An open tuning allows a chord to be played by strumming the strings when "open", or while fretting no strings. The base chord consists of at least three notes and may include all the strings or a subset. The tuning is named for the base chord when played open, typically a major triad, and each major-triad can be played by barring exactly one fret.[60] Open tunings are common in blues and folk music,[59] and they are used in the playing of slide and lap-slide ("Hawaiian") guitars.[60][61] Ry Cooder uses open tunings when he plays slide guitar.[59]
BUT, I use it a very differently. I use a week's lesson as a week's lesson! I don't play one a day, I play the whole week's worth each day! And, I stay on the week's lessons until I have them down. I very often back to earlier weeks, and go over them to see how much better I play them, see if they are really in my fingers..and they are perfect warm ups. I go on to new week's lessons, only if and when I feel ready.
The history of stringed instruments dates back thousands of years, while the modern guitar can be traced back to the oud and the lute of the 8th and 9th centuries. Today's guitars come in countless variations and at JustStrings.com, we have a dazzling variety of guitar strings and other types of strings for many different instruments. Advanced technology combined with traditional craftsmanship produces some of the finest strings that boast long-lasting durability and exceptional tonal quality. Whether you're looking for rugged, great-sounding electric guitar strings to take on tour with you, or the perfect set of strings for your lap steel, we're bound to have exactly what you need. We take great pride in bringing you the best quality strings from the world's leading innovators. Our acoustic guitar strings, from manufacturers like Ernie Ball, GHS, Thomastik-Infeld and Fender, are available in many varieties, from silver-plated copper flat wound to 80/20 bronze round-wound. You'll find plain uncoated strings and coated strings that improve longevity. Classical guitar strings, traditionally made from gut, are now strung with nylon or advanced synthetic materials for better performance. Electric guitar strings are available in nickel-plated steel, pure nickel or stainless steel. We also have strings for resophonic guitars (also known as Dobros), Steinberger guitars and pedal steel guitars. Browse our bass guitar strings, and find 7-string, 8-string or 12-string guitar strings. We also carry banjo strings, harp strings, and strings for octave, tenor, baritone and Renaissance guitars. We are the leading source of premium strings for nearly every type of instrument.
Dots are usually inlaid into the upper edge of the fretboard in the same positions, small enough to be visible only to the player. These usually appear on the odd numbered frets, but also on the 12th fret (the one octave mark) instead of the 11th and 13th frets. Some older or high-end instruments have inlays made of mother of pearl, abalone, ivory, colored wood or other exotic materials and designs. Simpler inlays are often made of plastic or painted. High-end classical guitars seldom have fretboard inlays as a well-trained player is expected to know his or her way around the instrument. In addition to fretboard inlay, the headstock and soundhole surround are also frequently inlaid. The manufacturer's logo or a small design is often inlaid into the headstock. Rosette designs vary from simple concentric circles to delicate fretwork mimicking the historic rosette of lutes. Bindings that edge the finger and sound boards are sometimes inlaid. Some instruments have a filler strip running down the length and behind the neck, used for strength or to fill the cavity through which the truss rod was installed in the neck.

Almost all guitars have frets, which are metal strips (usually nickel alloy or stainless steel) embedded along the fretboard and located at exact points that divide the scale length in accordance with a specific mathematical formula. The exceptions include fretless bass guitars and very rare fretless guitars. Pressing a string against a fret determines the strings' vibrating length and therefore its resultant pitch. The pitch of each consecutive fret is defined at a half-step interval on the chromatic scale. Standard classical guitars have 19 frets and electric guitars between 21 and 24 frets, although guitars have been made with as many as 27 frets. Frets are laid out to accomplish an equal tempered division of the octave. Each set of twelve frets represents an octave. The twelfth fret divides the scale length exactly into two halves, and the 24th fret position divides one of those halves in half again.
For the standard tuning, there is exactly one interval of a major third between the second and third strings, and all the other intervals are fourths. The irregularity has a price - chords cannot be shifted around the fretboard in the standard tuning E-A-D-G-B-E, which requires four chord-shapes for the major chords. There are separate chord-forms for chords having their root note on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth strings.[19]
Piezoelectric, or piezo, pickups represent another class of pickup. These employ piezoelectricity to generate the musical signal and are popular in hybrid electro-acoustic guitars. A crystal is located under each string, usually in the saddle. When the string vibrates, the shape of the crystal is distorted, and the stresses associated with this change produce tiny voltages across the crystal that can be amplified and manipulated.
