LESSON 8 - PLUCKING

In guitars, there are lots of technicalities that you can use to improve your playing capabilities. Clean sound, Aggressive tones, and soothing melodies that can make your listeners amazed on how you play it is some of the examples that these techniques can give you.

Now, this lesson is about to teach you a wonderful technique how to play it. This is often used, particularly, with folk songs and love songs (yeah!) also.  Most of the beginners that I had seen were eager to learn this stuff because they had “personal interest” to play a “love song”, for some reasons that you can think of. But some says they were just really into this stuff as their personality dictates their taste about music.

Whatever the reason that you had in your mind right now doesn’t matter. The important thing here is that you learn how to pluck your own guitar, and that’s the bottom-line.

Hand and Arm positioning

The first thing that you need to consider is the position of your hand and also your arm in the instrument. The position, as I had said in my previous lesson, is a crucial part. You must do this with comfortable position and you can freely move both of it (hands and arms) while you play the guitar. You also need to place each of your fingertips close to the string, or you can place and touch the string, is more of a good idea.

Another thing would be resting your arms into the second hump from the body of the guitar that we had been done in our previous lesson.  You don’t need to lock the guitar in your body and hold it tightly. Just relax your hands and arms, and focus on the chords that you’re doing while you pluck each strings with it. That way, your focus is in the sounds that you’re making instead of it.

Using your fingers while you pluck

This time, you will use all your fingers. This part has lots of technicalities, styles, and methods how to use your fingers to play a song with it. Since you are a beginner, we will do the basics, and that means we will use all of it. The fingers that will do most of the work plucking the strings will be: your Pinkie, Ring, Middle and Point fingers. These will pluck the last four strings in the fret board and the remaining finger (thumb) will be the one to do the bass of the chords. This is the finger allocations for each string:

• Pinkie - String #1
• Ring - String #2
• Middle - String #3
• Point - #4

You may notice that the thumb is missing. Well, the thumb is responsible for the bass of a specific chord that you do while you play a song in it. This finger has two strings that it can use unlike the rest of the fingers in a specific note. String #5 and String #6 are the strings that have been concerned about this, and either of them will be used by your thumb to produce a bass sound for a song making it bolder.

Plucking the guitar

Plucking is similar to strumming. They both have the same mechanics while you play it. The only difference is the style plus its details while you play it. The timing and the rhythm is just the same too. And to start plucking this instrument, you need to hit the bass string first with your thumb (of course!). After hitting that string, you will automatically start to pluck. First, hit the strings with an arrangement of 4, 3, 2, and 1 downward. And if you had reach the last string (string #1), you will hit the strings again with the arrangement of 2, 3, and 4 upward to make it a cycle. That’s it! You had made a cycle just like you’re strumming.

Usually, string #6 is used when a chord comes with a bar/flat. If there’s no finger pressing that string in the fret board use string #5, instead. That’s how simple it is. So you won’t be confused when to use string #5 and String #6 when you’re playing the instrument like this.

Pick or Finger

You can use either of them if you prefer it. But using a pick with a particular song, especially if it is a folk song, will give you a hard time playing it. It is possible, but you must have a tremendous amount of experience to do it. But still, it is your choice what you want to use.

There a lot of songs that plucking with fingers are more precise to use than a pick. If you’re good at it (pick), then there will be no problem to play with it after all. Picks can help you play without hurting your fingers, while, fingers can make your playing more convenient and faster while you pluck the guitar. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages this two has. But, no matter what you use, it is you that matters in this. So, even if you use the pick or not. It always depends upon your skill in playing this instrument.

This post is quite long now, so I will wrap this thing up here at Guitar Tutorials for Beginners. You can watch some artist like Harem Scarem, Andy Mckee, Eagles, Eric Clapton and many other artists to give you inspiration about this technique and furnish it. Enjoy playing the guitar and cheers with your success with this instrument. 

LESSON 7 - THE GUITAR TECHNICALITIES

We had reached this far with our Guitar Tutorials for beginners and this is the seventh lesson that we will be conducting together. As far as I’m concerned about this, specifically about the technicalities while you play the guitar’s having a big dispute if this really matters after all. Well, this is my opinion and you can take this as a fact or not.

Technicalities, whether if it’s important to a player or not, can raise a big confusion for you as a beginner. You need a lot more to learn about this instrument and these technicalities, I think, can really help you a lot. How big the deal about this is for others, the most important part is that you’re learning this thing and that’s our goal here. To learn and explore this thing that we all loved to do. This technicalities I will be discussing will help you sound a lot more better than it used to be and play cleanly while you strum it with your favorite songs. Remember this piece of advice that I will give you: playing this instrument is not just to show off or to impress other people around you but instead; you do this because you love to and wanted to express yourself musically. So, enough with these lectures and let do this.

