Electric Guitar Lessons

Electric guitars are established in our universe. There are even classical pieces composed for electric guitar. This is a new kind of musical instrument. Not only is the sound amplified by electronics but the sound itself is MADE by electronics. Soooo . . . is playing electric guitar as easy as it looks?!

Well first of all it is best to start to learn guitar using a nylon string acoustic guitar. Steel strings are rough on the fingers when you are just learning how to play. So whether you get it from ebay or the local music store, you need an acoustic guitar that's halfway decent. It doesn't need to be expensive, just playable.

When it comes to buying an electric guitar, you can easily start off with one of the less expensive models. You can get the buzz from playing a real honest to goodness electric guitar on whatever no-frills Stratocaster copy your music store has, and it will get through your initial guitar playing learning.

If there's one single lesson that all guitar students of all styles of music need to learn, it's TAKE IT EASY - SLOW DOWN. The music will still be there, you don't have to rush out to meet it. If you have a tendency to go too fast, to try to force your body to do chord changes before the muscles have learnt them properly, ask youself if you want to be still sounding crappy in a year's time. Because if you don't slow down when you are learning you are going to be sounding like a hat full of baby seals in one year - and probably twenty years time!

An important aspect of learning to play electric guitar is how you are going to be holding the guitar during your long hours of practice. If you do not pay attention to this stuff now, you could end up with back, neck and shoulder problems later from straining your muscles and skeleton.

Now you have your guitar, and of course a decent amplifier. A practice amp is good for use when playing near loved ones if you want to remain loved yourself. Another good idea is to get some kind of guitar effects program for your computer but some of them can be very hard on your cpu.

A tuner and a metronome are essentials. These are two bits of equipment which are part of the discipline of electric guitar playing. Get into the habit of tuning your guitar from time to time during practice sessions - you might be surprised how far out you can get without being aware of it! While you are first learning how to play electric guitar you probably won't be able to do too much jamming with friends until you develop a familiarity with your instrument. So once you feel you have gotten the hang of a song or a riff, try it out with the metronome. As slowly as you need to; you are not doing anybody any favors by rushing.

Do you need a teacher for electric guitar? Can you get all you need from books in your local music store or off the internet? It's true that looking for a person who can teach you what you need to know in a way that you can handle it is a bit of a trial. It's like any relationship, alot better without the other person, but what can you do? If you want to try learning without a teacher then make Google your friend. If you are not used to using search engines, just type any questions into the search box in your own words, and the results you get will at least point you in the right direction. Start by looking for guitar forums. This is where you will find people like yourself who have questions together with people who have answers. There are many ways online to learn to play guitar, some involve buying packages of videos and books which will be delivered to your house. Some give the less expensive option of downloading the videos and instructions. For the most part these guitar teaching methods are excellent. Another way to go is an online course where you can interact with your teacher and ask questions by email or on a forum. This is by far a better way to go because it can't be easily forgotten about like a course that consists of physical goods or computer files.

When you imagine yourself as a guitar player you probably think of the electric guitar. It looks really cool posing with one and they make great sounds.

But is it so cool you want to spend days investigating which is the best guitar for a beginner, where to get the best price, what amp to start with, what ancillary stuff you need? Or is it better to get that over with so you can concentrate on playing?

So let's embark on a journey that will take us flying over the desert of dreary comparison shopping to the grassy meadows of power chords and adoring chicks.

Okay, we are putting together a pack of necessities for the beginner electric guitar player. Your local guitar mart is packed with snazzy looking axes that may or may not love you back when you start caressing their strings, all at varying price ranges. How can a novice figure out which brands are best for which price?

Your Guitar

Okay, grab a guitar and look at how it's made. It is, after all a piece of electronic equipment and should be built to give good service. A well built guitar will have the body, neck and fretboard made of wood, not laminate or plastic.

Take a gander at the bridge. For most novice guitar players, the vibrato, or "floating" bridge is the one to get. The other type is the fixed bridge which does not allow you to "bend" notes using the tremolo arm or "whammy-bar". While we are on the subject, you should be warned that using the whammy bar on a cheap guitar often leads to broken strings, so if you end up with one of these you might want to remove the whammy bar altogether.

And another thing: an electric guitar has twenty-two frets, but some beginner's models are smaller. Don't get this unless you're about ten years old. Stick to the ones with twenty-two frets.

Now we come to the pickups which are little microphones sitting underneath the guitar strings. Pickups close to the bridge give a sharp "twangy" tone, while the pickups closer to the fretboard give a deeper sound.

