Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Musical Wednesday: Using your musical knowledge to play the guitar



Okay so last week, we learned the musical alphabet. Ashley over at The Usual Shenanigans asked me to apply it to the guitar. So basically the guitar. You all know what it looks like. You have the body of the guitar, the neck and theres also the tuning pegs. There are also 6 strings on the guitar as well. Usually they are tuned to the standard tuning. The bottom string, which is the biggest string is E and the top string which is the skinniest is also E, just an octave higher. The standard tuning goes like this, from bottom to top:

E - top string, skinny
B
G
D
A
E - bottom string, fat


There's an acronym that will help you memorize this, it's Eat All Day, Get Big Easy. Lol pretty funny right? Also, you need to place your left hand on the neck. With your thumb around the bottom string and the rest of your fingers around the neck to the top strings. There's also finger numbers that correspond with playing the guitar and where to place your fingers on the strings and frets.

Your finger number starts with your index finger, which will be number 1, your middle finger is 2, your ring finger is 3 and your pinky is 4. The thumb is just there to pretty much hold the guitar. But there are some rare uses for it which I won't get into because I don't use it that way.

Next, you will notice that there are there odd lines that stick out kinda and cross the neck and the strings. Those are called frets. The first line is the first fret and so on. On the side of the neck there are little dots that help you find out what number fret it is. Mine starts on the 3rd fret then goes to the 5th, 7th and so on. When you are holding down the strings, you want to hold them down inbetween the frets and NOT ON the metal bars.

Now that you know most of what you need to know about the guitar, you need to learn how to read tablature and music notes, as these will help you play the guitar. The idea of guitar tabs is to look at the tab the same way you look at your guitar. All of the lines corresponds to a string and each number tells you which fret to hold down when picking the string.

E|-----------------------------------4-------------||
B|-------1---------3-----------------3-------------||
G|-------------------1-----------------------------||
D|------------2---------------0--0-----------------||
A|--------------3-------------2--------------------||
E|-----------------------3-3--3------2-------------||

While you are holding down these strings, and sometimes, you will be holding down multiple strings, you strum with your free hand. You usually strum the multiple strings that you hold down and you pluck the singular string you are holding down.

So there you have it. Not the most detailed explanation but it's as much as I can think of at this moment so if you have any other questions, please let me know! =]

4 comments

  1. OHH, I never realised what the little dots were for! Haha clearly I didn't get far with guitars..

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  2. This is really interesting. Lol, I don't even own a guitar D;
    -Jodie-Ann

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  3. Weeeeh this is fun Adrian.. I looked for your last post about the A to G thing.. I almost forgot was that all about.. And hey I'm happy you talk about Guitars!! I tried to learn how to play.. but was not able to focus on the thing because of college.. anyways.. hope you can talk more about guitars.. and stuffs!!

    BASKET of DREAMS

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  4. @Ashley LOL! Well now you know! You should pick it up and try it out! It's fun!

    @Jodie-Ann You should get one! i

    @Kamila I definitely will! I will try to help you out as much as I can!

    If you guys have anymore questions about music, just let me know and i'll incorporate it into my posts!

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Maira Gall