Guitar For Dummies®, 4th Edition
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951123
ISBN 978-1-119-29335-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-29654-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-29653-9 (ebk)
Guitar For Dummies, 3rd Edition (9781119293354) was previously published as Guitar For Dummies, 3rd Edition (9781119151432). While this version features a new Dummies cover and design, the content is the same as the prior release and should not be considered a new or updated product.
So you wanna play guitar, huh? And why wouldn’t you?
You may as well face it: In the music world, guitars set the standard for cool (and we’re not just being biased here). Since the 1950s, many of the greatest stars in rock ’n’ roll, blues, and country have played the guitar. Think of Chuck Berry doing his one-legged hop (the “duck walk”) across the stage while belting out “Johnny B. Goode”; Jimi Hendrix wailing on his upside-down, right-handed (and sometimes flaming) Stratocaster; Bonnie Raitt slinkily playing her slide guitar; Garth Brooks with his acoustic guitar and Western shirts; B.B. King’s authoritative bending and expressive vibrato on his guitar “Lucille”; or Jim Hall’s mellow jazz guitar stylings. (Even Elvis Presley, whose guitar prowess may not have exceeded five chords, still used the guitar effectively onstage as a prop.) The list goes on.
Playing electric guitar can put you out in front of a band, where you’re free to roam, sing, and connect with your adoring fans. Playing acoustic guitar can make you the star of the vacation campfire sing-along. And playing any kind of guitar can bring out the music in your soul and become a cherished lifetime hobby.
Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, delivers everything the beginning to intermediate guitarist needs: From buying a guitar to tuning the guitar to playing the guitar to caring for the guitar — this book has it all!
Believe it or not, many would-be guitarists never really get into playing because they have the wrong guitar. Or maybe the strings are too difficult to press down (causing a great deal of pain). Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, unlike some other books we could mention, doesn’t assume that you already have the right guitar — or even any guitar at all, for that matter. In this book, you find everything you need to know (from a buyer’s guide to buying strategies, to guitars and accessories for particular styles) to match yourself with the guitar and equipment that fit your needs and budget.
Most guitar books want you to practice the guitar in the same way that you practice the piano. First, you learn where the notes fall on the staff; then you learn about the length of time that you’re supposed to hold the notes; then you move on to practicing scales; and the big payoff is to practice song after unrecognizable song that you probably don’t care about playing anyway. If you’re looking for this kind of ho-hum guitar book, you’ve definitely come to the wrong place. But don’t worry, you’ll find no shortage of that kind of book.
The truth is that many great guitarists don’t know how to read music, and many who can read music learned to do so after they learned to play the guitar. Repeat after us: You don’t need to read music to play the guitar. Chant this mantra until you believe it, because this principle is central to the design of Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition.
One of the coolest things about the guitar is that, even though you can devote your lifetime to perfecting your skills, you can start faking it rather quickly. We assume that, instead of concentrating on what the 3/4 time signature means, you want to play music — real music (or at least recognizable music). We want you to play music, too, because that’s what keeps you motivated and practicing.
So how does Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, deliver? Glad you asked. The following list tells you how this book starts you playing and developing real guitar skills quickly:
A serious guitar is a serious investment, and, as with any other serious investment, you need to maintain it. Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, provides the information you need to correctly store, maintain, and care for your six-string, including how to change strings and what little extras to keep stashed away in your guitar case.
We really don’t make many assumptions about you. We don’t assume that you already own a guitar. We don’t assume that you have a particular preference for acoustic or electric guitars or that you favor a particular style. Gee, this is a pretty equal-opportunity book!
Okay, we do assume some things. We assume that you want to play a guitar, not a banjo, Dobro, or mandolin, and we concentrate on the six-string variety. We assume you’re relatively new to the guitar world. And we assume that you want to start playing the guitar quickly, without a lot of messing around with reading notes, clefs, and time signatures. You can find all that music-reading stuff in the book, but that’s not our main focus. Our main focus is helping you make cool, sweet music on your six-string.
