Guitar All-in-One For Dummies
Overview
A one-stop resource to the essentials of owning and playing the guitar If you’ve just bought a guitar, or you’ve had one for a while, you probably know it takes some time and effort to learn how to play the popular instrument. There’s so much to know about owning, maintaining, and playing a guitar. Where do you even begin? In Guitar All-in-One For Dummies, a team of expert guitarists and music teachers shows you the essentials you need to know about owning and playing a guitar. From picking your first notes to exploring music theory and composition, maintaining your gear, and diving into the specifics of genres like blues and rock, this book is a comprehensive and practical goldmine of indispensable info. Created for the budding guitarist who wants all their lessons and advice in one place, the book will show you how to:
- Maintain, tune, and string your guitar, as well as decipher music notation and guitar tablature
- Understand guitar theory, sounds and techniques to help you learn new songs and add your style to classic tunes
- Practice several popular genres of guitar music, including blues, rock, and classical
- Access accompanying online video and audio instructional resources that demonstrate the lessons you find in the book
Perfect for guitar players at any skill level, Guitar All-in-One For Dummies is a must-have resource for anyone who wants to get the most out of their own guitar and make great music.
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About The Author
This All-in-One guide includes content from Jon Chappell, a guitarist, composer, author, and magazine editor;
Mark Phillips, a guitarist, arranger, and editor;
DesiSerna, a guitar guru and music theory expert; and
Hal Leonard Corporation, a renowned U.S. music publishing company.
Sample Chapters
guitar all-in-one for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
Learning to play the guitar is a lot fun. Use this cheat sheet to help you get started with your guitar finger placement and guitar chords. If you need help with finger placement on your guitar, use tablature (tab) and fingerboard diagrams.Practice playing the most common open-position chords on your guitar to get that “jangly” sound, and make sure you know the notes on the neck of your guitar to change starting notes in scales, chords, and arpeggios.
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Whether you have scads of time for guitar practice or are forced to shoehorn precious musical moments with your instruments into a hectic schedule, your goal should be to maximize the efficiency of your practice time. Guitar playing is fun, but you improve your skills with practice and work. This article offers ten tips to satisfy your inner efficiency expert.
Knowing guitar theory is one thing — applying it is another. To become a strong guitar player, you have to practice and play. This article includes suggestions to help you implement an understanding of guitar theory in your playing. The following are some of the best ways to practice along with tricks to help you take advantage of every playing opportunity.
Enrich your listening life with the sound of the blues. Not sure which blues-guitar recordings to begin with? Here are eleven of the greatest albums, which include a mix of artist-specific and genre recordings.
To acquire the original versions of classic blues records requires thousands of dollars and to play them requires a little thing called the turntable.
A capo is a device that clamps down across the fingerboard at a particular fret on a guitar. Capos can operate by means of elastic, springs, or even threaded bolts, but they all serve the same purpose — they shorten the length of all the guitar strings at the same time, creating, in effect, a new nut. All the "open" strings now play in higher pitches than they do without the capo.
Certain guitarists have made their mark on the world of guitar so that any guitarist who comes along after them has a hard time escaping their legacy. Here is a handful of some of the rock guitar greats you should absolutely be listening to and learning from.
B.B. King (1925– )
Although he wasn’t the first electric bluesman, B.
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Learning to play the guitar is a lot fun. Use this cheat sheet to help you get started with your guitar finger placement and guitar chords. If you need help with finger placement on your guitar, use tablature (tab) and fingerboard diagrams.Practice playing the most common open-position chords on your guitar to get that “jangly” sound, and make sure you know the notes on the neck of your guitar to change starting notes in scales, chords, and arpeggios.
Here, you will tackle some song-length guitar exercises that illustrate many of the characteristics, both chordal and rhythmic, of standard grooves or feels in rock music. Rhythm section players often talk to each other in terms of feel, and standard terms have developed to describe some of the more common rhythmic accompaniment styles.
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Guitar specific notation is super handy. If you see little numbers and letters in the treble staff, it usually means someone (the composer or arranger, a teacher, or the editor) has gone through and thoughtfully provided you with the suggested, the best, or even the only possible working fingering indications.
