Guitar All-in-One For Dummies

Book + Online Video and Audio Instruction

Mark Phillips, Jon Chappell, Desi Serna

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119734055
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Gitarrenmusik

A one-stop resourceto the essentialsofowning and playingtheguitar

If you've just bought a guitar, or you've had one for a while, you probably knowit 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 youevenbegin?

In Guitar All-in-OneForDummies, a team of expert guitarists and music teachersshows youthe essentialsyou need to know aboutowningand playing a guitar.Frompicking your first notestoexploringmusic theory and composition, maintaining your gear, anddiving into the specifics ofgenres like blues and rock, this bookis 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 guitartablature
• Understandguitar theory, sounds and techniques to help youlearnnew songs andadd your style to classictunes
• Practice several popular genres of guitar music, including blues, rock, andclassical
• Access accompanying online video and audio instructional resources thatdemonstrate the lessonsyou find in the book

Perfect forguitar players at any skill level, Guitar All-in-OneForDummies is a must-have resource for anyone who wants togetthe mostoutoftheir own guitar and makegreat music.

Book 1

Guitar 101

Contents at a Glance

1. Chapter 1: Guitar Anatomy and Tuning
   1. The Parts and Workings of a Guitar
   2. How Guitars Make Sound
   3. Tuning Your Guitar
   4. Tuning Your Guitar to Itself
   5. Tuning Your Guitar to an External Source
2. Chapter 2: Getting Ready to Play
   1. Assuming the Positions
   2. Getting Your Head Around Guitar Notation
   3. Discovering How to Play a Chord
3. Chapter 3: Buying and Stringing a Guitar
   1. First Things First: Developing a Purchasing Plan
   2. Noting Some Considerations for Your First Guitar
   3. Sifting through Models to Match Your Style
   4. Looking for Quality
   5. Before You Buy: Walking through the Buying Process
   6. Changing Your Strings
   7. Stringing an Acoustic Guitar
   8. Stringing a Nylon-String Guitar
   9. Stringing an Electric Guitar
4. Chapter 4: Deciphering Music Notation and Tablature
   1. Knowing the Ropes of Standard Music Notation
   2. Relating the Notes on the Staff to the Fretboard
   3. Relishing the Usefulness of Guitar-Specific Notation

Chapter 1

Guitar Anatomy and Tuning

IN THIS CHAPTER

Identifying the different parts of the guitar

Understanding how the guitar works

Counting strings and frets

Tuning the guitar relatively (to itself)

Tuning to a fixed source

Access the audio track and video clip at www.dummies.com/go/guitaraio/

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.

This chapter describes the differences among the various parts of the guitar and tell you what those parts do. It also tells you how to hold the instrument and why the guitar sounds the way it does. You don’t hold the guitar under your chin — unless, of course, you’re Jimi Hendrix.

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.

The Parts and Workings of a Guitar

Guitars come in two basic flavors: acoustic and electric. From a hardware standpoint, electric guitars have more components and doohickeys than acoustic guitars. Guitar makers generally agree, however, that making an acoustic guitar is harder than making an electric guitar. That’s why, pound for pound, acoustic guitars cost just as much or more than their electric counterparts. (When you’re ready to go guitar or guitar accessory shopping, check out Book 1 Chapter 3.) But both types follow the same basic approach to such principles as neck construction and string tension. That’s why both acoustic and electric guitars have similar shapes and features, despite a sometimes radical difference in tone production. Figures 1-1 and 1-2 show the various parts of acoustic and electric guitars.

Photograph courtesy of Taylor Guitars

FIGURE 1-1: Typical acoustic guitar with its major parts labeled.

Photograph courtesy of PRS Guitars

FIGURE 1-2: Typical electric guitar with its major parts labeled.

Here are the names and functions of the various parts of a guitar:

• Back (acoustic only): The part of the body that holds the sides in place; made of two or three pieces of wood.
• Bar (electric only): A metal rod attached to the bridge that varies the string tension by tilting the bridge back and forth. Also called the tremolo bar, whammy bar, vibrato bar, and wang bar.
• Body: The box that provides an anchor for the neck and bridge and creates the playing surface for the right hand. On an acoustic, the body includes the amplifying sound chamber that produces the guitar’s tone. On an electric, it consists of the housing for the bridge assembly and electronics (pickups as well as volume and tone controls).
• Bridge: The metal (electric) or wooden (acoustic) plate that anchors the strings to the body.
• Bridge pins (acoustic only): Plastic or wooden dowels that insert through bridge holes and hold the strings securely to the bridge.
• End pin: A post where the rear end of the strap connects. On acoustic-electrics (acoustic guitars with built-in pickups and electronics), the pin often doubles as the output jack where you plug in.
• Fingerboard: A flat, plank-like piece of wood that sits atop the neck, where you place your left-hand (or right-hand, if you're playing a left-handed guitar) fingers to produce notes and chords. The fingerboard is also known as the fretboard, because the frets are embedded in it.
• Frets: Thin metal wires or bars running perpendicular to the strings that shorten the effective vibrating length of a string when you press down on it, enabling it to produce different pitches.
• Headstock: The section that holds the tuning machines (hardware assembly) and provides a place for the manufacturer to display its logo.
• Neck: The long, clublike wooden piece that connects the headstock to the body and holds the fretboard.
• Nut: A grooved sliver of stiff nylon or other synthetic substance that stops the strings from vibrating beyond the neck. The strings pass through the grooves on their way to the tuning machines in the headstock. The nut is one of the two points at which the vibrating area of the string ends. (The other is the bridge.)
• Output jack: The insertion point for the cord that connects the electric guitar (or acoustic guitar that has been fitted with a pickup) to an amplifier or other electronic device.
• Pickup selector (electric only): A switch that determines which pickups are currently active.
• Pickups: Barlike magnets that create the electrical current, which the amplifier converts into musical sound.
• Saddle: For acoustic, a thin plastic strip that sits inside a slot in the bridge; for electric, separate metal pieces that provide the contact point for the strings and the bridge.
• Sides (acoustic only): Separate curved wooden pieces on the body that join the top to the back.
• Strap pin: Metal post where the front, or top, end of the strap connects. (Note: Not all acoustics have a strap pin. If the guitar is missing one, tie the top of the strap around the headstock, above the nut.)
• Strings: The six metal (for electric and steel-string acoustic guitars) or...