In the margins of this book, you find several helpful little icons that can make your journey a little easier:
Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, provides text, photos, and diagrams to help you get your head around — and your hands on — the guitar. But membership in the Guitar For Dummies club also gets you something else of great value: access to the online assets that help you stay connected even when your eyes aren’t focused somewhere between the book’s covers.
To begin with, we have an electronic version of a Cheat Sheet that gives you quick, at-a-glance guidance to several aspects of the guitar that help your playing. The eCheat Sheet is divided into four sections, dealing with such diverse topics as notation explanations, common chords for various music styles, and recommended tools and accessories to have on hand for your guitar playing sessions. To view this book’s Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com
and search for “Guitar For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
You can find several free pieces of information online at www.dummies.com/extras/guitar
.
You also can find online video and audio files at www.dummies.com/go/guitar
that demonstrate exactly what the exercises and songs sound like and how they should be played. As a bonus, we include two printable documents (in the form of PDFs): a page of blank chord diagrams that you can fill in with the chord forms of your choice and a page of blank music paper, containing a treble clef staff and a tab staff. We encourage you to print these documents and fill them with song excerpts or exercises that you’re focusing on. Be sure to check out Appendix C for a full explanation of and guide to the online files.
Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition, has been carefully crafted so you can find what you want or need to know about the guitar and no more. Because each chapter is self-contained, you can skip information that you’ve already mastered and not feel lost. Yet, at the same time, you can also follow along from front to back and practice the guitar in a way that builds step by step on your previous knowledge.
To find the information you need, you can simply look through the table of contents to find the area that you’re interested in, or you can look for particular information in the index at the back of the book.
If you’re a beginner and are ready to start playing right away, you can skip Chapter 1 and go straight to Chapter 2, where you get your guitar in tune. Then browse through Chapter 3 on developing the skills you need to play and dive straight in to Chapter 4. Although you can skip around somewhat in the playing chapters, if you’re a beginner, we urge you to take the chapters in order, one at a time. Moreover, you should stick to Chapter 4 until you start to form calluses on your fingers, which really help you to make the chords sound right without buzzing.
If you don’t yet have a guitar, you should start in Part 5, the shopper’s guide, and look for what you need in a basic practice guitar. After you buy your ax, you can get on with playing, which is the real fun after all, right?
Above all, remember that a hallmark of any For Dummies book is that it’s nonlinear. You can start reading from the beginning of any chapter in any Part of the book, and the text will make sense to you. We encourage you to skip around among the introduction chapters, the instruction chapters, the style chapters, and the shopping and maintenance chapters. And don’t forget to top off a reading session with a Part of Tens chapter or two. Those chapters give you plenty of info to impress even the most jaded guest at a cocktail party. And if you do decide to read the book straight through, in a linear fashion, even though you don’t have to, well, we think that’s just fine, too.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Know how to identify the different parts of acoustic and electric guitars and what makes them unique.
Understand how the guitar works to appreciate how it can produce sweet sounds.
Discover how to tune your guitar so you can make in-tune music and prevent the local dogs from howling.
Grasp how to position your body and hands correctly before you play.
Comprehend how to read guitar notation to increase the ways you can absorb guitar music.
Play a chord step-by-step to get your fingers in place for making real music.
Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Identifying the different parts of the guitar
Understanding how the guitar works
Access the audio tracks and video clips at http://www.dummies.com/go/guitar
All guitars — whether painted purple with airbrushed skulls and lightning bolts or finished in a natural-wood pattern with a fine French lacquer — share certain physical characteristics that make them behave like guitars and not violins or tubas. If you’re confused about the difference between a headstock and a pickup or you’re wondering which end of the guitar to hold under your chin, this chapter is for you.
We describe the differences among the various parts of the guitar and tell you what those parts do. We also tell you how to hold the instrument and why the guitar sounds the way it does. And, in case you took us seriously, you don’t hold the guitar under your chin — unless, of course, you’re Jimi Hendrix.
