If you have made the decision that you want to learn to play guitar, the next question is how? Once upon a time, it was an easy decision as there was only two routes you could take; learn on your own or get a guitar teacher. Now, with the advent of the Internet there is another option which is to learn online.
There are many people who consider teaching guitar and the Internet is awash with “how to become a guitar teacher” articles. There are good and bad teachers all over the world, so if you are thinking about adding yourself to these ranks, then hopefully this guide will help add you to the former and not the later description.
I have over the years had people phoning me up not for guitar lessons, but to ask how much I make a year because it seems a pretty easy job and they’d like to do it! Yes, I really have. Talk about having their priorities wrong. To be a great instrumental teacher, first and foremost you must have a love of the instrument you teach as well as music in general. You must also be a very good player and crucially be able to communicate to the student from your own experience how they in turn can develop their skills.
So, when thinking about this concept of good and bad teachers, how can we define what makes a good or a bad guitar tutor?
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GMI offers guitarists a variety of guitar chord chart resources and charts for guitar arpeggios and scales. Use on your computer or print for wall hanging.
Gone are the days when tuning a guitar could only be done by ear. Well, it was done by hand, but you used your ears to guess when you were actually in tune. The only other option used when working out how to tune a guitar was to use another instrument to tune too. This caused problems as well. The guitar is a transposing instrument so it sounds an octave lower than written. Making sure the French horn player knows what you are going on about could be tricky. Also, what if you tune to a piano and it is out of tune?
Now, there are a huge amount of options available to you. There is the way that just described above. In the twenty first century there are a lot more options available. There are guitar tuner pedals, guitar apps for tuning, pitch pipes and tuning forks. GMI – Guitar & Music Institute thought it was time to have a good look at what’s out there and go through the whole guitar tuning experience.
At this point it might be a good idea for us to split up tuning a guitar into two different types. You can tune your guitar relative to itself. That is, you use the ear method outlined below to tune the guitar to the lowest string. It’s usually a good idea to tune to the lowest string. The guitar may now be in tune, however, it may not be tuned to concert pitch.
Concert pitch is defined as follows. The A note above middle C (on a piano) is tuned and resonates at 440 Hertz (Hz). In 1926 the American Standards Association decided that this would be the standard. Before this, countries had different ideas of what concert pitch should actually be. It’s interesting to note that some people state that the universe vibrates at a frequency of 432 Hz, interesting but perhaps not that important to tuning the guitar.
The point of all this is the following. If you tune your guitar to itself using the “ear” method below without an external device to help you locate concert pitch, then you are tuning your guitar relative to itself. You will probably not be in concert pitch meaning that if you play with other musicians who are in concert pitch it will sound pretty terrible. That being said, if you are not playing with other musicians, it’s better to be in tune relatively than not at all and that is what the next section will teach you. As an aside, some people have “perfect pitch”.
Perfect pitch is sometimes referred to as absolute pitch. It’s quite a big subject but at it’s core it means that a human can hear and identify exactly any chord notes and tones without the aid of an external device. Musicians who have perfect pitch are few and far between. If you have perfect pitch you don’t need to bother continuing to read this article as it’s all hard wired into your head already!
The ear method means that you either use a tuning fork to tune one string to concert pitch then tune up using the following method. Or, you will just tune your guitar relative to one of your strings; usually string six. Watch the following video to see how to tune the guitar in this way.
The next method builds on the previous method, but by using a tuning fork we can ensure that the guitar is tuned to perfect pitch. As mentioned earlier, the note A resonates at 440 Hz and is the A above middle C on the piano keyboard. When you buy a tuning fork you need to remember the following. The guitar is a transposing instrument! What does this mean? It means that the guitar sounds one octave lower than written. So, if you were to play an A on space two of a musical staff, you would actually be sounding an A that sits two ledger lines below the staff. This means that when you hit a tuning fork and resonate it on your guitar soundboard, you are actually sounding an A note that is two octaves higher than your A open string.
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It’s not the end of the world to be honest. The video below will show the guitarist hitting a harmonic on the fifth string. He does this by lightly touching the string and plucking it with his plectrum. By doing this he plays a note that is an octave higher than the open string. The tuning fork is still an octave higher than this, but it certainly helps. Watch the following video to see how to use a tuning fork which will mean you are tuned to perfect pitch.
