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How To Find The Right Guitar For You

The Parts Of The Guitar

Make Your Guitar Easier To Play

Electric Or Acoustic

Expensive Vs Cheap Guitars

Reading Notation For The Guitar

Tablature and Staff Notation

Reading Tablature

How To Read Chord And Scale Diagrams

Electronic Tuners

The Well Tempered Guitar

Note Names On The Neck

Major Scales in 'A'

Pentatonic Scales in 'A'

Open Chords

Notes And Scales

List Of Guitar Techniques

Bending Strings

Muting Strings

How To Count Rhythms

How Read Music By Ear

Equal Distance   Every note on the guitar or piano is an equal distance from the next note. Each note represents a set musical distance. But it didn't used to be that way. People used to divide the spaces within an octave a little differently than the way we do today.

Just-Tuning   Early classical instruments were 'just-tuned.' This means that they were designed to play in tune in only one key - the key of C. You can find period music that is recorded in just-tuning. The intervals sound different, better in some ways because close intervals play perfectly in tune.

Limitations   But just-tuned instruments are very limited. They only sound good in one key, and you can't play notes too far apart, or else octaves and higher intervals start to sound flat. To get around these restrictions, musicians developed tempered tuning.

All modern music is played in tempered tuning.   Today, just-tuning is a curiosity for musicologists and students of period music. Virtually all western music written since about 1700 has been in tempered tuning.

Problems   But tempered tuning has a built-in imprecision. It has several minor dissonances, and you become aware of this fact the first time you try to tune a guitar by ear.

Early Classical Music   Music during the period before tempered tuning (before about 1650) almost never used notes outside of the key, but these notes were included as smaller, recessed keys. These are the black keys on modern keyboards.

All Possible Keys   Tempered tuning revolutionized music during the period of J.S. Bach. Bach was one of the first to write music for a 'well-tempered clavier.' Now it was possible to play chords and scales in any of 12 keys. Today, the key of 'Gb' plays in tune just as well as in 'C' or any other key. For the first time, it was possible to change keys in the middle of a piece, and to expand harmony to include all of the notes that were excluded before. This is when European keyboard and orchestral music first began to use many of the musical forms we recognize today.

Sometimes when you're recording a guitar part where a 3rd or a 6th is prominent, it's good to just-tune that interval to decrease the enharmonicity. This usually means lowering the 3rd or 6th relative to the tonic ('one-note').

Built-In Dissonance   Tempered tuning contains built-in dissonance, also known as 'enharmonicity.' This is the reason you can't tune with third or sixth invervals. Thirds and sixths which sounded so pure in just-tuning were 'sacrificed' so that octaves, fourths and fifths are always in tune in any of the 12 possible keys, and in all octaves simultaneously.

Tune With Consonant Intervals   'Consonant' intervals are unisons, 4ths, 5ths and octaves. Tuning with these intervals is the only way to tune a guitar by ear.

The Human Ear   Why doesn't everything sound in tune at the same time? The human ear is an amazing mechanism. It provides the brain with highly accurate information about the pitches it hears. Highly accurate, but not perfect. Fortunately, all human ears are 'off' by about the same amount. It's the imperfection of our hearing that makes tempered tuning necessary. No kidding.

An Evolving Concept   Tempered Tuning isn't an exact science. There is disagreement to this day between piano tuners as to the exact number of cents given to each pitch to create the best sound overall. It's one of those topics for debate with musicologist, like whether we should all use A440 or C256. (We are A440.) In other words, it doesn't matter much to everyday people like us. But it's kind of interesting. A tuned piano today may sound slightly different than a tuned piano 100 years from now. But $5 says you wont be able to tell the difference. Call me in a hundred years ...