The following list tells you the functions of the various parts of a guitar:
After you can recognize the basic parts of the guitar (see the preceding section for help), you may also want to understand how those parts work together to make sound (in case you happen to choose the Parts of a Guitar category in Jeopardy! or get into a heavy argument with another guitarist about string vibration and string length). We present this information in the following sections just so you know why your guitar sounds the way it does, instead of like a kazoo or an accordion. The important thing to remember is that a guitar makes the sound, but you make the music.
Any instrument must have some part of it moving in a regular, repeated motion to produce musical sound (a sustained tone, or pitch). In a guitar, this part is the vibrating string. A string that you bring to a certain tension and then set in motion (by a plucking action) produces a predictable sound — for example, the note A. If you tune a string of your guitar to different tensions, you get different tones. The greater the tension of a string, the higher the pitch.
The guitar normally requires two hands working together to create music. If you want to play, say, middle C on the piano, all you do is take your index finger, position it above the appropriate white key under the piano’s logo, and drop it down: donnnng. A preschooler can sound just like Elton John if playing only middle C, because just one finger of one hand, pressing one key, makes the sound.
The guitar is somewhat different. To play middle C on the guitar, you must take your left-hand index finger and fret the 2nd string (that is, press it down to the fingerboard) at the 1st fret. This action, however, doesn’t itself produce a sound. You must then strike or pluck that 2nd string with your right hand to actually produce the note middle C audibly. Music readers take note: The guitar sounds an octave lower than its written notes. For example, playing a written, third-space C on the guitar actually produces a middle C.
The smallest interval (unit of musical distance in pitch) of the musical scale is the half step. On the piano, the alternating white and black keys represent this interval (as do the places where you find two adjacent white keys with no black key in between). To proceed by half steps on a keyboard instrument, you move your finger up or down to the next available key, white or black. On the guitar, frets — the horizontal metal wires (or bars) that you see embedded in the fretboard, running perpendicular to the strings — represent these half steps. To go up or down by half steps on a guitar means to move your left hand one fret at a time, higher or lower on the neck.
Vibrating strings produce the different tones on a guitar. But you must be able to hear those tones, or you face one of those if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest questions. For an acoustic guitar, that’s no problem, because an acoustic instrument provides its own amplifier in the form of the hollow sound chamber that boosts its sound … well, acoustically.
But an electric guitar makes virtually no acoustic sound at all. (Well, a tiny bit, like a buzzing mosquito, but nowhere near enough to fill a stadium or anger your next-door neighbors.) An electric instrument creates its tones entirely through electronic means. The vibrating string is still the source of the sound, but a hollow wood chamber isn’t what makes those vibrations audible. Instead, the vibrations disturb, or modulate, the magnetic field that the pickups — wire-wrapped magnets positioned underneath the strings — produce. As the vibrations of the strings modulate the pickup’s magnetic field, the pickup produces a tiny electric current that exactly reflects that modulation.
Chapter 2
IN THIS CHAPTER
Counting strings and frets
Tuning the guitar relatively (to itself)
Tuning to a fixed source
Access the audio tracks and video clips at www.dummies.com/go/guitar
Tuning is to guitarists what parallel parking is to city drivers: an everyday and necessary activity that can be vexingly difficult to master. Unlike the piano, which a professional tunes and you never need to adjust until the next time the professional tuner comes to visit, the guitar is normally tuned by its owner — and it needs constant adjusting.
One of the great injustices of life is that before you can even play music on the guitar, you must endure the painstaking process of getting your instrument in tune. Fortunately for guitarists, you have only six strings to tune as opposed to the couple hundred strings in a piano. Also encouraging is the fact that you can use several different methods to get your guitar in tune, as this chapter describes.
We’re going to start from square one, or in this case, string one. Before you can tune your guitar, you need to know how to refer to the two main players — strings and frets.
Strings: Strings are numbered consecutively 1 through 6. The 1st string is the skinniest, located closest to the floor (when you hold the guitar in playing position). Working your way up, the 6th string is the fattest, closest to the ceiling.
We recommend that you memorize the letter names of the open strings (E, A, D, G, B, E, from 6th to 1st) so you’re not limited to referring to them by number. An easy way to memorize the open strings in order is to remember the phrase Eddie Ate Dynamite; Good Bye, Eddie.