It's quite easy to get a guitar with three pickups and a switch that lets you choose which pickups are being used.

As for price, are the guitars at the lower end of the price range inferior to the more expensive ones? Heck no! You'll get years of musical enjoyment with one of the less expensive models.

Your Amp

The way your new guitar sounds will depend largely on the way your amplifier is put together.

The power of a guitar amplifier is measured in watts. The higher the wattage, the more volume. Start thinking in the five watt vicinity to start with. That's about the size of your average practice amp.

For most electronics applications vacuum tubes have been replaced by transistors many years ago. But most guitar players use vacuum tube amplifiers because they have a better sound quality. You may be able to get your hands on a practice amp with the option of using a vacuum tube, but if you can't, don't worry you should apply your time and energy to learning your instrument right now.

Your Guitar Effects

There is no "pure" electric guitar sound. It is all altered to some degree. The different ways the guitar sound can be changed is called "effects". Effects like distortion, reverberation, and equalization give the guitarist more creative control over the sound. Some amplifiers have distortion built in because it is the most popular electric guitar effect. Generally speaking the more effects that are built into the amplifier, the better but if you're not to into a whole lot of effects just stick to what you really need.

Tablature is not a dumbed down version of "real" musical notation. It has been a real help to the many people who have taken up the electric guitar and who wanted to get down to the business of playing as quickly as possible.

Tablature as a means of writing music down has been with us for hundreds of years, but many people today look down on tabs as a third rate method of musical communication. Conventional music notation has much more to communicate than tabs, but if you already know more or less how the song sounds, and are prepared to work at your own interpretation, then there's nothing wrong with using tablature.

Guitarists contributing their tabs to websites have brought a wider range of music within reach of amateur musicians who never learnt musical notation.

Electric guitar tabs introduce an amateur guitar player to a range of music without asking him to learn musical theory that he may feel he can do without. Tablature allows the guitarist to get to know the music in his own time. For that reason tabs are a boon to the electric guitar player.

You can find electric guitar tabs in music stores along with conventional written music, but the simplest and best place to look for electric guitar tabs is on the internet. Many tabs are still available for free, but you need to be able to exercise your discernment when making use of tablature produced by amateur guitarists. You may need to change things around a little if they don't sound right.

Tablature also allows the guitarist to learn new scales or modes very quickly.

Using electric guitar tabs to learn new things on the guitar is not a walk in the park - you need to supply some of the information which is written into sheet music. You need to have some idea of the note values and a basic understanding of time signatures and tempo. What that boils down to is that you can hear the music in your head, and you just want to know where to put your fingers on the fret board. That is where guitar tablature can help you.

If you have been thinking all your life about learning how to play the electric guitar and you’ve decided to put your dream into action you need to start looking for an electric guitar. Many seasoned guitar players recommend that you never buy new guitars or equipment. There are bargains to be found online and in the music stores, and there are so many new guitars that are of dubious quality that it is better to make it a policy to become better informed about your musical instruments so you can choose from the range of second hand guitars and equipment.

If you are forced to make buy a new electric guitar most of the top brands like Fender, Ibanez and Gibson have basic low price range models for beginners. Bear in mind that some cheap model guitars are difficult to keep in tune and this could take away from any advantage in price. You could take the route of simply getting the same kind of guitar as your favorite artist.

Here are some user reviews of guitars that might be helpful to guitar players of all persuasions bearing in mind that the reviewers might be somewhat inexperienced but enthusiastic guitarists.

The Vox Pathfinder is a great choice of amp for the new electric guitar player with gain and tremolo built in and enough loudness to satisfy any garage band. The basic guitar effects you need are reverb and distortion. There’s a pedal named Big Muff that does the job nicely and you won’t need to pay a fortune.

For transporting your guitar a hard shell case offers the best protection even though they cost a lot more than gig bags. When you buy your guitar, also get a range of picks in varying thicknesses.

Once you get your guitar and amp home and set up you will then realize that you are not a natural born guitar player and that you are in need of a lot of practice over a fairly considerable amount of time. You have about seven or so chords that you will consider the basic essential chords for the electric guitar player so start learning them and the songs that you can play using them. Also don’t forget to have fun fooling around with trying your chords in different positions on the guitar neck and making up tunes using your chords.

