Comprehensive Guitar Tutorial -1

Hallo friends,

From to day, we are starting our new guitar learning classes online. Though it is very much difficult to teach playing a musical instrument this way, I believe it is not impossible. I hope if you people can bear it with me and keep in touch, we can really make it happen.

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A note for Advanced Guitar Player:
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I want to do it very comprehensively so that any one can properly learn guitar from here WITH OUT taking ANY help from his music teacher. I want to make this tutorial thorough and complete. Therefore some of my initial articles may seem very boring to the more matured players. I will suggest them to safely skip those for now and wait a few days more for my advance materials.
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As an instructor I will expect two things from you. First of all I will expect all of you to attend these guitar classes regularly so that you are never behind our schedule and the second thing is off course, I will expect each one of you to practice my lessons and complete my home tasks properly.

It is also worth saying that, this is a two way learning process. Not only you will benefit from my lessons but I will also have chance to learn a lot in the process of preparing this course for you. In this way I am grateful to all my future students.

The primary requirements of this course
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You will require a classical or electric Spanish guitar. That's possibly the only physical requirement for now. It's better if the strings of the guitar are already tuned. If they are out of tune, you have to tune it from some guitar player right now. You may not be able to tune the guitar properly at this level even if I tell you how to tune that. Because you have to go through proper ear training before you can tune a guitar correctly.

Things we will learn in this class:
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1. Different parts of Guitar
2. Standard Tuning
3. Fret Board and how to fret
4. Practicing a simple run - Sa - Re - Ga - Ma


1. Parts of Guitar
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Well, Ok. Let us look to our guitar. The following figure shows a classical guitar. Different parts of the guitar are labeled in the figure . Notice those parts carefully and memorize the names of those parts. If you are using some other Spanish guitar like an electric one, the shapes of different parts may be different there (like, the thickness of the body is smaller and there may not be any hole), but still you should be able to recognize all the parts.


2. Standard Tuning
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Now let us know something about tone and tuning so that we can play our guitar a little bit now. Please remember that, the meaning of "tone" is different in classical guitar theory and we will talk about that later. but for the present situation we can define tone just as a property of any music. For example, suppose you are haring a song in your music player. If you increase the sound, the property of the music does not change. Because while you increase sound you are just giving it more power or more energy so that you can increase the intensity of the music. But what happens when you change the graphic equalizer setting of your music player? It changes the property of the song. It may increase the bass or increase the treble thereby changing the property or tone of the music. So, is it clear?

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Exercise - 1
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Strike gently in the thinnest string of the guitar. Then again strike to the thickest string of the guitar. Notice the tone of the sound. The first sound was higher in pitch than that of the second sound. The physics is- the frequency of the first sound was actually higher than that of the second sound.
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Again I am saying there IS a more classical definition of "tonality", but we are not talking about that right here. Anyway, the next thing you need to know is about the tuning of your guitar. It is very easy to understand. The standard tuning of your guitar will be "E-B-G-D-A-E"? Clear? Well.. well.. well.. I know it's not clear! But I need to tell you a lot to make you understand about it. So let's start from the start.

First let's ask ourselves a question. Why do we need a tuned guitar? To know the answer of this question go through the exercise below.

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Exercise - 2
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Strike the thinnest string of the guitar. Listen to the sound properly. Now find the tuning screw corresponding to the thinnest string. Move the screw half round in any direction. Strike the string again. Listen again to the sound. Got the difference? The sound is changed. Now again move the tuning screw in the opposite direction half round so that the tuning again comes back to the original position.
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From the above experiment you have understood that the sound that comes from the guitar varies depending on how loose or how tightly we tune the guitar. If you loosen or tighten the tuning screw in some different way, the sound of the guitar will also change. That's why we need to fix up a standard. So that everyone can tune in that standard way and all perfectly tuned guitar sounds exactly same. So I think this is clear now why we need to standardize the tuning. Now lets come to the second point.

I hope you have heard about the seven notes of music. People in Indian subcontinent call it "Sa - Re - Ga - Ma - Pa - Da - Ni". In western music they call it "Do - Re - Me - Fa - So - La - Te". What is the significance of these music notes? Well, it's possible to express and write down any music in terms of these notes. That's why they are so important. Anyway, in musical instruments like Guitar, we will simply denote these notes as "A - B - C - D - E - F - G". Simple enough. Now we will see how all these notes help us to play with music all over. First, let's see how we can use these notes to tune our guitar.

