If you are a new guitar player or you where thinking abou

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Guitar Instruction
An Introduction to the Guitar
Your Instructor Mr. Anthony Granata
Part I
Part II
The Guitar /An Overview
The Notes of the Fretboard
Part III
Part IV
Coordinating our Hands to Play
First Steps in Theory
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About This Book
This book was written as an introduction to the
Guitar, It proceeds from the paradigm (belief)
that the reader knows nothing about the
instrument. It is a practical hands on guide, in
which various types of Guitars are identified,
individual parts of these guitars are named,
similarities of the types are compared, and
differences are noted. The book covers various
tuning methods as well as the proper holding of
the instrument as well as the hand position of
the left and right hands. The book presents
music-theory in a visual graphical-representation
as much as possible. With the belief that a
picture is indeed worth a thousand words. One
such example of this is the Keyboard pattern
depicting the twelve tone music system. Learning
where the notes fall on the Fretboard has
traditionally been a daunting task for new guitar
players. We believe by presenting these notes on
the keyboard first, where they have been
quickly-identified, this task is daunting no
longer. One of the biggest hurdles for new
guitar players is hand coordination,. We believe
it makes no-sense to start learning how to read
music while at the same time, not being able to
physically play the notes on the Fretboard, .With
this belief we have compiled many different
finger exercises in this book, to help strengthen
and coordinate the hands to play. Intervals, are
the building blocks of scales and chord
construction. With this fact being the case, a
considerable amount of time has been spent on
discussing them within this book. If you are a
new guitar player or you where thinking about
learning and never put your thought into action,
This book is for you! I hope you enjoy this book
as much as I enjoyed putting it together.
Sincerely, Anthony Granata
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The Right Forearm and Hand Position
The right forearm rests on the top of the Guitar,
and is set at a 45 degree angle with the right
hand over the strings for support-if needed,
you may place your right pinky on the guitar an
inch below the first string which is the E. The
pick is the only thing that should be
touching/hitting the string/strings. Lets take a
close look at the illustrations below. Pay
particular attention to the position of the
elbow/forearm as well as the right hand position
in the illustrations.
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The Notes of the Fretboard
Part II
What I believe to be the best and easiest way to
learn the notes of the Fretboard and how they are
position on the Guitaris not to start with the
Fretboard at all, but the Keyboard / Piano.
Western Music 12 tone System
In western music we use a 12 tone music system,
lets identify these tones as they appear on the
Piano first and then on the Guitar. If you look
at the image of the keyboard closely , you will
see that the keyboard has a certain organization
of black and white keys. In fact, in each
repeating unit of keys their are 5 black keys and
7 white keys. (75) 12 Yes? Yes!
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The Guitar Fretboard a Closer Look
Open Strings
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Before we go into the other basic finger
exercises, I would like to spend a couple of
minutes speaking about where your fingers should
be landing when they come in contact with the
strings.
For these finger exercises in this section, the
area in between the black bars (left slide) is
where your fingers should be making contact with
the strings. There will be times particularly
with bar chords and certain types of arpeggios
when we will use, the flat area of our fingers as
shown on the (right slide) between the red bars.
But for right now all the finger exercises that I
am about to present to include the one we just
covered, --the area between the black bars is
where your fingers should be coming in contact
with the strings. Ok, Moving Forward
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The next finger exercise is called 2-4, here we
will use our middle finger and pinky
Here we are going to start on the first string ,
first fret with our middle finger and then
suppress the first string 3rd fret with your
pinky. Then you will go to the second string,
and do the same thing, you will do this for the
3rd 4th and 5th strings until, you have reached
the 6th string third fret with your pinky finger.
At that point the pinky finger is then lifted
up, and your middle finger will slide to the 6th
string second fret, - we then will work our way
down, Until we reach the First String 3rd fret
with our pinky finger , then our pinky finger is
raised up and our middle finger will slide to the
3 fret and we will work or way up. This exercise
is also repeated to the 12th fret.
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C D E F
G A B C
1st 2nd 3rd 4th
5th 6th 7th
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Degrees
C major scale
C major scale harmonized
CMajor Dminor Eminor FMajor GMajor
Aminor Bdim-5
I ii iii
IV V vi vii
Tonic supertonic mediant
Subdominant Dominant submediant
leading tone
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B diminished vii chord
The Arpeggio s
The word arpeggio is an Italian word which means
the production of tones of a chord in succession.
So in other words an arpeggio is the notes of the
chord played one at a time. In the previous pages
we have been given the diatonic chords of the key
of C major. What we are going to do now is to
learn the basic arpeggios for each of them. The
patterns we are about to learn should be practice
with the respective chord first and then if you
like, you may try different arpeggios with
different chords. (The fingers you use is
indicated in the diagrams)