Song writing and some final reflection...

I feel like I'm now ready to compile songs and start to fiddle around with my guitar and create anything on my guitar that my fingers desire. Although my amp isn't working now I was fortunate enough to record a snippet of a song idea before it was destroyed that I titled "1928." I would say this little ditty is going to evolve into a full-length song once I buy another electric guitar amplifier and can continue working on it.

I started by hitting the G chord and then hitting the E chord. This created the intro to the potential song that will be heard on a blank cd that will accompany this blog.

Now fast forward to the present day and I've come up with two more snippets of songs. The first one is called "TabsandChords" and the second is called "Final Stage." Both of these songs are acoustic sounding and offer up basic sounding guitar strumming and finger picking. "TabsandChords" starts out with me awkwardly strumming on all six strings to try and create a twangy sort of sound... hopefully you can notice it.

For "Final Stage," I went with this idea of putting two completely different sounding guitar parts in the same song and it comes in at the 38-second mark. The first 37 seconds are finger picking on a total of 4 different strings. I really enjoyed playing this particular part of the song because it was great finger picking practice and that's the area where I need to work on the most.

After coming up with the guitar parts I open up Garage Band and began to record. Since I wasn't able to record directly into my computer from my guitar, I used the microphone function, which basically picks up overall sound in the room. I think the sound quality was decent and was good enough considering that my amp was broken.

I messed up a lot in coming up with these tunes. Sometimes it would be due to strumming to many chords or I'd flat out hit a wrong chord and it would ruin everything and I'd have to start over again. I played for about 30 minutes and then tried to come up with ideas for a new song but nothing really materialized.


All in all I had a great time playing the guitar and all the lessons I've learned. I'll definitely practice a lot more during summer to really hone in on my skills and polish them off right.

Technique Fundamentals and The Caterpillar

There's a few things you should know about guitar playing techniques. Whether you're a left or right hand player the same rules still apply. I'm a right hand player which the more common way to play so I'll start with the right hand techniques first:

Right hand rules:

-Have fingers anchored to the body of the guitar.

-Have the correct grip on your pick

-Always alternate your picking finger by strumming down (the usual way) and strumming up. This will make things easier for you when it comes to playing. And remember...TAP YOUR FOOT! this will insure that you're keeping the right timing when you play.

This exercise was a little boring for me so it'll probably be the least interesting of all my recordings. I essentially just played every string separately, going up and the down the guitar neck. The video is below:

I know it's not the best playing you've ever seen but I thought I performed decently. My next step was to practice what is called the "Caterpillar," which is an ideal way of improving your overall playing ability. You basically start on the "E" string which is the first string closest to you when looking down at your guitar and you place your four fingers minus your thumb on the "E" string and move each finger down to the next string one at a time. This is hard because the trick is to play each note without removing any of your fingers until they are needed to play another note. I must have messed up the first couple attempts but below is a video of me getting the hang of playing the caterpillar...sort of:

My next and last blog will include commentary on the guitar parts I came up with and recorded. It will also include some reflection on my experience in trying to learn how to play the guitar.

Thanks For The Amplifier Blowout, Marty Mcfly...

I have absolutely no idea how my guitar amplifier resembled the outcome of the opening sequence to the film, Back To The Future, where Marty Mcfly (aka Michael J. Fox) turns the volume knobs all the way up on an anormously large amplifier while hanging out in the garage of Dr. Emmitt Brown (also known as Christopher Lloyd. Check out the scene below to refresh your memory:

I can't really understand why I was compelled to act out the following but what's done is done. I've often thought about how funny that scene is and how unrealistic it is. The conclusion of the scene is Michael J. Fox flying across the room because the sound waves from the amplifier were so powerful.


So I turned on my amplifier to the highest volume level, along with my bass and boost knobs all the way up and plugged my guitar cord in. I proceeded, in the same fashion as McFly and I strummed down extremely hard on all six strings and my amplifier cracked and made a loud, searing noise and sort of faded out abruptly. At first I was scared because the sound itself was pretty scary and I was kind of in awe at the fact that my amplifier pretty much just blew up in front of me.


