Beginner Guitar

In this exercise, we practice the E major and E minor chord in the 1st hand position. Since this guitar is tuned E standard, (EADgbe) the lowest sounding note is E, and so the lowest sounding chord is also E. The difference between these two chords is just whether the pointer finger sharpening the highest sounding note, which is the 3rd, from minor3rd to major3rd, The E major shape, if moved up one string, becomes the A minor shape. While it would be unusual to play both of these chords in the same song, This exercise is still good for learning to hear the difference between a minor and major sound, contrasted with each other, like A-B testing.

In this exercise, we practice the minor pentatonic scale notes, By using the song, house of the rising sun. House of The Rising Sun, is like the standard song of all standard songs. Its a very old song, that is in the public domain, And that has been covered by everyone. I suspect this is because the song is such an excellent teaching tool, that music teachers can’t help but to use it to teach music to their students. The overall structure of the song, including the minor pentatonic scale, and the 12 bar blues beat/rhythm turnaround, Makes it so that its approachable for a beginner, Easy to improve for an intermediate player, And truly a song you can re-interpret every time you play it. This is a landmark song for any guitar student, especially anyone following these set of beginner guitar lessons from start to finish. This could be one of the first 5 songs you learn, and will help unlock so much more music in the future.

In this lesson, we continue to use the song House of the Rising Sun to practice the minor pentatonic scale. In the previous lesson, which was the first verse, we started at the low root note, and worked our way up from there. In this lesson, which is the second verse, we start at a high root note, and work our way back down from there.

In this lesson, we continue on from the previous two lessons, which were, to build a bar barre, with the pointer finger and/or thumb, as an anchor point, And then to use the other 3 fingers to explore all reachable notes, following the “1 finger per fret” rule. In this exercise, we kind of ignore the frets, and just let our hand relax and melt into the string/fret matrix. Everyones hands are unique in size, and therefore everyones hands will fit differently at the 5th hand position. As you can see in this video, when my hand is relaxed, my pinky finger cant reach the 8th fret. While i could theoretically stretch my fingers out to reach the 8th fret, that would require more effort, and we are trying to work toward effortless playing... So as you practice this box shape up and down the neck, you will find that each hand position feels slightly different than the adjacent hand position, Ranging from feeling like the frets are too far apart, to feeling like the frets are too close together. And somewhere in between those two extremes, there is a sweet spot, where the distance between the frets fits your relaxed finger spread better than anywhere else on the neck. Find this sweet spot hand position, and just noodle around there for a while.