Tablature staff (called “tab” for short) is sometimes added to the standard notation staff for guitar players. Tablature is a six-line staff that represents the guitar fretboard. Note that each line represents a string of the guitar, with the top line corresponding to the 1st (high-E) string and the bottom line corresponding to the 6th (low-E) string.
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Classical guitarists are no different from other musicians dealing with written music in that after they identify and understand the symbols of standard music notation, they have to correlate them to their instrument. In other words, they have to play. At the most basic level — executing the correct pitch and rhythm — you must be able to play the note you see on the staff correctly on the guitar.
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Although lead guitar is a studied craft with an established orthodoxy (that is, you can buy books on the subject), rhythm guitar is a universe without any rules. No one can say for sure what makes up a good rhythm guitar part, but you sure know one when you hear it.
The best rhythm players in rock — such as Pete Townshend, Eddie Van Halen, and Keith Richards, just to name a few — all play in a style that’s hard to label or analyze.
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Some people do all sorts of exercises to develop their position playing on the guitar. They buy books that contain nothing but position-playing exercises. Some of these books aim to develop sight-reading skills, and others aim to develop left-hand finger strength and dexterity. But you don’t really need such books.
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After you develop a feel for strumming your guitar in different combinations of quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, you can increase the rhythmic variation to these various groupings by applying syncopation. Syncopation is the disruption or alteration of the expected sounding of notes. In rock and roll right-hand rhythm playing, you do that by staggering your strum and mixing up your up- and downstrokes to strike different parts of the beats.
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Musicians and guitarists use secondary dominants on almost any chord in a key to provide some variety to a progression and to give some temporary focus to another chord. For example, the D7 chord has a different sound quality than a simple D minor chord, which is what you normally find in the key of C.
Because the chord has a dominant function, it draws attention to the following G7 chord.
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How do you know which mode to play the guitar in? Here’s where things get tricky. Although the major scale has multiple modes, musicians generally think of and notate music as being in only the relative major and relative minor, even when another mode is being used.
So songs in the major modes (Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian) are all treated as if they were plain major, or in Ionian mode, while songs in the minor modes (Dorian, Phrygian, and Aeolian) are all treated as if they were natural minor, or in Aeolian mode.
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A triad is a set of three notes stacked in 3rds. Playing in 3rds on the guitar means that you start on a scale degree, count it as “1,” and then move to the scale degree that is three away, “3.” For example, the G major scale is G-A-B-C-D-E-F♯.If you start counting from G, then the 3rd is B (G-A-B, 1-2-3). If you start counting from A, then the 3rd is C (A-B-C, 1-2-3).
In rock, jazz, and blues, improvisation plays a great role for any guitarist. In fact, being a good improviser is much more important than being a good technician. It’s much more important to create honest, credible, and inspired music through improvisation than it is to play with technical accuracy and perfection.
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Rhythm guitar includes many more approaches than just simultaneously strumming chords. A piano player doesn’t plunk down all her fingers at once every time she plays an accompaniment part, and guitarists shouldn’t have to strike all the strings every time they bring their pick down.
In fact, guitarists borrow a technique from their keyboard-plunking counterparts, who separate the left and right hands to play bass notes and chords, respectively.
Not all arpeggiated passages are straightforward — where the melody occurs consistently in either the treble or bass part on the classical guitar. In some cases the melody moves back and forth between the treble and bass, and in others the treble and bass parts contain melodic motion simultaneously.
Fortunately, the playing of such pieces requires no new techniques, but it does require a heightened awareness (on your part) of where the melody is and how to bring it out.
You can mute with your right hand on the guitar (using the heel of the palm), but this produces a different effect than left-hand muting. In right-hand muting, you still hear the sound of the fretted string, but in a subdued way. You don’t use right-hand muting to stop the sound completely, as you do in a left-hand mute; you just want to suppress the string from ringing freely.
There are many types of chords for the guitar that include 2nds and 9ths, but the three that you’re most likely to encounter are sus2, add9, and 9 chords. You start with the sus2 chord, a chord that has its 3rd replaced or suspended by a 2nd.