While the free guitar lessons here will help you get started, we always recommend committed students to invest in their guitar skills by starting a Guitareo membership. That’s where you’ll get a more comprehensive library of step-by-step video lessons so you always know exactly what to learn next, play-along songs so you can apply your skills to real music, and community support so you’ll get all of your questions answered. Click here to learn more about Guitareo.
Ze first began his journey playing original music and top 40s pop tunes around the country's popular venues. Eventually, through the music of John Mayer, he found a strong attraction to blues music. Ze has years of experience teaching beginners and intermediate guitarists. Currently with Liberty Park Music he is teaching Introduction to Guitar Playing for Complete Beginners, Rhythm Guitar to learn about strumming, chords and more, Guitar Essentials as a fast-track review course, and lots of Song Lessons on pop and rock hits.
A major chord is made from the I, III and V notes, so C major uses the notes C, E and G. To make a major chord into a minor, you flatten (lower the pitch by one fret, or a half-step) the III note. This means C minor is made up of C, Eb (flat) and G. So now, from the E major scale, E = I, F# (sharp) =II, G# = III, A = IV, B = V, C# = VI and D# = VII, you can work out both the major and minor chords. Sharps are just the opposite of flats, so you raise the pitch by one fret (or half-step). When you're working out the E minor chord, you have to flatten the F#, which just makes it back into a natural (neither flat nor sharp) F.
Conventionally, guitarists double notes in a chord to increase its volume, an important technique for players without amplification; doubling notes and changing the order of notes also changes the timbre of chords. It can make a possible a "chord" which is composed of the all same note on different strings. Many chords can be played with the same notes in more than one place on the fretboard.
Electric guitars and bass guitars have to be used with a guitar amplifier and loudspeaker or a bass amplifier and speaker, respectively, in order to make enough sound to be heard by the performer and audience. Electric guitars and bass guitars almost always use magnetic pickups, which generate an electric signal when the musician plucks, strums or otherwise plays the instrument. The amplifier and speaker strengthen this signal using a power amplifier and a loudspeaker. Acoustic guitars that are equipped with a piezoelectric pickup or microphone can also be plugged into an instrument amplifier, acoustic guitar amp or PA system to make them louder. With electric guitar and bass, the amplifier and speaker are not just used to make the instrument louder; by adjusting the equalizer controls, the preamplifier, and any onboard effects units (reverb, distortion/overdrive, etc.) the player can also modify the tone (aka timbre or "colour") and sound of the instrument. Acoustic guitar players can also use the amp to change the sound of their instrument, but in general, acoustic guitar amps are used to make the natural acoustic sound of the instrument louder without changing its sound that much.

The pickguard, also known as the scratchplate, is usually a piece of laminated plastic or other material that protects the finish of the top of the guitar from damage due to the use of a plectrum ("pick") or fingernails. Electric guitars sometimes mount pickups and electronics on the pickguard. It is a common feature on steel-string acoustic guitars. Some performance styles that use the guitar as a percussion instrument (tapping the top or sides between notes, etc.), such as flamenco, require that a scratchplate or pickguard be fitted to nylon-string instruments.
Learn a G major. Your ring finger goes on the top string, 3rd fret. The middle finger is for the 5th string, 2nd fret, and you pinky goes all the way to the bottom, on the 3rd fret of the 1st string. Strum all of the strings together to play the chord. If you want, add in the 3rd fret, 2nd string -- this not is not necessary, but makes a richer sounding chord.
Some piezo-equipped guitars use a hexaphonic pickup. "Hex" is a prefix meaning six. A hexaphonic pickup produces a separate output for each string, usually from a discrete piezoelectric or magnetic pickup for each string. This arrangement lets on-board or external electronics process the strings individually for modeling or Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) conversion. Roland makes hexaphonic pickups for guitar and bass, and a line of guitar modeling and synthesis products. Line 6's hexaphonic-equipped Variax guitars use on-board electronics to model the sound after various vintage instruments, and vary pitch on individual strings.