In this exercise, we use the thumb and pointer finger to make a bar or barre across all of the strings, This exercise is shown at the 5th hand position, which is when your fret hand pointer finger is just behind the 5th fret, closer to the nut, However this exercise should be practiced on all frets. (Hand positions) This moveable bar barre shape works in all hand positions, and your hand position will dictate which key you are in. because i am tuned standard E (EADgbe), and my hand is in the 5th position, that means the notes played on both outside strings (E-e) will both be A notes, which are two full octaves apart, or 24 half steps. These outside strings provide you with a low-note and high-note that are always the same note, thus always sound good together, and are always in key, no matter what. Up one string from the Low E is the A string, which, because i am already in the 5th hand position, means i am in the key of A, and so this open A string can be played open or fretted and will sound good both ways. Because the A string is somewhat tricky to fret with your thumb and fingers like this, its ok to just not bother too much if you get it or not, because it will sound good either way. If you accidentally don’t fret the A string, it will sound as an A note. If you accidentally do fret the A string, it will sound as a Perfect 4th note. There is a video on youtube “Why you suck at guitar - Barre Chords” which i recommend you take a detour and watch, as he does a pretty good job of explaining how to make these bar barre shapes, which looks easy but can be very frustrating in practice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrlF4Tc8qC8 This particular bar barre shape exercise will become the foundation on which to build more later... In particular, all of these notes make up every-other-note in the 2 note per string minor pentatonic scale. This shape is the backbone for the A minor pentatonic scale, And more importantly is the backbone for the A minor pentatonic box shape, And also the A blues scale. If we think of a box shape as having 4 sides, then this bar shape alone is 1 whole side of the box, A huge square box which is 24 half steps on each side, (given a 24 fret guitar) And from this bar barre, or side of the box, we can use it as an anchor or reference point, to know where all of the notes are, that are reachable from the bar anchor. Every scale degree 1-12: is reachable from this shape, So its a good exercise to work out in your mind where each scale degree is, by number 1-12 Later, we will do exercises that only use the notes of a certain scale (minor pentatonic and blues) And since you have already practiced counting half steps, finding and naming these scale degrees will be easier This box shape is one of the things that made Jimi Hendrix great, in my opinion, Hendrix is often thought of as a guitarist, but he usually sang lead vocals too, and merely accompanied himself on guitar, while the rest of the band followed his lead. So if you binge watch Jimi Hendrix videos, watch very carefully every detail of how he moves, from head to toe. And notice that often when he sings, he has his hand locked in this box shape, And when he is not singing, he moves his hand position a lot more. So, he can alternate between singing lead, and playing lead guitar, And when he is singing lead, his hand is locked into a shape that insures he is in the right key. Another even better example is Kris Kristofferson who literally played an entire concert, solo, just him and his acoustic guitar, standing at a microphone all night... And the entire night Kris only played 2 chords An E chord and A chord. For every song on the setlist. And while i am always impressed by musicians who shred on guitar, Kris taught me to appreciate minimalism, and how you can write a lot of songs without getting too hung up on chord progressions and music theory So if this exercise, done in the 5th hand position, is in the key of A minor pentatonic / A blues This exercise, if done with all open strings, would then be in the key if E minor pentatonic / E minor blues. Or if this exercise was done at the 12th hand position, it would also be in the key of E minor pentatonic / E minor blues From an eagle eye view of the lesson plan, this exercise is important because is signifies a milestone in guitar development, Specifically, that you are able to fret notes with your thumb and all fingers, That you are able to move from note to note, and string to string, without getting lost, That you have learned the easy half of the box shape, And that once you learn the other half of the box shape, you will then know 2 different scales, which are the minor pentatonic, and blues scales, You will have a foundation on which to build more bar barre chord shapes, And perhaps most importantly, you will soon be able to forget about all of these lessons in counting half steps and naming scale degrees, and just play the guitar, without thinking about it. Because you will be preoccupied singing, Or working on songwriting, Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to pay you to practice scales, But if you are lucky, and work hard, one day someone might give you a penny or nickel to sing a song, and accompany yourself on guitar. FREEBIRD!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aEVxyMqXBo

In this exercise, we continue on from the previous exercise, which was to practice making a bar barre shape with the thumb and pointer finger across all 6 strings, at the 5th hand position, To make half of the box shape, So now we move on, and use the other 3 fingers to reach the other half of the notes. In this video, there are shown a few shapes and scale degrees, 3 root triangle shape. F shape (major shape) Minor 3rd (minor shape) Perfect 4th and 5th, which can be thought of as minor or blues shapes within the context of this box shape The A Minor Pentatonic and C Major Pentatonic are relative minor/major of each other, and thus use the same notes, but from different starting points, Where the Am5 starts on E string 5th fret A note, And CM5 starts on E string 8th fret C note. If you follow the “1 finger per fret” rule, Then your pointer finger will play all the strings at the 5th fret, And your middle finger will play all the strings at the 6th fret, And your ring finger will play all the strings on the 7th fret, And your pinky finger will play all the strings at the 8th fret... Then your entire hand will have to micro-adjust between each note. The most difficult note to reach will be with your pinky finger on the 8th fret low E string, So if you start there, at the most difficult note to reach, and work your way back thru each note, they should get progressively easier to reach. That note just happens to be a Minor 3rd interval, within the context of this box shape, So unfortunately its an important note, and you really will need to practice reaching for it with your pinky finger, which is your weakest finger, at its most extreme reach... But the good news is, this is the most difficult of all the normal maneuvers, so if you can master this one maneuver, then you know you can master any maneuver on guitar.

