Archive for the ‘guitar reviews’ Category
With so many quality guitar lesson-providing websites out there, increasingly larger numbers of existing and prospective guitar players are nowadays turning to the Internet when it comes to finding efficient guitar playing lessons, tutorials, tips and tricks that can significantly improve their playing. Although many types of guitar lessons have good potential of teaching both the basics and subtleties behind playing the guitar, guitar lesson videos are still regarded as the best methods of learning how to play the guitar. Designed by the best guitar players and instructors in the world, the right video guitar lessons can teach you everything you want to know in the least of time and with minimum effort. Video guitar lessons are nowadays provided by dedicated websites either under the form of downloadable or CD/DVD video files, they are properly categorized on criteria such as difficulty and music genre, and can be either accessed for free or obtained in exchange of a small fee.
Regardless of your level of skill and experience at playing the guitar, online guitar lesson videos are perfect for helping you polish your guitar playing technique and discovering new things about playing the guitar. Providing you with valuable guitar playing techniques, tips and tricks in video format, video guitar lessons are ideal for both novice and experienced guitar players looking to further improve their playing.
Presenting a variety of concepts in a descriptive and highly comprehensive manner, guitar lesson videos are easy to put into practice and can help you discover and reach new levels of guitar playing in less time and with less effort. Therefore, if you are interested in learning everything you can about the art of playing the guitar from professional guitar players, all you need to do is find a reliable, dedicated guitar tutorials-providing website, enter in possession of a few quality video guitar lessons and start practicing. With good motivation and regular practice, results will begin to show in no time.
If you are a complete beginner and want to learn the basics of playing the guitar the quick, easy and convenient way, then it is advisable to enter in possession of quality beginner guitar lessons in video format. Video guitar lessons for beginners are perfect for learning the basics such as the notes on the guitar fret board, basic finger positions on the fret board, the most commonly used scales, finger strength building, picking techniques, speed training, and so on. Helping novice guitar players build a solid guitar playing foundation, beginner video guitar lessons are crucial for ensuring that all exercises are performed correctly and naturally. Considering that the first guitar lessons that you receive have a great impact on your future guitar playing (once formed, bad guitar playing habits are usually very difficult to eliminate) it is crucial that you use the best quality beginner video guitar lessons right from the beginning and build a clean, proper technique.
Once you have reached the next level with your guitar playing, then you can switch to a set of intermediate and advanced video guitar lessons and develop new skills while also working to further improve the ones you have already learned. High quality, efficient video guitar lessons for intermediate and advanced-level guitar players are designed to help you learn how to play the guitar like a pro, and cover a variety of topics, as well as a wide range of tips, tricks and secrets that most guitar players prefer not to expose. If you want to be able to play the guitar like a pro and impress all your friends with your skills, then you should enter in possession of a few quality video guitar lessons for advanced, start practicing, arm yourself with a little patience and results will definitely show!
For more information about guitar lesson video or even about beginner guitar lesson your can check on this website http://www.guitar5day.com for more guitar related subjects.
The very first step toward learning to play acoustic guitar is to develop confidence and to destroy that “I can’t do it” mentality. Your biggest obstacle in your acoustic guitar playing is not going to be money, time, or the absence of a good teacher. The biggest obstacle is going to be you. You are your own worst enemy. Once you learn how to tame the negativity inside, you will be that much closer to becoming a good acoustic guitar player.
Frustration is normal during the learning process. Learning anything new is not meant to be easy. Resistance is what helps us grow. So the next time you are working on a scale, or chord progression, and you find yourself fumbling or messing up, don’t throw down the guitar with frustration, instead welcome the challenge and have patience in it.
YOUR FIRST GUITAR
Buying a first guitar is an important step for the beginner guitarist. You should have a good understanding of the acoustic guitar as a whole as well as a good idea of what your goals are as an acoustic guitar player. By educating yourself in these areas, you will be able to make an intelligent purchase that can provide you with years of enjoyable playing.
There are two kinds of acoustic guitars that you can purchase and they are your classic or nylon string guitar and your steel string guitar. One is not necessarily better than the other as it is really a matter of personal taste, but each guitar does have its own unique feel and sound. The classic or nylon guitars produce a round or dull tone, where as the steel string guitars are much different, producing a bright tinny or metallic sound. You will certainly develop your own preference the longer you play, or like many guitarists, you will enjoy using both. Only time will tell.