"With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are the harmonic series.... As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand."
The fingerboard, also called the fretboard, is a piece of wood embedded with metal frets that comprises the top of the neck. It is flat on classical guitars and slightly curved crosswise on acoustic and electric guitars. The curvature of the fretboard is measured by the fretboard radius, which is the radius of a hypothetical circle of which the fretboard's surface constitutes a segment. The smaller the fretboard radius, the more noticeably curved the fretboard is. Most modern guitars feature a 12" neck radius, while older guitars from the 1960s and 1970s usually feature a 6-8" neck radius. Pinching a string against a fret on fretboard effectively shortens the vibrating length of the string, producing a higher pitch.
Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies; solid bodies produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a patch cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices (effects units) or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) or the pre-amp in the amplifier. There are two main types of magnetic pickups, single- and double-coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, R & B, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to techniques less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.
Renaissance and Baroque guitars are the ancestors of the modern classical and flamenco guitar. They are substantially smaller, more delicate in construction, and generate less volume. The strings are paired in courses as in a modern 12-string guitar, but they only have four or five courses of strings rather than six single strings normally used now. They were more often used as rhythm instruments in ensembles than as solo instruments, and can often be seen in that role in early music performances. (Gaspar Sanz's Instrucción de Música sobre la Guitarra Española of 1674 contains his whole output for the solo guitar.)[10] Renaissance and Baroque guitars are easily distinguished, because the Renaissance guitar is very plain and the Baroque guitar is very ornate, with ivory or wood inlays all over the neck and body, and a paper-cutout inverted "wedding cake" inside the hole.
The history of stringed instruments dates back thousands of years, while the modern guitar can be traced back to the oud and the lute of the 8th and 9th centuries. Today's guitars come in countless variations and at JustStrings.com, we have a dazzling variety of guitar strings and other types of strings for many different instruments. Advanced technology combined with traditional craftsmanship produces some of the finest strings that boast long-lasting durability and exceptional tonal quality. Whether you're looking for rugged, great-sounding electric guitar strings to take on tour with you, or the perfect set of strings for your lap steel, we're bound to have exactly what you need. We take great pride in bringing you the best quality strings from the world's leading innovators. Our acoustic guitar strings, from manufacturers like Ernie Ball, GHS, Thomastik-Infeld and Fender, are available in many varieties, from silver-plated copper flat wound to 80/20 bronze round-wound. You'll find plain uncoated strings and coated strings that improve longevity. Classical guitar strings, traditionally made from gut, are now strung with nylon or advanced synthetic materials for better performance. Electric guitar strings are available in nickel-plated steel, pure nickel or stainless steel. We also have strings for resophonic guitars (also known as Dobros), Steinberger guitars and pedal steel guitars. Browse our bass guitar strings, and find 7-string, 8-string or 12-string guitar strings. We also carry banjo strings, harp strings, and strings for octave, tenor, baritone and Renaissance guitars. We are the leading source of premium strings for nearly every type of instrument.
Open tunings improve the intonation of major chords by reducing the error of third intervals in equal temperaments. For example, in the open-G overtones tuning G-G-D-G-B-D, the (G,B) interval is a major third, and of course each successive pair of notes on the G- and B-strings is also a major third; similarly, the open-string minor-third (B,D) induces minor thirds among all the frets of the B-D strings. The thirds of equal temperament have audible deviations from the thirds of just intonation: Equal temperaments is used in modern music because it facilitates music in all keys, while (on a piano and other instruments) just intonation provided better-sounding major-third intervals for only a subset of keys.[65] "Sonny Landreth, Keith Richards and other open-G masters often lower the second string slightly so the major third is in tune with the overtone series. This adjustment dials out the dissonance, and makes those big one-finger major-chords come alive."[66]
The ratio of the spacing of two consecutive frets is {\displaystyle {\sqrt[{12}]{2}}}  (twelfth root of two). In practice, luthiers determine fret positions using the constant 17.817—an approximation to 1/(1-1/ {\displaystyle {\sqrt[{12}]{2}}} ). If the nth fret is a distance x from the bridge, then the distance from the (n+1)th fret to the bridge is x-(x/17.817).[15] Frets are available in several different gauges and can be fitted according to player preference. Among these are "jumbo" frets, which have much thicker gauge, allowing for use of a slight vibrato technique from pushing the string down harder and softer. "Scalloped" fretboards, where the wood of the fretboard itself is "scooped out" between the frets, allow a dramatic vibrato effect. Fine frets, much flatter, allow a very low string-action, but require that other conditions, such as curvature of the neck, be well-maintained to prevent buzz.