Frets: Fret can refer to either the space where you put your left-hand finger or to the thin metal bar running across the fingerboard. Whenever you deal with guitar fingering, fret means the space in between the metal bars — where you can comfortably fit a left-hand finger. (We introduce frets and other important parts of the guitar in Chapter 1.)
The 1st fret is the region between the nut (the thin, grooved strip that separates the headstock from the neck) and the first metal bar. The 5th fret, then, is the fifth square up from the nut — technically, the region between the fourth and fifth metal fret bars.
Most guitars have a marker on the 5th fret, either a decorative design embedded in the fingerboard or a dot on the side of the neck, or both.
Relative tuning is so named because you don’t need any outside reference to which you tune the instrument. As long as the strings are in tune in a certain relationship with each other, you can create sonorous and harmonious tones. Those same tones may turn into sounds resembling those of a catfight if you try to play along with another instrument, however; but as long as you tune the strings relative to one another, the guitar is in tune with itself.
To tune a guitar by using the relative method, choose one string — say, the 6th string — as the starting point. Leave the pitch of that string as is; then tune all the other strings relative to that 6th string.
The 5th-fret method derives its name from the fact that you almost always play a string at the 5th fret and then compare the sound of that note to that of the next open string. You need to be careful, though, because the 4th fret (the 5th fret’s jealous understudy) puts in a cameo appearance toward the end of the process.
Here’s how to get your guitar in tune by using the 5th-fret method (check out the diagram in Figure 2-1 that outlines all five steps):
Play the 5th fret of the 6th (low E) string (the fattest one, closest to the ceiling) and then play the open 5th (A) string (the one next to it).
Let both notes ring together (in other words, allow the 6th string to continue vibrating while you play the 5th string). Their pitches should match exactly. If they don’t seem quite right, determine whether the 5th string is lower or higher than the fretted 6th string.
You may go too far with the tuning key if you’re not careful; if so, you need to reverse your motions. In fact, if you can’t tell whether the 5th string is higher or lower, tune it flat intentionally (that is, tune it too low) and then come back to the desired pitch.
Play the 5th fret of the 5th (A) string and then play the open 4th (D) string.
Let both of these notes ring together. If the 4th string seems flat or sharp relative to the fretted 5th string, use the tuning key of the 4th string to adjust its pitch accordingly. Again, if you’re not sure whether the 4th string is higher or lower, overtune it in one direction — flat, or lower, is better — and then come back.
Play the 5th fret of the 4th (D) string and then play the open 3rd (G) string.
Let both notes ring together again. If the 3rd string seems flat or sharp relative to the fretted 4th string, use the tuning key of the 3rd string to adjust the pitch accordingly.
Play the 4th (not the 5th!) fret of the 3rd (G) string and then play the open 2nd (B) string.
Let both strings ring together. If the 2nd string seems flat or sharp, use its tuning key to adjust the pitch accordingly.
Play the 5th (yes, back to the 5th for this one) fret of the 2nd (B) string and then play the open 1st (high E) string.
Let both notes ring together. If the 1st string seems flat or sharp, use its tuning key to adjust the pitch accordingly. If you’re satisfied that both strings produce the same pitch, you’ve now tuned the upper (that is, upper as in higher-pitched) five strings of the guitar relative to the fixed (untuned) 6th string. Your guitar’s now in tune with itself.
Getting the guitar in tune with itself through the 5th-fret method in the preceding section is good for your ear but isn’t very practical if you need to play with other instruments or voices that are accustomed to standard tuning references (see the section “Getting a taste of the tuning fork,” a little later in this chapter). If you want to bring your guitar into the world of other people or instruments, you need to know how to tune to a fixed source, such as a piano, pitch pipe, tuning fork, or electronic tuner. Using such a source ensures that everyone is playing by the same tuning rules. Besides, your guitar and strings are built for optimal tone production if you tune to standard pitch.
The following sections describe some typical ways to tune your guitar by using fixed references. These methods enable you to not only get in tune but also make nice with all the other instruments in the neighborhood.
