a. Your guitar sounds very unique and creatively done.
b. Your guitar sounds out of pitch and horrible.

One is good and the other is bad. Why? It is because to play guitar broken chords, one must have the sharp ability of tuning. For example , a series of notes plucking the broken chord below can be played in G chord:

Illustration tablature Figure 1:

<........................G Chord........................>

—————–5————————–E high
————-3——-3———————-B
——2——————-2—————–G
—0——0——————-0————-D
——————————————–A
-3——————————-3———-E bass

But the one minor alteration below is a complete out of tune:

Illustration Tablature Figure 2:

<.....................G chord?...........................>

—————–4————————–E high
————-3——-3———————-B
——2——————-2—————–G
—2——2——————-2————-D
——————————————–A
-3——————————-3———-E bass

Play it in your guitar and you cannot really think it belongs to a chord of G.

This gives us the first technique in broken chords playing:

Observance of proper notes affected with the associated key signatures.

Since our example uses a key signature of G, the notes affected are the following:
G- so
A- la
B – ti
C- do
D- re
E- mi
F#- fa#
G- so

Examining the notes played under G in 1st tablature illustration:

<......................G Chord..........................>

—————–5————————–E high
————-3——-3———————-B
——2——————-2—————–G
—0——0——————-0————-D
——————————————–A
-3——————————-3———-E bass

Notes played in sequence: so–re–la–re–re–la—re–la—re–so

Remarks: All notes played in the sequence does not violate the notes for the key of G.

Examining the notes played under G in 2nd tablature illustration:

<.....................G chord?...........................>

—————–4————————–E high
————-3——-3———————-B
——2——————-2—————–G
—2——2——————-2————-D
——————————————–A
-3——————————-3———-E bass

Notes played in sequence: so–mi–la–mi–re–so#—re–la—mi–so

The problem notes is indicated by red color. Lets listen in detail:

The obvious out of pitch (not following G major notes affected) is the so #. But why “mi” seems out of pitch?

This leads us to the 2nd rules of playing broken chords.

The importance of chord triad and your ears

G major chord triad is: so -ti- re, so this means any first 3 notes of the chords to be played must capture a G sound and to make this happen. All first 3 notes played should fall into this triad to make sure it wont fall out of pitch.

The first set when played , does not deviate so far from the G sound so it is tolerable. The 2nd set is very deviated, in fact, the actual chord for that 1st 3 notes is now E-minor.

If you have trouble understanding the technical aspect of music, I recommend reading music lessons:

Free Music Lessons
Music Theory Scales
Sharp major scale
Sharp minor scale
Flat Major Scale
Flat Minor Scale

Good luck!

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Suggestions:

Buy guitar case for your instrument.

If possible buy something that is hard that could protect it from accidental bumps. There are a lot of ways you can buy case. In most cases or countries, when you first buy your guitar, the guitar case is included already. But if it not part of the package, please buy it separately as early as possible. You can even buy online at $25. This is cheap but highly valuable item for your guitar.

Image courtesy of http://www.zzounds.com.

Do not let anyone use your guitar for leisure-related purposes.

Yeah I am greedy but it is true, if you cannot afford to buy two guitars (one for studio and one for leisure use), then this is a must. I have one guitar used for studio purposes and I could not even remember a single instance of having anyone borrow it for leisure purposes. It is by law of human nature that if you do not own the instrument you have the tendency to be less caring about it or tend to abuse it.

Clean your guitar frequently.

This is highly important to retain the skin quality of the instrument. Number 1 enemy of guitar body skins are water based stains (that could be accidentally spill from food, drinks), dust, and dirt from your body! (yes it is true if you sweat always).

To clean your guitar is to use soft cloth with mild alcohol to remove stain or dirt. Do not use abrasive cloth as it destroys skins. Also strong solutions like acid are not recommended. Other things that you will avoid are to wash the guitar with soap or shampoo, this is insane but I heard someone doing this funny stuff.

