*Updates will not be on a new post, just scroll down the page to look for them.

Latest update – 9th Dec 08.

Okay. The first thing you must know about playing the guitar is that it helps you to relax after a hard day, and also is considered to be a form of enjoyment. Yes, it will get frustrating at times trying to get the notes right but after hard practice, you’ll be beaming with pride knowing that you can play it.

Things to get started:
- A classic guitar (6 strings) in hand
- A guitar pick (if you are comfortable with one)
- A reasonable amount of patience

Things to remember
- Keep your fingernails short by trimming them regularly. This will allow your fingers to hold down the notes easier and produce a better sound.
- Your fingers will start to hurt as you begin to play and this is normal. Eventually, with time and practice, your fingers will get used to it and the pain will go away.

Lets take a closer look at your guitar. On the neck of it, you will notice there are spacings between one thin lining of metal and the next. These spacings are called frets. Your fingers are placed here and not on the metal lining when playing. So when you see a fret one, in guitar terms, it simply means the first spacing.

The next thing you’ll need to know is how to hold a guitar. Sit down comfortably somewhere and pick up your guitar, holding it so the back of the body of the instrument comes in contact with your stomach/chest. The thickest string on the guitar should be the closest to your face, while the thinnest should be closest to the floor. When playing the guitar whilst sitting down, the body of the guitar will rest on your right leg.

Some will wonder if a pick is necessary when playing the guitar.  The fact is it will be needed for certain techniques. And it’s really cheap. You can get one at around fifty cents to a dollar, depending on the price range of different shops. One thing to take note for is the thickness of the pick. While playing on the classic guitar, I would recommend a medium gauge pick which is around the thickness of 0.5-0.75mm. The numbers will be labeled on most picks, so thats one thing to look out for when choosing yours.
After you have one, this will be how to hold the pick in the right position.

Grasp the pick between your thumb and first finger. Notice how little of the pick remains visible and how it protrudes at ninety degrees to your thumb (the more of the pick you hold, the easier it is to control).

Now for the most important thing. Tuning. If your guitar isn’t tuned to the right tone, your music isn’t right.

See those “oval-shaped things” you can turn? They are the tuner pegs of a guitar. You turn them to change the tuning of the strings. Different guitars have been stringed differently so you have to find out yourself if turning your tuners of your guitar clockwise/anti-clockwise gives you a higher/lower tone. In case you haven’t purchased a music tuner, here’s a website for standard tuning: http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/onlinetuner.html.  Just adjust your guitar strings by turning the tuning pegs of your guitar to sound like those in the website.

For more advanced players you can try manual tuning also known as relative tuning.
Here are the steps
1. Place a finger on the 5th fret of the 6th string* and play the note.
2. Play the 5th string open**. When in tune, these two notes should sound exactly the same.
3. Adjust the tuning peg for the 5th string so that, when played open, it makes the same sound as the 5th fretted 6th string.
4. Place your finger on the 5th fret of the 5th string and repeat this process with the 4th string open.
5. Repeat this process for the 4th and 3rd strings.
6. When you reach the 2nd string, things change slightly. Instead of placing your finger on the 5th fret of the 3rd string when adjusting the 2nd string, place it on the 4th fret.
* In case you get confused, the sixth string is the thickest string while the first is the thinnest.
**open refers to plucking the string on the guitar without placing any fingering.

After tuning your guitar, it’s time to learn how to read tabs and play some tunes. If you go to google and type search for a guitar tab of a song, it would appear in this format -
E———————————-||(Thinnest string)
B———————————-||
G———————————-||
D———————————-||
A———————————-||
E———————————-||(Thickest string)
This is a guitar tab invented by guitarists for easier reading. Most guitarists such as myself would prefer using guitar tabs than to actually use the standard notation. While standard notation is readable by those who play any instrument, tab is native to guitarists, so those who don’t play guitar won’t be able to comprehend it.
Notice that there are numbers located in the middle of the lines. The numbers simply represent the fret the tab is telling you to play. For example, in the illustration above, the tab is telling you to play the third string (third line) seventh fret. This is the concept of reading tab, at it’s most basic.

Heres a sample of a simple tab for you to try-
E ——3————-1—————————————-|
B —-1————0————-0————1—————|
G –2————0————-0————2—————–|
D —————————2————3——————-|
A ————————————————————|
E ————————————————————|
*Take note that 0 means playing an open string. In case you forgot, it means you don’t put any fingering on the string and just pluck the string accordingly.

If the numbers on the tab are not vertically in line, you play each note according to the tab. In the above, the first note to play is the second fret on the fourth string, the second note would be the first fret on the fifth string, the third note would be the third fret on the sixth string, so on and so forth.

However there will instances where you WILL see numbers vertically in line. This is not an error in the tab. An example is as such-
E–2———————————————————|
B–3———————————————————|
G–2———————————————————|
D–0———————————————————|
A–0———————————————————|
E————————————————————|

When this appears on the tab, place your fingers on the frets of your guitar accordingly to the frets shown on the tab. (Remember again that 0 means you do not have to put any fingering BUT you have to play it in the note.) See that the first string doesn’t have a number? It means you don’t hit that string. So hold your pick, strum it downwards from the second to the sixth string, fingers still on the frets, and there you go, a chord!

