Depending on the kind of music you like to play would determine as to what kind of guitar you would choose to purchase from the many different varieties that are available on the market today. It is essential, however, that the guitar that you select feels comfortable to you. If you are a person of a small build, then you will require a guitar that fits your build, whilst if you are a person with very long arms, then a small guitar simply would not be suitable. The weight of the guitar that you select is another important factor. This is because, if you will be playing the guitar a great deal, then you will not wish to feel weighed down by an instrument which is far too heavy for your strength.

Other factors which need to be taken into consideration when selecting a guitar is the sheer look of it, as well as the sound that it gives off. Guitars are available in a wide range of different shapes, colors and finishes. Every single guitar will have a slightly different sound and the quality of sound very often depends upon the quality of the guitar.

If classic music is what you enjoy playing, then you will require a guitar with nylon strings. The back and sides of the guitar will usually be made of rosewood, with spruce or cedar for the top. The guitar that is used for playing flamenco is similar, only with the wood being thinner and the body of the guitar shallower and made of cypress with a cedar top.

The classic guitar which has a hollow body and nylon strings, and the electric steel guitar with its solid wood body, bottled neck and steel strings, such as the very popular Fender Stratocaster are the two most popular types of guitar. Of course, there are many variations within each type. The semi-acoustic and the semi-solid are just two of them. Then of course there are the bass guitars. However, when purchasing a guitar for the first time, the main selection will be between electric and acoustic.

It is worth considering purchasing an acoustic guitar if you have never played before. This guitar is much simpler to play and nothing else is required to accompany it, apart from a case, strap, some picks, and sheet music, all of which are available at an inexpensive price. If you choose to purchase an electric guitar, then you will also need to purchase an amplifier and at least one effects box. This can of course increase the overall cost dramatically and make the selection more difficult.

Even though it is not necessary to spend huge amounts of money on your first guitar, it is never recommended to buy the cheapest available simply because you are not sure if you will continue to play. For this reason, it is worth taking every opportunity to have a play with friends’ guitars or with those in shops before you make a purchase decision. It is not necessary to purchase one of the top brand names; there are plenty of guitars available with no brand name attached to them.

Always ensure that the guitar you select is well made. This can be done by running your fingers around the seams. If you can feel as though any part is coming apart or if it feels rough, then do not buy it. Ensure that the frets are even and the top is not made of plywood. It is never wise to rush out and buy the first guitar that you see. Select a guitar carefully from the many different ones that are available on the market today.

Tags:
Guitar,
Instruments,
Music General,
Music Theory

Source: Instruments

I have never really been interested in the classical guitar. I can appreciate it as much as the next guy, but figured it was not really my thing. Anyway, I found myself, in a bizarre twist of interest the other day doing a little classical guitar research and I can tell you that what I found surprised me.

For starters, far from there being just one type of classical guitar there are in fact loads of different types. Within the category of classical guitars you will find a plethora of different types from different places, although a large number do seem to originate from South America. Flamenco guitars, for instance, are classical but give more of a percussion like sound, and then there’s the guitarron. The guitarron is of Mexican origins and it is huge – and when I say huge, this is a guitar the size of cello; bigger even! There are also little classical guitars like the Mexican requinto, the Colombian bandola, or the tiple.

I also found out that the classical guitar is designed to create solo polyphonic music arrangements. Although I am not quite sure what this means it sounds good doesn’t it? Anyway this is the thing that differentiates the classical guitar from other types of guitar.

The other thing that I discovered, which I guess I just had not given that much thought to was, who decides what makes a guitar a guitar? Like, what sizes, dimensions, stuff like that. Most of us have heard of Antonio Torres Jurado, but I for sure didn’t really know the extent of what he contributed to the guitar world. He lived in the nineteenth century, and before him there weren’t really any set dimensions that were universally applied to the classical guitar; meaning that each manufacturer would have his own style and dimensions. However, since the late nineteenth century, manufacturers have been largely complying with the dimensions set by him.

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I do not mind telling you that one of the things I find most annoying is peoples ignorance when choosing strings for their guitars. Come on folks – it is really not that hard. There are just a few factors you need to consider when choosing your strings.

First of all – your instrument is a precision instrument; of course you should know your instrument, play with it, feel it, but if you do not know what you are doing, get some advice. Changing the tension in your stings, and the gauge of the strings will effect your instrument in a very physical way – be informed, that’s all.

It may sound overly simply, but obviously some people just don’t get it. The strings affect your sound. Play around as much as you like, but you should know that the lighter the gauge of the strings, the quieter the sound will be.

Be in tune with your instrument. You would not put a bass box in a vintage Rolls Royce, so do not do it with your guitar. New guitars will mostly accommodate different string gauges but an older one might not. If your guitar was made for gut strings, use gut strings, it is as simple as that.

Last but not least – the bigger the gauge, the bigger the pressure on your fingers, and the bigger the pressure on your fingers the more it is going to hurt your fingers. If you are a new player, avoid this. Even if you are not achieving the sounds you thought you would, you must start out slow until your fingers harden, then you can move onto a heavier gauge. Also, when you see other players style, check out the strings they are using. They can make a big difference. Lighter gauge means more flexibility, so for a small handed player this is great, but for a stronger player a too light gauge may be more of a hindrance than a help.

