Lesson 2: How to Tune a Guitar (Relative Tuning)

Time and again I find guitar students who have no idea how to tune their instruments without plugging in to a guitar tuner. Private guitar teachers: this is your fault!

Usually at some point in the first month of lessons, I will teach all of my students what is called "relative tuning". That is to say, tuning so that the guitar will sound good by itself, without any other instruments playing with it. If you want to play with other musicians, you'll need to tune to "concert pitch", which is a standard tuning which all instruments follow in order to play together, in harmony.

If a guitarist is alone in the woods, can he still play his instrument "in tune" and sound great?

The essence of relative tuning is that each string on the guitar is tuned to properly relate, intervallically, to each other. In music theory terms, the interval between each neighboring string, with the exception of G to B, is a Perfect 4th. String G to B is a Major 3rd.

It's a lot easier to just show you what I mean (as opposed to trying to explain it in words, on a blog). So I'm just going to post my worksheet and let you figure the rest out on your own! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave those below.

Don't forget, here's the link to my... post series on guitar lessons curriculum.

Disclaimer: All resources on this blog are intended for personal use only. If you are a music instructor - public or private - and would like to use some of the resource materials I have created, please contact me to get permission before using them with your own students.

Lesson 1b: Picking Technique and Open-String Exercises

One of the toughest things about starting to learn guitar is gaining control and accuracy of your right hand - both single-note picking and strumming chords (if you're learning on a right-handed guitar, that is). In my first lesson, if we have time after covering the parts of the guitar (lesson 1a), we dive right in to playing the guitar.

Not particularly musical or fun, but fundamental. Open-String exercises are helpful to new students in a few ways:

1. The student gets comfortable holding the guitar and practicing good posture.
2. The student begins to develop right-hand precision - getting a feel for the spacing between each string - which will help with playing scales and strumming.
3. The student is practicing ear-training from day one (that means the student is beginning the process of being able to know what each note of the guitar sounds like and what the relationship is from one string to the next.)
4. The student begins to practice playing even, or steady, rhythms - necessary to play any form of music on any instrument.

But before getting into actually playing these exercises, we have to talk about two things:

1. How to hold a guitar pick. Flip your right-hand index finger straight out and completely flat, palm-side up. With your other hand, place the pointy corner of the guitar pick on your index finger, make sure that about 1/4 inch of the pick sticks out over the end of your index finger (like an extension of your nail), then quickly "snap" your right-hand thumb on to the pick comfortably. That's it!

2. Rule*: Use Alternate Picking. Alternate picking means using an alternating "down then up then down etc." motion when playing each note or chord. If your first note is played by picking down (approaching the string from above and striking it down toward the ground), then the next picking stroke should be up (the opposite of the last). Always "down, up, down, up" when we're working with steady rhythms (IE: the rhythmic value of each note is the same).

*Every week or so I add a new key rule or principle for students to memorize. Most of the time, it's the absolute, bear essential piece of information a student has to walk away from a lesson with.

Here is the worksheet I often use with my students. Remember, it's all open strings, so pretty much all students can get started with this right from the first lesson. No chords to learn or worry about. Easy peasy.

Disclaimer: All resources on this blog are intended for personal use only. If you are a music instructor - public or private - and would like to use some of the resource materials I have created, please contact me to get permission before using them with your own students.

Lesson 1a: The Parts of the Guitar

My first lesson always includes a section on the anatomy of the guitar. Why? Because every guitarist ought to be able to converse intelligently with other guitarists about the instrument they love. And, if you don't know your own instrument, no self-respecting musician is going to take you seriously. Now, you probably already know that electric and acoustic guitars look different. True. And that means they have different parts. Many are the same, but enough are different that I use two different diagrams, depending on which type a student brings to his or her first lesson. Here, I have included my acoustic guitar sheet.

For some of you, this might be a refresher. Or, you might just learn something new. For others, this is totally new. Take a look for yourself...

Disclaimer: All resources on this blog are intended for personal use only. If you are a music instructor - public or private - and would like to use some of the resource materials I have created, please contact me to get permission before using them with your own students.

From the Beginning...

I've decided to begin posting my entire guitar lessons curriculum to this blog, starting at the very beginning - what I do at lesson #1, and how I proceed. I hope that this blog can become a resource for other teachers, improving their own teaching methods. And I hope that these posts benefit learning and eager guitarists (and aspiring ones) everywhere to improve their game, get stoked about the instrument, and learn music theory, too. First curriculum post coming soon...

What to Do When You Forget Your Notebook

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lost.jpg

I can't tell you the number of times that a student has forgotten his or her notebook at my studio after a lesson. It happens all the time. And, embarrassing as it may be, it's even more embarrassing to show up to your next lesson totally unprepared because you couldn't remember what to practice.

So what should you do if you forget your lessons notebook?

Call your teacher immediately. If it's me, just give me a buzz and leave a message, if you have to. Most likely, I'm in the middle of another lesson, a gig, or a recording session. In any case, call as soon as you find out you left it.

Practice what you can remember immediately following your lesson. If it's impossible for you to pick up your notebook right away, it's really important to practice as soon after your lesson as possible. Doing so helps to solidify all of the new content from your recent lesson.

Arrange a pick-up time ASAP. This one is pretty obvious.

Call if you have questions. Okay, yeah, you forgot your notebook. Yeah, it was a stupid thing to forget. But it would be even stupider to not practice because you couldn't remember what you worked on in your lesson. If I'm you're teacher, you can always call and ask questions.

All teachers do things differently, but I like to try to make myself available to my students via phone or email throughout the week, just in case they have questions about their homework. Give me a call. Let's try to work it out over the phone.

In some cases, I have also been known to hand-deliver forgotten notebooks to students. Again, not standard protocol, but I do it every once in a while, if I have the time and I have your address.