Buying the right guitar may not be an easy choice for you. It can be so frustrating and exasperating that sometimes you will just feel like buying the next guitar you see just so that you can stop your search once and for all. Worse if you the easily frustrated type, you may even feel like giving up the idea of learning how to play the guitar altogether.

Every person will have a different set of criteria when choosing a good guitar. However, chances are that you may not always be able to satisfy all of them at once. Just have a little patience and look around as much as you can so that will not regret later that you have bought a wrong guitar. Don’t just buy the first guitar you see, visit as many guitar stores as you can just to get an idea of what is on offer.

You probably will have friends who are experienced guitarists, so go and ask them for advice on how to choose a guitar for a beginner like you. Someone who has been playing the guitar for sometime will be able to show you where to choose the best guitars for the best price. Better yet, ask them if they are willing to accompany you to check out the guitars.

Beginner guitar players are often offered package deals in most guitar stores. These deals will often include a free guitar strap, case, tuner and sometimes even free lessons. This would be a good choice for a beginner because everything you need to learn how to play the guitar is packaged together.

If you aspire to be a proficient guitarist, buying a guitar not suitable for you would not only get you shortchanged but it might also disillusion you and dampens your enthusiasm. For this reason, it is always recommended that buy your guitar from reputed brands such as Yamaha, Ibanez, Fender, Gibson, Ovation and Martin just to list a few of them.

You don’t have to get embarrassed when trying out and testing the guitar at the shop since you will be the one who is paying for the guitar. When inspecting a guitar, lookout for sloppy gluing and also make sure that the guitar has a good solid top.

Play the guitar as loudly as you want to because this is the best way of listening to its tonal quality. Play on every fret on the guitar neck to make sure that there are no fret buzzes. Also never pay the listed price for a guitar, so do some hard bargaining with the sales staff and you may get a handsome discount.

If buying a brand new guitar is out of your tight budget, you may wish to consider getting a good quality second hand guitar. This is also an option especially so if your enthusiasm on being a guitarist is just a passing fad.

By: Chris Chew

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Let’s be optimistic and assume you found a gem of a cheap electric guitar for a price within your means. Remember to keep some room in your budget for a few more items necessary to rock your block off.

The most expensive companion for any beginner guitar is an amplifier. Amps can cost just as much, or even more than the nicest guitars. You’ll need to roll up your sleeves and continue to dig for bargains in order to keep your guitar dreams from breaking your bank account.

You may be able to find a good deal on an electric guitar package that will include a cheap electric guitar and amp combo. Lots of music stores will offer combination deals like this for beginner guitar equipment. Do the math and see if this kind of purchase makes financial sense.

Once you’ve secured a good deal on an amp or guitar/amplifier combo there’s one more essential accessory left to buy. You’ll need a cable to connect the two. Such a simple thing it would seem, yet this is one item you shouldn’t cheap out on. Cheap electric guitar cables are likely made with poor quality and won’t last long at all. It’s best to spring for a top notch brand of guitar cable that won’t give you problems. Otherwise you’ll be back at the store in just a few weeks buying a better one.

Once you have your guitar, amp, and a cable to connect the two, you’ll be ready to rock. If you have a few extra bucks burning a hole in your pocket there are a few more items that will enhance your shredding experience.

You can probably persuade the person selling you the guitar to give you a pick or two, but you may want to buy some on your own. Guitar picks are cheap, but come in various levels of thickness. You should try out a few different versions to find the type that suits your style. There’s also a wide variety of novelty guitar picks that may have cool designs or might even glow in the dark.

Picks won’t cost you much so hopefully you still have a few spare bucks to buy a strap for your cheap electric guitar. A strap is not a necessity for a beginning player. You’ll find it easier to learn while sitting down. But there will come a time when you master your first riff and the urge to stand up and play like a pro will be irresistible. When you’re shopping for a strap be sure to try it on to see how it feels. You shouldn’t be concerned with looks; only comfort.

Hopefully you can acquire all these items within your budget. With some patience and a touch of bargain hunter savvy, you’ll have all the gear you need to rock out on a cheap electric guitar.

By: Mike Danick

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So what is the best way to get a collection of guitar songs to learn? There are plenty of books available for you to buy on line or at your local music store that contain anthologies of guitar songs belonging to a wide range of musical genres. The trick is to use your own tastes as a guide only – but not to make the final choice.

