The Guitar Magician

Learn to Play the Guitar

Can you learn to play the guitar? Of course you can! Young, Old, man, woman, girl or boy. You can learn to play the guitar and you
should! If you feel you have no musical talent at all don’t worry about it. Familiarity itself will increase your ability.

One of the best ways I know of to learn the guitar is TO USE IT !. Thats right…touch it, feel it, hold it, strum it, tune it,
play it, clean it, restring it, play catch with it, whatever you can anything but USE it.

Almost every interview or article I have ever read dealing with a guitarists work, eventually leads to the subject of “Tone”. And rightfully so.

Definition
Tone [French. ton; German Ton; Italian-Spanish tono]:(3) the character of the sound achieved in performance on an instrument (The Harvard Dictionary of Music).

In other words it is the way the note sounds, the quality of the sound, the color that it has, the pleasantness or harshness or fullness, the brightness or bite that the note might possess. It is what makes you either like it or hate it.

What are guitar Tabs? Tabs (short for tablature) are a great simple way to “read” where the notes of a song are even if you can’t “read music”.

Tablature is drawn as a chart using the fret board of the guitar as the background. Six lines are drawn on the chart to represent the guitar strings. Small circles with numbers in them (representing the fret at which the string is fretted) are placed on the “strings” in the sequence that they are played. This allows the player to see at a glance where his fingers should be in order to play the next note!