Guitar

            Guitar is a plucked strings music instrument commonly with six strings. Of course almost all people know guitars. Guitar is a very famous music instrument all over the world. Guitar is a simple music instrument. You can bring it everywhere easily (not like piano). Guitar can also represented an orchestra.

           Guitar has improved a lot. There many kinds of guitar now, such as guitar bass with 4 or more strings, acoustic guitar with 6 strings, and some guitars have more than 6 strings. Technology has improved that cause guitar modified become electric guitar. The sound also can be modified become other sound. Even though the technology has improved, we still have to learn about the original guitar.

            There are two ways how to play guitar, strum or plucked. Mostly, people play guitar with strum technique, because it’s easier than pluck the string. Plucking is usually played in the classical music.

            Guitar is one octave bellow the violin. The standard open strings of guitar is E, A, D, G, B, E from the lowest to highest open strings. There are some other kind of tuning, sometimes the tuning would become D, A, D, G, B, E or E, A, D, F#, B, E for some songs depend on the arranger, composer or style of the song. You have to ensure that the guitar is tuned well. When the temperature changes, it would effect at the guitar strings tone.

            Guitar also can play a lot of kinds of music, such as Pop, Jazz, Rock, Blues Country, Classical, etc. They make some different variation in each kind of music.

            In the Pop music, guitar is very famous. Usually people play it with strum technique. Because it is very simple and easy to learn. But sometimes the songs are using plucking technique.

            In the Jazz, Rock, Blues and Country music, guitar is also useful. They can make some variations in the songs. The chord that they are playing is also varied and sometimes uncommon.

            In the classical music, guitar is commonly played with plucked technical. If you play classical guitar, you’ll have to pay attention to the way you sit at the chair, holding guitar, and you’ll need footstool for it. It is a little bit difficult to play it, it needs a lot of time to learn. You have to be diligent in order to be a professional classical guitar player.

            Guitar was made from the lute idea. But lute was famous at the baroque period music. So, the classical songs that can be played by guitar are usually from the baroque music.

            Guitar is a good music instrument to study chord and interval. To arrange a song for guitar is more difficult than arrange song for piano. You have to think about the fingering, and it’s really limited. Sometimes, people are using capo to change the key become higher.

            To strum a guitar, you can use your index finger in your right hand or sometimes using guitar pick to strum down and your thumb, index or pick to strum up. For Rasgueado technique, which is commonly used in flamenco guitar, we can strum it for more than a finger. To plucked a guitar, there are many technique, such as tremolo, pizzicato, vibrato, etc. There are 2 ways how to pluck the guitar, apoyando and al aire.

            And the last, there are two types of strings for guitar, the nylon and the steel. For strumming, people prefer the steel string to the nylon string. For plucking, it’s suggested to use the nylon string. Because the steel string could hurt your finger. For the beginner, I suggest you to use the nylon string. The nylon string also can be use for strumming. Nylon string is the recommended string for classical guitar.

            That’s all about guitar that I can tell you. I hope this article would be useful for everyone who read it. Sorry if I've got some wrong information, I tried my best to write what I know. Thank you.

By : Eric Loka