Below is a sample guitar cleaner solution, courtesy of Nevadamusic.co.uk

Wipe out the rust in the guitar strings frequently

String is the heart of the guitar as they are the ones that produces sound. Steel string is metallic in nature and is susceptible to rust. One of the ways to correct this problem is to wipe out the string with soft oil. This will prevent the rust to accumulate the string area. I think the cleaner solution kit above uses some kind of oil solution to prevent rust accumulation.

Replace strings in a periodic basis

You can do it in a period of two years but depending on how you use the instrument. Frequent usage could mean faster worn out and that could be replaced in a yearly basis. It is important to use guitar pick for steel string based guitar because it cares both your guitar and wont hurt your fingernail.

Play your guitar always

Yes, contrary to popular belief that frequent use could damage sound , but frequent and correct use does improve sound of your guitar and increases the longevity.

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I know there is a way to earn money and to make it a permanent living. It takes money to earn money so this is a game of investment. The number 1 determining factor of success is still TALENT/SKILLS and GREAT MARKETING. Being a great guitarist and the ability to write original guitar compositions can be an asset and in every asset there is a potential income opportunity.

Below are the ways or steps every great guitarist with the ability to write guitar compositions can earn money. So do not be desperate anymore of what your mother , father or family members are saying that you will NEVER be rich with playing guitars. This is FALSE.

OK so much about it, below are what I think is a very useful preparation before you can earn money:

1. Decide if you really choose of “being a professional guitarist” as your life long career. This is extremely important that you decide NOW. Whatever the outcome of this decision , it will still give you a positive mindset. If you say “YES” , “I want to be a life long guitarist”…then so be it, read the succeeding post. If you say NO. Do not even bother reading the succeeding tips below and please navigate away.

I remember how important it is to have a single career decision, it could change the direction of your life. Joe Satriani is a big fan of Jimi Hendrix ,just like YOU , you maybe a fan of both of them. Joe Satriani (photo above) before he become a pro guitarist is a football player. And after learning the death of Jimi Hendrix , he told his coach that he will decide to become a pro guitarist. He decided this at age of 14 and now he is 52, he still playing guitars and produces a highly successful guitar work throughout his career.

2. Sharpen your skills to the MAX, Study in Schools!. I am serious, a life long guitar career needs you to have a full ammo. It is not enough you are great guitar player because you can cover Satriani Licks from start to finish. It takes more than that, to win the massive guitar competition out there, you must have the TECHNICAL edge. Study hard again, do it every day.

Today you can learn by buying Joe Satriani Guitar DVDs or other legends such as Paul Gilbert. So you can do it online. This means you maybe not needing to go to actual guitar schools unlike before. As long as you are following a certain professional guitar courses and you pass their test. Then you are good to go.

IMPORTANT: You should not skip this one! Joe Satriani seriously studied Jazz guitars at young age and in Five Towns College of Music, Paul Gilbert (picture below) studied seriously at Guitar institute of technology (GIT). These guys educational sacrifices pays off..Now these guitarists makes a lot of big bucks playing guitars. There is no excuse why you should not do it. If you do not have the bucks right now, make this your spending priority more than spending it out to your girlfriend or hanging out with your friends for drinks. Remember this is a very good investment.

DISCLAIMER: I am not endorsing these schools

3. Document your Work and Copyright it! Never miss this serious mistake where most musicians commit. It is important you have a transcription of your notes, or even transferring your original composition to a user friendly guitar tablature is extremely important. Title it properly so that you can remember it time to time when you need to practice or rehearse it. Aside from the tablature , it is good you will have an equivalent audio copy of your original compositions.

Submit it to US Copyright to have it copyrighted in your own name.

4. Introduce yourself as “professional”, play at professional bars and have a name ONLINE. Make an online catalog of your songs to have others license it. The demand for instrumental music is endless because the demand for movies and new TV shows or advertisement is also endless. So become a significant player in this market, you are now a PRO. It will be very easy for you to get noticed if you have great original works ; there will be millions of consumers outside ready to license your songs.

A practical promotion is introducing yourself in public places such as Youtube or MySPACE, have your viral instrumental music played it up there. People will start to notice it…Reinvest what you have earned in other promotional vehicle such as Taxi or other places where you can expose your music. Having your songs registered with a music publisher is even a great marketing strategy. They will do the promotional work , you just do the writing of the songs yourself.