When you play all the six strings of the guitar one by one, they sound different. That means the six different strings of the guitar must correspond to six different musical notes, right? Now let's see what are these six different notes for the six strings of a standard tuned Guitar. They are, as I said before, E, B, G, D, A, E (From thinnest to thickest). These six notes are for the six strings of the guitar. See the diagram in the page https://www.geocities.com/a_r_mitra/guitar-tutorial-1.html


The thickest string and the thinnest string both are in the same note 'E'. You may ask me then why do they sound different? Well, my answer will be they are tuned to same musical note 'E' but those two 'E's correspond to two different octaves. If you don't understand what I am talking then just memorize it for the time being. Sooner or later you will understand what is an octave.
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Memorize it right now: guitar strings are tuned to E-B-G-D-A-E notes respectively as shown in figure above.
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hi taquila ..
i thught this was a continous guitar lessons ..whr's the next stuff. I really liked the way yu ve explained. would love to have more tutorials wid ya..
please please ..go ahead n give lessons..

yu'll ve have a sincere student here..waitin'....

 

I will read it after getting the guitar :'(

 

what happened to Comprehensive Guitar Tutorial by Taquila?

Dear Taquila:
I found your guitar lessons very interesting and encouraging. Wondering what happened to the next part!!! Pls dont get back for the sake of all of us. Hope we will see you soon.
Sharabo

 

Request

Sir,

Please send me some,,,,,,,,.....elementory....guiter tabs........or fingurings....




suvo

 

thanks..

great tutorial.. in very simple language.
waiting very eagerly for the next parts...

 

a very simple language, good for beginners. wud luv to be ur student. waiting for
next parts

 

I am sorry.. But plz give me more time

Hi all,

I am amazed with your compliments. Thank you all for that.

You were correct. I started it as a comprehensive guitar tutorial. But after sending the first one I had to stop.

The REASON is I had to go through the trauma of a very critical Spinal Chord Surgery due to a painful orthopaedic problem called PIvD, that is "Prolapsed Intervertibrate Disc". It's a kind of slip-disc that affected me after I met an accident some 2 years ago.

But don't worry. The operation was "successful". Now I can sit, walk and even run. Soon (with in months) I will be fully normal.

I will start the task again then.

Bye and yes belated happy new year to all!!!
:beer:

 

Good to hear that ur back on ur feet again. Hope to see more of ur work here soon. Adios

 

great job. wish you speedy recovery

post the next tutorial

 

hello, thanks

Thanks for first lesson, how can i get the second lesson

 

we need your help

thanks for a wonderful tutorial,
need more of it.....
please

hope you are feeling better now

thanks
sid

 

nice tutorial but it wud hav been better if images were given

 

Continuing the lesson.

tutorial's very nice dude.

We would like someone else to continue with them atleast. Beginners will feel bored this way aite?

I uploaded books ere for ya guyz. Its very easy to understand and quick for learning.

Books. (All books are in PDF format so u must have Adobe Acrobat reader)

Rock Guitar Secrets (You must know the total basics atleast for this)
https://rapidshare.de/files/28045771/Guitar_Tabs_-_Rock_Guitar_Secrets.pdf.html
12mb file.

Learning the guitar - Stefan Schyga (BASICS) Mostly western notations( i recommend it it'll help ya in the long run). 600kb.
https://www.megaupload.com/?d=R4TJSATY

Fretboard Roadmaps -(Advanced) Do this after u learn the open position of any scale. Its a good book. 8.5mb.
https://rapidshare.de/files/28047311/Fretboard_Roadmaps.pdf.html

Idiots guide to the guitar (Funny name but very nice book..one of the best ive seen so far. lvl 0 to 10) 8.5mb.
https://www.megaupload.com/?d=6UVE8XVB

from all the exercises everywhere i recommend the spider exercise the most. It is mentioned in the Secrets to Rock Guitar book.


Note: If any of you do not understand something in the book you can PM me or post in this thread.

Hope ya guyz like my post.

AJ.

 

cmon guyz atleast post some comments/questions?

 

Good enough for a newb. Include the proper way to hold a guitar, where to keep your finger etc.

Uhh... Dude, you do know that there's no such thing as a 'Spanish Guitar'. Its called an acoustic guitar. Suggestion: Maybe next time you could include the basic differences between acoustic and electric. And also basic effects like distortion, reverb, WAH, delay blah blabbity blah blah.

 

What are you referring to?

Anyway mate..a spanish guitar is a type of acoustic guitar. U can NEVER say theres no such thing as spanish guitar

 

Cool

Thanks AJ,

I think the book Rock Star secret will really rock .

i couldn't download Learning the guitar - Stefan Schyga (BASICS)https://www.megaupload.com/?d=R4TJSATY and Idiots guide to the guitar https://www.megaupload.com/?d=6UVE8XVB. i think the links are not working

Could you please send any other link to do the same.

Thanks buddy for this posting ....;-)

 

I though we refer to Spanish guitar as one of those classical flamenco guitars that come with nylon strings.

I would prefer to label it as subset of acoustic guitar.

 

ow man megaupload really sucks..i'll upload it again soon..

@others
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