Another thing you will have to consider is the body style of your acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitars come in a variety of different body sizes from small to jumbo. Each size has its own distinct sound. Smaller body guitars have more treble and midrange sounds and are much easier to hold. Lead guitarists tend to favor smaller body guitars because they tend to have a more balanced sound to them and are easier to make out when playing with other musicians in a band. Your larger body guitars have more bass and are more difficult to hold. The only way to really know what body style is right for you is to try one out for yourself. Your best bet is to find a guitar that you are comfortable holding and playing. Guitar playing is challenging enough in the beginning and you do not need any added difficulties.
Guitar quality will differ depending on the model and brand. Sometimes two instruments of the same make and model can differ as well. It is therefore important to try out as many guitars as possible within your price range. It is also recommended that you bring along an experienced musician when you go guitar shopping. An experienced guitar player will be able to better judge the quality of a guitar.
Buy the best guitar that you can afford. Many of the guitars that sell for under $100 are poorly made for the most part. If you cannot afford to spend more, then save up and wait until you can. A well made guitar will be easier to play, more appealing to the eye and more responsive. If you enjoy playing your instrument more, you will then be more inspired to play. You can find a fine beginner acoustic guitar for under $500. Some brands to look into are Seagull, Martin, Yamaha, Fender and Ibanez to name a few. You may also want to look into the used acoustic guitar market. You may be able to find some real gems out there at great prices, but you have to be very careful with used guitars. Make sure you take an experienced guitar player with you if you decide to buy a used guitar.
LEARNING & PRACTICE
There is probably no substitution for a good guitar teacher, but it can be rather expensive over time, so many guitar players are left with no other choice then to learn on their own. For those of you who may not be able to afford a professional instructor right now, below are some guidelines for helping you get the most out of your practice time.
Practice as many days out of the week as you can for at least twenty to thirty minutes, more if possible. The more often you play the faster you will learn. Be careful not to overdo it though and take breaks of course. Your brain can only absorb so much information before it needs a break and your hands and the rest of your body need time to recuperate as well. When you practice do not rush through any of your exercises. Twenty minutes of quality focused practice is much more effective than an hour of sloppy practice
Study Your Instrument
Take some time to learn more about the parts of your acoustic guitar. Learn about how it is constructed and how all the parts work together to produce those beautiful sounds that you hear.
Learn How to Tune Your Guitar
You can find free step by step guides online for tuning your acoustic guitar. Make certain that you spend time learning how to do this. Purchase a guitar tuner at any local music store and practice tuning your guitar with the guitar tuner. When you begin to develop a better ear, try tuning it without the guitar tuner. Then use the guitar tuner to check and see how accurate your ear was. This will help you develop a good ear.
Learn the Right Posture
If you are accustomed to just grabbing your guitar and sitting down to play in any old position, then you are at risk of injuring yourself and developing bad playing habits. Make sure you understand the correct way to sit and hold your instrument for optimal performance.
Learn Your Chords & Scales
Learn as many different chords and variations of the same chord that you can and practice your scales. This will give you a well rounded familiarity with the frets on the guitar and it will build up strength in your fingers and hands.
I hope this article has helped with your acoustic guitar learning. Keep a positive attitude and practice! Before you know you will be playing acoustic guitar like a pro. I wish you well. God Bless.
History of the Lap Steel Guitar
The lap steel guitar is a type of steel guitar, from which other types developed.
There are three main types of lap steel guitar:
Lap slide guitars, the first developed, which use a similar sound box to a Spanish guitar.
Resonator guitars, particularly those with square necks.
Electric lap steel guitars, which include the first commercially successful solid body instruments.
Lap slide and resonator guitars may also be fitted with pickups, but do not depend on electrical amplification to produce their sound.
The Chandler electric lap steel guitar is a modern solid body electric instrument with the classic Weissenborn profile and built without its’ normal soundbox, relying on its’ electric pickup system to directly receive the vibrations of the strings. Solid body instruments are preferred in situations where acoustic feedback may otherwise be a problem, and are inherently both cheaper to build and more rugged than acoustic electric instruments.