Bars and flats

I had mentioned in my last Guitar Tutorials for beginners that I will include this part here so, have a deep breath and this is it! The most intriguing and as I can say, is the hardest part of these tutorials for beginners who aspires to be a guitar player.

As you can see it in the guitar chord chart, you will be pressing all the strings or the strings starting from the fifth down to the first string (sixth string not included) that will give you a hard time to accomplish. But, don’t be afraid because we will do this process with easy steps for you to guide and learn this in no time. To make this easier and a convenience in my part, we will use F and B chords only. These chords will be the perfect chords that we will use practicing here in this lesson. The pointing finger is the cue here to make these two chords to make it sound good and this can also be the reason why it didn’t produce the chords’ sound. Usually, with the beginners first try attempting to strum with that chord, has failed and gave them a dead sound or nothing at all. It’s normal. Everybody was been frustrated about this stage when you’re trying to learn this for the first time. Even I had a hard time accomplishing this task when I was just like you. If you tried to strum and you ended up with no luck, try and try until you succeeded.

These are the following reasons why you had ended up without a sound: wrong positioning of the hand in the fret board while you’re doing the chord and the pointing finger presses the string in a wrong way.  Well, as I had said, its okay as long as you will not lose your desire to complete this task and go on to the next level. If you’re doing chords like these or any kinds of chords whether it’s just a basic, advance, flatter or not chords be sure to relax your hand. You don’t need to press the string hard and making all the strings dead. Just relax your hand and observe how the strings interact with your fingers while you strum with those chords that successfully produced that distinct sound for a specific note. 

Another is the position of your thumb in the back of the fret board. You need to press your thumb in the middle of that side with your pointing finger pressing against it in the other side of it, in the exact place where your thumbs pressing the pressure. This will produce a cleaner sound when you strummed the instrument plus, this will make your arms relaxed to and an extra room to shift to another chords with an ease. To make this accurately perfect while you do this, you must not forget about your other three fingers that’s making the remaining strings dead and making no sound at all. Even if the pointing finger will be the crucial part doesn’t mean that you can ignore the remaining fingers. You must also pay attention about this cause each finger that was required for a specific chord has a responsibility. Avoid making an open string in a chord to be a dead one. This might be simple error and a very technical one but, this can make you’re playing cleaner to listen to.

Technical or not technical

To be a technical player or not is not important for you right now. This can be a big deal for you if you are on an advance stage of your development in this instrument. But, this section in these Guitar Tutorials for beginners actually is more of an advice, rather than a requirement for you to be that player you were dreaming of. This is more on helping you as I had said earlier, to attain that goal of success in this. You can use this or not. It’s you to decide if you will follow this techniques how to play with a guitar on your hands. Or, you can have your own style or technique if you prefer that. Whatever it is that you think is the right and the most suitable thing for you is always the right way. I will share you some of these stuffs that will make your play more gracefully and be more accurate learning this thing inside your mind, also. So, these are the three technical stuffs:

Beat with your feet – This can help you with your timing while you strum the strings in a particular song. You can synchronize the strum with beat that’s been produced by your feet by hitting the ground like a pedal to a bass drum.

Relaxed strumming – When you play with your guitar, you don’t need to strum that heavy to play a song in it. You just need relax your hand and don’t just use your wrist while you strum with it. Use your arm with your hand to work instead to make the sound bolder and clearer to listen.

Learn how to use a guitar pick – This is very useful thing which you can use and enhance your sound and playing capability while you play it. Obviously, A lot of advantages this can bring to you. It is a tricky thing to use but, if you had mastered how to use this, you will be playing that instrument producing a bolder sound. You can use this thing whether you’re strumming or plucking the strings.

There, you had it! And this is all over. You’re near to your destination as advance player with these Guitar Tutorials for beginners that I had been teaching you. I’m very glad that you’ve manage to accomplish my previous task and assignment that you need to do after this. But, that doesn’t mean that you will stop learning this after you had attained that. You still need to furnish your skill to play more songs to it and perfectly sounded clean. This is just the beginning of your arduous journey to master it. Practice more and the next lesson will more of an advance one. Got to think about it first (sorry for the inconvenience that I can’t tell you what’s next) and rest for awhile. Cheers for your achievements!