With the advent of electronic circuits and the miniaturization of components we now have a huge amount of battery and mains powered tuning pedals. The following video was created for GMI by our very own Gary Clinton. Gary is using the Korg DT10 tuner, but there are many options available to you. This tuner is floor mounted and would best be suited for the semi-pro or professional guitarist. It’s on the floor out of the way. It allows silent tuning which is important when tuning up in a pit band or orchestral scenario or any situation where people don’t want to hear you twanging away. The other important thing about this guitar pedal is that it is chromatic. Some guitar tuners are only set for the six strings of a guitar in standard tuning. This means they are not any use for tuning alternate tunings or drop D tunings.
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There are now a range of tuners that attach to the end of a guitar. These are cheaper to buy than the floor mounted pedal versions and are all pretty useful. Here is a video which looks at a range of these tuning devices and gives a rating as to how good they are compared to each other.
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Many guitar now come with tuners actually built into the guitars. Some people feel that this is a bad thing to do as cutting away the wood and making more holes in the guitar reduces the quality of the sound created from the instrument. I’ll leave that up to you to decide. In this video you see an inbuilt guitar tuner being used.
Guitar Apps are everywhere! They are so prolific that GMI created a post about them titled Ten Free Amazing Guitar Apps which looks at tuners and other guitar related apps. Apps mean that you can have a mobile guitar tuner wherever you go on your phone, tablet or laptop. By now you should be getting the hang of things, so rather than go on, check out this video and see what is available for Android and iPhone.
Some electric guitars have a string locking system. This was primarily created for wammy bar use. With the string lock in place, you could take the strings right down with the wammy bar and they would lock right back into tune. This is great when everything is going well, but not so good if you have a string break. It takes an age to change your string! Also, the strings when locked are usually tuned either on the bridge or at the nut position with little circular tuners, not at the headstock. These can be really fiddly at times and when strings get old, difficult to keep in tune.
Well, hopefully you have found this article on how to tune a guitar informative and at times interesting. One piece of advice that is as old as the hills is to do with strings. If you find that your guitar is constantly going out of tunes then do you need to replace your guitar strings? If your strings are really dirty and the wire is coming of strings four, five and six then you should consider this. Extending string life with string cleaners is another option. Other areas to look at if your guitar keeps going out of tune is the guitar tuning pegs which may be slipping as well as the bridge.
If you have enjoyed this on how to tune a guitar article, then try searching this site and find out a huge amount of other articles at the GMI – Guitar & Music Institute homepage.
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I suppose the meaning behind the question when students ask “how to practice guitar” is; “I’m not developing as fast as I’d like”. This is the real question. Or, the other phrase is “I seem to be hitting a brick wall”.
Frustration is usually behind these questions about practice. Or if I’m asked the best way on how to practice guitar scales they are really saying “I can’t play my scales fast enough”.
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If you have a burning desire to learn to play blues guitar then our blues guitar tabs will get of to the best possible start with this complete course from the Guitar & Music Institute. You should also check our pages on blues scales.
In our Fastlines Blues Primer book techniques include development for blues guitar with 20 blues guitar licks which include:- Quarter-tone, half, full and minor third bends, rakes, vibrato, double-stops, blues licks. Backtrack section contains five varied and much loved blues progressions played by live band in various keys and styles.
Full solo also included which draws upon the Fastline examples as well as ten projects to get you working for months. All music is demonstrated in both traditional music notation and blues guitar tabs so everyone can benefit from the ideas and solos presented.
We will soon be publishing a range of blues guitar tabs books so keep coming back for more free content and to find out more about our blues range of publications. Check out our current guitar books for sale and our how to play guitar pages which details all our current courses.
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We have a great range of guitar books and aids for you to view. Check out our GMI – Guitar Publications page.
Being able to see a wide range of scales chords at a glance is a big help, that’s why we created a range of guitar chord chart printable resources for our visitors. The GMI posters are A3 size downloadable posters. You can either just view these posters on your computer, tablet or phone for reference, or even better, print them out for hanging on your wall. Learn how to finger a wide range of scales, arpeggios and chords in one easy place.
NOTE: This is a download only product, frames are shown for display purposes only and are not included with the guitar poster download.
The first poster that we have created shows a range of open string chords. This poster does not show all open string chords. Rather, we thought we would give you a range of the most used. In that way you can build up a range of great looking and easy to memorise guitar chord chart posters over a period of time. We will also be publishing other posters for scales and arpeggios. If you find these chords easy, check back as we add more chord charts.
The second poster that you can download below offers you at a glance, a wide range of open string scales and arpeggios for you to play. We have included open string major and minor scales. We have also listed open string arpeggios for major, minor, dominant seventh, major seventh and minor seventh chords.
