This short lesson will make you acquainted with reading some basic musical notations for guitar and also you will learn how to play some chords like C Maj, F Maj and G dom 7th.
Mastering guitar comes only with persistent practice and determination. You have to be extremely patient to learn different techniques on your guitar as it can take some time. So if you want to play some real good riffs, start allocating atleast 2-3 hours daily for practice.
I will be discussing few techniques here in this lens that you can take it as lessons on acoustic guitar. If you are planning to learn guitar or you have just started out, you should always start practicing on acoustic guitar. The reason for that is, you will develop a great deal of perfection if you play on acoustic guitar. You must be thinking how !
This is how it helps,
* Helps develop more finger strength - The strings on an acoustic guitar is more strong and it is not very close to the fret board as it is on an electric guitar also, the neck or fret board of an acoustic guitar is broader than that of an electric guitar. So naturally you will press hard to strike a note and this will ultimately develop your palm and finger strength.
* Play it anywhere - An Acoustic guitar can be played anywhere, because you don't need an amplifier to get the sound out.
* Affordable - You can buy an acoustic guitar for a very cheap price. Where as if have to spend atleast 4-5 times on an electric guitar of a good company. And that's not all, you have to purchase a good amp and to get some jazzy and fancy sounds, you have to have a nice digital processor too. So all these will cost you a fortune.
Reading Musical Notations - An Overview
Staff or Stave(Plural of staff) In Western music, the staff or stave is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces where the notes are written, each of which represents a different musical pitch.
Ledger Line A ledger line or leger line is musical notation to represent notes outside the lines and spaces of the staff. A line little longer than the note is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below it, spaced at the same distances as the notes within the staff. (See the First part of the figure, where the higher and lower notes which cannot be represented in the staff are written. Such as A B C D E F on the upper part of the staff and C B A G F E on the lower part of the staff)
Middle C Middle C is the note designated by the first ledger line below the treble staff. The C note played on the 3rd Fret of the 5th String on a guitar is a Middle C which comes in G Clef pitch.
G Clef There are different Clefs for different pitches in music.The different pitches in music are Treble, Bass, Alto, Tenor and Soprano. Here I will be defining only G or Treble Clef and F or Bass Clef. In Guitar there is no Bass or F Clef, it is only used for denoting the lef hand BASS notes in a Piano. This Clef is also known as Treble clef that indicates the pitch of the notes following it in the staff: a clef that puts the G above middle C where G is on the second line of the staff. And F or Bass Clef indicates that F which is marked on the fourth line is below the middle C note.
Learning Some Basic Chords
What are chords ?
Chords are a group of notes played together, be it guitar or piano. This creates a more melodious sound than a single note. Chord progressions can be made very melodious to our ears if you know how to group them well. For this we need to learn some basic chords first.
The first 3 chords that you can learn are C Major, F Major and G7th. We can say that, these chords are from the same class or family because, all the above 3 chords are derived from the very basic and simple C Major scale.
Let's see how these 3 chords are derived from the C Major scale !
C Major In C Major scale, C is the first or root note. The first chord will be always formed from the first note of a scale. In this case "C". This note is also called the Tonic Note. Hence C Major is the Tonic chord. C major chord is made up of any combination of C, E and G (1, 3 and 5 from the C major scale)
F Major F is the fourth note or at the fourth degree in C Major scale. The fourth note of a scale is called the Sub-Dominant note. And, the second chord is formed from the Sub-Dominant note, hence F Major is called the Sub-Dominant chord in C Major scale. The notes of F Major chord are F, C, F, A, C and F. This chord is played by placing a barre on the fret with your index finger.
G Dominant 7th(popularly known as G7th) G is the 5th note of C Major scale and the fifth note or degree is called the Dominant Note in every scale. Hence G7th is called G Dominant 7th chord. The Dominant 7th chord is formed on the 5th degree from the Tonic(i.e. C in this case)
The notes in G7th chord are G, B, D, G, B and F. The 4th(D), 3rd(G) and 2nd(B) strings are open. When a seventh note(i.e. F in this case) is added to a major chord(G Maj in this case) we get G Dominant Seventh, which gives a more bluesy tone.
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