Guide to Learning To Play The Classical Guitar

If your dream is to learn to play the classical guitar, you will have to commit a lot of time to learning, understanding and practicing with the bass fretboard and strings. Understanding and learning how to play notes on the fretboard is one of the basic fundamentals to playing the classical guitar.

Getting Started

Now that you are ready to learn how to play the classical guitar, let’s look at how this guitar is different from the others. It is one of the more popular guitars to learn how to play and is better known as an acoustic guitar. There is a large variety of tones, sounds, and styles that can be found among the many guitarist as each person can add their uniqueness to the music.

The classical guitar is distinguished by the following characteristics: it is an acoustic instrument; it has six strings and some classical guitars have 8 or more strings to expand the bass range, the strings are made from nylon and the classical fretboard is normally flat. Originally, the classical guitar was thought to be suited for bars and pubs and now it is referred to as the “little symphony” because brings depth of passion and expression to classical music.

Learning the Strings

The next step when learning to play the classical guitar is to learn the strings. The neck of the classical guitar is wider than most to accommodate the strings being wider spaced to allow for the clean plucking of notes. Here are a few tips that may help you when practicing the frets. Locate the number and press down on the string in the space before the fret of that string and then play the string. If there is a zero, you do not hold any frets down because the zero defines an open string. This may sound confusing but look at the fretboard and place your fingers before strumming to hear the notes.

Keeping beat and tuning is very important when you are playing the classical guitar. You should make sure that your guitar is tuned to match the song. Since the classical guitar has been around over 500 years, many of the classical guitarist performing musical transcriptions are assumed to be using defined tuning like the Renaissance lute tuning: E-A-d-f#-b-e’ or G tuning: D-G-d-g-b-e’.

Remember that most tabs do not show rhythm, therefore you may need to listen and hear how it is played before joining in. When you find a few numbers on top of each other, realize that this is an indication of a chord. The idea is to fret the numbers all at once then strum the strings that is part of the chord.

Does this sounds challenging? Well it is if you have never played guitar before, but with a little understanding and practice you will playing scales and on your way to making music. Each practice will bring you closer to the new skill that will provide pleasure for the rest of your life.