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Learn to play guitar easy.
Holding Your Guitar and Using Your Pick The Correct WayJason Covill Each step of learning to play your guitar gets you closer to your ultimate dream and that is to be a good guitar player. It is important that you remember to practice each step over and over again until it is just second nature and you cant remember ever having trouble or feeling awkward. You will feel stiff when first starting and you will have to do mental checks to make sure you are positioning yourself properly but in a very short time and there is no point in learning to play any instrument and then skipping the parts we don t like if your going to learn, learn properly the first time. Find the most comfortable armless chair you can find, that will usually be a dining room chair sit with your lower back against the back of the chair make a conscious effort to stay sitting with good posture don t slouch as this will give you sore back and shoulders and bad habits. Hold your guitar so the back of the body is against your stomach while the neck is running parallel to the ground. If you are holding your guitar properly the thickest string will be on top whilst the thinnest is closest to the floor. For a left handed person ideally you should buy a guitar made for left handed people but this is not always necessary as I know a lot of lefties who can play using a standard guitar perfectly. When you are holding your guitar while sitting you will notice that the body of the guitar is resting on your right leg (If your right handed, left leg if your left handed) the guitar will rest on the leg furthest away from the headstock. Try to sit in this position for a little while taking mental notes on how your posture is and how it should be. We are going to focus on your fretting hand, that s the hand closest to the neck of the guitar. Your thumb needs to be behind the neck of the guitar with the remaining fingers being slightly curled held just above the strings, it is important to keep these fingers curled at the knuckle unless you are told otherwise. The Guitar Pick 1. Open your picking hand and open your palm so it is facing you. Your picking hand is the one positioned closest to the bridge. 2. Close your hand and make a very loose fist making sure that you thumb is next to your index finger. 3. Turn your hand so you are looking at its profile you should now have your thumbs knuckle facing you. 4. Use your other hand to put the pick between your thumb and index finger. The pick should be behind the knuckle of your thumb. 5. Make sure the point of the pick is facing away from your fist and is sticking out about half an inch. Hold your pick firmly. 6. Put your picking hand over the sound hole of the acoustic guitar or if you are using an electric guitar over the body. With the thumb knuckles facing you your picking hand should be floating just above the strings. Don t rest your picking hand on the body of the guitar or the strings. 7. Use your wrist only to strum don t use your whole arm, using a downward action strike the sixth string, that is the string furthest from you. Sometimes this will cause an excessive rattle just simply hit the string a little softer. 8. Now do the same but in an upward stroke. Repeat this exercise several times making sure to minimize the movement of your picking hand, one short picking stroke downwards and one short picking stroke upwards. 9. Do the same exercise on all other strings starting with the sixth string and moving up towards the first strings. 10. Most of all remember practice makes perfect you may feel a little awkward to start but the more you practice the more fluent you will become. Don t forget to recheck your posture from time to time and adjust if necessary. Essential Guitar: 33 Guitar Masterpieces.Sensible Sound , December, 2002 Read the full article with a Free Trial of HighBeam Research »Various artists. Decca 289 470 477-2 (2-disc set). As the name suggests, this two-disc compilation includes some of the best works from virtually every major composer who ever wrote for the guitar. Appropriately, the first disc starts with Rodrigo`s perennial favorite, the Concierto de Aranjuez, with Pepe Romero and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Neville Marriner conducting. Now, many of you are probably saying, "Yes, but that was a Philips recording from the late seventies, and this is a Decca product." Well, this recording of the Concierto is listed as Read the full article with a Free Trial of HighBeam Research »HighBeam Research Members: View the full text of this article » Try HighBeam Research for seven days of free unlimited access to the most powerful research engine on the web. Access superior sources and sophisticated research tools, including the HighBeam Library archive of over 32,000,000 articles from thousands of business and consumer magazines and journals, transcripts of TV & radio news and entertainment broadcasts, maps, images and more! Guitar articles
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