and carry around. It’s very likely that the first amp you purchase – assuming you don’t spend a tremendous amount of money – won’t achieve the tone you’re looking for, but the key is to experiment with settings such as bass, trebles and…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and follow along on your guitar Guitar tablature (or ‘tab’ for short) is a system of notation that visually represents the strings and frets of the guitar fretboard. Each note is indicated by a number, which indicates the fret to play, placed on the appropriate string. A basic guitar tab consists of six lines running horizontally and these lines represent the six strings of your guitar, with the thinnest E string at the top and the thickest E string at the bottom. Numbers are then placed on these lines to represent finger positions on the guitar fretboard. So if you see the number ‘2’ positioned on the A string, then you would have to hold down the fifth…

A time signature will always be found at the beginning of a piece of music, directly after the key signature. It is very important as it tells us exactly how to divide the beats of the bar, in turn making it so much easier to read a piece of music. There are two main types of time signature: simple time and compound time. Here’s a bit more about them… Simple time Simple time is a signature where the main beat is divided into two equal beats. For instance, in 44 time, the main beat is a crotchet/quarter note, and this can be divided in two quavers/eighth notes. The most common forms of simple time signature are 44 , 3 4, and 24 . Compound time Compound time, much like simple…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Scales in music are a series of notes that are arranged into a specific sequence which can be either ascending or descending. They usually start and end on the same musically named note, separated by an octave (the distance between eight musical notes). Scales will follow a set pattern of either semitones (half-steps) or tones (whole steps). The three most common forms of scales are major (a happy sounding scale), minor (a sad sounding scale) and chromatic (a scale whose sound is ambiguous and is made up entirely of semitones). Learning scales on guitar is important for a number of reasons. It will enable you to learn your fretboard quickly, which will…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and play along on your guitar The pentatonic scale, as the title would suggest, is a scale made up of five notes per octave instead of the usual seven as found in heptatonic scales (such as either the major or minor scale). These scales contain no semitones (half steps) and, as such, can be played in any order without clashing. At first look, the major pentatonic scale can look like an incomplete major scale. However, this scale is made up of the first five consecutive pitches from the circle of fifths (a musical idea of showing the relationship between the 12 notes of the chromatic scale and their key signatures). By rearranging the pitches to contain themselves within…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar Out of every genre, rock may be the most difficult to define. Since its inception in the Forties, it’s a term used to describe anything from Elvis Presley to – in the modern day – the Foo Fighters. It’s a genre that has been heavily influenced by country music and blues. There are, as ever, multiple trends that tie it all together, the electric guitar being one of the many staples. Rock music is often centred around a group consisting of electric guitars, an electric bass guitar and a drum kit. Typically, songs follow a 4/4 time signature structured around the pattern of verse/chorus/repeat, but some sub-genres of rock do diversify the…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar Since its inception in the late-Eighties, indie rock has been a constant in our lives, emerging from both sides of the Atlantic and taking on various forms. Indie musics spans from early American alternative bands, such as R.E.M. and Dinosaur Jr to Britpop groups Blur and Oasis. More recently, indie music has spanned from the power chordloving ‘The’ bands of the early Noughties (think, The Kooks, The Fratellis and The Libertines) to more electronic-heavy bands of recent times, such as MGMT and Crystal Castles. Indie has undergone quite an evolution over the past 25 years. As such, the indie sound can be quite hard to pin down and define. One thing for…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar As one of the most popular genres of all time, the evolution of blues music is steeped in history. The genre’s origins lie with African-American voices of the Deep South that began to emerge in the late-19th Century. Often reflecting social discord and a deep sadness and sometimes taking the form of a loose narrative, ‘the blues’ has come to connote that general melancholy feeling even outside this musical setting. Over the last century, the world has seen many influential blues guitarists, from the likes of Robert Johnson and BB King to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. The sound made famous by these artists is often characterised by a slow tempo (usually…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar The guitar has been a staple part of popular music for many years now, from the rock and roll of Elvis Presley and The Beatles’ early catalogue to more modern acts like Maroon 5 and Pink. Although pop bands and musicians are gradually incorporating more and more synthesised and electronic instruments, the success of acts – like the latter two mentioned above – in this past decade proves that more traditional instruments still have a place in popular music. When it comes to playing pop, there are a couple of chord progressions that you can try out to get started. E, G, D, A is one of the simplest progressions, yet this…