in this exercise, we use our middle and pinky fingers to fret 2 notes on 1 string, 2 half-steps, or 1 whole step apart. Then we move to the adjacent string and repeat, which is 5 half steps, or a perfect 4th. This exercise is important because this is an important root level maneuver when playing a major scale starting on the low E string with a root1-M2 interval on the E string, and then the P4-P5 interval on the A string. Its also a good exercise for practicing using your middle and pinky fingers for anchor/reference/pivot points, Which can be used as a foundation on which to build more later...

In this exercise, we use the pointer and ring fingers to fret 2 notes on 1 string, 2 half steps apart, or a whole note... Before moving on to the next string and repeating. This exercise helps build spatial awareness not only physically in your hands, But also aurally, in your ears. If we look at this lesson from an eagle eye view, it is composed of two exercises that we have already done earlier, which are, Using Pointer and Ring fingers to do a whole step interval on one string. Using pointer finger to do a perfect 4th interval between two strings.

In this exercise, we use different combinations of adjacent fingers, to fret 2 adjacent notes on one string, And then moving to the adjacent string and repeating. The previous exercise used the fingers 1-2, So in this exercise we will be using fingers 2-3 (middle and ring) fingers 3-4 (ring and pinky) This exercise combines two exercises we did earlier, which are 1 Half-step using adjacent fingers on one string. 5 half-steps by jumping to adjacent string at the same fret. This exercise will help you build spatial awareness in 2 different axis Axis 1 is the half step on a string, Axis 2 is the perfect 4th between the strings Bonus points for working out what happens to the interval between the G and B strings, and what you have to do to correct the interval to match your intended pattern. Hint: you have to sharpen the note on the B string

In this exercise, we use 2 adjacent fingers to fret 2 adjacent notes on 1 string, And then moving to the adjacent string and repeating. This exercise helps develop your fingers sense of where they are on the fingerboard, Or what is called ‘spacial awareness’, which is a very important concept that we will continue to work on. Spacial awareness allows us to expand ourselves beyond our physical body, to at least an imaginary bubble the size of your wingspan and reach in every direction. Spacial awareness helps us dance, And dance helps us feel the music, And feeling the music helps make better music...

In this exercise, we use all 4 fingers to fret 4 adjacent notes on 1 string, at the 12th fret Before moving to the adjacent string... This exercise is a good intermediate point in your guitar lessons. From a beginners view, if we can do this exercise LEGATO, meaning even and smooth, from beginning to end, That means our picking hand is able to pick out 4 notes on a string before moving on to another string. That means each of our fingers has been trained, and exercised, and abused, and blistered, and calloused, strengthened, and grip calibrated, and toned down, and brought under control, and open, and loose, and relaxed, and working effortlessly, and comfortably, and... From the moment you master this relatively simple exercise, you will be ready to start taking away notes from it, stripping it down, analyzing the notes that we use, and don’t use... There is not a single scale that is not contained within the outline of these notes, in any hand position. So from this point forward, as an intermediate student, your job is to chip away at this exercise, to play every possible combination of notes, from any starting note... To learn all of the scales starting with the chromatic. “Chrome” like a mirror, reflects all colors. So a chromatic scale is all notes, usually thought of as 12 half-steps within an octave, But in truth the chromatic scale is like a number line 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 But then also all the infinite space between 1 and 2, etc. Think slide guitar... Next learn where the Root, Perfect 4th, Perfect 5th, Perfect Octave 8va are. These anchor points will be used more often than others during normal guitar playing, and will give you the foundational reference point - anchors you can use to build more upon later. Next, learn the minor and major pentatonic scales, And use these pentatonic scales as a frame work upon which to learn the natural minor and major scales... Next, practice each of these scales, but use each different scale degree note as the root note. This is mode.

