Purpose of this tutorial is to give you a game plan as you first start to play the guitar of what you should actually be working on. So if you have just gotten the guitar and picking up for the first time, let's just look at some concepts of how to actually play it and how to get where you want to go, which is playing songs and learning them quickly.
The first thing is actually fretting notes. Before we even start to learn some chords, there are some concepts that will make it much easier as we go. A lot of times, students will start and they will go to play a note and they will do something like this. They will put their finger down, they will be playing the correct fret, this will be the second fret and they will get a sound like this. This will buzzing sound and they will just press down harder and harder and harder.
As we are adding other strings to form chords, we will get sounds that just don't have a very good tone and that can be very frustrating. You practicing a bunch and nothing you are playing is really sounding good. So the first thing that we really need to look at is how to actually fret a note. When you play you want to be right behind the metal part of the fret, that's the actual fret wire.
We want to be behind that not far back on the fret space but actually right up next to the wire, not on it. Because that will also give you a buzz but just have your finger right behind it, that will give you a much purer note and if you back up you will notice that the tone changes as I am back up. I can just barely apply pressure and get a very good sound just by being next to that fret.
The other thing that's very important is the position of your thumb relative to your fingers. A lot of people will have their thumb wrapped around like this or up here as they start playing. What that does is it forces your fingers to flatten out which really inhibits your dexterity and your ability to play different chords and different melodies on the guitar.
So if you can you want to try to bring your thumb back behind the neck. What that does for you is it gives your fingers an arch. An arch is much stronger than just having a finger out straight and trying to press it down that way. You will notice that that also has a clumsy look to it, whereas if I have the tips of my fingers coming down, it's much more effective.
So I want my fingers to be curving around and using the tip of the finger to touch the string. That's going to feel awkward at first because you will have to be much more accurate to get on the string, but in the long term that will give you a much better sound. You will be hitting extra strings; you will be able to isolate notes much more easily. So we just want to bring that thumb back, bring the hand below the guitar and that will allow your fingers to curve around and hit the strings much more effectively and remember to be behind those frets.
So we will come back and start with the some major chords in our next part of this tutorial.
G chord, C chord, A minor and D chord make up the song. I can leave my first and second finger in place and my ring finger slides into the second fret of the third string.
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