Chandler Musical Instruments is a manufacturer of solid body electric guitars, lap steel guitars and electric basses. Weissenborn or H. Weissenborn is a brand of lap slide guitar manufactured by Hermann Weissenborn in Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s.
These instruments are now highly sought after, and form the base for most non-resonator acoustic lap steel guitars currently produced. It is estimated that fewer than 5000 original instruments were produced, and unknown how many now survive.
Steel guitar is:
A method of playing slide guitar using a steel. Resonator guitars, including round necked varieties, are particularly suitable for this style, but other types are also used, usually with modified high actions, as well as instruments produced specifically for the purpose.
A specialized instrument built for playing in steel guitar fashion are;
Lap steel guitar, which may be:
Lap slide guitar, with a conventional wooden guitar box.
The square-necked variety of resonator guitar.
Electric lap steel guitar.
Electric table steel guitar.
Electric pedal steel guitar.
The name steel guitar does not come from the material of which the guitar is made, but from the name of the steel, a slide held in the left hand and refers to a method of playing on a guitar held horizontally, with the strings uppermost and the bass strings towards the player, and using a type of slide called a steel above the fingerboard rather than fretting the strings with the fingers. This may be done with any guitar, but is most common on instruments designed and produced for this style of playing.
The lap steel typically has 6 strings and is tuned to either standard guitar tuning, or an open chord. It differs from a conventional or Spanish guitar in having a higher action and often a neck that is square in cross section. The frets, unused in steel style playing, may be replaced by markers.
Steel guitar technique also developed from bottleneck guitar, which is a similar technique to steel guitar but with the guitar held in the conventional position, and using a different form of slide to accommodate this playing position.
The technique was invented and popularized in Hawaii, thus the lap steel guitar is sometimes known as the Hawaiian steel guitar, particularly in documents from the early 1900s. However in Hawaiian music, Hawaiian guitar means slack string guitar, played in the conventional or Spanish position.
I was puzzled when I saw the name of the game on my receipt as “Guitar Hero World Tour” yet when I played the game it seemed more like Rock Band 2 and a half. In one tier of the game that had five songs, four of them were on either Rock Band or Rock Band 2. For a new 50 dollar game, this is just unacceptable. If I wanted just a couple more songs I would have downloaded an expansion pack online for Rock Band which is basically all Guitar Hero 4 is.
Music has been around since the dawn of time, their is no shortage of songs that involve a guitar, bass, drums and microphone. The songs on the first three Guitar Hero and first two Rock Bands are great, but that does not mean that I would like to pay more money just to play the same songs under a different name. Now the songs are tweaked a little bit, but its still the same song. In my mind, there is no excuse for making me pay for the same thing twice, Guitar Hero 4 should spend more time looking for good songs that were not in a previous game and make it better.
Nobody can blame Guitar Hero for adding a bass, drums, and microphone but that does not give them the right to completely copy Rock Band. Tour Mode? That sounds like Rock Band World Tour mode to me. Playing songs on higher tiers before you beat the lower tiers? That’s a Rock Band feature, not found in any other Rock Bands. It almost seems to me that the makers of Guitar Hero sat around and played Rock Band to get their ideas and then just changed them slightly.
It wasn’t all bad for Guitar Hero though, including “Crazy Train” and “La Bamba” it does have unique songs and brings back the image of guitar battling bosses during the game that Rock Band has never tried. Another thing that true Guitar Hero fans would appreciate over Rock Band is how much more challenging Guitar Hero is. Rock Band on hard is the equivalent of Guitar Hero on medium. This may not make a difference if you are not good at Guitar Hero, but the hard level should really be hard, and if you’re an expert, it should show that in your game play.
Overall i would give Guitar Hero world tour 3 out of 5 stars. The original songs are good, and if you are a fan of the series you will undoubtedly like this one. But, since everyone does expect Guitar Hero to try and compete with Rock Band to me it did not come even close to meeting nor exceeding Rock Band. Just because you add the bass, drums, and michrophone does not make it Rock Band, though using the same songs does make it as close to Rock Band as they can get but thats not what a consumer wants. If Guitar Hero is to compete with Rock Band they need to make it better and be more innovative, it needs to be one step ahead of Rock Band, instead of trying to just meet Rock Band and falling a step behind.