In this exercise, we use 3 fingers to fret 3 adjacent notes on a single string. From a music theory view, this combination of notes would only work in the blues scale between the perfect 4th, blue note, perfect 5 interval... Which to me, is all the reason we need to practice it... But beyond music theory, this maneuver is very helpful from a “noodling” view, in that you kind of dip your toe in the water, but you don’t have to commit to anything You can use this maneuver as a passing-note or pick-up note. It lets you keep on listening to yourself, while you try to find the note you actually wanted to hear Music purists would say that a good musician should play the right note, right on time, without any extra noodling or fill. Even Jimi Hendrix was unpopular with some other musicians he jammed with, because he was noodling around too much... But then there are those of us who never heard the noodling as mistakes or imperfections, and just considered it part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience This maneuver is also an introduction to “the 3-finger thing” as some musicians call it. With 3 fingers on one string, you can get different kinds of control on bends and tone.

In this exercise, we use the pointer and pinky finger across 3 half steps. Usually you would learn that 3 half-steps is a minor 3rd, And usually you would learn that, within the context of the Minor Pentatonic Scale. These being your first 2 notes: root1 - m3 However, 3 half-step maneuvers are not limited to the role of minor 3rd, And therefore, the rote exercises we do today, will help us make these maneuvers more easily when we have to do them in other contexts.

In this exercise, we practice anchoring at 3 points, which are all 3 the root notes/octaves This illustration shows 3 E notes at the 12th fret, However this shape is moveable up and down the frets. This is a very common 3 point anchor that a lot of musicians use. I know this because i have watched so musicians use it, that i figured there had to be something special about it, and there is... This shape gives you a good solid foundation on which to build other shapes, both from a music theory view, and from a practical technique view.

In this exercise, we use the opening notes of the Star Spangled Banner to practice the F shape in any hand position. The way these music lessons are set up, is that what you learn first, will help you learn what comes next. So this lesson is a good illustration of of approach. On the one hand, we are merely practicing working on the F shape in different hand positions. On the other hand, we are learning the star spangled banner song, which will probably never go out of style. The Star Spangled Banner itself is just a basic melody player in a major key So these 4 notes we practice here, will become a foundation on which to learn more about music and songs

In this exercise, we practice, (very badly) the moveable F shape at different hand positions, by playing the opening notes to The Star Spangled Banner This exercise is intended to help the student 1) practice the F shape, and get used to the way those notes sound together in a scale or chord 2) practice the star spangled banner. 3) get better at the Major shape/ sound

In this video, we go thru the first half of making a box shape, which is usually to establish which notes are in our scale or chord. If we think about the open strings on a guitar as EADGBe, those open notes, together, comprise half of the notes of an E minor pentatonic scale. If you bar all of the strings on any fret, those notes will be half of the minor pentatonic scale, and the key will be where ever your hand position is. The box shape is important because it lets us just pin down all the strings, like a capo, and use this half notes as the anchor points, from which to reference the other half of the notes. Using a box shape allows you to just plant your hand in one hand position, and play either chords, or scales, or both, without much effort, which allows the guitarist to focus on other things such as singing.