Sus2 chords
Sus2 chords are stacked 1-2-5 or some combination thereof.
By far the most common type of 4th chord that you encounter as a guitar player is a sus4, where a 4th replaces the 3rd and a chord is stacked 1-4-5. On occasion, a 4th is added and the 3rd is retained, in which case you view the formula as either 1-3-4-5 or 1-3-5-11 and call it either add4 or add11.
Sus4 chords
Here are a handful of sus4 chords in various keys.
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A high-note riff on the guitar is very close — in words and in music — to a lick. So, just forget the whole idea of strictly defining terms in such a forgiving and nonjudgmental form as the blues. But if you’re mastering all that low-note stuff, you deserve to see what awaits you when you ascend the cellar stairs into the sunshine of high-note, melodic-based playing.
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A riff is a self-contained musical phrase on the guitar, and it can be used to form the basis for a song. Riffs are the bridge between chords and lead guitar. Riffs are usually based on single notes, but they can involve double-stops (two notes played simultaneously) and bits of full-chord playing.
You may hear the terms riff and lick used interchangeably in your blues guitar career.
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Different C form chord voicings are played by breaking down the arpeggio pattern into smaller, fragmented pieces on the guitar. Here are several ways to play partial chord shapes based on the full C form. In these examples, you fret and pick only the black dots. The numbers in the black dots are suggested fingerings.
Although more than 99 percent of all rock playing on the guitar is played with a pick, occasions for fingerstyle do pop up occasionally. Fingerstyle, as the name implies, means that you pluck the strings with the right-hand fingertips. For these times you can put the pick down or stick it between your teeth; whichever allows you to grab it the fastest after the fingerstyle passage is over.
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Beginning guitarists can learn a great deal from playing intervals. The distance from the 1st to the 2nd scale degrees in the major scale is called a second interval, from the 1st to the 3rd is called a third, from the 1st to the 4th is called a fourth, and so on. Here’s what makes up each interval:
2nd: A whole step above the 1st scale degree.
What’s cool about playing up the neck of the guitar is how often you get to shift positions while doing it. And make no mistake, shifting is cool. You get to move your whole hand instead of just your fingers. That looks really good on TV.
You’re ready to try some real licks.
Licks that transport
Just like life, a lick can start you out in one location and take you to another unexpected place — often with delightful results.
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For some reason, all traditional guitar method books start with the guitar’s top strings and work their way down to the low strings. But in the true rebellious spirit of rock and roll, let’s start at the bottom.
The impetus for so many of the world’s greatest melodies, riffs, and rock rhythm figures have low-born origins (from a guitar perspective, anyway).
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The melody of a classical guitar piece, though usually played by the fingers on the high strings (in the treble), is sometimes played by the thumb on the low strings (in the bass). (This concept applies to the piano, too, by the way. The right hand plays the melody of most pieces, though for a different effect, the melody can be placed in the left hand.
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Melodies in the bass are a bit easier to combine with arpeggios on the guitar than are melodies in the treble. However, arpeggio pieces with melodies in the treble are actually more common than those with melodies in the bass, and here you look at the technique you use to play such pieces.
Playing arpeggios with the melody in the treble rather than the bass can be a bit trickier for a few reasons, as the following list explains:
Question of fingering: Technically, any given melody note can be taken with any available finger — i, m, or a — and it’s often up to you to decide which to use.
Just as you use the CAGED arpeggios to form major chord voicings on the guitar, you can do the same with minor arpeggios. You lower all the 3rds in each arpeggio pattern to minor 3rds (♭ó3rds). This simple adjustment changes everything from major to minor. You then fret and play different kinds of minor chord voicings with each of the five minor CAGED forms.
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Some songs you will play on the guitar are based on simple progressions that contain only the I and V chords (also known as the tonic and dominant chords). Songs like “You Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry, “Jambalaya” by Hank Williams, and “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus are all good examples of this basic chord progression.
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Before you break down the C form into smaller and more useable chord voicings on the guitar, add to it in the form of an arpeggio pattern. An arpeggio is a technique in which you play the notes of a chord one at a time like a scale rather than simultaneously as a chord.
