How Do I Hold This Thing? [Beginner]

OK, this is about as basic as it gets. This will be either the most boring post I ever post, or I'm gonna have a real bomb down the road and this will be the second lamest post I'll have to put on here. But with that being said, let's get this over with...



The parts of the guitar. I've made a nice and beautiful picture, complete with my dream guitar, with all of the parts labeled.

An acoustic guitar has about the same parts set-up, the main difference being the acoustic guitar body is built like a sound-box with a sound hole instead of a solid body with pickups routed into the guitar face. Modern acoustic guitars have the options of having a built-in pickups. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations between guitar wood, pickups, neck wood, fretboad wood, tuners, electronics, etc. I will address many of these options very in depth in a later post.

To play electric guitar, you will need, in addition to your guitar, an amp and a 1/4" instrument cable. Connect the cable from your input jack on the guitar, into your amp, then power up your amp. (Note: If you have a tube amp, LET THE TUBES WARM UP BEFORE PLAYING! This is very important. So many good tube amps get ruined because the player does not allow enough time for the vacuum tubes to get to a proper working temperature.) Once the amp is on, set your volume levels. Your volume levels should be set both for personal comfort (you gotta hear to be able to play music) and depending on your location (let's not get the cops involved and say "Mike from Doghouse Guitar said to crank it to 11!"). Setting up your guitar and amp for a certain tone is an art upon itself, and we'll discuss this as well in a later post. But for now, I'll tell you...most of your tone comes from your fingers.

What this means: practice with consistency, really hit each note, develop proper picking and fretting techniques, follow through with each note, and practice some more. Eddie Van Halen has a signature tone and has had his gear change through the years until he found what he thought was the perfect tone, but he would still sound like Eddie Van Halen on my guitar, amp and pedals, because of -how- he plays, not what he plays. So buying a quality instrument is very important, but at this stage, don't get caught up in buying things you don't need. A distortion pedal isn't going to make you sound any more powerful if you can't play anything right, it's going to make you sound like a semi with a knock in the engine. The point being, a $3000 guitar is not the answer to becoming better at the guitar, playing the guitar and mastering the techniques is the answer.

I've got one more topic to hit before we wrap up this post. TUNE THE GUITAR. This is one of the most vital things to learn from the start. A guitar that is properly tuned, and that will sound easy to the ear when played correctly, will help to push your drive to become better. If you're playing everything right and the guitar is out of tune, you won't know you're playing it right. It will sound like a Yoko Ono record. And believe me, that's a bad bad thing. The tuning that we will be dealing with 95% of the time will be what we call standard tuning. This tuning is E A D G B e. The large E string will be the thickest string on your guitar and from time to time, we will refer to this is the 6th string. The 5th string will be tuned to A, the 4th string to D, and so on.  Tuning your guitar is simple and you have many choices these days to get your guitar in tune.

A) Tuning Fork: You strike the fork which produces a set tone (it will say what note the fork is tuned to on the fork usually) then you pluck the string that it is matched to (the most common forks used for guitar tuning is either an "E" or "A" ) and then adjust the corresponding tuning head until the pitch matches up. The pitch will go from sounding very wavy (out of tune) to having no waves (in-tune). A Tuning Fork - "A" 440 Hz with Soft Shell Case (Decent choice if you don't mind hitting something with the fork everytime you want to tune.)

B) Guitar Tuner: You can pick one up just about anywhere, and I suggest the Korg GA-30 Ultra Compact Guitar and Bass Tuner. I've personally used and abused this thing and never had any problems out of it. To use it, you simply plug-in your guitar to the tuner and tune it up one string at a time. The screen will show a needle the wavers left or right, then will rest upright when you get the string in tune. There are many different choices and brands for tuners, but don't skimp out and get the cheapest one you can. Remember, no Yoko Ono. (Best choice)

C) Listen to a song that you know the key of and tune according to the notes played in the song. (Worst choice, but I've done it a thousand times).

There won't be a long wait between this post and the next one, as this post doesn't really have you playing anything yet, and that's the reason you're here. So we'll let this sink in for a day or two, then we're going to jump into our first theory lesson. *insert evil laugh here* We will be covering the musical notes, how to read music, and how to read tablature.