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.