MUSIC MATES

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Equipment and Attitude

If you are going to learn to play the guitar, you will need to beg, borrow, or steal one. Since air guitar is not the same as the real thing. Whether you use an electric, acoustic, electro-acoustic, or classical guitar is not significantly relevant. There will be differences, to be certain, but you will still learn to play the guitar and the skill can be applied to any type of guitar.

Many believe the classical guitar a fine instrument for the beginning guitar student. It depends on how quickly you are going to start performing for others. If you will be performing in less than a year from when you begin learning to play the guitar I would encourage you to purchase an electro-acoustic guitar. At any rate, you will also need a pick, which is flat, triangular, and made of nylon (a hard plastic). That is all you really need to start playing the guitar.

There will be three aspects to your learning at the beginning. They include scales, chords and rhythmic patterns. Many enjoy starting with 3 chords and one strum pattern, so they can play a pop song and sing along. This is a good way to begin, because it engages the heart together with the head.
First Steps

You can begin to play a song with only three chords. So let us learn D, G, and A.

Technically, a chord is three notes or more played at the same time or nearly the same time. You will notice that the chords for the guitar usually have 4-6 notes. That is because some of the notes in a chord are played at two different pitches, called octaves. The same note, just higher pitched is an octave higher and the same note, lower pitched is an octave lower.

Look at the legend to familiarize yourself with notation for chord diagrams on the guitar. The first horizontal bar in the diagram corresponds to the nut on the guitar, which is the top of the neck, where the strings enter the head of the guitar.

Now look at the chord diagram for D. Try to carefully place your fingers at the places on the neck of the guitar that correspond to those in the diagram. Then, using the pick, strum from the fourth string down.

If there are some strange noises it is because of one of three problems all beginners have. Be careful to press down hard enough on the string in the middle of the space between the correct fret bars. If that is not the problem, be careful not to touch any other strings with the fingers you are using to make a note. Also, watch the palm of your hand that it is not inadvertently touching a string. You must twist your hand and reposition your fingers until you get each string sounding a clear note. Remember to not play the 5th and 6th strings (the top two, lowest pitched strings).

Repeat this procedure for each chord. Practice the three of them each day for about three days. By then you should have them sounding beautifully every time.

You will need a strum pattern as well. Strum patterns are patterned combinations of down strums and up strums. Yes, you must strum up sometimes in between the down strums to create the rhythm of the guitar.

So imagine that a down strum is worth a quarter note in time of a 4/4 song. What does this mean? Simply put, it means that you will strum down four times for each measure. A measure is a basic unit of time in the song. You can count it out: 1, 2, 3, 4,; 2, 2, 3, 4; 3, 2, 3, 4 in military fashion or 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3, 4 in civilian mode. The benefit of military mode is that the 1st number counts the measure you are on. You will feel that 1st beat of nearly every measure if you are counting correctly, depending on the song too.

The up strums come in between the beats in the measure. They can be counted together with the down strums in this way: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & ; 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & ; etc… each ‘and’ is a strum upward from the 1st string up to the string you normally start your down strum on for the chord. It takes practice.

There is a basic strum pattern that works in general for singing along with a song. It is D . D U . U D U / D . D U . U D U / etc… The periods are where you make the strum movement, but do not make contact with the strings that time. So to put it another way, where the untouched strokes are in parenthesis: D (U) D U (D) U D U / D (U) D U (D) U D U / etc… You are always moving your hand that holds the pick down and then up and then down and then up, but sometimes you stroke the strings and sometimes you do not. It is all based on the strum pattern you are creating for the song. Try it! You will get the knack of it soon enough. Practice makes perfect.