Private lessons · Guitar
Guitar lessons in Miami
Six strings, many styles. Here is the instrument, and how right-hand and left-hand technique grows from first position to barré chords.
- StringsUsually six (twelve also exist)
- Main typesClassical, steel-string acoustic, electric
- Modern formTook shape around 1850 (Spanish makers)
The basics
- The guitar is a fretted stringed instrument: its sound comes from strings stretched between two fixed points.
- Most guitars have six strings or twelve; seven-, eight- and nine-string versions also exist.
- Acoustic guitars project sound through a hollow resonant body; electric guitars use pickups that send the string vibration to an amplifier.
- The three main modern types are the classical (Spanish) guitar, the steel-string acoustic or electric guitar, and the lap steel guitar.
- Electric guitars were first patented in 1937; solid-body models came to dominate the market in the 1960s and 1970s.
- The origins of the modern guitar are not known. The name comes from the Spanish guitarra, from the Latin cithara and Greek kithara; the modern form took shape around 1850, largely through Spanish makers such as Antonio Torres Jurado.
- It is a main instrument in blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, rock and heavy metal.
How technique develops
A map of the stages, taken from published exam-board requirements (named below). It is a map of what each stage can look like, not Green Hat's own method; your teacher adapts the path to you.
First position
ABRSM classical guitar Grade 1 asks for one-octave scales and arpeggios, some thumb only and some fingers only, and its sight-reading stays in first position in simple keys (C, G and F major, A and E minor).
Two octaves and clean arpeggios
By Grade 3 scales span two octaves, thumb and fingers combine, and broken chords and arpeggios are played with attention to over-ringing and non-over-ringing notes.
Two right-hand strokes
From Grade 5 fingers-only scales must be prepared with both tirando (free stroke) and apoyando (rest stroke).
Up the neck, then barrés
Sight-reading moves above the 5th position with easily prepared partial barrés at Grade 6, and full barrés at Grade 8. From Grade 6 the player tunes the guitar themselves.
The ABRSM guitar syllabus is for classical (nylon-string) guitar.
Sources
Facts come from the sources below; check them if you need exact details.