Even a single popular instrumental song can feed you and your family in a lifetime. Yes I am certain about it. It will then just depend on how good you are and how popular your instrumentals also. Good luck

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TECHNIQUE 1: “Rasqueado”
The essence of this technique is to play 3 fingers so fast!

Video courtesy of www.learnhowtoplayguitar.com/

Actually this is just too fast. You can break it down creatively by using rest between strums I will illustrate this at the later point.

TECHNIQUE 2: “Tirando and Apoyando”
Tirando is known as “guitar plucking” in popular guitar world. This is also a tricky technique because it requires fingers to be bent a exactly 90 degrees with respect to your hand. The objective is easy guitar playing. If you will not bend your fingers it cannot play that fast. I started doing this since 12 years old and I am pretty sure I have bent fingers now. Common mistake of most beginners is to rush in practice without purely learning the fundamentals. Take note that you will have to undergo the difficulties in finger adjustment as well as hitting those guitar strings clearly, this is normal and you should pay attention to it.Apoyando is aimed at playing notes, much analogous to “lead guitar playing using guitar pick” in popular guitar world. Apoyando does not require notes to be bent but requires greater care to give excellent performances.

Check out this video on how to bent fingers to play the tirando and apoyando technique.Actually, the first part of the video is illustrates the APOYANDO technique (playing strings with straight fingers), but the 2nd part of this video illustrates the TIRANDO technique, you can noticed when he stars to bent his fingers to play the note. Play it slow first.

Courtesy of : Fridrikur

TECHNIQUE 3: “Golpe”
Have you seen Antonio Banderas “Desperado” Movie? Remember when he was attacked by bandits inside the church and he is bringing a guitar. Have you noticed that as he stepped slowly he struck the guitar with his fingers creating a “soothing rhythm”? This is called “Golpe” and requires hitting the guitar wood to bring the beat.Golpe is used to creatively make a percussive technique creating a beautiful Spanish dance rhythm.I play Golpe using my thumb but there are lot of useful techniques such as below:

Video courtesy of : Quergitarre

Combining all flamenco guitar techniques in one song:
Actually I have written “Flamenco del Natividad” performed by Jeanine Maningo. This is a pretty romantic song with slow start and flamenco dance finish. Listen below how I performed Rasqueado, Tirando, Apoyando. Song copyright by EMERSON MANINGO. All Rights Reserved.

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Digital Guitar tuners - this is very important in music studio applications, take note that once an engineer will bypass the digital guitar tuners and will tune by ear,this will increase the risk of out tune songs. I will trust my ear for mixing but not for tuning the guitar. Tuning the guitar is sometimes hard especially if you do not have balance or flat guitar. Balance or flat means that the tuning will not change from fret to fret. So if an E is tune on the open 6th string. It should give also a perfect E note on the 12 fret 6th string. Other guitars do not have this ability and that is why a digital guitar tuner is recommended.

I am using Digital Guitar tuner, a free Windows tuner application. See screen shot below:

As seen on the screen shot you can customize the tuning digitally, so tuning half step or standard as well as other tuning variations is highly possible. The good thing about Digital tuner is that it is FREE. To use digital guitar tuner you must have the following requirements:

a. Windows Based Computer
b. Soundcard with line input or microphone input
c. Some hard disk space to install digital guitar tuner (it will only consume a little resources).

Below are the important procedures to use Digital Guitar Tuner:

a. Connect the electric guitar to your Windows Based computer using the sound input or microphone input.
b. Open the Digital tuner and configure the system, test whether the input is loud enough.
c. Look for “tuner is on” then you are ready to tune the guitar, this is very easy to use.

Since this is a free application it can fail sometimes like hang. To correct this is to restart your computer and start all over again, but it wont hurt the computer. Double check this program before installing as it comes from different sources, it may have spy wares in it.

The program has some setbacks. It cannot tune a bass guitar!!! So be careful with this , make sure you are only using this for acoustic and electric guitar and not for bass guitar tuning applications.

