Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Learning Guitar Involves Knowing Your Instrument

By Steve Casey

When you learn guitar, think of you and the instrument as partners in a musical relationship, rather than treating the instrument merely as a tool. The more you can understand the construction and quirks of your particular guitar, the sooner you can work together to create lovely music. Having this attitude will be beneficial as you learn how to play the acoustic guitar, because you will learn how to treat the instrument well, and in turn, it will enable you to play more easily.

You can learn to name the guitar parts quickly; body, neck and head, and the frets that cross the neck with the strings running over them, attaching to the tuning pegs in the head.

When holding the guitar, you let the back of it rest against your stomach, with the neck more-or-less parallel to the floor. The thickest string runs along the highest edge of the neck, with the thinnest along the bottom. Your fingers or guitar pick hang just over the sound hole, or the mid-point of the body if the guitar is electric.

It's important when you learn guitar that you sit up fairly straight, and don't strain your back muscles. And most importantly, hold your fingering hand at the far end of the strings, and pull your wrist down, with the thumb in the middle of the back of the neck. Now you can plant the tips of the fingers, not the flats, on the strings. It will hurt to use your fingertips, but once you build up some calluses, that will stop. And placing your fingers this way will help you learn guitar chords without the flats of your fingers touching neighboring strings and deadening their sound.

Placing your fingering hand in the right position won't just make it easier on your fingers and muscles as you learn guitar, but will help the guitar itself. The neck of the instrument will tend to twist from the pressure of your fingers, but this will lessen if the fingers press straight down on the frets rather than dragging sideways on each guitar string. As you learn more about the construction and makeup of your instrument, you'll discover these and other postures that will make it easier to play, and lessen the strain on both you and the guitar. - 40728

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