The list for popular types of guitars can be endless. Guitars come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and types. There are acoustic guitars, electric acoustic guitars, semi hollow guitars, electric guitars, twelve string guitars, four string bass guitars, five string bass guitars; the catalog goes on and on.
Acoustic guitars
Acoustic guitar is independent of any external device to be heard. The acoustic guitar is more sober than other instruments commonly found in bands and orchestras. To play within such groups the sound is often externally amplified. Acoustic guitars, which are available today, feature a variety of pickups. This enables the player to increase and adjust the raw guitar sound.
Prominent subcategories feature within the acoustic guitar group
Classical and flamenco guitars; steel string guitars, that comprise the folk or flat top guitar; arch top guitar and the twelve string guitars. There are unamplified guitars also in the acoustic guitar group.
Such types are designed to play in various registers such as the acoustic bass guitar. The tuning of the acoustic bass guitar is similar to that of the electric bass guitar.
Classical guitars
These are normally strung with nylon strings, to be played in a seated pose and are used to play a variety of musical styles together with classical music. The classical guitar is designed in such a way that it allows the execution of solo polyphonic arrangements of music
Portuguese guitar
The Portuguese guitar is a 12 string guitar used in Portugal for the customary Fado songs.
Archtop guitars
Steel string instruments feature a violin inspired f hole design where the top (and often the back) of the instrument are engraved in a curved rather than a flat shape.
Flat top (steel string) guitars
Here the body dimension is typically considerably larger than a classical guitar and it has a narrower, resistant neck and stronger structural design
Resonator, resophonic or Dobro guitars
The hum of the resonator guitar is created by a metal resonator fitted in the middle of the top.
Tenor guitars
Some classical guitarists call the Niibori prime guitar a Tenor Guitar on the grounds that it sits in pitch between the alto and the bass.
Harp guitars
This consists of a usual guitar, with additional harp strings strung on top of the six normal strings. The instrument is generally acoustic and the harp strings are adjusted to lower notes than the guitar strings, for an added bass range.
Acoustic bass guitars
This type has steel strings or guts strings in it and often has the same tuning as an electric bass guitar.
12 string guitars
Instead of having only six strings, the 12 string guitar has six courses made up of two strings each, like a mandolin or f lute.
Electric guitars
Electric guitars are the types, which have solid, semi hollow, or hollow bodies, and generate minute sound without amplification. The electromagnetic vibrations of the strings are converted into electrical signals, which are supplied to an amplifier via a cable or radio transmitter. Sound outputted is regularly modified by other electronic instruments or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier.
Most people think learning guitar is difficult. Well not true, learning guitar is always easier than most people think. Learning guitar is often like yoga for the fingers, as they learn to stretch and even grow a little differently. The key to learning guitar is practice. Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of first learning guitar is that it is seemingly impossible to play anything that actually sounds good and most people get frustrated and leave it at that. Once you get that first “good” tune from the playing the guitar it acts as a trigger for more enthusiasm and encouragement that you are seeing success from your endeavors. When you have that first guitar success it is a great feeling to have. One thing to remember is that learning guitar is a passion for each and every one of us and is something that takes a long time to master.
A guitar is primarily a rhythm instrument, meaning you can make good music with just a handful of chords and a couple of scales. Above all, the most important thing is to make sure that playing the instrument is something you actually enjoy, or no matter how much you put into it, you won’t ever get anywhere. It is undeniably the most popular instrument in our country at this time. For only a small amount more you can get a quality instrument.
Learning Guitar: Getting Started
I have found that learning to play guitar is like many other activities it takes practice and perseverance. A person can get along fine these days by learning a few chords and knowing how to read tab, right. That should be the first guitar goal and that alone will unlock many doors to guitar progression. The best and easiest path to becoming a competent guitar player is by learning some chords and then applying them to learning the rhythm parts of songs that you hear and enjoy. Guitar players often spend hours learning new chords and practicing them over and over again. Almost anyone can learn to play the guitar if they put their heart into learning, in addition to putting in a substantial amount of effort and passion. Although many prefer to take lessons, which can be very expensive, learning to playing guitar by purchasing guitar courses online is also a very realistic option.
