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Guitar Pickup Theory

Guitar Pickup Theory

Blues Guitar Lessons Online

Learning to play blues guitar should not be boring or mind-numbing, but like all courses of music study, blues guitar lessons contain new ideas, the language of music and a whole new repertoire of physical movements to come to terms with.

In the early twentieth century blues guitar lessons were taken from a friend or relative, maybe using a borrowed guitar, or maybe using a single string on a broomstick. These lessons had no theory and paid no attention to how you sit or stand while you play the guitar, or whether prolonged guitar practice was going to damage your back or your hands.

These days you can get blues guitar lessons online which benefit from the musical knowledge and experience musicians have accumulated over nearly a hundred years. If you want to learn blues guitar you don't need to be steeped in the traditions and folklore of the people of your region. You just need to download lyrics and tabs for blues songs and learn to play them on an acoustic or electric guitar.

Blues guitar lessons online will not only teach you how to play the blues but also how to read guitar tabs and chord charts, how to adjust your tone control and pickups to get you sounding like a real blues guitar player, and basic stuff like how to keep your guitar in tune.

If you enjoy listening to blues music, but do not know much about the guitar, a typical course of online guitar lessons would make sure you knew the basics of handling and maintaining your instrument before teaching you songs in your favorite genre. Before you start learning to play blues songs and guitar solos, you would be taught some strumming patterns, how to hold the pick, and perhaps a finger picking pattern or two.

Unlike the early blues songs which would have utilized open chords, modern blues numbers make use of barre chords, power chords and exotic scales and modes. Also the sophisticated playing techniques developed over the past fifty years, like string bending, trills and slides have a big role in blues music.

Today's musical environment also produces guitar players who have devoted themselves specifically to becoming music educators, so if you take blues guitar lessons online you won't be getting a guy who spent a few years in a garage band and then branched out into teaching, you will be learning from a guitarist who is also a composer and seasoned professional musician who has learnt how to pass musical know-how onto students.

About the Author

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Guitar tone on Stratocaster?

OK so first of all...it's actually a Starcaster (by Fender) and not a Stratocaster...but I put Stratocaster up there since they basically the same. Anyway...I just got my first electric guitar and I'm a tad bit confused on how to use the two "tone" knobs on the guitar and also how to use that little switch next to them (which has about 5 different positions). Does the switch select which pickups I'm using? and if so...why are there five positions when I only have 3 different pickups. And what is the general theory behind using the tone knobs?

The switch allows you to switch between the normal, rhythm, and lead pickups, being the neck, center and lower pickups. The positions that are between the center and two ends, allow you to select the two pickups in that position. The tone control boosts the treble of the given pickup. The lower two pickups have adjustable tone controls. From the wiring diagram, the upper pickup does not have adjustable tone. The volume control is for all pickups selected.

Different years and models vary, so it would be best for you to experiment.

BTW -- Your little Starcaster cannot hold a shadow to any Strat. I have heard that professionals use them for firewood, but you may actually like it. If you can get over the fret buzz.

Do yourself a favor, when you learn to play guitar, go to an actual music store, and try out a quality musical instrument. You will be amazed by the difference.

~Authentic BottleNeck Slide Guitar~ This is the sound of Jesse James' hideout in 1871