Guitar Neck Shapes

Guitar neck shapes can make or break your guitar playing experience. There is a difference in terms of playing comfort from a ‘U’ shape through to a hard ‘V’ shape and of course everyone’s fingers are unique, so learning a little about neck shape is a valuable exercise if you are seeking your perfect guitar.

     Guitar neck shapes vary considerably from thick-necked ‘U’ shapes, which are great for players who employ their thumbs on the back or side of the neck through to a medium ‘V’ shape, which are popular with blues and country players.

     Beyond neck shape, other factors that influence the feel of a guitar neck include; depth, width and radius. Depth is the thickness or the distance from front to back. Width is measured from side to side and usually at the nut. Radius refers to the curvature of the fingerboard and can very much affect playing comfort, especially if you bend strings a lot. The flatter the radius of a neck the easier it will be to bend strings and lower the action.

     So whatever your preference is as regards the neck on your dream guitar, you can now see how all these factors will affect your playing experience. The picture below will give you an idea of what kinds of necks shapes are currently used. Comment below what kind of shape your guitar has and let me know what shape do you prefer.

As always, Sound Theory here, thanks for reading!

Soundboard Wood

Today, I will talk about the most common soundboard wood used and that is the Spruce. This is the most common top wood that could be found in to any music/ guitar store and you will see that at least 80% of the guitars hanging on the walls have some sort of spruce top. The reason for this is that Spruce has a very high strength/weight ratio and it also has a significant amount of elasticity to it. The Function of a guitar top requires a large amount of strength and elasticity which makes spruce the popular option.

Types of Spruce

     As of right now the most common soundboard wood is the Sitka Spruce due to its superior strength and the ability to bend a lot before it actually breaks. The sound is consistent and very appealing to the eye. Spruce has strong articulation and has a great bass response.

Adirondack Spruce

     This spruce is commonly seen on pre-war guitars and is still used today on many high dollar Acoustic’s. The grain patterns and property’s of Adirondack Spruce give it an even higher Elasticity/Strength/Weight Ratio. This is partially due to the wider grain pattern that is common in Adirondack Spruce. By having wider grain Adirondack spruce has more flexibility and elasticity to it making it a more responsive and brighter wood than Sitka spruce. Generally speaking spruce is known for its durability and its clarity. It does not compress or distort when played aggressively. 

Cedar: The finger picking wood

     Cedar is on of the most popular alternatives to spruce. It is softer, not as strong or as elastic as spruce. It is, however, more stable with changes in moisture content. It has a powerful finger style tone with much brilliance and sustain, clarity, and focused bass, with a dry sound. Cedar does have a tendency to compress if you play it aggressively with a flat pick. Cedar is very common on classical guitars but is seen on steal string guitars.

Mahogany and Koa

     When working with warm tone woods it is not uncommon to see guitars built with the same top as the back and sides. This is because the warmer, more elastic woods work as soundboard woods and expand tonal quality. Generally these guitars will have less overall volume due to the less elasticity in the wood but have great variety in tone.

Stay tuned for more posts! Comment below on the type of guitar/soundboard wood that you currently have and what is your favorite guitar!

Popular Guitar Woods

Today’s blog will talk about the most popular acoustic guitar woods. 

     The characteristics of this wood lie somewhere between Maple, Koa and Mahogany. African Satinwood is noted for producing a very balance tone.

     Brazilian Rosewood is a protected species and increasingly hard to find.  Brazilian Rosewood is considered to be the premier tone wood by both luthiers and guitar players.

     A favorite among musicians, Indian Rosewood is one of the most stable rosewoods and has a deep, rich tone.

     Hawaiian Koa is beautifully figured and produces a rich sound somewhere between rosewoods and maples.

   

     Mahogany is one of the most stable tone woods and is also used for soundboards. It produces a balanced woody tone with a powerful midrange. 

     While Maple may be most often associated with violins, its application as a guitar tone wood is just as successful. It is light and produces a brilliant clarity and separation of notes. 

      Stay tuned for next weeks blog! I will talk about the variety of soundboard woods that range from Engelmann Spruce, Adirondack Spruce, Sitka Spruce, Sitka Spruce, European Spruce, Carpathian Spruce, Lutz, Curly Redwood, Western Red Cedar, Sinker Western Redwood, Koa, Mahogany. 

     Well here you go, I hope was post was informative for any guitar player or musician looking to buy a new instrument. As always, Sound Theory here, thanks for reading!

Ten Tips For Beginners

To accompany my last post on beginner guitar, this blog will touch base on what beginners should do before picking up the guitar. These are some of the things that I have done myself and learned from others through out many years of playing the guitar and playing with other musicians. This tips will surely improve your experience as a guitar or musician. 