In this video, we practice the F shape, and the F chord. This illustration starts out with the hand in the 13th hand position, which technically makes this an F chord, although this chord gets its name from when this shape is make in the 1st hand position. This chord can be challenging to get comfortable with. You really have to experiment with moving your elbow etc to get it to work correctly. Many guitar players really don’t like this chord, so they don’t practice it, and just figure out a work around. However, this is a very important chord shape, and it can become the foundation on which to understand the strings, starting with the high E string. If you think about learning guitar from the lowest note to the highest, we would start on Open Low E string, and go up by one half-step increments. With this shape, and exercise, we start at the high note (the note on the high E string) and work our way down from there. This shape ties together the two different octaves that exist across the 6 strings, by re-establishing and emphasizing the root/octave note on the D string. That root note on the D string is the anchor point, the pivot point, where 2 different octaves come together. That root note on the D string allows you to noodle around above and below the root/octave, and resolve on the root. Practice this shape all the way up and down the fingerboard

In this video, we practice the Perfect 5th double-stop, which is a 2 note chord, consisting of the root note and the note that is 7 half-steps above the root note. This is a very important chord shape to learn. To put in perspective, if the root and octave notes were the 2 most important notes, Then the Perfect 4th and Perfect 5th are the next 2 most important notes. The perfect 5th double stop is called the power chord, And its invention is attributed to a man named Link Wray in his song Rumble https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5021946 Metallica uses a lot of power chords... Since the power chord is 7 half steps, and we are on a journey of 12 half steps, we are 7/12ths of the way there. This power chord shape will bring your ring finger into a position that its not used to being in, and your entire arm will have to adjust, from the shoulder, to forearm, to wrist, in order to get your ring finger where it needs to be... But the good news is, not only is this chord important to learn for its own sake, but its also a chord that can be a stepping stone onto onto other chords. This root-p5 shape will allow you to think about music differently, with your ring finger being the lead note, and the pointer finger being the follow note. In other words, don’t think of your pointer finger as the root or anchor, and the ring finger in relation to that anchor... but rather, think of the ring finger as the anchor, and let the pointer finger find itself in relation to the ring finger. By slowing moving your anchor points from one finger to the next, you eventually hope to develop all 4 fingers equally, so that any finger could be an anchor, and you can seamlessly move from anchor point to anchor point. The first few notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star are the root and the perfect 5th

In this video, we look at the D-shape up close, and then slide the D-shape all the way down the fretboard, to frets 2 and 3, where it will become the Open D chord. While we only have our fingers on 3 strings, keep in mind that there is a 4th string right there that is open, and that is the D string. So in theory, if you play that Open D string, as the lowest note sounded, that string would become your D root note, and this D shaped chord would simply have a different name depending on where you are on the fretboard. It would be a matter of music theory to go thru and learn all the proper names of these chords, but for today, whats most important is to listen to how they sound. Also, in this exercise, we do some open-hand-close-hand exercises, Where we start with our fingers gently resting on the strings (mute), and then open all 3 of our fingers, so they just barely come off the strings, so theres a gap between your finger and the string, thats about as big as the gap between the open string and the fret. Do these open-close hand exercises until you get to where you can lift all 3 fingers at the same time, and put them all back down at the same time, in the right place. Also, these open-close exercises are good for developing a feel for the minimum grip strength needed to fret notes and make them sound right. When we are beginners, our fingers are weak, our fingertips are soft, and so we really have to squeeze the strings as hard as possible to fret them good... But as we play longer, we get stronger, and we no longer need to squeeze as hard as we can. So you kinda have to re-calibrate your grip strength after you’ve been playing a while. Do these open-close exercises two different ways. 1) try to make it sound slightly different each time for 100 times. (Pretending mistakes are on purpose) 2) try to make it sound exactly the same each time for 100 times Lastly, in this exercise, we use the ring finger as an anchor, or pivot, that stays put, while the rest of the fingers move around. This ring finger anchor, on this particular D chord, is a very important trick for every guitar player to know. Why? Because the “3 chord trick”, on guitar, is usually the G-C-D 1-4-5 And that ring finger anchor will stay there for all 3 chords, which could be the entire song. By having just ONE anchor point, on these particular 3 chords, enables the guitar player to focus on more important things, like singing. From a songwriting standpoint, its about the most simple way there is of putting your song lyrics to 3 chords So if you have been following these beginning guitar videos from the start, you should know that you are getting very close to being at the intermediate level.