Digital acoustic recording I love playing my classical guitar, and I want to record some tracks with it. However, I want to edit them using a computer and obviously I can’t plug the guitar into my machine directly because there are no pickups. How can I record acoustically on the computer? It really depends on your available budget. The cheapest option would be to buy a USB desktop microphone and plug it into your computer. Make sure you stick the microphone near the soundhole of the guitar (but not so close that your fingers get in the way and pollute your recording) and record what the microphone hears into your favourite audio editor, like Apple’s GarageBand or Audacity. A decent desktop microphone can be picked up for around £25/$39, or…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar Restringing your guitar is an important part of any guitar owner’s relatively small maintenance schedule, and while it might seem a little daunting when you do it for the first time, the whole restringing process is actually a lot easier than you might think. How often you choose to restring your instrument really depends on a number of factors, such as how often you play, your playing style itself and the quality of strings on your instrument. Some guitarists will change their strings every week if they’re gigging regularly, others may leave it far longer if they’re only an occasional player. It’s not an exact science, but there are a few clues…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar audio guides Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar Strumming seems so simple, but there is an art to it. It’s not uncommon to sit down with a guitar for the first time and find it difficult to strum up and down the strings comfortably. Most beginners tighten up their wrist, almost raking the strings, making it impossible to get any type of natural flow. First and foremost, you need the right guitar pick. As we’re just starting out, a thin pick – around 0.73mm – is best. It will allow far more freedom when performing downstrokes and upstrokes, giving you much more leeway when…

Further info Turn to page 152 for a list of the essential basic chords Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar Guitar chords involve a collection of notes sounded together that are played on adjacent or separate strings, or all of the strings together. The guitar is a very versatile instrument for chording purposes, and there are five basic major chord patterns, which are C, A, G, E and D (known as the CAGED system). You may notice that there are some chords that appear to be missing, such as F and B (as well as the sharps and flats). Well, they aren’t here because…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and follow along on your guitar Nobody said that learning barre chords was going to be easy, right? Far from it, but as well as knowing the basic structures and hand positions that make up the chords, there are plenty of tricks you can implement to make playing them slightly less taxing. Most of these boil down to your playing posture and the way in which you are holding the guitar. While learning these complex chords, you needn’t worry about looking cool and adopting a rock ‘n’ roll stance – it’s far more important and practical to get your body trained and getting used to the position it needs to be in so that you can fret the…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar String bending is a very basic blues and country technique that involves ‘bending’ or pushing the string over the fingerboard with your fretting fingers so that the string gets tighter and the pitch goes up. Bending the strings far enough to get the pitch to change can take quite a bit of effort, especially for a novice, so the key is to use three of the fingers on your fretting hand to manipulate the string – one (your ring finger) on the fret you intend to bend and then a further two (your middle and index fingers) on the frets next to it for added leverage. However, if you have a tremolo…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar If you want to make your acoustic or electric guitar play a completely different sound, try using natural harmonics. The key to achieving a successful and effective natural harmonic is the positioning of your fretting finger. Rather than pushing your finger down on the string as you would when playing a regular note, you must only rest your finger on the top of the string without applying downward pressure. When played correctly, a natural harmonic, like an open string, can still be heard even when playing another note (as long as it’s on a different string). The great…

From distortion to delay, a guitar’s sound can be drastically transformed thanks to an effects pedal Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar It’s widely assumed that an effects pedal can get any tone or sound you need. While they are certainly beneficial and essential if you are looking for something specific, it’s far more likely that any pedal will need to be used in conjunction with numerous other pieces of kit to be a true success. That doesn’t mean they can’t shape your education. Effects pedals are designed to boost certain tones or sound. The most common are distortion pedals, but effects such as chorus, delay and compression are also popular. Many, when they are first starting out,…