•       Be prepared to practice. Do some stretching exercises. Relax; take a few deep breaths before you play.  Getting in the habit of stretching reduces overuse injuries like tendinitis and back stiffness from sitting.  
• 
  
•       Get an electric tuner at first. Then learn how to tune without it.  
• 
  
•       Practice simple songs. Playing scales, and exercises get boring real fast when you don’t have a reason to practice and improve.
• 
  
•        Want to build calluses fast? Bends, hammer-ons/hammer-offs, vibrato outta do the trick!
• 
  
•      Tired, stressed, finding it hard to concentrate and retain info?  Don’t try to learn new things when you’re tense. Also sleeping on a problem or difficult technique helps.  Parts of your brain actually grow when learning an instrument. Take 15 minutes before bed, to go over any material that you are learning.  Don’t worry about playing it perfectly just go through it once.  Even doing this in your head without a guitar helps.
• 
  
•        Plan ahead. Get a beverage, ashtray (if you smoke), fan, asthma inhaler, pez dispenser, whatever creature comforts that could distract you from practicing.
• 
  
•      Talk to other guitar players. Lots of people play guitar.  Tell people you meet that you want to learn to play the guitar better; you’ll be surprised how happy people are to share their knowledge.  Jam with others every chance you get and try to pay as much attention to what the other jammers are playing.
• 
  
•      Don’t expect miracles, it takes years to develop the confidence to play with a group in front of an audience.  Creating a unique style and “mastering” the instrument usually takes much longer.
• 
  
•       Practice visualization. When not physically playing guitar, close your eyes and imagine playing scales, songs, chords, tuning, holding the guitar correctly, hearing the strings and the relationships of notes.
• 
  
•      Warm-down too, especially if you can feel your hands straining from a long session. Musicians put a lot of stress on their hands and most people don’t think about doing stretching exercises until they feel discomfort

What are some of tips or techniques that you guys practice? Comment below!

Picking Up An Acoustic Guitar

     One question that aspiring guitar players always ask is what kind of guitar they should buy to start out with. Should they buy a beginners guitar, novice, advance, professional guitar? Should they buy a cheap or an expensive guitar? Choosing a first acoustic guitar can make or break a successful experience on learning to play the guitar. It seems like most of the advice that aspiring guitar players come across from most sources recommend that someone learning how to play guitar start with an inexpensive acoustic beginner guitar. This can be fine (sometimes) but an instrument that's too cheap might be a piece of junk that's very hard to play or is impossible to setup correctly and or a complete waste of money.

     

     This is the case because most people don't know anything about guitar price or quality, try a few guitar lessons with a cheap guitar, then decide it’s too much work and give up. I believe that having a good guitar could keep them enthusiastic about their new adventure. If most new guitar learners started with a quality instrument, something between cheap and expensive then not as many of them would give up from pure frustration.

     

     My first real guitar was an acoustic guitar, a vintage Sigma Guitars DM-1; I believe it was an off brand from C.F. Martin & Co. It did not sound that great because the fingerboard split apart from the neck and some of the frets are worn out and at the time it was a major discouragement because it just didn't sound good.

     

     I think that for any new guitar student or beginner should have that passion to learn how to play. If not, then the student will buy a guitar and then that guitar will be nothing but a dust collector. But one choice that can inspire someone to greatness is buying a guitar that is best for the type of music the beginner wants to play.

     

     Acoustic beginner guitar choices do not have to be expensive to sound good. It can help but it's not necessary. Some well established companies such as Yamaha, Epiphone, even Fender put out some great beginner guitars. There are some very reasonably priced acoustic beginner guitars that are quality products and sound great.

Basic Guitar Chord Progression

     Basic chord progressions will give any musician an understanding of chord groupings used in writing music. Although it is not necessary to know when writing music, it can make song writing a much simpler task. Advance musicians who know their music theory tend to be more creative in songwriting because they tend to use math and theory for their songs, but I will try and explain the basics here instead to the best of my knowledge.

     Now, for the purpose of this section, I will define what a chord progression is and what are the general rules to follow when finding the right chords to play in a progression as simply as possible.

     The first things to know when writing a song is you need to find out what keys you want to play in. After that there is a rule that states that for every root chord, there are two chords that go along with that chord in a pattern and the root chord is the actual key that the song is performed in.

     These chords are referred to by musicians as 'First', 'Second' and 'Third' to describe when the changes in the song are coming and where they are going, as the song is being played. Musicians tend to write songs that best suit their vocal range. These chords can be added or even subtracted, but there are always three chords in the basic structure.

     Now, as an example, a song in the key of ‘A’ means that 'A' becomes the root chord. Knowing that 'A' is the root chord, the musician is then able to determine that the base of the song will be written in the chords of A, D and E or I, IV, V chord progression.

     In the Scale of A the notes are as follows:

A B C# D E F# G# A

     The # means that the note is a SHARP, a half step above the natural note.

     So here it is! I hope this information helped any aspiring musicians and guitar players try this out and ss always, Sound Theory here, thanks for reading!