In this video, we micro-adjust a tapered nut shim, by sliding it back and forth in the nut slot, and then cutting off the excess from both ends. In an earlier video, we made a precision wood sanding block, for making these precision wood shims. The reason i call these precision, is not because the wood shim itself is sanded down to high precision, but because the nature of the taper shape makes it infinitely adjustable, so you could, for example, do a precision adjustment by lowering the action until you start getting fret buzz, and then raise the action until fret buzz goes away, which isn’t really an adjustment you can do (and verify) any other way. For this particular job, i had to do the nut shim adjustment 3 times before i was satisfied with the string action, But this was no big deal, because making the nut over-long, and making these micro-adjustments, was part of the job plan. One thing to watch out for are, when the shim is in the nut slot, and you are tightening the strings, its easy to hit the delicate, fragile ends of the shims and break them off. Also, be sure not to push or pull too hard on the shim, or you might break it. 1) make a tapered shim thats over-long on both ends. (Longer than the nut) 2) make sure one end of shim is slightly over-thick, and the other end of the shim is slightly under-thick, with a smooth, even taper from one end to the other 3) dry fit the nut shim. Bring the guitar up to tune, (or very close to it, if the nut slides to the bass side) so that you can verify the nut action, and check for fret buzz, under the full load tension of the guitar, as normally tuned 4) keep micro-adjusting the nut back and/or forth, until you find the best action and least fret buzz 5) verify, verify verify. check every fret for fret buzz. check every string for action, especially at the nut end of the string. 6) once you are sure you have the adjustment as good as you can get it, mark both ends of the shim, and cut off excess length. Sand smooth. 7) use wood glue on a toothpick to glue shim and nut 8) if you use the strings as a clamp, be very careful to have the string tension exactly the same on the bass and treble sides of the nut. When the glue is wet, its acts like lube, and makes it so the nut is slippery in the nut slot. This can become a problem, if you glue your nut down, and then it slips while its drying, and then drys out-of-place. How much tension can make a difference? If you turn the low E string tuner just enough to make the string move the distance of just ONE string winding, it can be enough to make the nut slide sideways. To prevent this, i used just the two outside E strings, so that i could more accurately control and balance the bass-treble side string tension. Once you think you have the string tension balanced, verify by trying to gently nudge the nut and see if it wants to move either way. Even after you think you have it clamped good, keep checking, and verifying that nothing has moved, for about 30 minutes, or enough time for glue to dry.