Here is the second poster for you to get your hands on.
Finally, make sure you check out our guitar books for sale page. We have a growing range of print and ePublication books for guitarists. Also, on our how to play guitar page, we list all our current courses. Our blog page has a large amount of free material to view as well so make sure you check it out. Use our sign up form to get the latest updates, news and lessons from GMI.
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Learning jazz guitar scales can seem daunting, that’s why we created the Fastlines series of printed and ePub range of low cost guitar methods. You can download our free taster PDF and listen to all the lick ideas that are presented in the printed and ePub book. We hope you enjoy listening to the examples and that you will consider buying our low cost printed versions direct from Amazon.
So what are the main problems in learning to improvise and understanding how jazz guitar scales work? The biggest challenge is having a good library of musical ideas to work with and develop. If you have a range of great sounding ideas and backing tracks to actually play them over; that is half the battle.
By learning the jazz guitar lines presented here, you are building up a resource or library of pre learned phrases that you will develop and change as you continue your practice.
BUY FROM AMAZON OR DIRECT PDF & AUDIO DOWNLOAD FROM OUR ONLINE STORE
FASTLINES JAZZ PRIMER
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Introductory package for beginners includes:- II-V-I lines in both arpeggio and scalar forms, chromatic movement of lines, playing through minor progressions, use of altered tones and rhythmic variation.
Complete solo included with play along facility.
Projects include: Arpeggio playing, inner-lines, altered chords, warm up techniques and solo construction.
Backtrack section contains standard jazz progression in various styles in the keys of D minor, C major, G major.
If you are looking for more ideas regarding jazz guitar scales, make sure to check out our Intermediate and Advanced jazz guitar methods in the Fastlines range.
FASTLINES JAZZ INTERMEDIATE
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Intermediate to advanced player package includes:- Rhythmic displacement, upper and lower neighbour tones, chromatic approach tones, modal ideas, left hand techniques and playing over the bar line.
Complete solo included with play along facility.
Projects include: repeated rhythmic figures, wide interval playing, substitution principles, syncopated rhythms.
Backtrack section contains standard jazz progression in various styles: swing, modal, Latin, ballad, slow swing.
FASTLINES JAZZ ADVANCED
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Advanced player package includes:- Flat five substitution, lines in fourths, triadic substitution, contemporary and modern rhythm changes, scales built from the lydian mode, diminished lines and wide interval playing.
Complete solo included with play along facility.
Projects include: Quartal harmony, movement of a half-step, exploiting the flattened fifth, combining major arpeggios.
Backtrack section contains standard jazz progression in various styles: Rhythm changes, altered chord progressions, Lydian backing tracks.
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We have a great range of guitar books and aids for you to view. Check out our GMI – Guitar Publications page.
Make sure you get the FREE download which includes the examples from all three packs including audio tracks of the Fastlines included.
If you are serious about getting your chord playing and knowledge together, then it’s absolutely imperative that you understand drop 2 voicings for guitar. This short blog post will use video which we created for GMI to help you understand these vital chordal formations.
The following videos accompany the book we created titled “Drop Two Voicings Uncovered”. The book wholly concerns itself with drop 2 voicings for guitar, their construction and how they work within chord progressions.
Each of the thirteen videos offer free material for you to use for practice and understanding. Some of the videos contain PDF downloads, others a backing track and some both. All of the material is completely free and you don’t need to sign up to anything to get it.
No. The reason that guitarists use them is that they are easier to play (for the most part) than close voicings. Close voicings stack the notes up one after another. Although they sound great, they can cause problems if you need to play many of them one after the other. This is where block 2 voicings for guitar come in. The second note from the top of each chord is dropped by an octave and in almost all cases, this makes playing the chord much easier. Many guitarists already play a wide range of drop two voicings, they just don’t know that they do.
No. Drop two voicings are used across a wide range of musical genres. Pop, rock, jazz, blues. In fact, drop two voicings are used in almost every musical style. The exception probably is heavy rock/metal where power chords are to the fore.
It’s not nearly as hard as you think and that is why GMI created the book DROP TWO VOICINGS UNCOVERED. The book takes you through an easy to understand and follow course of lessons. The book accompanies the videos above and also offers the book owner further PDF downloads and backing tracks.
Easy. Just click the following link HERE and you’ll be able to view more about the book and how to buy it. We sell through Amazon and good booksellers throughout the world.