Key signatures are shown at the beginning of a piece of music and are either a series of sharps or flats. You will see a key signature immediately after the clef in a piece of music, saving the composer from having to add them after each required note. Key signatures explain two things: firstly, the key the piece is in and, secondly, which of the notes you play as either sharps or flats. The order in which sharps and flats are placed in a key signature will always remain the same. There are two mnemonics we can use to help us remember these orders on a treble clef stave. For sharps we can use: Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battles For flats we can use: Battle Ends And Down…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and follow along on your guitar The major scale is one of the most popular scale types. You might also see this referred to as the Ionian scale. This scale produces music that has an essentially ‘happy’ sound. It comprises a specific sequence of eight notes using tones (whole notes) and semitones (half notes). The major scale will always follow this sequence; from the example of the C major scale you can see the semitones will always fall between the third and fourth notes, and the seventh and eighth notes. Major scales can be used in a variety of different musical styles, including the ever-popular rock and pop categories. This page will show you exactly how to play…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and follow along on your guitar As mentioned in a previous section, minor scales can exist in various forms; however, the minor pentatonic scale is loosely based upon the natural minor scale. In the instance below, the root note of the minor pentatonic scale is A (the first note), with the rest of the scale being made up of the third, fourth, fifth and seventh notes of the A natural minor scale (ABCDEFG). Closely compare this minor pentatonic scale to the blues scale across the page and you will notice that they are extremely similar with the exception being the exclusion of the sharpened fourth (or flattened fifth) which in this instance would be an F# (or Gb).…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar Metal has changed over the years. Brought to the forefront by bands like Black Sabbath and then hardened in the Eighties thanks to Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, the genre is now more fractured than it has ever been. There’s black metal, death metal, doom metal, glam metal and many more metal sub-genres to listen to and be inspired by. A distinct sound has remained true throughout the years, however, namely a distorted quality backed up with long guitar solos and a thick, deep tone. At its core, the development of metal has come in how much bands have tried to push it to its limits. Sludge metal, for example, is almost…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar Contemporary folk music is quite hard to define, but easy enough to identify by ear. Although folk music in its purest form was around long before guitars as we know them even existed, the revival in the mid-20th Century is arguably what is associated with the term ‘folk rock’. In the latter part of this revival in the early Sixties, luminaries like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Simon & Garfunkel produced acoustic masterpieces that have transcended time. Although Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel would later incorporate electric elements into their acts (with a degree of controversy in Dylan’s case), they still retained a folk rock sound. A time of great upheaval, many…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar As it’s one of the most complex musical genres in the world, playing jazz is a real test of a guitarist’s ability. The genre makes use of syncopation, improvisation, polyrhythms and the swung note – all skills that can take years to acquire and perfect. Jazz is a genre that is difficult to play and it’s also difficult to define, too, since the term encompasses a range of music like bebop, ragtime and free jazz. Like the genre in general, jazz guitarists rarely conform to any musical templates or standards – any time signature or chord structure goes! Relatively simple chords like major sevenths (maj7) are very common, but other commonly used…

Major chords Get a happy sound with these shapes Basic major chords are incredibly popular in Western guitar music, probably because many of them are easy to play and they give your songs a happy feel. These chords contain the first, third and fifth notes in the corresponding major scale. It’s worth noting that the ‘major’ isn’t often referred to when you see these chords written down. Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Key 1 Index 2 Middle 3 Ring 4 Little X: Don’t strum this string Minor chords The best way to get a sad sound A basic minor chord will give you a much sadder sound than a major chord. This is because the third note…

Your posture while playing the guitar is vitally important because if you slouch or are generally seated badly, then you could easily pick up bad playing habits that could make it much harder to learn to play. When learning, the best position is to remain seated with a nice straight back, with your strumming hand resting over the sound hole or pickups and the thumb of your fretting hand pressed against the neck of your instrument so that your fingers have more flexibility to reach around and press down on the strings. As your confidence grows, however, you can play your instrument while standing up too. Many guitar players prefer to stand while performing but we recommend working your way up to it. And it’s not just deciding whether to…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar Video file • Watch the step-by-step video guide and follow along on your guitar Further info Turn to page 92 for more information on how to read tabs Warming up your hands before you begin playing your guitar is crucial, which is why you’ll see all the top pros do it. It brings a number of advantages, including helping to prevent RSI (repetitive strain injury), enabling you to move your hands and fingers more quickly and avoiding cramp while you’re playing. Getting your hands used to the feeling of the frets will also give you the advantage of muscle memory when it comes to learning complicated riffs. Basically, a five-minute warm-up before…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar Finger picking is the alternative to using a plectrum (pick) to pluck the strings of your guitar. It means you can play more than one note at a time and create rhythmic and melodic patterns for chords. It is typical of classical, folk and country guitar playing, usually using an acoustic instrument. While you can learn to finger pick particular melodies and riffs, an ideal place to start is with a chord that you are already familiar with. Basic finger picking techniques can take the exact same chord patterns and replace the strumming with picking that draws out individual notes or groups of notes. This can add another dimension to the chord,…