In this video, we make a sanding block, in order to make very precise, delicate, infinitely adjustable nut shim. The main idea of this video is to show how double-stick tape can be used to hold a very small, delicate shim, while you sand it down to a very precise thickness, without breaking it... I started this job by using a paperboard shim to test fit the nut. The action on the bass strings was perfect, but the action on the treble strings was too high. Therefore i knew the maximum thickness of my wood shim would be the thickness of the paperboard, And the minimum thickness would be 0, which would be the nut sitting directly on the nut slot. So i could spend all day looking up factory specs on this particular guitar, Or get specs from other well-known guitar factories, Or get specs from a luthiers webpage... And i could get out a micrometer, and feeler gages, and a calculator, and a pencil and paper... and spend time coming up with a very precise game plan, from where we start, to where we want to be, and how we are going to get there, measured down to the hundred thousandths... In my experience, ive found TWO major problems with this approach. 1) its very easy to sand too much, and make your part smaller than you had intended, and therefore probably unusable. this could be the difference between just a few sanding strokes, and by then you have already invested a lot of time sanding it down to the size you had intended. so your time is a complete waste, and the part is too, for this job. It becomes a spare part that “might” get used someday on another job. it becomes shop clutter. But for now you have to start over making a new part... 2) you make the part to the exact size you had intended, down to the hundred thousandths... Feels good man Then you install the part, and wait for the glue to dry... then finish setting up the guitar, and then you tune the guitar, and when you go to test each fret for fret buzz, and realize that even though you did everything right, according to your plan, theres still a major fret buzz problem, and the part you *just* made, is too small... So you need to start over. So both problems 1) and 2) result in a part (guitar nut or shim) that is too small, and both problems require you to start the job over from scratch. I can afford to make mistakes, because i am working on my own guitars, but if you were trying to run a guitar repair shop and you had to start a job over, you would be put 24 hours behind on this job, and probably other jobs too. And thats not “compensated work” Or a “compensated nut”. Thats work that you, or the guitar tech, will just have to do for free, because you can’t charge a customer for your own mistakes. So anyway, what i have been doing for nut shims, is to make a long, tapered shim, to slide back and forth in the nut groove, to micro-adjust during a dry run test fit, until i get the action adjustment i want, and all the notes sound good everywhere. the shim is longer than the nut, so that the shim sticks out on both ends, giving you something to grip, to pull on, during adjustment. You can also use a combination of pull-push to gently adjust shim back and forth, so that you don’t break the shim you *just* spent an hour making... One tricky thing is, when you go to tune the guitar, the bass strings will pull harder on the nut than the treble strings, and so the strings will pull the nut off to the side. To compensate for this problem, tighten strings until they are close to intended tuning, but yet 3bass-3treble string tension is balanced enough so that the nut wont move, even if you try to gently nudge it side to side to see if it wants to move. For this particular job, i had to make the micro-adjustment 3 times before i was satisfied with the action. However, because of this over-long nut shim, i was able to make those adjustments quickly and easily. Because making these micro-adjustments was already part of the job plan before i even started the job, i wasn’t even disappointed when my first test fit wasn’t as good as i wanted, because i knew the micro-adjustment was so easy. Now instead of getting it “close enough”, You can really dial-in that nut micro-adjustment to exactly where you want it, and test drive the guitar action, *before* committing to it with glue.