LESSON 6 - PLAYING A SONG IN THE GUITAR

Now, this is the most interesting part that you had been waiting for, in these Guitar tutorials for beginners that we had been doing for about some time. Give yourself those big thumbs up for accomplishing the previous task that I had given you. You’re now quite growing as a player and this will make you more interested as an aspirant in this instrument, which we had been using. Playing a song in a guitar’s another easy task that I will be teaching you, and this will be the “icing” in that cake as we go on with this stuff, right away. But, if you hadn’t had the chance to see the beginning of these tutorials, you could go to my very first post here. Or, if you were through with that would phase, you can still proceed with this topic and you don’t have to read it. What’s important is that, you can understand what I’m talking here and that’s what I needed.

As I have said in my previous Guitar tutorials for beginners before you proceed here (if you’re following these lessons, the whole time around), you‘re confident that you had mastered that skill that’s been required, in order for you to make a sense in this lesson.  Please, be guided with these words and let’s move on to this very special topic of ours, to explore with your guitar (of course!).

Songs for the beginners

Before we begin to play a song, we need a particular song that we will play here. So, to make this thing short and go on with this stuff, we will choose the song titled “leaving no a jet plane” by John Denver. In my personal experience, this is my very first song that I had played when I was just like you, and this is a very easy song to play with it. You can look for it in "Google" and search for its chords plus its lyrics. You can download the song too, if you don’t know the song.

If you had all the things we needed here in Guitar tutorials for beginners, we will now proceed to this lesson and the first thing you need to do is to study how the song works. Yes! You must first understand how the song goes even if you had listened to it from the past; you still need to study its flow, timing, and its rhythm to make it faster for you to have the idea when to change the chords. Observing how the artist strummed the guitar and how the song goes until it’s ending will give you the idea, why you must do this first. If you think that you had understood what I had said, then, you can hit that strings after this lesson with more convenience.

Changing chords in a song

Usually, a song is composed of only three chords in one whole song.  An example of this is the song I had chosen to use in this lesson with only three chords:  G, C, and D. That’s the chords that we will be using a lot, cause, this chord were basically for beginners that I had mentioned in my previous lesson too.

Changing a chord from one chord to another in a song can be quite hard for beginners to understand this that is why I had to make you listen to that song, and observe it to make this easier for you. This phase is more on the timing of the song that we will be playing. Consider the song that I had given you; it changes a chord after the count of 4 times in a row.  Each cycle was doubled in this song and this means that, instead of the regular cycle that we had done in our previous lesson, you need to have two cycles first, to call it a count. So, a count has eight cycles in all and you will do this the whole time until the songs are finished. You need to copy the timing and the rhythm of that song; to let your listeners knows what you’re playing exactly in your guitar. This is one of the most important things about this, because that chords pattern- G, C, D could be from another song, based on how you strum these strings in that instrument whether if it is fast or if it slow.

You can also use a song book to see that particular chord in the lyrics of that song. This is easier to do if you’re having a hard time, understanding this and play the song in it. You can search for the lyrics with chords of this song in Google. The reason I’m teaching that other process to you on how to change a chord in a song, is to make you play the guitar more independently and learn how to realize the timing that I am teaching to you. That way, we will be eradicating you to be so dependent about it and learn to master the guitar quickly as possible. Using this method is pretty self-explanatory and I don’t need to include it here (I will not mock you’re intelligence cause, I believe in you!).

Practice makes improvements

This is the task that you need to do in order for you to sharpen your skills, not just by playing the guitar, but in other things as well. So, you must play that instrument over and over again. This will make you learn faster and will help you gain more knowledge about it. Experience is a good teacher because these tutorials will only guide and provide you the right processes to attain that success in this instrument.  You can experiment and look for a specific style how to do these stuffs. Watch videos and learn from other musician or guitarist, to make this stuff clearer to you. Play this instrument with your friends and interact with them. So that, you can study or learn from each other that can make you more interested practicing this lesson. Always maximize the resources and see the results for yourself.

Guitar tutorials for beginners – lesson 6’s now finally over. You can now play a song with it but, you’re still limited to these chords that I had mentioned or what you can easily do in your guitar chord chart which you possess, right now. Still, you need more patience about this but; at least you can now play song in it.  The next lesson that I will teach you is all about the technicalities while you play the guitar. I will also include how to do the chords with bars/flats that have been giving beginners a hard time, making the strings sounded well while they hit it with a chord like that. Let’s rest for now, and I will be right back with another lesson for you.

LESSON 5 - STRUMMING THE GUITAR

Congratulations! We had reached this far to continue these tutorials in Guitar tutorials for beginners to a higher level. Good work on your last lesson and I’m hoping that you’re learning this thing in the right process to make you better upon playing this instrument. Here in this section, I will now discuss how you can strum the guitar for the first time or rather strum the string with me in the first place. I wouldn’t know if you had strummed it before or maybe, you are practicing a lot and try exploring it. So, I will just assume that you wanted to learn the basics on how to make it sound good while you hit these strings with a chord in the fret board.