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Acoustic  Guitars

Acoustic guitars and their types depend upon their structures and body shapes in resonating sounds. Acoustic guitars are generally made out of wood. The neck is usually made from mahogany and the fret board is made out of maple or rosewood.

Among the different kinds of  acoustic guitars we can point out:

• Classical

They are usually the choice guitar for beginners: strings from nylon, played in a standard sitting position and used in playing classical music. Classical guitars are generating think and whole sounds.

Flamenco guitars - almost similar to the classical guitars, but they produce crisper and thinner sounds.

• Steel-Top

Steel-top guitars are very similar to the classical guitar, but they are constructed to be more resilient. The parts of the steel-top guitar are reinforced and their bodies are significantly larger than the classical guitars. All this gives a warmer tone compared to the classical guitar.

• 12-String Guitar

A normal guitar usually has 6 strings, but the 12-string guitar - as you understand has 12 strings. Each string is accompanied by another string of the same note, typically tuned in a higher octave. This is done to create a semi-chorus effect.

• Resonator

This type of guitar is similar to the steel-top guitar, but there is one detail - the steel in the middle of the soundboard is used to resonate the sound from the vibration of the guitar strings. This is giving a very thin and distinct sound, usually used in playing the blues.

Among the variations of the resonator guitar it is possible to mention - the square-neck resonator guitar, played on the lap like a piano or organ, then the round neck resonator guitar, played like a common guitar.

• Archtop

An archtop guitar usually has the f-hole design, this kind of guitar is preferred by jazz players.

• Acoustic Bass

Acoustic bass guitars are bass guitars without electronic pick-ups. The body of the guitar is used to produce the sounds. This kind of guitars usually has 4 strings, but there are acoustic bass guitars which have 5 or 6 strings.

Electric Guitars

Electric guitars use electronic pick-ups to amplify the vibrations of the guitar strings. They are usually connected to electric amplifiers. Electric guitars typically have a solid or semi-solid body type. As they are not using the body for sound resonance they make very little or no sound when played without an amplifier.

Electric guitars usually have control knobs for changing the volume or the tone of the guitar. They also have pick-up selectors - many electric guitars use multiple pick-ups to achieve the best guitar sounds. With the help of these pick-ups different tones are produced from the guitar. The tone knobs are usually used to shift from a bass-intensive sound to a treble-intensive sound or vice versa.

Some electric guitars have whammy bars. These bars are attached to the guitar to shift notes without changing the finger positions in the fret board. Whammy bars are used to produce “crying” guitar sounds. The use of the whammy bar in less expensive guitars is not advised because it may cause the strings to go out of tune.

Source: bass guitar

The guitar, or at least its ancestors, have been around for pretty much as long as human history. 5,000 years ago when civilization was rising in Egypt and Mesopotamia early guitars were in existence in Asia. The earliest pictographic evidence of a guitar-like instrument dates from around 1300 BCE. Early guitars didn’t necessarily look like they do today, but they did share the basic features such as a long neck, flat soundboard made of wood, flat back, and usually curved sides.

The word ‘guitar’ comes from ‘guitarra’ in Spanish which in turn came from the Latin ‘cithara’, borrowed from the Greek ‘kithara’, which some people believe came from the Persian ‘sihtar’, which would have been related to the well known Indian stringed instrument the Sitar.

The modern guitar is reminiscent of the Roman guitar which in opposition to the Moors’ “oud” had just one sound-hole and a relatively narrow neck; although the Scandinavians have had, since at least the eight century, their six stringed lute which is also of the guitar family.

The guitar has experienced several incarnations over the centuries but the people credited with the creation of the first 6-string modern type guitar was the Vinaccia family and we actually have a six string model with no signs of having been modified from another type with the date of 1779 on it. However, it was around 100 years later that the dimensions of modern guitars were set and the man responsible for this Antonio Torres Jurado of Seville. It was around this time also that fan strutting became set as preferable to transverse table bracing due to the work of both Antonio Torres Jurado and the Englishman Louis Panormo.

The electric guitar is the latest addition to the guitar family, having being patented in 1936 by George Beauchamp and mass produced by Danelectro.

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Did you ever pay attention to the different pick-holding techniques you see? I did. In fact when I was a kid, playing air guitar, it was my right hand I paid most attention to because I somehow felt like it was the way I held my pick that would determine what kind of guitarist I would be. I noticed that there were quite a lot of differences in the ways that my various role models gripped their picks.

As opposed to the usual thumb-index finger grip, Eddie Van Halen tends to hold his using his middle finger and thumb. However, Metallica front man James Hetfield uses his thumb, fore finger and index finger. Pat Metheny holds his like Hetfield does, except he uses the round end rather than the pointed end, and he is not alone in this; George Lynch does the same, as does Stevie Ray Vaughan. The reason for this isn’t entirely clear, but Stevie was once cited as claiming that this method allows for more ‘string attack’. Beating all others for ingenuity however has to be Jimmy Rogers and Freddie King who were both able to use two picks at the same time!