It was destroyed, I thought...and I was right, my amplifier was out of commission. A few obsenities were said and aside from being extremely upset...I was also without a guitar amp. So now I need to buy another amplifier and as a result, my final audio recordings will mostly be acoustic sounding instead of the original format which were to be me playing on my electric guitar. Looks like you got me good this time Mcfly!

The Last Stretch: Guitar Tabs, Chords and Some Music Playing

There's 2 basic ways to learn how to play music with a guitar: tabs and chords. Basic things to know about tabs:


-TABS is the easiest way to communicate music notation on the guitar
-The lines represent the strings on a guitar
-The numbers (0-5) represent the FRET numbers you press on with your fingers.


Basic things to know about CHORDS:

-Chord diagrams are upright pictures of the guitar neck
-The numbers represent which fingers you should use
-The "X" means don't play this string, the "O" means to play the string open

I began an exercise where I played a series of basic guitar tabs, utilizing both a finger picking and strumming techniques. I did this for about 5 times at 20 seconds long, just so I can get a feel for how to properly play guitar tabs and chords...and to be honest, I can't really tell a big difference. I'll admit I enjoy the sound of both techniques and will definitely play both ways when I begin to write songs.


I probably messed up four or five times on each technique and maybe one or two of my attempts were flawless. I definitely need to practice more.


After I went through these playing techniques I started combining both techniques simultaneously and felt like I was improving my playing style.


Ideally, I would like to learn the actual guitar notes, which is the proper way to read music but the next best thing is studying guitar tabs and chords.

First Things First...

Before I even pluck one string, I want to cover a few topics that are absolutely essential to someone (like me!) who wants to learn how to play guitar. The first thing you need to know is what the notes are on a guitar. Holding the guitar upright in front of you, if you start from the right string (the thinnest) and move upward (to the thickest string), the names of the string are: E, B, G, D, A, E. The first and last string on a guitar are both an "E" string.


Since there is no pattern or logic to the order, there's an easy acronym to remember:




E: EASTER
B:BUNNY
G:GOES
D:DANCING
A:AT
E:EASTER






I'll admit it took me a few days to remember this without referring to my instructional book, and even now I have trouble every now and then.


In addition to these notes, there are also SHARPS and FLATS that relate to natural notes.
These sharps and flats are denoted by:

Ab (flat)

A (natural)

A# (sharp)

The picture here displays an easy diagram of sharps and flats:

Notice how there's no sharps or flats between the B and C chord or the E and F chord.




Now, here are some basic major chords to start out with:

The numbers denote what finger you use for each string (1=index finger, 2=middle finger, etc.) These exercises were kinda boring and repetitive but they helped me develop a comfortable finger placement routine that I would practice a little bit before starting to play. In my next blog I'll start doing some basic chord strumming and learning the 2 main types of guitar diagrams: Chord diagrams and Tablature.

Introduction... by: Mike Rincon

As I begin to delve into what I'm assuming will be a richly rewarding, but at times frustrating experience, I want to thank anyone in advance for reading or remotely keeping up with this blog. With that said,  I'm going to teach myself to learn to play the guitar. At my disposal will be a dvd and instructional book on how to learn to play guitar, my brand new Epiphone guitar, a Fender amplifier and my MAC laptop where I can record any music I create using Apple's music editing software, GarageBand.

This blog is going to explore basic to intermediate guitar playing techniques and chord structures. I'm  also going to be learning proper finger placement and guitar tabs as well.

I've wanted to play guitar for a few years now and have actively been listening to music and writing about it since I was 14. At one point my parents bought me a guitar for Christmas when I was 16 but I sold it to my friend. Now my interest has peaked again and this time I feel serious and more compelled to learn to play the guitar. This time I hope it will be easier to understand and grasp.

I will also be documenting any problems I have along the way and reporting any progress or little nuggets of guitar ideas for songs I come up with and  hopefully my progress will warrant a few listens or two.  I hope by the end of the blogging period I will have at least one song written and recorded. It will probably be instrumental because I don't think my voice is good enough to be heard by anyone but myself. Thank you...