In these Guitar tutorials for beginners, you need to learn every detail. You must learn this thing in order for you to understand the terms that I will be using in the next topic we will be doing, accompanied with this tutorial. So, to eradicate that problem of misunderstanding or you’re missing something in it before you move to the next the round of this tutorial, you must concentrate and practice this. If you had perfected to understand every single detail about this topic then, you’re ready for the next lesson. 

First things first, before you hit those strings

The first thing you need to consider is the position of you and your guitar in your body. Positioning it in the right way can make it convenient and comfortable to play it. This is kind of a very obvious one, but, I have seen some of the beginners I had taught in the past had a difficulty playing it. Why? The position isn’t correct and that makes it hard to make a good sound, out of it. This is the basic element in order to make a good sound while you strum it. And wrong position about anything, I think, isn’t making any good to you. This is the advice I hoped you will be following. The right position can only be simple and you just need to put the guitar in your right lap and find a distinct position of your body to make it comfortable for you to strum the guitar. Let you’re right arm or if your left hander, your left arm (Off course!) to rest in the second hump (usually, this will be the bigger curve) in the body of the guitar in the side or If you had putted the guitar in your lap, then in the top right portion from the body of the guitar.  And your other arm will be in-charged making chords in the fret board. Your arm that does the chord must be outwards to your body not inwards. This will make you more ease in making a chord in the fret board while you strum it.

Just strum first

Now, you know the right position. We will now proceed to strum the string. You will strum it without doing any chords first. Why? As far as my experience teaching a guitar is concerned, this is a hard thing for me to make my student understand how to strum correctly. If I will teach you to strum while you do the chords will give you a hard time and this will turn you down and forget about learning it after all. So, to prevent this from happening, you need to do this first. This is the easiest way to make you perfect this thing and to fully realize how to do it and make it sound right, when you hit it with the chords at the same time.

To do this more easily, we will be considering each strum or hit to all the strings with “up” and “down” terms. If you strum the string downward, logically, it will be called as “down” and if you strum it upward, then it is called as “up”. Next, is the term I used if you strummed it “down” and you immediately followed it with an “up” strum is called a “cycle”. Each cycle that you produce is equivalent to a “count”.

If you know how to dance, then that’s the count I’ve been taking about. Or, in your P.E. (Physical Education) class when you do the exercise, you don’t just do it. But you count each particular routine 1,2,3,4, right? That’s what we needed. We will apply this rule in here. Now, strum the string without any chords, up and down once. In doing so, you had made a cycle. To make it more interesting, you can strum it a little faster and do it continuously. Count each cycle up until you had reached the count of 4. That’s how to strum! But, that’s not all. That’s just a brief example. If you want to do a particular song, then, you need a lot of cycles to do it. Just follow these instructions and you’re off to do your strumming with a chord.

So, what now

 So, you had learned the basic of strumming here at Guitar tutorials for beginners.  It’s quite simple, isn’t it? This is a very easy task that you can practice all day with no difficulty after all. Let’s dig deeper to this topic and learn more about its technicalities.

Usually, beginners make a robot like sound when they’re strumming the guitar for their first try or in their first full song. These are the reasons why they make this sound ugly: Their arms weren’t relaxed and they’re not confident doing it. Another thing is they’re not using their wrist and instead using the whole arm to do it. You can strum with that behavior but you can’t sound good in that. Use your wrist and relax your hand, go with the flow of the rhythm of the song. One of the most effective ways is to study or memorize the beat of the song. This will make you familiar with the timing on strumming.

This is important for you to make it sound more like a song and not just strumming. Strumming can tell what songs you’re playing even you do the same chord progressions in the guitar.

Play it, with simple chords first

I will recommend chords that you can practice you’re strumming skill with it. This will help you more comfortable strum the string with a chord. These chords, basic family chords, are easy to do. Again no bar/ flat cause it will give you a headache and we don’t want that to happen. G, D, E Minor or Em and C will be the chords you’ll be using and will be practicing to sharpen your skills in strumming. Look for these chords in a guitar chords chart (no other place you can find it) and just practice to make a cycle with each chords first. Playing songs will be discussed in our next lesson with chord routines, its progressions and when to change your chords in a particular song.

  

That’s it! The basic things you need to know on how to strum a guitar. Hoped that you learned it all and studied all the details that we need to precede to our next topic. This topic will be about playing with a song. Now, I know that you’re waiting for this to come. Thanks for dropping by, here at Guitar tutorials for beginners, to learn this stuff. Hope to see you soon.