Choosing an Acoustic Guitar
If you are looking to choose an acoustic guitar as your learning guitar then I would recommend the following:
- Taylor, moderately priced
- Dean, some good deals available
- Gibson, expensive, but you get your money’s worth in terms of quality
Acoustic guitars may be more expensive up front but then again you won’t need an amplifier. I often recommend learning acoustic first, and then moving to electric, but it doesn’t really matter what you start on and is often a matter of taste. An acoustic guitar is generally used by learners because it produces a cleaner sound and the chords crisper as a result. Some people consider it harder to play on an acoustic because you have to push harder, and when you take an electric guitar in your hands after that, youll see how it is easier.
Choosing an Electric Guitar
If you are looking to learn guitar by starting with an electric guitar I would recommend the following makes:
- Ibanez, great starters and very attractive prices
- Gibson, same as acoustic, expensive but worth it
- Fender, moderately priced, but if you don’t want to pay full price you can go with Squire
If you decide to start with an electric guitar, then you’ll want to purchase a practice amp too. You can usually pick up a reasonably high quality practice amp for around $50-$100. If you buy an electric guitar first, it will be great fun learning to do power chords and noisy solos, but when you reach certain level where you want to start using more complex chords and arrangements, it’s time to knuckle down to practice chords and progressions as if it was an acoustic. One advantage of learning guitar with an electric guitar as opposed to acoustic guitars is that you can practice silently by using headphones.
Conclusion
Learning guitar is about repetition, repetition, repetition and if you have time, repetition. Once you have those chords and scales burned into your muscle memory playing guitar is very relaxing. One major aspect of learning guitar is that of confidence and getting to that first goal and persevering is a must. Also some people find it difficult initially teaching the left hand the chords and fingering but again, this comes down to practice. The first thing to understand is that learning guitar is something that takes a long time. The most important thing to keep in mind while learning guitar is never give up and you will succeed.
Guitars are the most common instruments played by many music lovers of all ages. Even kids can easily learn to play the guitar. Choosing the right guitar is very easy. There are many types of guitars that can go along with any kind of music. All a guitar player needs to do is identify the kind of music he prefers to know which type of guitar is best for him.
The following are the most common types of guitars.
Classical Guitars
Classical guitars are the father of all guitars. They have been used for many genres and all kinds of music. Classical guitars come with nylon strings which give the guitar a unique and colorful sound. The sizes of classical guitars have been standard for many years. Classical guitars that are of the finest quality are made with spruce or cedar tops. The guitar is able to produce various sounds even with the use of fingernails.
Electric Guitars
Electric guitars are the next most common guitar especially in the 20th century. Electric guitars are known as the main attraction of rock music. These guitars have been famous since rock music was introduced and blend very well with jazz, pop and even blues music. The main difference between other guitars and electric guitars is that they are played with amplifiers because they are unable to produce sound without amplification.
Steel Guitars
Steel guitars acquired their name because they are literally made of steel. These types of guitars are played horizontally. A guitar player may place the guitar across his knees or legs or on a stand. The pedal steels of these guitars are the ones responsible for their unique sounds.
Bass Guitars
Bass guitars are similar to electric guitars. However, there are also variations in these guitars such as the acoustic bass guitars. Although bass guitars fall under the family of guitars, the sounds they produce are very distinctive and separate from any other guitar. The reason is that bass guitars usually have four strings unlike standard guitars that have six to twelve strings.
Many other guitars may be found on the market. There are also the archtop guitars, twelve strings guitars, solid body guitars and the resonator guitars. All these types of guitars produce different kinds of music that can satisfy the taste of many music lovers. All a person has to do is identify his taste for music to be able to decide which guitar is perfect for him and his music.
In The Beginning
The guitars soft melodic tone made it difficult for people to hear it when being played alongside other instruments. So during the 1930s an inventive individual decided to change that and invented the first electric guitar. Little did he know, or have imagined way back then how the invention of the electric guitar would significantly affect the course of 20th century music.
Like most new things, the electric guitar had its critics but it quickly won people over because of its ability to allow musicians to play much more creatively and express their own individual styles.
The First Pickup
In 1924 an inventive engineer working for the Gibson guitar company named Lloyd Loar, designed the first magnetic pickup. Using a magnet, he converted guitar string vibrations into electrical signals, which then were amplified through a speaker system. This first pickup was crude, but it was a great beginning.