Time for you to practice what you have learnt. Here’s the tab I made for James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”
E|—————————————————————————–||
B|——–4-3-4————4-3-4—6—–4-3-4—————————||
G|-0—————-0———————————–0–1—————–||
D|——————————————————————————||
A|——————————————————————————||
E|——————————————————————————-||
Have fun

10th November 2008
Reading guitar tabs will not always be simple like those in the above post, as most songs involves the use of certain techniques. Examples of such techniques would be the most commonly used hammer-ons, sliding and pull-offs which will be represented by a certain symbol in tabs.

Hammer-ons
This is a technique represented by “h” on the tab right after a note. Occasionally, you’ll see the ^ symbol used for it too. Something like
E|———————————————————————|
B|———————————————————————|
G|——————2h4—2h4—————————————|
D|———————————————————————|
A|———————————————————————|
E|———————————————————————|

This is how you do it:

Firstly, place your first finger on the second fret of the third string. Ready your third finger, poising it above the fourth fret of the third string (don’t put your third finger down yet). Next, use your pick to play the note on the second fret and WITHOUT re-picking the note, put the tip of your third finger down firmly on the fourth fret. If you’ve done it correctly, the note on the fourth fret should sound, even though you didn’t re-pick it. Here’s a link to the video I found on youtube for playing a hammer-on in case you still don’t get it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEqBB6syxS8. (Start watching from 0:50)

Pull-offs
It is represented by “p” in a guitar tab. Like

E|———————————————————————|
B|———————————————————————|
G|——————2p4—–2p4————————————|
D|———————————————————————|
A|———————————————————————|
E|———————————————————————|

This technique is somewhat similar to a hammer-on, but you do the exact opposite. Place your third finger on the fourth fret and first finger on the second fret on the third string. Play the third string with your pick, removing your third finger after playing. (As you remove your third finger, make a slight downwards tugging motion with your third finger, causing it to ring out the note your first finger is fretting.) The first few times you try it, the string may stop ringing as you remove your third finger. Keep practicing and you’ll get the hang of it.

26th November 2008
Hey there, welcome back.
Today will be a lesson on sliding, so get your guitar at the ready and read on

Be prepared though, your fingers will definitely hurt for this one.

Sliding
A very popular and a most used technique, represented by / for an ascending slide and \ for a descending slide in a tab.
One other symbol commonly used for slides, is an “s”.

E:—————-
B:—————-
G:—7s9———
D:—————-
A:—————-
E:—————-

Lets start from an example of an ascending slide:

E|———————————————————————|
B|———————————————————————|
G|——————7/9————————————————|
D|———————————————————————|
A|———————————————————————|
E|———————————————————————|

This indicates you to start by playing a note on the seventh fret on the 7th string and then briskly sliding your finger up to the 9th fret on the same string, without re-picking. The key to playing this is to keep exerting downward pressure on the string with our finger while sliding the note (make sure you keep pressing the note down as you slide).  These are things to take note of:

After you’ve learnt that, time to add in another note:

E|———————————————————————|
B|———————————————————————|
G|——————7/9\7——————————————-|
D|———————————————————————|
A|———————————————————————|
E|———————————————————————|

This example is similar to the one above, just with one more step after sliding from the 7th fret to the 9th fret. This time, try sliding on the 7th fret from the 8th fret to the 9th fret, then back to the 7th fret, all without re-picking the string. It might be a little tough on the first try, but keep practicing until you’ve got the hang of it.

9th Dec 2008
The Christmas season is almost here

While you’re busy making plans for the celebration, make sure you don’t leave your guitar to collect dust! Use any piece of wet cloth you can find, and give your guitar a good wipe every week.

Today will be a lesson on how to read chords diagrams and fingerings for some basic chord notes. Chord diagrams are typically represented in a grid format and the name of the chord is form at the top of the diagram.

• The vertical lines represent each string on the guitar with the left most reresenting the thickest string and the rightmost representing the thinnest string.

• The horizontal lines represent the frets of the guitar.

• The black dot on the diagram shows you where to place your fingers and the number indicates which finger you should use in playing the chord.

• The white dot represents that you should play an open string.

• The X represents a string that should not be sounded while playing the chord. In other words, mute the string when you see the X symbol.

Basic open chords

*Again another reminder, an open string is playing the string without fingering them.

Open chords are basically chords that contain at least one note in the open strings*. They are the basic chords in playing the guitar. However, this does not mean that learning to play these guitar chords for the first time is easy. Here is a list of major open chords

And these, are the minor chords

For this lesson, concentrate on learning the fingerings for the chords. The most important thing is to achieve a clean sound for each open chord when you are practicing. After you had placed all your fingers on the fretboard, play through each of the strings of the chords. Make sure that the strings that are supposed to ring all not muffled or muted. If the notes are not ringing out properly, find out why. Chances are that you are not pressing hard enough or parts of your fingers are touching that string which prevents it from sounding out clearly.
The next thing to do is to get your fingers used to changing chords. It takes some time to get used to the fingerings. One important thing to take note is that when you are changing chords, make sure that the chords are still played clean and clear.