A "guitar pick" or "plectrum" is a small piece of hard material generally held between the thumb and first finger of the picking hand and is used to "pick" the strings. Though most classical players pick with a combination of fingernails and fleshy fingertips, the pick is most often used for electric and steel-string acoustic guitars. Though today they are mainly plastic, variations do exist, such as bone, wood, steel or tortoise shell. Tortoise shell was the most commonly used material in the early days of pick-making, but as tortoises and turtles became endangered, the practice of using their shells for picks or anything else was banned. Tortoise-shell picks made before the ban are often coveted for a supposedly superior tone and ease of use, and their scarcity has made them valuable.
Try one that starts with C, moves to F, then G and then back to C. This is the most basic progression, and uses the major chords you know. If you start with an A minor before going to C you can make a more interesting progression which incorporates both major and minor chords. Generally speaking, you want to focus on the chord with the same name as the key (the root), which in this case is C. Think of the other chords as either springing from it or leading back to it. Play around with the chords and see what you can come up with!
A slide, (neck of a bottle, knife blade or round metal or glass bar or cylinder) is used in blues and rock to create a glissando or "Hawaiian" effect. The slide is used to fret notes on the neck, instead of using the fretting hand's fingers. The characteristic use of the slide is to move up to the intended pitch by, as the name implies, sliding up the neck to the desired note. The necks of bottles were often used in blues and country music as improvised slides. Modern slides are constructed of glass, plastic, ceramic, chrome, brass or steel bars or cylinders, depending on the weight and tone desired (and the amount of money a guitarist can spend). An instrument that is played exclusively in this manner (using a metal bar) is called a steel guitar or pedal steel. Slide playing to this day is very popular in blues music and country music. Some slide players use a so-called Dobro guitar. Some performers who have become famous for playing slide are Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Ry Cooder, George Harrison, Bonnie Raitt, Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, Duane Allman, Muddy Waters, Rory Gallagher, and George Thorogood.
Quartal and quintal harmonies also appear in alternate tunings. It is easier to finger the chords that are based on perfect fifths in new standard tuning than in standard tuning. New standard tuning was invented by Robert Fripp, a guitarist for King Crimson. Preferring to base chords on perfect intervals—especially octaves, fifths, and fourths—Fripp often avoids minor thirds and especially major thirds,[102] which are sharp in equal temperament tuning (in comparison to thirds in just intonation).
As a general rule, brass strings are always going to be brighter than bronze strings. Though, counterintuitively, many brass strings go by the moniker of “80/20” bronze. These strings are actually the one in the same. Brass, or 80/20 bronze as it’s often known, is made from 80% copper and 20% zinc. This gives the strings a bright and cutting voice, though when used on guitars that already have a prominent high-end response it can make an instrument sound thin and tinny. For best results, use brass strings on a guitar that’s an OM size or larger (so this would include OM guitars, dreadnoughts, and jumbos).
Learn a D major. This chord only requires the bottom four strings. Place your index finger on the 3rd string, 2nd fret. Your ring finger then goes on the 2nd string, 3rd fret, and your middle finger is the 1st string, second fret. You'll form a little triangle shape. Only strum these three strings and the 4th string -- the open D -- to sound out the chord.
SFCM produces some of the most successful and influential classical guitarists in the world. Spearheaded by renowned faculty and complemented by visiting artists such as Marcin Dylla, the department honors the tradition of the classical guitar while cultivating innovation. The Harris Guitar Collection, housed at SFCM, gives students a chance to see—and play—some of the most extraordinary guitars of the last two centuries.