ALL ABOUT THAT BASS CHORD GITAR
Ever thinking of how to buy a guitar for beginners? How to choose your own piece of guitar? What is the best guitar for beginners? After viewing through the Guitar Basics, now you know that there are two types of acoustic guitar, steel-string acoustic guitar and nylon-string classical guitar. Today, I would like to further explain to you the properties of steel-string and nylon-string for your better understanding as this could help you in choosing your very first guitar for beginners, and choosing your second guitar for advanced player.
The Steel-string
It’s made of steel of course, but the steel-string of an acoustic guitar is totally different from the steel-string of an electric guitar. The steel-string of an electric guitar is rather soft, and really soft with a very low tension which hardly generate any presentable sound physically. Basically, you’ll need an amplifier to generate sound from an electric guitar.
Coming back to the steel-string of an acoustic guitar, it usually comes with higher tension than a nylon-string to generate the same tone, and it usually harder to press with the steel-string firmly on the guitar fret(will be covered in Hands-on Practical Playing) compared to nylon-string to generate a rigid and solid tone. In addition to the higher tension, a steel-string is slender and will gradually drops a lot more pressure to your fingertips, results more pain to your fingertips while playing a steel-string acoustic guitar. With exchange of these downsides, the steel-string generates a clean and clear metallic sound which allows a steel-string acoustic guitar to produce more lively styles.
If you would like to know more about acoustic guitar steel-string, you can click HERE which will bring you to my Resources page where you can find brands of acoustic guitar steel-string available.
The Nylon-string
And of course, it’s made of nylon! The nylon-string generates soft and gentle sound in a comfortable manner which usually used to play classical songs. A detail composed classical song with complicated mixture of tones could sound chaotic. But, thanks to the soft and gentle sound of a nylon-string which could bring down the whole phrase peacefully, comfortably, and beautifully.
The nylon-string has less tension and adequate string thickness which drops less pressure to your fingertips, you’ll find it easier to press with the nylon-string firmly on the guitar fret with less pain on your fingertips. However, the downside of nylon-string is the sound produced from a classical guitar tempted to be be dull, it is not as crystal clear as what produced by a steel-string.
You could click HERE for more information on brands of classical guitar nylon-string in my Resources page, and one of the brand Gibson is my favorite classical guitar nylon-string with special appearance(black nylon-string instead compared to other general transparent nylon-string) which makes it standing out from the others.
Choosing Your 1st Guitar – Beginners
Now, basically I bet that you already have the idea here, so you have two choices.
- Classical Guitar – Nylon-string, less tension & easier to press, wider & thicker guitar neck, more spaces on guitar fret. Acoustic Guitar – Steel-string, more tension & harder to press, narrower & thinner guitar neck, less spaces on guitar fret.
My #1 recommendation for you as a beginner, please choose a Classical Guitar instead. Ever wonder why? With nylon-string it’s easier to press and you’ll less having a sore fingertips which it’ll be much more worst with steel-string. In this case, you’ll be able to practice more frequently so that you could catch up with more skills and technique.
Your first guitar could be a Used Guitar or a Brand New Guitar, my suggestion to you is that as long as it’s a nylon-string classical guitar will do. I would like to suggest you for any Used Guitar will do, or you can choose a better branded guitar with normal grade from Valencia or Kapok, they are not expensive and have an overall good quality. Secondly you can choose a better grade guitar, the Yamaha C40 which myself have been using until today. You do not want to invest too much on a fancy guitar nor an extremely high grade guitar at first, as you never know which type of guitar that you actually prefer without any hands-on practical playing, it’s up to you though.
Choosing Your 2nd Guitar – Advanced Player
Once you’ve getting along with your first guitar, you will probably notice that which type of guitar you more prefer with, and you might be considering changing your first guitar, or you might be happy to continue playing with it. Nevertheless, I bet that now you’ll have your own desire and passion on certain specified guitar, this is when you will invest for a better grade of guitar.
You might find out that you do love classical guitar, and you’ll be continue playing with your own piece of guitar, or you’ll be looking forward for a higher grade and sound quality of guitar, even thinking of playing a steel-string acoustic guitar for a different style. There are a lot of guitar brands in the world, you could not judge the quality of a guitar barely just by its’ pricing, simply a brand comes with different grade of guitar available.
As an example, the Yamaha C40 which I have been playing until today only cost me at around USD 150, it’s a fine guitar and that’s why I have been playing it for years. But, you will also find a grand guitar which will cost you at around USD 500 for the Yamaha CG192S, or the Yamaha SG1000 at around USD 530. These are all grand guitar(hands-on in a lot of music instrument shops, which I hope to own one too! Beautiful piece of guitar!), other brands such as Gibson, Taylor, Martin, Fender, Ibanez, Paul Reed Smith, B. C. Rich, Epiphone, Jackson, ESP, Rickenbacker, and much more! You may click HERE to my Resources page and I hope that you could find a piece of guitar which catches your eyes in all of these brands.
My Own Piece of Classical Guitar
The Yamaha C40 is a very common piece of nylon-string classical guitar owned by a lot of guitar player, it is not very expensive and it’s manufactured by a well known music instrument manufacturer, the Yamaha Corporation. BUT, mine is just a little bit different than the others which makes my guitar playing experience much more different than all the others. I exchanged my original nylon-string of the Yamaha C40 with the Gibson steel-string(I used to play with Gibson nylon-string).
Although I’m some sort of classical based guitar player as I love beautiful classical songs, but I have to admin that I do much prefer the sound quality of a steel-string! Then, I have my own style of playing the classical guitar, it’s a steel-string classical guitar instead. Actually, doing this is not recommended as the steel-string will cause minor damage to your classical guitar which is meant for nylon-string, but I just love the way I play it, and this is my very own style of playing classical guitar.
All guitar lovers out there, we all have our own style right? Cheers mate!
If you don’t mind, please do leave any comment at the below, I’ll be glad with all of your comments, and also I’ll be more than happy to help you out with your questions.
How To Play Acoustic Guitar For Absolute Beginners Learn How To Play Acoustic Guitar Book+2 Cds