If you need a bass guitar tuner I highly recommend to have a hardware tuner for this, not a software one. And if you are very gifted you can even tune a bass guitar by ears, but this is not recommended as I have tried before and bass tuning is a pain in the ass.

Please read my post about learning all the notes in acoustic guitar. So that you can have a complete guide on the notes of the guitar for which you would like to tune. Below is a photo of the bass guitar, which obvious follows different notes on different frets compared to the acoustic/electric guitar. It is because the bass guitar is a 4 string instrument:

And below are notes of the bass guitar for your guidance:

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The scope of this post is to learn the very basic techniques that allow guitarist to play guitar fast using “alternate picking” (by a guitar pick). Other guitar techniques such as “sweep picking” will be covered in the future post.

In details, left and right hand technique are illustrated as follows:

Right hand technique: (alternate picking)

Rules to play:
1. Use a guitar pick.
2. Play the first note with pick down stroke.
3. Play the 2nd note with pick up stroke.
4. Play all successive notes in up and down motion of pick (regardless of the string)

Aim for clean notes first.

The Speed guitar drill Tab:

As said, play it slowly first. Specifically (the nine notes of this Speed guitar drill:)

1st note: Down ,2nd note: Up 3rd note: Down
4th note: Up, 5th note: Down, 6th note: Up
7th note: Down, 8th note: Up, 9th note: Down (repeat pattern over and over again)

Play the notes as clear and as slowly as you can at first. This is not for overnight success. Guitar speed playing takes patience and time. I suggest you can use a metronome for your practice, set it a slow tempo first then gradually make it faster each day as you progresses. You can use any types of guitar, but recommended is electric guitar with or without distortion. The purpose is for you to be familiar with the fretting distance and the force you will need to exert on your left hand fingers.

Left Hand Technique:

As said early, left and right hand must be well coordinated to create maximum speed. After discussing the right hand techniques above, below are the tips you can optimize the left hand fingers.

First,remember this important finger mnemonics:

Refer to the tab above, the LH Fingers means “Left hand fingers”, so this means you will position your finger 1 on the 1st note and play it downstroke with pick, 2nd note with finger 4 and play it upstroke..so on and so forth (also to right hand techniques above).

To illustrate the above principles, watch the video clip below with actual illustrations of the procedure. Remember to play slowly at first to give time for your fingers to learn.

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Mastery of the songs is necessary for successful live performance. A lot of singer-songwriters lack dedication to practice on a daily basis. This is very important because you will able to know your songs very well in detail. Lots of singer-songwriters nowadays play guitar in addition to singing vocals.

This makes things a bit difficult but more advantageous to a singer-songwriter. The reason is simple, a singer-songwriter can play live without further need of a band. But more live shows and die hard fans loves artist who play instruments at the same time as it provides more inspiration to them in terms of music.

The first step to mastery is knowing your instrument on a daily basis. A lot of artist complain of practice, some may be forced to practice by their managers or mentors. Dedication is the key, once a mastery is achieved, a smooth sailing performance will follow. Knowing instrument on a daily basis such as guitar takes time to develop, so allocate a portion of your time to practice everyday and START IT NOW! Do not wait for A&R and record producers to request you play live in front of them and that is the time you start practicing guitars because there are music industry professionals knocking at your doors, it is just impossible.

The important technique is developing a working objective daily and write it on a note to monitor progress. For example, for a certain day you may want to practice the 1st stanza of song X. So devote the whole practice hours of the day just doing 1st stanza of song X. Assess progress in a daily basis, the next day you may want to do 1st stanza of song X. Once you are confident doing it, you may consider the 2nd stanza of Song X as your next working objective. When you feel 2nd stanza is easy, you may now combine 1st stanza and 2nd stanza together as your next day working objective. By doing this, day by day you will a lot of progress in mastering your own songs. Doing this in a daily basis and starting NOW, I can guarantee you will be a great live performer soon!

Success will always happen to those who are determined, dedicated, positive minded and hard-working. So if you want to master you own songs for performance you must that attitude. There are basically two major phases of sucessful performance, the 1st one is practicing and mastering your songs inside your room, the final phase is Public performance. Once you have 3 sets of songs (equivalent to about 3 hours of performance along with some mixtures of your favorite covered songs maybe), you can have make a press kit so that you can play in clubs. Playing in clubs and bars is the best way to master your songs with confidence. It gives you a total control of performance with people watching straight at you.