You need to strike a balance between learning other people’s music and creating music that feels good for you. Your own personal style can emerge from day one of electric guitar playing but it will undergo constant change as you learn more over the months and years ahead. But do not let anyone tell you to put your own style of playing on hold.

Whether or not you think that music theory and sheet music are boring and difficult, the truth is that no electric guitar player who has gone through the effort of learning that side of music has ever said, “gosh, I wish I hadn’t done it”. If you learn guitar without learning theory you will still end up being a guitarist but the sad fact is you will miss out on some gigs if you can’t read music.

When you learn to play electric guitar don’t be afraid of a challenge. Setting yourself goals to learn riffs and solos you like will keep you getting better. Keep in mind that you want to improve your technique and the way to do that is to try to play stuff that is a little beyond you at the moment. Part of working on your guitar technique is to keep your fingernails on your left hand short. Long nails stop you from fretting notes. To warm up for a practice session spend a few minutes going up the guitar neck in the first position playing frets 1 2 3 4 and then down 4 3 2 1 using alternating up and down strokes with the pick.

Learn How To Play The Electric Guitar Before You Get Old

Tab Guitar Lessons has a bunch of handy guitar learning tools.

Beginner Guitar Lessons Beginner guitar lessons consist of you getting to know your first guitar. This guitar will probably be a nylon string acoustic which will enable you to learn what it takes to get music out of an instrument without relying too much on electronic enhancements and without cutting your fingers up on steel strings. What style of guitar do you want to learn?

Beginning guitar players experience problems changing electric guitar strings, so to lessen the pain, here's a guide to the string-changing process. But first you need to give some attention to your strings during their life on the guitar.

On electric guitars, you will find the first three strings are plain wire, and the other strings are wound around a central core. Some strings use nickel-plated wrap wire which gives a great overall sound, but many electric guitar strings use a stainless-steel wrap which gives a bright sound.

To keep the strings fresh for as long as possible, get in the habit of wiping your strings down with a soft, dry cloth. Get the cloth between and behind the strings every day before you put away your guitar, and you'll be giving them extra life.

After some time you will need to bite the bullet and change your strings because worn out strings are a pain to tune, and sometimes cause dead tone in your guitar playing. Humidity in the air with oil and stuff off your fingers gets to your guitar strings and deadens the sound. As a rule of thumb you should change your electric guitar strings around every two weeks if you're playing a couple of hours a day.

As you remove each string wipe oil and dirt from the fingerboard.

You will need a pair of small needle nose pliers to cut and bend the strings and a string winder, a little item that will save you a whole lot of time.

Remove and replace one string at a time. Once a new string is on the guitar, tune it. It will go out of tune again, but start on each one right away.

Use the string winder to turn the tuning peg so the sixth string loosens. Use the pliers to cut off the twisted end of the old string and remove it from the tuning peg.

Take out the old string completely paying attention to how your old string comes off so you can do the opposite when putting a new one back on.

Feed the new string through the hole in the body or the tail piece of the guitar. Pull until the ball is anchored in place.

Pull the new string over the bridge and the nut and past the tuning peg. Use your pliers to cut off excess string. There should be enough string to go around the tuning peg a couple of times.

Pull the string through the hole of the tuning peg and wind it, keeping it tight all the while.

Place your string winder above the tuning peg and wind til the string tightens up. Then take off the winder and tune the string.

Repeat the process for all the other strings.

Always wind so the string wraps from the inside of the post out.

Once you have all the strings on the guitar, do a little strumming and pull on the strings and retune them til they stay in tune.

While you are still new to guitar playing set aside a whole afternoon for changing your strings. Pay attention to detail to make sure you are clear about what you have to do and why.

String muting is a guitar playing technique that can sets you apart from other guitar players. You can mute the strings with the hand you pick with or you can mute some of the guitar strings with your fretting hand. Different kinds of muting producing different effects.

When you use your fretting hand to mute the strings, you first select which strings you don't want to include in a chord. This technique is often used when you are playing power chords. If you don't want to include the sixth string in a C chord where you are fretting the C note on the fifth string at the third fret, you can use the tip of the finger you are using on the fifth string to rest against the sixth string to stop it from sounding. Or you can mute the first three guitar strings by placing your index finger on them as if you were making a bar chord. This way you can still use your pick across all six strings.

Palm muting is a matter of holding your picking hand in the usual playing position and laying the fatty heel of the hand across the strings near the bridge. With this kind of muting you get the chuggy sound associated with metal guitar.

by Gyorgy Huba of Guitar How-To