Because it holds its pitch so well (needing only biannual or annual tunings, depending on conditions), a piano is a great tool to use for tuning a guitar. Assuming that you have an electronic keyboard or a well-tuned piano around, all you need to do is match the open strings of the guitar to the appropriate keys on the piano. Figure 2-2 shows a piano keyboard and the corresponding open guitar strings.
Obviously, if you’re off to the beach with your guitar, you’re not going to want to put a piano in the back of your car, even if you’re really fussy about tuning. So you need a smaller and more practical device that supplies standard-tuning reference pitches. Enter the pitch pipe. The pitch pipe evokes images of stern, matronly chorus leaders who purse their prunelike lips around a circular harmonica to deliver an anemic squeak that instantly marshals together the reluctant voices of the choir. Yet pitch pipes serve their purpose.
For guitarists, special pitch pipes exist consisting of pipes that play only the notes of the open strings of the guitar (but sounding in a higher range) and none of the in-between notes. The advantage of a pitch pipe is that you can hold it firmly in your mouth while blowing, keeping your hands free for tuning. The disadvantage to a pitch pipe is that you sometimes take a while getting used to hearing a wind-produced pitch against a struck-string pitch. But with practice, you can tune with a pitch pipe as easily as you can with a piano. And a pitch pipe fits much more easily into your shirt pocket than a piano does!
After you get good enough at discerning pitches, you need only one single-pitched tuning reference to get your whole guitar in tune. The tuning fork offers only one pitch, and it usually comes in only one flavor: A (the one above middle C, which vibrates at 440 cycles per second, commonly known as A-440). But that note’s really all you need. If you tune your open 5th string (A) to the tuning fork’s A (although the guitar’s A sounds in a lower range), you can tune every other string to that string by using the relative tuning method that we discuss in the section “Tuning Your Guitar to Itself with the 5th-Fret Method” earlier in this chapter.
Using a tuning fork requires a little finesse. You must strike the fork against something firm, such as a tabletop or kneecap, and then hold it close to your ear or place the stem (or handle) — and not the tines (or fork prongs) — against something that resonates. This resonator can be the tabletop again or the top of the guitar. (You can even hold it between your teeth, which leaves your hands free! It really works, too!) At the same time, you must somehow play an A and tune it to the fork’s tone. The process is kind of like pulling your house keys out of your pocket while you’re loaded down with an armful of groceries. The task may not be easy, but if you do it enough, you eventually become an expert.
You can either plug your guitar into the tuner (if you’re using an electric instrument) or you can use the tuner’s built-in microphone to tune an acoustic. In both types of tuners — the ones where you select the strings and the ones that automatically sense the string — the display indicates two things: what note you’re closest to (E, A, D, G, B, E) and whether you’re flat or sharp of that note.
Nine-volt batteries or two AAs that can last for a year with regular usage (up to two or even three years with only occasional usage) usually power electronic tuners. Many electronic tuners are inexpensive (as low as $20 or so) and are well worth the money. You can also find tuners in the form of apps on smartphones and other handheld devices and on the web. (For more on tuners, see Chapter 17.)
Lest we forget, you have at your disposal one more fixed source as a tuning reference: your Guitar For Dummies audio tracks.
The benefit of using Track 1 to help you tune is that it always plays back the exact pitch and never goes sharp or flat, not even a little bit. So you can use Track 1 at any time to get perfectly tuned notes.
Chapter 3
IN THIS CHAPTER
Positioning your body and hands before you play
Reading chord diagrams, tablature, and rhythm slashes
Playing a chord
Access the audio tracks and video clips at www.dummies.com/go/guitar
Guitars are user-friendly instruments. They fit comfortably into the arms of most humans, and the way your two hands fall on the strings naturally is pretty much the position from which you should play. In this chapter, we tell you all about good posture techniques and how to hold your hands — just as if you were a young socialite at a finishing school.
We jest because we care. But you really do need to remember that good posture and position, at the very least, prevent strain and fatigue and, at best, help develop good concentration habits and tone. After we get you positioned correctly with the guitar, we go over some basic music-deciphering skills and show you how to play a chord.