One of the major differences in playing in clubs and playing in your room is the microphone and your standing position. In your room , you are just concerned in mastering the songs and this could not mean great performance. Only when you also stand in your room with your guitar and fronting with a mike also (facing a mirror is fine as well as video-taping yourself), you can simulate public performance/ concert conditions. By doing this, you will start to notice your weakness, your mistakes (such as difficulty in singing along with playing guitars), any lousy performance before it can happen right to you in public performance.

As a summary, be positive and objective focused in your practice. Mastery of performance will not happen overnight! Instead it is a day to day activity powered by determination, dedication, positive mindset and hard-work. Good Luck!

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To start with, acoustic guitar is simply a six string instrument. These six strings have notes, they are called OPEN NOTES, because of the fact that they can be played without pressing your fingers in the fret. It is extremely important you know the name of these open notes because it is one way to identify the rest of the notes in the acoustic guitar.

Another thing that is very important to remember, is that guitar scale is CHROMATIC. “Chromatic” means it is played half-increasing or decreasing. I suggest to read this lesson first regarding Theory about musical scales. The objective is to get to know “chromatic scales”.

Below is the close-up view of the acoustic guitar sound hole with the strings:

These are the pitch names/notes of the acoustic guitar open strings. Take note that the same name of strings for electric guitar and other six string guitars.
Since it is chromatic nature, it will increase half-step by every single increase in frets. Acoustic guitar has around 20~22 frets (depending on acoustic guitar you bought).

So for example if it is treble high E (1st string), the name of the open note is “mi”. So pressing one fret will raise a half step pitch (F or fa). The same principle applies with different strings. Below are complete guide to all notes in the acoustic guitar:

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Right on the left are the open note strings, E (mi), B (ti), G (so), D (re), A (la), E (mi)

The numbers on the upper portion of the image are the fret numbers of the guitar. You can always review my musical guide in knowing chromatic scales here. By looking at the guide above, you can always know the notes of the guitar at any particular guitar fret number and corresponding strings to be played. Also I have included a complete courses on chord formation and concepts, please look at the site main navigation.

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The tricky part in playing guitars are the chords. Chords are very important for a songwriter/performer since all songwriting methods and performance are basically based on this technique. The harder part in the earliest stage are the hands and timing. Based on my experiences in playing with this instrument, below are my suggestions on how to cope up difficulty in playing chords for the 1st time (Assuming you have the acoustic guitar already)
Tip #1: Get a guitar chord book with figures and understand how to interpret it.
Tip #2: Practice one common chords at a time: Common chords are the ones that are easy and useful. Example are A,Bb,B,C,D,E,F,G,Am,Bm,C#m, Dm, Em, F#m,Gm.
Tip #3: Position your hands according to the chord book.
Tip #4: Make the whole chords sound without a break or muffled sound. This is done by strumming downwards 2 stroke with your right hands.
Tip #5: Remove your hands then position again your hands (same chord) then strum 2 strokes downward.
Tip #6: Do this until your hands are comfortable with the chord positions.
Tip #7: Change to another chords if you feel confident that you can now shift and position your hands in the fret without much effort.
Tip #8: After positioning all basic chords as mentioned above do basic strumming practice by doing a sample songs.

Recommended practice songs:

a. What’s up by 4 non blondes.- tips: try to practice really slow by following the most basic pattern as what you have listen.

Video: What’s up -video

b. Every Rose has it’s thorn by Poison- tips

Video: Every Rose has it’s Thorn- Video

Reference: Guitar chord patterns

How to interpret the chord patterns:

1. X means it will not be included in the strumming.
2. 0- means open string, no fingers should be placed on that string but it will still be played.
3. To your rightmost is the high E-note.
4. To your leftmost is the low E-note (bass)
5. A number of the left means the fret number of which you will be forming the chord if none it will be the first fret.
6. The dotted black is where you place your fingers on the guitar.

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