The First Electric Guitar
In 1931 the Electro String Company was founded by Paul Barth, George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker, and developed the first electric guitars marketed to the general public. They made their guitars from cast aluminum and were played on a persons lap using a steel slide much like today’s steel guitar. Because of their unusual material, they were affectionately called Frying Pans.
The early success of the frying pans prompted the Gibson guitar company to build their first electric guitar, the ES-150 which is a legend today.
The First Solid-Body Electric Guitar
Electric guitars were quickly becoming popular, even though there was a major problem with their construction. Their bodies would vibrate due to the amplified sounds coming through the speakers they were played into, causing what we know as feed-back. The obvious remedy was to build a guitar made with a solid body which wouldnt vibrate so easily.
As with most innovations, there is controversy over who invented the first solid body electric guitar. Guitar legend Les Paul in the 1940s developed his affectionately called The Log solid-body guitar by attaching a Gibson neck to a solid piece of wooda railroad tie, hence the name Log.
Around this same time, guitarist Merle Travis and engineer Paul Bigsby developed a solid-body electric guitar that resembled the solid-body guitars that were so familiar with today.
The First Mass Produced Electric Guitar
Leo Fender in 1950 was the first to mass produce an electric guitar which was originally called the Fender Broadcaster. This guitar was quickly re-named to the infamous Telecaster because the name Broadcaster was already being used by another company. Leo followed this up in 1954 with the most renowned guitar of all timethe Stratocaster.
Leos success led other guitar manufacturers into developing their own mass-produced electric guitars. Most notable was the teaming-up of the Gibson guitar company with Les Paul to create the famous Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.
More Affordable Electric Guitars
During the 1960s and 1970s famous brand name electric guitars were too expensive for the average person to buy. Less pricey imitations quickly came to market but they were sub-standard in sound and playability. The Japanese, in the 1980s started manufacturing electric guitars of similar quality to the more expensive American made models, but with much more affordable pricing. This prompted Fender and other leading guitar manufacturers into producing less expensive versions of their classic models. This resulted in electric guitars now being more affordable and accessible to more people.
Today, the Gibson and Fender guitar companies are still producing some of the most well-known and best made electric guitars on the market. But its getting crowded with other high quality brands such as BC Rich, ESP and Peavey. Innovative designs, shapes and materials are being incorporated with new technologies to produce better sounding electric guitars.
Modern guitars have built-in software allowing them to sound like other types of guitars. Some are even fitted with pickups that synthesize the sound of different instruments or record the notes in musical notation.
The electric guitar has come a long way with an interesting and inventive past and many in the industry say it has an even brighter future.
The guitar is one of the most sought-after musical instruments today. Its popularity is manifested through-out the radio stations and the music videos on MTV. Almost all types of music in modern pop culture have been influenced by the guitar in one way or another.
For people who would like to get their hands on a guitar, they must first learn the guitar lingo. The guitar lingo is made up of weird-sounding words that are unique to the guitar world.
The guitar lingo also applies to the guitar parts. You must be able to know the parts of a guitar to be able to know how to play it. Here are some of the guitar parts:
-Body
This is also referred to as the sound box. This is the largest guitar part and it comes in different shapes and sizes. The acoustic guitars usually have a hollow body, while electric guitars have solid or semi-solid bodies. Acoustic guitars have hollow bodies because they rely on the body structure for sound resonation and electric guitars use electronic pick-ups to amplify the sound.
-Headstock
The headstock is the part at the end of the guitar which holds the tuning keys. It is connected to the neck of the guitar.
-Nut
The nut is the piece between the guitar neck and the head. It is a small rod with indentations to hold the guitar strings in place.
-Neck
The neck is the long section which holds the fret board.
-Fret board
The fret board is divided into different notes by small metal rods. The number of frets in a fret board varies depending on the type of guitar and the brand. Modern electric guitars usually have 20-22 frets in the fret board.
-Bridge
It is a part of the guitar’s body and it is important for sound resonance. It gives elevation to the guitar strings so they can produce vibrations.
-Pick-up
The pick-up is an electronic device which acts like a microphone: it picks up the vibrations from the strings and converts the vibrations into electrical impulses. They are usually found in electric guitars
-Amp
The amplifier a speaker box from which the sounds of the electric guitar are magnified.
-Capo
This is a device which is attached to the fret board which allows a player to play the same chord structures but in a different key.
Listed below are some of the different words that you might encounter in learning how to play the guitar.
