How To Play The Guitar

Hello, my name is Matthew Forbs from the Music Workshop Company. I'm going to take you through how to tune some instruments, how to play them basically and also how to read the notated music for them. Okay, this is a steel-stringed acoustic guitar and the way to play it, I think it is most comfortable to have it on your right knee if you are right-handed and left-handed will be all the way around.

But as I'm right-handed, classical guitars are often played on the opposite knee to bring it higher. I think for this kind of starlets, it is better to have maybe here, so my right hand is where I'm making the sounds. I can either use just my fingers or my thumb generally is in the lower regions and picking up the base lines and the rest of my fingers are falling in the higher areas.

The left hand, of course, is pressing down the strings. It is always a good tip to be either exactly in the middle or slightly on the top side of the threads. Between the two threads of course, you will get the same note.

There is a small amount area but in order to get the clearest sound, you want to put the full pressure somewhere in the middle of the top side of each thread. When you are learning chords at the beginning, try keep the chords that are the simplest possible. So I suggest the major chords, something like the G-chord where you are using third thread, second thread.

Open, open, open and the third thread there. It is a good thing to learn, I think, two chords at once. So if we have the G-chord, we also have the D-chord where it starts there.

We can also use this string. But I'm starting at the D. Second thread, third thread, second and the fingers are shaped in that way.

It is a good thing to practice going from one chord to the other and back again just so that you train your physical memory to remember where those shapes are, and always to try within a post. So if you imagine to be at one two three four, change to three four one two three four. And always try to play on the one.

However long it takes to change. Maybe as you become more fluent, you start speeding up your changes. So instead of four, you might be doing on every two.

One two, One two. On every one. Do it your eyes closed so you feel the shape of the chords in your left hand.

You had another one, say the C-chord. Just that one. Practice timing it very carefully.

If you said the speed is too fast, just bring the speed slightly back so you get the change really really comfortable and once you do it within a time frame, you find it a lot easier to anticipate these chord changes. Instead of the fingers, players often are used to play the pentrum which has another policy of sound. The pentrum generally, if you hit it, if you pull the strings, just they, the bridge side of the sound hall, that is the best.

It is the best quality of sound from a steel stringed guitar like this one. .