My Guitar Diaries: First Day of Lesson

Saturday, April 11, 2009

First Day of Lesson

My mom and dad bought me something for summer vacation. Guess what--- a Guitar book and DVD! (I thought they were gonna buy me a GUITAR.) They just told me to borrow from someone in Z City... so... it's all fixed, actually. So after that I thanked them for buying me those things, and started learning to play last Monday, (I think that was March 23) and my first formal teacher was Ricky __?__. Yah. Something. So. He is a professional guitarist and he had this purple plectrum (or picks, as Steve MacKay would explain to me from the Guitar DVD) that he let me borrow for practice. It was cool. The only things I hated about it was my fingertips. Argh! They all got red and painful. Hate it. So much. Anyways.

Here's a picture of my guitar. (my BORROWED guitar.) Ha ha.

*I have to master all the chords first before they buy me my own guitar. niceee:-)

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♪♫♥The Guitar Dictionary♥♫♪

List of Terms

Archtop: A type of electric guitar that has a hollow body, this making it part acoustic and electric. They have a different tone than regular electric guitars, and were popularized with blues and jazz.

Chromatic scale: A scale that uses all 12 notes in a octave.
Cutaway: Applicable to acoustics since electric guitar can take virtually any shape. A place on the body of the guitar where part of the body front and back is "cut away", and then the sides wrapped around the removed area. The result looks like a regular acoustic guitar. The purpose of the cutaway is to allow the guitarist's hand to fret notes further down the neck.

Feedback: A high pitched sound that comes through an amplification system when the output from the speakers or amplifiers are picked up by the microphones or pickups, creating an infinite loop.
Fret: A piece of metal embedded in the fretboard. When you press a string down against a fret, it changes the length of the string and the pitch of the note.
Fretboard: The piece of wood attached to the neck on the front side of the guitar. It holds the frets and provides a smooth surface for you fingers to make contact with.

Guitar: A musical instrument, popular in modern music. There are many different kinds of guitars, but the most common are electric and acoustic.

Headshell: The plastic or metal covering on the end of a piece of cabling use to connect to an amplifier.
Headstock: The piece on the end of the neck that has the tuning pegs and nut attached to it.
Humbucker: A type of pickup that uses two coils at opposite polarity, thereby eliminating some of the background hum on single coil pickups.

Interval: A measurement of the distance of two notes from one another, in the chromatic scale. Each interval has it's own tone, consonance or dissonance.

Mode: A different way of playing the same scale type, by starting on a different note. The first mode is the major scale, the second mode starts on the second note of the major scale, etc.

Neck: The long piece of wood that extends from the body, and has the fretboard attached.
Note: A standardized measurement of an increase in pitch. Notes are described as being sharp or flat in relation to how higher or lower they are in relation to the accepted method of tuning.

Octave: It is the note that a scale starts and ends on. Octave occur at double or half a given frequency, so when you hit the 12th fret, which is in the middle of the guitar, the string will play an octave.

Pentatonic scale: A scale that uses 5 notes, generally the first, third, fourth, fifth and seventh of the major or minor scale.
Pickup: A magnetic coil that detects the string vibration on an electric guitar. There are two main kinds, single-coil and humbuckers.
Pick: A piece of plastic or metal used to hit the strings.
Pitch: A measure of how high or low a sound it, which on the guitar is related to how fast or slow the string is vibrating. Shorter strings vibrate faster, and make higher notes.

Root note: The note that a given scale starts and stops on. It is also the octave and the tonic.

Semitone: A measurement between one note an the next note, it is the smallest interval in the Western 12 semitone chromatic scale.

Tonic: I a scale, it refers to the chord built on the root note, or just the root note itself.
Tone: A general term to refer to the texture, colour or mood of a particular sound. In an instrument, it refers the the general qualities, and is comparable to the sound of your voice.
Tone (alternate): A measurement between one note and another note, consisting of two semitones. On the guitar it is measured by two frets.
Tremolo bar: Another name of a vibrato bar. This was popularized by Leo Fender, who misnamed it when it was invented.
Tuner: An electronic device that allows you to measure the pitch of your strings, and how in tune they are. Some tuners can also emit tones that you can tune to.

Whammy bar: Another name for a vibrato bar.
Vibrato bar: A device on electric guitars that allows you to quickly lower and raise the pitch of your strings, thereby allowing you to move the tone up and down as you wish.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

First Day of Lesson

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