The verb arpeggiate describes how players pick through the notes of chords individually rather than strumming them all simultaneously (think of the opening to “The House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals or “Everybody Hurts” by R.
Chords are basic building blocks of songs. You can play a chord (the simultaneous sounding of three or more notes) several ways on the guitar — by strumming (dragging a pick or the back of your fingernails across the strings in a single, quick motion), plucking (with the right-hand fingers), or even smacking the strings with your open hand or fist.
Dorian is the second mode of the major scale — when the 2nd scale degree functions as the tonic on the guitar. Because it centers on a minor chord (ii), it’s considered a minor key. Although this type of minor scale isn’t as common as Aeolian mode (the natural or relative minor) it does come up from time to time, so you need to look out for it.
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There are seven different modes you can play on the guitar. Any degree in the major scale can function as the tonic (or key) and serve as the starting place in the scale, so because the major scale has seven degrees, it also has seven possible starting points, or modes.
Ionian (I)
Ionian is the first mode of the major scale — when the 1st scale degree functions as the tonic.
Lydian is the fourth mode of the major scale — when the 4th scale degree functions as the tonic on the guitar. Because it centers on a major chord, it’s considered a major key. Rarely do you hear a song that’s completely in Lydian mode. Instead, this mode usually occurs only temporarily in a song, until the music moves to a more stable tonic like I.
Mixolydian is the fifth mode of the major scale — when the 5th scale degree functions as the tonic on the guitar. It centers on a major chord, so it’s considered a major key. It’s also called the dominant scale because the 5th degree of the major scale is named the dominant pitch and forms a dominant 7th chord.
Phrygian is the third mode of the major scale — when the 3rd scale degree functions as the tonic on the guitar. It’s considered a minor key because it centers on a minor chord. This type of minor scale is pretty uncommon, but some heavy metal artists use it for its dark, unusual sound.
Here’s what happens to the G major scale when you reorganize its notes and chords, beginning with the 3rd degree, B, to produce B Phrygian mode:
G major
1-2-3-4-5-6-7
G-A-B-C-D-E-F♯
I-ii-iii-IV-V-vi-vii♭ó5
G-Am-Bm-C-D-Em-F♯m♭ó5
B Phrygian
1-♭ó2-♭ó3-4-5-♭ó6-♭ó7
B-C-D-E-F♯-G-A
i-♭óII-♭óIII-iv-v♭ó5-♭óVI-♭óvii
Bm-C-D-Em-F♯m♭ó5-G-Am
Phrygian is a type of minor scale with a flattened 2nd as its most defining characteristic.
In music composition and guitar playing, voice leading is the technique of writing smooth transitions from one chord to another, using common tones between chords and stepwise motion between their different pitches. Voice leading allows composers to take advantage of relationships between chords when connecting them in order to create more melodic lines.
Bending strings is probably the most important of all the articulation techniques available to a rock guitarist. More expressive than hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides, a bend (the action of stretching the sounding string across the fretboard with a left-hand finger, raising its pitch) can turn your soloing technique from merely adequate and accurate to soulful and expressive.
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You can play moves on the higher strings. These guitar strings often involve the same notes played on the lower strings (the fifth and sixth of the chord featured in the Jimmy Reed move —), but when played up high, it sounds more like a riff than a chord figure.
That creates a bridge between chord figures and riffs and licks.
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When you begin to move the left-hand in conjunction with the right, you uncover an exciting new dimension in rhythm guitar: left-hand movement simultaneous with right-hand rhythm. This “liberating of the left hand” is also the first step in playing single-note riffs and leads on the guitar.
This example features a classic left-hand figure that fits either a straight-eighth-note groove or a shuffle feel (although it’s placed here in a straight-eighth setting).
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The A form is one of the most commonly used shapes and is typically what comes to mind when guitarists think of barre chords. Here, you move up an open A chord and use it as an A form barre chord to play major chords all along the 5th string. The root is under your 1st finger on the 5th string. Here are four examples to get you started.
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The D form is unique in that it’s the only CAGED form that isn’t rooted to either the 6th or 5th string on the guitar. Instead, its root is on the 4th string. It’s awkward to finger and technically isn’t a barre chord. As with some of the other CAGED forms, you don’t usually use it in the same way that it appears in the open position.
