Grasp the essentials needed to begin playing acoustic or electric guitar. You'll learn an easy approach to get you playing quickly, through a combination of exploring the instrument, performance technique, and basic music theory. For students who have long thought about picking up the acoustic or electric guitar, this course will provide an easy-access foundation that will get you playing. When first learning guitar, it is important to have the material presented in stages, in an enjoyable way that allows you to grasp the basics of the instrument and music. The course begins simply with the parts of the guitar, the names of the strings, tuning, and technique—whether finger-style or pick. It then explores the basics of music theory with such topics as scales, triads, power chords, and fingering and shapes. At the end of this course, students will understand the structure, parts, and accessories of the instrument, in addition to an understanding of its basic maintenance. Electric guitar players will learn the operation of their instrument along with basic options for amplification, effect pedals, and sounds. Students will also learn to develop correct technique and apply theory concepts to their playing. They will have the foundational knowledge necessary to pursue most intermediate guitar courses.
Essential Accessories for Acoustic Guitar
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From the course by Berklee College of Music
Guitar for Beginners
1288 ratings
From the lesson
Acoustic / Electric Guitar and the Basics
In this first lesson, we will take things slow. We will focus on how to choose the right guitar for you and what accessories are essential for any guitar player. We'll also learn the parts of the guitar and get you comfortable with your instrument.
Meet the Instructors
Thaddeus HogarthAssociate Professor
Guitar
[MUSIC]
So let's talk about some essential accessories
that you might want to consider getting for your guitar.
I do recommend some kind of protective case.
I have a hard shell case,
which is good for traveling and checking in at the airport.
I recommend a similar kind of case to protect your instrument.
Adequate padding and nice soft fluffiness inside protect my instrument.
A strap is essential.
Some kind of guitar strap.
In this case I have a leather strap.
It attaches both ends, one end to the head stock of the guitar and
the other end to a pin that's attached to the bottom of the guitar.
Moving along, it's always a good idea to have some extra strings.
Strings break from time to time.
On average I change my strings maybe once or
twice a month, especially if I'm playing regularly,
maybe even more often, and so I keep maybe three or four packs handy.
And you just can't go wrong with that.
This is called a metronome.
I recommend this and then many different versions that you ca get.
This one is a simple old fashioned digital metronome.
What a metronome does and we'll talk more about this later is it keeps time for
you so that you can practice whether it's a scale or
a strumming pattern, with accurate time, it's essential to have
some kind of metronome that you can use as a guide when you're practicing.
All it does is it keeps a beat, as we can see, and
there's some way to adjust the frequency of that beat.
Now there are many different types of metronomes.
You can buy a digital one like this, as cheap as $10 or something like that.
They even have some free online website metronomes that you can pick up.
These days, if you have an iPhone, there's many metronome,
free metronome apps that you can get.
The idea here is that you get one and you use it when you practice.
In my case, my acoustic guitar does not have a built in pick-up.
So what I have is a pick-up that I install into the sound hole of the guitar.
This goes right inside there under the strings and
then it allows me to plug it into either an amplifier or a PA.
As I mentioned before many acoustic guitars today come with
built in pick up so you can actually plug them in directly without having to use
an attachment such as this.
But this is a pretty old guitar and this is an pretty old pick up too.
Some kind of tuner,
there are many different kinds of tuners that you can get on the market today.
In this case this is one that you can actually plug directly into or
you can use it acoustically and when you play a note [SOUND] it actually guides you
towards the correct frequency, and you can tighten or you can loosen the tuning pegs,
and then that way you can keep your instrument in tune.
Again, today, you can buy a tuner for maybe five or
ten dollars, up to $20 or so.
But there are many tuners that are available if you have a smartphone.
There are many tuners that are available, free tuners,
along with various online free tuners that you can get your hands on.
Another essential and very inexpensive item.
This is called a string winder and it also has a built in,
what we call, bridge puller.
When you get to changing your strings, should you break a string.
Often times the string winder allows you to quickly wind up a string
to its required tension, you'd wrap it around a few times and then wind this.
Should you have to change a string there's a little corner of this,
which is called a bridgepin puller and you would get that underneath
the bridgepin pull it out.
Essential, and only a few cents.
Moving right along.
Most of you who owned acoustic guitars should get some kind of humidifier.
The weather does play tricks on you and your acoustic guitar.
Varying humidities, hot,
cold sometimes can cause the wood to do things that are not good.
I recommend a small humidifier such as this one.
This one actually installs in between the strings and stays in there.
What it does, it keeps a certain amount of humidity within the instrument so
that you don't get drying out or warping.
I highly recommended for anyone who plays acoustic guitar.
Moving right along, at a point later in the course,
we're going to talk about the use of a capo.
This is a capo, extensively what it is, is a moveable nut.
Now, this nut here allows me to play what we call open position cords.
We'll talk about open position cords later on.
What a capo does extensively is move that nut up to a required fret.
So if you're a singer, let's say, and you're used to playing, of if
you're accompanying a singer and you're used to playing a song in a certain key,
what this does is it allows you to transpose using the identical shapes.
As I said, we'll get into that as the course progresses,
and we'll talk about open-position chords.
But for now, all you need to know is this allows you to play open-position
chords anywhere on the fretboard.
Another thing that we have is yet
another tuner these have become popular of late.
These tuners actually attach to your headstock.
See if I can pop this on here.
And basically what it does is it gives you an affect what you get
when you have a built in tuner it attaches to your headstock and
then it allows you to tune your guitar.
[SOUND] It allows you to tune your guitar and make the adjustments accordingly.
And it attaches permanently to your headstock or temporarily.
You can take it off.
So that's another kind of tuner.
And that's it, for some essential accessories for your acoustic guitar.
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