-Riff
Guitar riffs pertain to musical pieces which are parts of a song.
-Reverb
It is added to the sound of the guitar through an effects box or through amplifiers to make the sounds more natural.
-Tablature
Guitar tablatures or more commonly known as guitar tabs are written music for guitars. It is similar to musical pieces (with notes and other musical symbols) but the notes are translated into guitar frets. It’s a useful tool in learning how to play the guitar.
-Vibrato
It refers to a guitar technique where the string is slightly bent at a fast rate to Produce a longer resonating sound.
-Arpeggio
This refers to a technique where you remove notes from a specific chord. You can then use these to create an adlib lead technique or add to the rhythm of the song.
-Pick
This is the small device which guitar players use to strike the guitar strings and is usually made of plastic.
-Whammy bar
This is an attachment to the bridge of electric guitars that can be used to bend the pitch of the notes. You can pull the whammy bar to be able to make your guitar “cry.”
-Plucking
It’s a picking technique where a player does not strum the strings all at once but hits the strings one by one to attain a softer and more defined tone.
-Palm mute
This is a technique where a player uses his picking hand (usually the right hand) to mute the strings while strumming to be able to attain a distinct tone. It is very popular in the punk rock world.
The world of guitars is composed of many other new words and you must be able to master these or at least have an idea of what they are to be able do to appreciate the wonderful instrument that is the guitar..
Guitarists know a lot about their instrumentstechniques, chords, songs etc. But what many guitarists dont know is the history of the guitar. Its understandable, because many people dont feel this helps at all in actually playing the guitar. Still, it is helpful to know everything about the instrumentincluding the history.
The history of guitar is a debatable topic, as there are no concrete facts about the guitar and when exactly it first appeared. What is known, though, is that guitars or similar instruments have been around for over 5,000 years. Entire books could be written about the history of guitar, so in this article, well just go over a timeline of how it is thought the guitar evolved.
1400 B.C: The Hittites play a four-string, guitar-like instrument. This four string instrument had soft, curved sides, which were somewhat similar to the current guitar. Also around this time, the Greeks produced a similar instrument which was modified by the Romans and became known as the cithara.
By 1200 A.D.: There were two types of guitars. One type was known as the Moorish guitar (guitarra morisca). This guitar had a wide fingerboard, rounded back, and several sound holes. The type of guitar was the Latin guitar (guitarra Latina). The Latin guitar looked more like our current guitar with a narrower neck and just one sound hole.
The late 1400s: A new guitar, called the vihuela, evolved from the two types of guitar mentioned. The vihuela was a large instrument with double the strings of the Latin and Moorish guitars, a longer neck and ten or eleven frets. The Portuguese and Spanish courts preferred the vihuela over any other instrument for roughly 200 years.
Until the late 1600s: The vihuela, and another instrument called the lute, were more popular than the guitar. This changed when the popularity of the lute declined because it had too many strings and was too hard to play and tune. The vihuela was replaced by four and five course guitars of that time. Four course guitars had seven stringsa single high string and three pairs of other stringswhile five course guitars had nine stringsa single high string and four pairs of other strings. Some feel that the addition of the fifth course during the 16th century, which gave the guitar greater flexibility, was the reason why the guitar became popular.
By the beginning of the 1800s: Some guitars used fan struts under the soundboard and featured six strings (like the modern guitar). Also changed during this time was the neck (which was raised), the fingerboard (which used ebony or rosewood), and the tuning pegs (which were replaced with machine tuners). Guitars like these are most similar to early classical guitars.
By the late 1800s: A man named Antonio Torres Jurado changed the guitar dramatically by refining the strutting of the guitar. This allowed for as many as seven struts to be spread out like a fan under the soundboard. Additionally, the size of the body and the width of the neck were greatly increased. As a result of Jurados improvements, the guitar had greater bass response and volume. Jurados work made it possible for the guitar to meet the demands of both the solo performer and the concert stage.
The Present: Our modern guitar is practically the same as the one made by Jurado.
As was previously said, this is but a brief introduction to the fascinating history of guitars. If you wish to find out more on certain types of guitars, such as the history of Acoustic, Electric or Bass guitars, you can check out our articles titled The Acoustic Guitar, The Electric Guitar, and The Bass Guitar.