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BitterSweet Guitars in the Bitterroot, MT

So you want to be a guitar hero? Here’s how:

Day 1

Go to your local instrument dealer and buy the following items:

  • A tuner. It’s essential to have an instrument in tune, otherwise it will sound bad no matter how well you play it. You will think it’s your fault (and so will your girlfriend), and you will give up on the whole enterprise after day 5 or so. You play with your ears just as much as with your fingers, so you might as well get good habits from the start. You can get a good tuner for very little money. Make sure you get one where you can choose which tones to tune to, and not just to the standard tuning. You’re going to need that later on. You don’t have to buy a tuner, of course; there are excellent tuner programs around, which do the job just as good or better than a standalone tuner. I can’t give recommendations of tuner software for  Windows, but google “free guitar tuner windows” and you should find something that works.
  • New strings. They produce the sounds, not your fingers or your ears. Bad strings — bad sound. Again: your girlfriend will think it’s your fault, and so will you.
  • A new guitar. OK, this one is optional, at least until day 12, but even a great guitarist will only sound half great on a bad guitar. Besides, a good guitar will be easier to play on, hence easier to learn on. Nylon strings are easier on the fingers than steel strings. You will get sore fingers no matter what kind of guitar you have, so be warned.
  • A capo. This is not essential at this stage, to be honest, but you will need one eventually, so you might as well buy one while you’re in the store. There are three main types: the cheapest ones fasten with a piece of elastic or nylon. The elastic models cost less than a beer, but are also the weakest, so they may not be able to press down all the strings with the necessary pressure and thus produce a buzzing sound. Besides, they will break, eventually. If you want to stay in the cheaper range, go with the nylon model to the left. The spring based model is more expensive. Many players love this kind. I don’t. Tastes differ. For what it’s worth, I use the lever-operated, no-frills capo to the right: it does what it’s supposed to do, and it will last forever. Make sure you get a capo that fits your guitar. Nylon string guitars have a flat fretboard and need a flat bar, whereas most steel string guitars have a curved fretboard and need a curved bar, as in the picture to the right.
  • You may also want to buy some plectrums. They vary in thickness and elasticity. “Find the one that suits you best,” would be something to say to someone who has played for a while, so I won’t say that. I’ll say: get a Dunlop .71 mm. It’s glaringly pink, but other than that, it’s ideal: not too rigid (which will make it stick between the strings and you’ll loose it), nor too sloppy (which will produce more clicking than real guitar sound). Peter Stone Brown has told me that there is a brown Dunlop plectrum that is identical to the pink one. Ask your dealer.

You can now leave the shop and go home, change your strings (or ask the nice people in the shop to do it for you), tune your guitar (this you should do yourself — you will be doing it a lot, so you might as well get into the habit), and grab hold of your guitar.

Update: You may want to know a little more about tuning. If you’ve been a good student and done as the professor ordered, you can use your tuning device, and all should be fine. If you’re rebellious, obsessed about personal freedom, or for some other reason don’t have said device, here’s a quick run-through:

    The standard tuning of a guitar is (from deepest to highest): E – A – d – g – b – e’ Tune the deepest string to an E. If you don’t have an instrument to tune to, find a CD, and go to dylanchords.info to find a song that ‘s in E. Most of Blood on the Tracks would do. Shooting Star is in E. Etc. When that string is ok, press it down on the fifth fret. The fifth string should sound like the tone you get. Repeat with the next two string pairs: the fifth string fingered at the fifth fret should sound like the open fourth string, same with fourth -> third. Between the third and the second strings, the distance is smaller, so you will have to finger the third string on the fourth fret. Between the two highest string, it’s again the fifth fret. The sixth (deepest) and first (highest) strings should sound the same.

Now what?

Chord charts

Chances are, you are going to read a lot of tabs from the Net. I will get back to the topic of how to read tab later on, two words about it now, before we move on. A common way to write down chords, is as a string of numbers, from the deepest string (E) to the brightest (e’). It is common to number the strings in the other direction, so the “first string” is the brightest, and the “sixth string” the deepest.

“0” denotes an open string, a number indicates the fret to push down the string in, and “x” means that the string should not sound. Thus, 000000 means all strings open, and — slightly more exciting — 022000 means: place fingers on the second fret of the fifth and fourth strings. This could also be written graphically, like this:

by ooo

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