{"id":66539,"date":"2022-08-31T02:19:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T02:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/?p=66539"},"modified":"2022-08-31T02:19:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T02:19:28","slug":"how-to-play-guitar-the-basics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/blog\/how-to-play-guitar-the-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Play Guitar &#8211; The Basics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BBz-Jyr23M4?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>How to Play Guitar &#8211; The Basics: A blog about how to play guitar, the basics you should know before you start<\/p>\n<p>An acoustic guitar is a stringed instrument that has a hollow body and a neck. Its sound is produced by the vibration of the strings which are plucked by the fingers. The acoustic guitar has been around for a long time and has evolved over the years. Nowadays, they are available in various shapes, sizes and styles. You can even choose among different materials like steel or nylon strings.<\/p>\n<p>Early History<\/p>\n<p>The first guitars were made of Spanish cypress and had four or five strings. These guitars became popular in Europe during the 16th century and gained further popularity in America during the 19th century when Antonio Torres Jurado from Spain moved to Mexico and began making instruments of his own design using local woods like cedar and red spruce.<\/p>\n<p>It is believed that Torres inspired others to build guitars as well and soon he was joined by others with names like Manuel Reyes, Agustin Barrios and Julian Arcas. They all built guitars for their own purposes but all based on Torres&#8217; original designs. Today, these guitars are known as classical guitars because they are still used for their original purpose \u2013 playing classical music or Spanish pieces.<\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in how to play guitar and want to know more about it, you should start with a few basics. There are many different things that you can do with the guitar, but if you want one of them to work as well as possible, you should learn the basics first. Here is a look at what they are.<\/p>\n<p>So What Are The Basics?<\/p>\n<p>Playing the guitar involves several different kinds of skills. You need to be able to read music and understand how the instrument works. If you don&#8217;t have some idea about how the guitar is played, learning how to use it will be hard for you.<\/p>\n<p>For any kind of playing on the guitar, it is important that you have a good knowledge of the musical notes. Before you can know this, though, it is important that you know what musical notes are. So let&#8217;s take a look at that first.<\/p>\n<p>The notes on a guitar are named after letters in the alphabet and not numbers like on piano keys. This makes it easier for beginners because there are fewer letters involved and they can be remembered easier. The notes on a guitar start with A which is also called &#8220;A&#8221; note. When talking about notes on a guitar, people usually refer to them by their names not by their numbers<\/p>\n<p>The guitar is a marvelous instrument that is at home in nearly every type of music. A lot of people want to learn to play it but are unsure where to start. It&#8217;s not as hard as you think, but there are some basics to get under your fingers before you can be playing the songs you want.<\/p>\n<p>The Basics<\/p>\n<p>The guitar is a stringed instrument with six strings. The strings run from the head of the guitar to a bridge that runs across all six and over the body of the guitar. The strings are numbered from one to six, thickest to thinnest, starting with the low E string on the left.<\/p>\n<p>Space Between Strings<\/p>\n<p>First you need to know that those spaces on the neck between each set of two strings are called frets. The space between each open string and its first fret is called an &#8220;at rest&#8221; fret (the 1st, 3rd, 5th and so on). Frets separate pitches played across multiple strings, thus theoretically giving you more notes using different combinations of notes on adjacent strings than if there were no frets at all (which would be a 12-string guitar).<\/p>\n<p>When To Use The Fret Hand<\/p>\n<p>To play barre chords (chords where all the notes come from one or<\/p>\n<p>First of all, the best way to learn how to play guitar is to get lessons from a professional. However, if you are not in a position to do that, there is still hope!<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of great tools out there that can help you learn on your own. You should definitely check them out. A few of the best are listed below:<\/p>\n<p>Music Theory<\/p>\n<p>Music theory is important when learning how to play guitar. The reason is simple: it will allow you understand the music better, which will make you a better player.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Playing by ear,&#8221; while useful in some situations, is actually more difficult to master than reading music. There are far fewer people who can play by ear well than read music well.<\/p>\n<p>Learning how to read music on the guitar can be very helpful in understanding the guitar and learning new songs quickly. Make sure you know how to read music before jumping into playing by ear.<\/p>\n<p>Learning Music Theory<\/p>\n<p>There are a lot of different music theory books out there for guitarists. If you&#8217;re interested in learning about theory, I suggest checking out some of these books and seeing what works best for you:<\/p>\n<p>Guitar for Dummies (by Mark Phillips) Guitar Theory for Dummies (by Jon Chappell)<\/p>\n<p>The guitar is an instrument which is played by plucking or strumming the strings. Its body, commonly known as a &#8220;guitar body&#8221;, is in the shape of a musical instrument and thus resembles a long, thin piece of wood.<\/p>\n<p>The guitar typically has six strings, but may have as many as 12. The sound of a guitar can be modified by new playing techniques such as string bending, tapping, and hammering-on. Invented in the 1930s by Gibson Guitar Corporation, the modern guitar was adopted by jazz and country musicians, who frequently used it in Hawaiian music and bluegrass music.<\/p>\n<p>The modern steel string guitar was popularized in the 1940s and 1950s with blues players such as Robert Johnson. Rock musicians adopted the instrument from these blues players and began using it themselves in their folk music-influenced rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll of the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>The electric guitar has since become a preferred instrument in heavy metal music. The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is played casually, aggressively or using a combination of both; depending on performance situation and player preference.<\/p>\n<p>Guitars are usually played with finger or thumb (or pick) technique and often by strumming along with an<\/p>\n<p>First, let&#8217;s just get this out of the way: There is absolutely no substitute for practice. In fact, if you practice smartly and efficiently, you can significantly cut down the time it takes to learn guitar.<\/p>\n<p>So take this lesson for what it is: a foundation. I will teach you how to hold the guitar and how to make chords. This will allow you to play many songs. You will be able to impress your friends and family members with your newfound guitar prowess. But before you run out and buy a dozen guitars and an amplifier, please realize that this is not an end in itself. It&#8217;s a beginning.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Musicians can be divided into two broad categories: those who rely on their music for income, and those who do not. If you don&#8217;t rely on your music for an income, then the fact that you are not very good is not a problem. You can continue to play without too much stress or embarrassment. If you do rely on your music for an income, however, the fact that you are not very good is a big problem.<\/p>\n<p>Trying to make a living playing music is one of the most stressful things I have ever done. The pressure is enormous and constant. It&#8217;s not so bad if you&#8217;re in a band with other people where there is a division of labor and everyone has their role, but if you&#8217;re doing it all yourself\u2014writing, recording, performing, marketing\u2014it can become overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>This post will focus on the single most important thing that young musicians should be aware of: To make a living from music, you must be very good at what you do.<\/p>\n<p>There is an obvious corrolary to this rule: No one expects you to be perfect at the start. But if you want to make a living from music, the most important thing to realize is that improvement takes time. A lot of time.<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wAfbTvEeMmw?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rTMN8rCBWkw?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to Play Guitar &#8211; The Basics: A blog about how to play guitar, the basics you should know before you start An acoustic guitar is a stringed instrument that has a hollow body and a neck. Its sound is produced by the vibration of the strings which are plucked by the fingers. The acoustic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66539"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66541,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66539\/revisions\/66541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}