An anthology of folk songs containing numbers like Nine Hundred Miles, Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, Worried Man Blues, Little Boxes, Foggy Foggy Dew and Clementine may be too old fashioned for your musical tastes but the muscles responsible for changing chords aren’t going to know about that.

Collections of folk songs are compiled by guitar instructors who are following a plan of learning groups of chords over time using several songs. This enables a guitar student to get used to chord changes involving a definite number of chords before moving onto another group. For example the song This Land Is Your Land may not be one of your favorites but it’s a great way to learn the chords G, C and D.

If you start your collection of guitar songs with songs that you personally are fond of you may be making your progress as a guitar player more difficult than it needs to be. With a collection of easy folk guitar songs that have been chosen with the gradual introduction of the guitar to a student in mind, you have teaching material that will get you playing the songs you like in a short amount of time.

Using easy guitar songs in this way might diminish the enjoyment of learning the guitar a little but it won’t put unnecessary obstacles in your way. So you still get to have fun while you learn guitar without risking becoming disillusioned with yourself as potential guitar player.

If you can choose a collection of easy guitar songs, your learning experience will be much more enjoyable if you can then find on YouTube some free video clips of guitar players performing some of the songs you’ve chosen. Failing that you can look for audio of the songs to buy or borrow. Whatever you do is don’t belittle the collections of easy guitar songs that you see online or in the stores. They may not have lasting interest for you but they will help you to learn guitar.

By: Ricky Sharples

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So onto some basic Flamenco guitar techniques. The most distinctive technique used in Flamenco is the tapping on the body of the guitar. This technique is called the golpe and is performed just below the sound hole. Flamenco guitars are made with a tapping plate to minimize damage to the guitar from constant hitting of the body. The golpe is often used in conjunction with downward strokes of the thumb and with continuous up and down strokes of the index finger used by guitarists playing the Flamenco musical form called Bulerias.

The rapid picking exhibited by Flamenco guitarists is called picado. This is also used in classical guitar but to nowhere near the same degree. It is a “rest” stroke which is played by striking a string with an upward stroke of the first or second finger which comes to rest on the string behind it. So if you play a rest stroke on the second string the finger comes into contact with the third string after it has struck the note. Flamenco scale passages are played as picado using rapid alternating strokes of the first and second fingers.

Another Flamenco guitar technique is the use of rapid arpeggios. Arpeggios are played by placing the first, second and third fingers in position on the first, second and third strings as if you are going to pluck a chord. Instead of plucking all three strings you lift your whole hand slightly so that the fingers play the strings in rapid succession. The thumb and fingers of a guitarist who has practiced this technique can play some very fast arpeggio passages. The effect is similar to sweep picking used in rock guitar.

The thumb is uses almost exclusively in downstrokes. This is another rest stroke where the thumb plays, for example, the sixth string and comes to rest on the fifth string before starting the next stroke. It may seem strange to anybody who has not tried it to make the thumb and fingers “rest” between strokes, but this technique can produce some very fast thumb and picado playing.

Another technique used in Flamenco guitar is the tremolo. This is a technique for producing a long line of melody notes accompanied by the thumb playing bass notes. This technique was borrowed from classical guitar and differs in that Flamenco tremolo is played with four notes between each bass note whereas classical guitarists only play three melody notes between bass notes. In most guitar notation systems the thumb is shown as “p” (for the Spanish “pulgar”), the index finger is shown as “i” , the middle finger is designated “m” and the ring finger is “a” (for annular which is latin for ring).

To play a continuous E on the open first string of the guitar, use the fingers and thumb in this order:

Play a bass note on the open sixth string with your thumb using rest stroke.

On the open first string:

Play a free stroke with i

Play a free stroke with a

Play a free stroke with m

Play a free stroke with i

You have just played one bass note followed by four melody notes. To continue playing, make an E chord with your left hand and alternate the bass notes between the sixth, fifth and fourth strings.

As you can see these techniques are hard to explain in words. They are easier to understand if you use my written descriptions in conjunction with watching Flamenco guitarists on video. It will take some hard work to actually use these techniques, and I strongly suggest you take lessons from a guitar player who knows how to play Flamenco.

By: Ricky Sharples

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