Give it a try Video file • Watch the step-by-step guide and follow along on your own guitar String muting is a technique that is used to prevent certain strings from sounding while playing other strings. The reason why guitarists mute strings at times is because otherwise the vibrating strings will interfere with the music they’re making. For example, when playing licks, the bending and release of a higher string will cause the lower bass strings to vibrate, either because they’ve been accidentally hit or because they’ve simply vibrated when other strings have been hit. To effectively mute strings that you don’t want to be heard, there are numerous techniques available. For example, many players use the palm of their picking hand to mute the lower strings, which involves ‘karate…

A musical note is represented by a type of dot on the musical stave. This dot can either be filled in or left with a gap in the middle. This will change the length of time that you play the note, for example, four crotchets would be played on the four beats of a bar. Most notes also contain a vertical line known as a stem. Again, this will help to determine how long you hold the note on for, however, the direction of the stem (pointing up or pointing down) makes no difference. Here are the different musical notes and how long they should be played for. You may initially have trouble distinguishing the notes from each other but after steady practise you’ll find yourself knowing your crotchets from…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and follow along on your guitar During the course of this rather detailed glossary, we will illustrate and explain a number of symbols and words that help us perform and understand a piece of music. We will also take this opportunity to have a little bit of a recap on just what we have learned in this section so far, as understanding music can be quite daunting. We will also introduce you to some more commonly used symbols that you are quite likely to encounter in a piece of music. You will find a brief description of each symbol and, in most cases, a diagram showing the character in question. As you familiarise yourself with these life will…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar There are three different types of minor scales which include the harmonic and melodic, but here we shall be looking at the natural minor scale, or as it can be referred to as the Aeolian Scale. Similar to the major scale, it is made from a series of semitones and tones, but you will see that the placement of these distances is noticeably different. The natural minor scale will always use the following pattern. This time you will see that the semitone falls between the second and third notes, and the fifth and sixth notes. Minor scales can be used in a variety of different musical styles but will create a completely…

Give it a try Audio file • Listen to the audio guide and follow along on your guitar This scale is a hexatonic scale (six note) made primarily of the minor pentatonic scale. The difference between the two scales is the use of blue notes, which are notes played at a slightly lower pitch, typically a semitone, than its major equivalent. Notice that the blue notes used in this example are the C (flattened third), D# (sharpened fourth/flattened fifth), and the G (flattened seventh). The blues scale is often used with the 12-bar blues chords sequence and blues music in general, although it can also be common in jazz music. It can also be heard in some conventional pop music. We will now show you how you can play the…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar Punk rock music developed during the mid-Seventies as bands like The Ramones (in the US) and the Sex Pistols (in the UK) captivated crowds with their short, energy-filled and often antiestablishment songs. Punk even became a cultural phenomenon in the UK. Many saw the punk movement as a response to the overblown ten-minute progressive-rock epics that were popular during that time. So instead of grandiose solos and multiple time-signature changes found in many prog songs, punk rock featured heavily distorted guitars, relatively low production values and simple power-chord structures. Inevitably, this sound evolved over time, and gave rise to numerous sub-genres such as faster and heavier hardcore punk in the early Eighties,…

Give it a try Audio files • Listen to the audio guides and play along on your guitar It may have never cracked the mainstream, but classical guitar music is incredibly popular with certain audiences, and is one of the most difficult genres to master. With its intricate finger-picking patterns and often complex arpeggios, classical guitar players require both hands to be at their best, and it’s certainly a genre that requires more than a fair bit of patience and practice. Classical duets and quartets are fairly common in this musical genre, but often the guitarists are soloists, so they need to be picking bass notes as well as a higher-pitched melody. This results in many interesting chord shapes occurring and finger patterns that are not seen in any other…