The next thing that I noticed about pick preferences was the motion itself. Personally, I always thought circle picking was a little OTT and probably should have seen the end of days along with the end of glam rock, however it does seem to keep appearing. I think that in terms of effect, it is difficult to immediately spot the difference between alternate and economy from a distance. However, since I have now progressed from air guitar to real guitar, I have to say that economy picking is what has prevailed for me as my natural choice. I understand that this has been the choice of many others as well, including I’m pleased to say some of the greats!

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Do you have any idea how many types of guitars there are? I bet you don’t. Here’s just a few of the different types that make up the wonderful world of guitars.

Renaissance and Baroque guitars aren’t really modern guitars; they are in fact the pre-runners of the today’s classical guitars. They are quieter than today’s species and tend to have 4 or 5 strings.

The Ten-string guitar is a modern guitar created in the 1960s by a Narciso Yepes to follow a musical logic that would create the ability for all 12 tones of the chromatic octave to be created. He introduced the C, A?, G?, and F?, strings which will resonate when those tones are played on other strings allowing for all 12 tones to have string resonating support. This should not be confused with multi-string guitars, some of which do have 10 strings, but does not create the same effect.

The Portuguese guitar has 12 strings, while the guitar called the 12 string guitar is a steel stringed instrument used mostly in folk, blues and of course rock n’ roll. This type of guitar does have 12 strings but set in 6 courses of two strings per course.

The flat top guitar which is also called the steel-string guitar has many similarities to the classical guitar but it usually has a larger body than the classical and a reinforced narrower neck. This type of guitar is used largely in folk and blues, but is also very popular in jazz and country as well.

Then there’s the archtop guitars which are also steel stringed but have a violin-type f-hole feature, and tend to be curved rather than flat. The archtop guitar usually has a deeper body than most making it closely related to the mandolin, and can be either acoustic or electric.

Honestly, this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg – the guitars just keep on coming!

How many people do you think learn guitar online? Going by the number of guitar tutorial websites popping up over the Internet, I would say the number of people attempting to learn guitar is quite high. There are some sites that are really good, and then there are some that just skip through the basics. Yeah, without being noble about it, there are quite a few sites that are not half as good as they claim to be, and are definitely not what beginners should be looking for.

When I decided to learn guitar, I thought it made a lot of sense to do some research on the options I had as far as teachers were concerned. I found out what quite a few others like me must have found out during their searches – that getting a teacher who fit your requirements to a “T” was not all that easy. I discovered the advantages of learning guitar online, and have, since then, advocated the same to anyone I come across who is in the same position as I was. One of the things I tell people is to do their research well before choosing a website, as not all websites are the best in terms of approach or content.

This is  where JamDojo.com steps up to the plate. We’ve researched the online guitar training courses and found one that we highly recommend for beginner guitar players and it’s called “The Beginner’s Guide to Unlocking the Guitar”. Learn more about how to play guitar using this excellent training method.

While I agree with what you are saying above, I would also like to say that localized, ‘native’ musical cultures have not gone extinct yet. I myself am an avid fan of the guitar, and yet I would venture forth to say that while it could be a very popular musical instrument, it is bunkum when you say it is the single biggest musical connector in the world today.

Even today, localized, country-specific musical cultures are flourishing all over. One only has to take a look at the different music festivals organized by the different governments, and even by private organizations (though many of these private dos end up propagating western musical influences). Every government today has a department or division that recognizes the threat of their local musical culture being marginalized or made extinct, and therefore organizes events in different countries to promote these cultures.

I would say along with that, there is a larger need to increase awareness among the local populace about the importance of their own musical roots. So while the guitar is becoming one of the most popular musical instruments, it is wise for it to be able to learn to co-exist with other instruments. And I do not foresee this as being a problem, because music is not about domination or ego, it should not be. It should be about sharing expressions and experiences with fellow human beings.

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It is really amazing how this one instrument – the guitar – has captured the imagination of people from all across the globe. It is true that each country and culture has its own specialized music form and, by that logic, specialized musical instruments. However, more and more, over the years, people have found it acceptable, however illogical it may seem, to identify with universally accepted musical forms such as rock and roll and blues, instead of retaining their traditional heritage.

There could be many reasons for this, and we could spend a lifetime debating on the practicality of such a situation. However, the fact remains that even today, you will find rock bands in Japan, India, and even Pakistan. This influence can be easily gauged by the fact that in nightclubs in Tokyo, you could find Elvis Presley look-alikes. You could find western musical influences in the musical compositions of Indian movie composers as well. Some did not take that much trouble and simply lifted the tunes of famous English numbers, plagiarism be damned. It does not take a nuclear physicist to figure out the apparent improbability of global success for a, say, Japanese or an Indian rock band. However, the fact remains that such bands exist.

While this may not speak too much about the fondness of people for their native culture, it does speak a whole lot of the popularity that the guitar – that iconic representation of western music – commands over global audiences. One would rather be seen gyrating with a guitar on stage, than sitting placidly with a sitar, that wonderfully melodious stringed instrument from India. Like it or nor, the guitar has, very rightfully, staked claim to be the single instrument that can connect the world musically.

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