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Like the A form, the E form is a standard barre chord shape. On the guitar, you use it to form major chords for notes along the 6th string. You can form it into some unique chord voicings, especially when you use the extra note found in its arpeggio pattern.
Credit: Illustration courtesy of Desi Serna
You add only one note to the E form shape to complete the arpeggio pattern: a 3rd interval on the 5th string.
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Check out the G form. Like the C form, this barre chord is hard to play on the guitar and rarely, if ever, used in its entirety. Usually, you break it down into other, more manageable shapes. You use the G form to form major chords for notes along the 6th string.
Credit: Illustration courtesy of Desi Serna
Play the full G form arpeggio pattern.
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Probably the greatest invention ever created for lead rock guitarists is the pentatonic scale. Its construction and theory have spawned countless theoretical discussions, but for rock guitar purposes, it just sounds good.
Staying at home position
The main position for the pentatonic scale is in 5th position. This is the home position of the pentatonic scale in C major or A minor.
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You can use chord patterns to track chord progressions in the open position on the guitar, although doing so takes some extra work and requires that you identify the actual note name of each chord.To play in the key of G using common open chords, visualize the 6th string chord pattern starting on G at the 3rd fret and replace each barre chord with an open chord.
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After you understand how to build triads on the guitar, you can continue to build on each degree in the G major scale. Try doing this on your own on the fretboard. Here’s what the completed scale looks like in triads:
G: G-B-D, G major
A: A-C-E, A minor
B: B-D-F♯, B minor
C: C-E-G, C major
D: D-F♯-A, D major
E: E-B-G, E minor
F♯: F♯-A-B, F♯ minor ♭ó5 (also called a diminished triad)
By following this tab, you can play through all seven major triads in three different ways.
You might know their music, but how about the lives of superlative guitarists? This article offers some brief background stories on four of the greatest classical guitarists ever.
Fernando Sor
Fernando Sor first fell in love with music as a boy, when his father introduced him to opera. It was Sor's father, too, who introduced him to the guitar, and by the time the young Sor was 8, he was an accomplished guitarist.
If you’re just starting out as a novice guitarist, you may ask, “What’s the minimum I need to spend to avoid winding up with a piece of junk?” That’s a good question, because modern manufacturing practices now enable luthiers (the fancy term for guitar makers) to turn out some pretty good stuff for around $200 — and even less sometimes.
Although you don’t need to read music to play the guitar, musicians have developed a few simple tricks through the years that aid in communicating such basic ideas as song structure, chord construction, chord progressions, and important rhythmic figures. Pick up on the shorthand devices for chord diagrams, tablature, and rhythm slashes, and you’re sure to start coppin’ licks faster than Vince Gill pickin’ after three cups of coffee.
Many seemingly insurmountable problems you may come across with your rock guitar often have a simple and quick solution. This troubleshooting guide should cover most of the basic problems. It doesn’t offer the obvious troubleshooting standbys like “Make sure your guitar is plugged in” and “Make sure your amp is turned on,” because surely you don’t need to hear those.
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To use the C form as a moveable barre chord, your 1st finger acts like a capo and lays across (barres) the guitar neck while your remaining fingers form the rest of the chord shape.
One way to arrive at this fingering is to play an ordinary open C chord, replace fingers 1-2-3 with 2-3-4 (this puts your 4th finger on C at the 3rd fret of the 5th string), slide your fingers up two frets, and then barre across the 2nd fret with your 1st finger.
It’s a well-guarded secret, but guitars are made primarily of wood. As time goes by, various factors — moisture, temperature, string tension, and even your playing — make the wood expand and contract, warp, and move around. Your guitar’s performance suffers as a result.
Before you play it again, it’s time for a setup — a thorough adjustment over of your guitar’s key components.
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Asking for a type of guitar by musical style is completely legitimate. Ask for a heavy-metal guitar, and the salesperson nods knowingly and leads you to the corner of the store with all the scary-looking stuff. If you request a jazz guitar, you and the salesperson trundle off in a different direction. Note the variety in shape and style.
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