Learn to play guitar easy.

How to Play the Guitar

If you think learning to play a musical instrument is difficult,

then you haven`t learned how to play the guitar. You may not become a

musical genius overnight, but in just a few short lessons you can learn

how to play the guitar and be well on your way to a consummate professional.

There are essentially two elements of learning to play the guitar: positioning

and chords. Once you learn these elements you will be equipped with all you need

to begin playing the guitar.

While you are anxious to play the guitar, you must first learn how to hold the guitar.

Many people think they only need to place the guitar in their lap and they`re ready to

play. Holding your guitar incorrectly can actually affect the sound your instrument

generates. When you play your guitar you will either play it sitting or standing.

When you play your guitar sitting down, you want to be sure the guitar rests comfortably

in your lap. The main thing to remember is that you don`t want your body to support the guitar.

Standing and playing the guitar is more of a presentation style.

You will hold the guitar

like you would if you were sitting, but you place one foot in front of you to prevent stress

on your back. When you first learn how to play the guitar, holding the guitar may seem awkward.

Just give it some time and it will eventually seem natural to you.

Once you feel comfortable holding your guitar, it`s time to focus on positioning. Positioning

refers to what you do with your hand to play music using the guitar. Let`s start with the left

hand. The longest part of the guitar, the neck, is the area of the guitar where you will

position your fingers and thumb so that you can create the great music afforded to the guitar.

You should not place too much force against the fretboard when you play a note.

Your right hand is responsible for picking, plucking, or strumming the strings.

You can decide for yourself how to play the guitar using either method. The proper

way to hold your hand when you play the guitar with a pick is to make a fist with your

thumb on the outside of your hand.

The pick slides between your thumb and index finger.

You then pick the strings in an upward motion. To play the guitar with your fingers, or

pluck the strings, you use your thumb and index finger. Like when you use a pick, you pluck

the strings in an upward motion. Strumming involves playing all the strings all at once.

If you`re wondering how to play the guitar if you use a left-handed guitar, you will

position your fingers in mirror image of the instructions presented here.

Although you are just starting out, you are probably anxious to start actually learning

how to play the guitar. There is one more important element to learn before you can actually

playing music. It doesn`t matter what genre of music you are interested in playing, you will

need to be able to recognize chords to play music. A chord chart represents the neck of the

guitar and indicates by using "X" marks, hollow circles, and numbered circled how to play a

particular chord.

The fretboard consists of six strings and five frets. The hollow circles in a chord chart

indicate strings that you play.

The numbered circles indicate which finger to use to play

the chord. Neglecting to include your thumb, associate each finger with a number beginning

with the number one (for example, the index finger would be 1, the middle finger would be 2,

and so on). The "X" on the chord chart indicates that you should not play that string. Once

you learn how to play the guitar and learn the five major chords (C, A, G, E, D) it will be

easier to learn how to play just about any song.

The Fucking Champs - guitar metal band - Brief Article - Interview

Thrasher Magazine , Oct, 2001 by Joseph Epstein

THE FUCKING CHAMPS ARE NOT REALLY A METAL BAND. While they have enough chops to make Yngwie Malmsteen wet his pants, they don`t wear spandex or twirl their hair. Guitarists Josh Smith and Tim Green don`t do that back and forth dueling rock pendulum thing (a la Glenn Tipton and KK Downing of Judas Priest), and drummer Tim Soete--who plays third guitar on occasion--doesn`t have a flaming gong. And they don`t play covers of "Running with the Devil." (The band is opting for a scorching rendition of Bach`s "Air on a G-String" piece. "Our shit is so ridiculously simple compared to Baroque," says Smith.)

On stage at a recent New York City show, this San Francisco-based, all-instrumental power trio stand nearly motionless, looking down at their instruments, looking a lot like they`re in a high school battle of the bands and really need to concentrate on just playing. And they probably do.

The Fucking Champs are heavy metal guitar nerds, playing only metal riffs, one alter the other after the other. "Everything depends on riffs and melodies to the exclusion of everything else. There are no chords and the drums are not exactly in pocket, but playing along with the riffs. We wanted everything to be very linear, flat, and two dimensional," explains Smith. The band sounds like Slayer on prozac, without any vocals or heavy metal`s swords arid sorcery affectation. "It`s not unlike death metal, which doesn`t repeat at all and has no tonal center," says Smith about the comparison, "but the melodies that we write could be in a Juicy Fruit commercial, or the theme to Dynasty, or an Earth, Wind and Fire song."

The band was formed initially as a two guitar improvisational duo in 1992. Exploring Wayne Horvitz and Pigpen, Trout Mask Replica-era Captain Beefheart, arid Ruins, the freaky prog-rock duo experimented with different sounds--Smith even started playing a nine-string guitar. The band combined this art rock approach with its roots in mod (Green played in Nation of Ulysses) and thrash metal (Soete played in a sludge metal band called Lice) to develop this signature Thin Lizzy-meets-muzak approach. "We want the music to be constantly changing and focused on all the money riffs. It`s supposed to be like Christmas morning, you are just opening up riff after riff," says Smith.

But the Fucking Champs are not some post-millennial ironic statement, as most of the rock press--licking their chops over the band`s latest album, IV--has intimated. "If we wanted to be a goof, we would have made a more effective goof," Smith assures us. "There are certain schools of music that are the norm. If you exist outside of that spectrum, then people can`t accept that. They seem to think that there must be something cerebral going [to rationalize why] other people like it. There isn`t."

And the band has no interest in milking heavy metal revivalism, much less negotiating the politics of one scene or another, according to Smith. "It is usually `nice shoes, I like the way that distortion pedal sounds, this is my whole identity, I am going to do these kind of drugs,`" Smith says with a roll of his eyes. "But the sound makes people go like this" he says, making the big rock sign with his forefinger and pinky.

Rather than changing their approach to leverage the band`s newfound appeal, the Fucking Champs plan to concentrate on pushing their concept further. "I don`t particularly want to mature or evolve, necessarily it has taken us three years to get to this sound and angle of composition," says Smith matter-of-factly. "It would be nice to remove any last traces of cyclic agrarian farmer; you know, that sort of prison of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus."

The end result, says Smith, are songs where "the key changes so rapidly--like four times a bar--and there are so many melodies that we can`t even hope to play it live." Now that`s fucking metal.

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