In this video, we talk about string stretching. Brand new strings will stretch quite a bit, and this can be a problem when you are trying to play guitar and every time you bend a string, the string stretches a little bit and goes flat. Multiply this problem by 6 strings... So to help alleviate this problem, we stretch the brand new strings during the string change. There is a fine line between over-stretching and under-stretching, so always try to err on the side of under-stretching, meaning you should only stretch the string maybe 2-4 times, instead of 20-30 times. Some people will stretch the string, move their hand an inch, stretch, move, stretch, etc In my opinion, this creates a situation where every inch you have an alternating pattern of a small section of “stretched string”, and “not-stretched” string. Maybe thats a good thing? Its the imperfections we love, so maybe an unevenly stretched string sounds better to our ears? Different harmonic colors? Let me know what you think in the comments below. But anyway, presuming that you *want* a string that is stretched evenly... Think about the string for its entire length, from bridge to tuning peg. At the bridge, the string usually crosses over a sharp corner, leaving a mico-dent or mico-kink in the string. If you continue to stretch the string, eventually you will pull that damaged part of the string forward, and you’ll have (another) imperfection in the vibrating length of the string... This is why its so important to get the ball end of the string properly seated before you tighten string. If ball end isn’t seated, and then tightening string causes the ball end to move up 1/8”, then the section of string that was just moments before being damaged by crossing the bridge, will now be 1/8” into the vibrating length of the string. This has never bothered me enough to change the string, but if i was doing a job for pay, or paying someone to do the job, there should be no string damage like this on a brand new string job. On the tuning peg, a string with a round cross section has to go around the radius of a peg, creating an uneven stretch on the string, between the inner diameter, and outer diameter of the string. Multiply this by the number of wraps the string goes around the peg, and more headaches. So, when installing strings, make strings slightly shorter, so you get ~ 2 wraps instead of 6 wraps Even as the string passes over the nut, there will be places where the string is stretched unevenly. For the vibrating length of the string, there will continue to be stretching going on, probably more toward the middle of the string, where bends are made, as opposed to bridge or nut end, where bends are not made. Even along the middle of the string, the string bends made during normal guitar playing will be made at the frets, creating this situation of alternating stretched-not-stretched pattern on the string that we were trying to avoid... So a few things you can do are 1) inspect the tuning pegs when the strings are off, and make sure they are smooth and free of irregularities. 2) inspect the nut, and smooth out any rough contact points. 3) inspect the saddle, bridge, and bridge pin holes, or tail piece, and smooth any rough contact points. 4) theres not much you can do about uneven stretching around tuning pegs, nut, bridge etc other than make fewer string winds on the tuning pegs, and lube contact points. 5) As for the vibrating section of the string, think of stretching the string as one continuous motion, that stretches the entire length of string evenly from end to end. Depending on the strings, some strings you can actually feel the string kind of crinkle, or snap, crackle, pop, under your thumb. Im not sure what causes this, but i tell myself that there are micro-tensions that are built into the string during the manufacture and packaging of strings. For example, if a string is manufactured or stored in a coil, its going to want to stay in a coil. This is why we inspect each new string when we take it out of the pack, and let it hang straight down, and look for any coiling, and then gentle run our fingers down the length of the string a few times to try and get the string to hang perfectly straight down. Even after the string is installed, there are still millions (billions?) of micro-atomic level spots within the string, where there is string tension or ‘memory’ in the metals. By stretching in one continuous motion, you get to feel the string stretch for the entire length of string, and you’ll be able to release far more of these micro-tensions with this method. How do we know? Because on the first, you’ll feel the string crinkle for the entire length of string, But on the second pass, there will still be crinkling, but not nearly as much. By the third pass, the crinkling may have stopped. It just seems to me that the strings just feel and sound better when you stretch the strings this way. The strings feel silky and smooth, And when you are playing, you just ‘feel’ like you are bending *an entire length of string*, as opposed to, for example, feeling like you are merely bending *a note* at the 7th fret

In this video, we do an A-B comparison of two guitars that have both had their bridge pin holes worked on. In the first guitar, we can clearly see where the wood was removed during the job, leaving a lighter colored wood exposed, and contrasting with the black color of the bridge. In the second guitar, we did the exact same job, except this time we used a black sharpie to color in the hole. This sharpie trick is probably one of those things where people won’t notice if you do the job, but will probably notice if you don’t do the job

In this video, we look at the notch left on the bridge pin hole edge, from where the string comes in contact with the bridge, usually at a sharp angle. These bridge pin holes are factory drilled at 90°, so the string cuts across a sharp edge at the exact anchor point of the string. Fortunately, this sharp edge is just wood, so the string just cuts into the wood and leaves a notch. In this job, we clean up that string notch, without making it any deeper! we just contour the edges and give it a nice gentle radius for the string to contact, and hopefully get more vibration transfer. Also, we want to make sure the ball ends of the strings aren’t too fat, that they impede the bridge pin from seating properly. On the ball end of the string, the core of the string wraps around the ball, and then doubles-back on itself. Closely inspect the ball end during string installation, and make sure the stub end side of the string is turned AWAY from the string notch, so that the string can lay perfectly across the nice gentle radius you just made... also, in this job we use a sharpie marker to blacken the insides of the bridge pin holes, and the string notch we just cleaned up. This gives it a nice look that you can only really appreciate by A-B comparing with a guitar that hasn’t been blackened. This video is part of a series on guitar maintenance and repairs. In particular, this job is part of a routine string change job, that also entailed inspecting and de-burring the tuning peg string holes. If you break a guitar string, LOOK very closely at which end the string broke on, (bridge or tuning peg) theres a very good chance that theres a sharp edge or burr that caused the string to break. And if you don’t fix this sharp edge, it will probably cause another string to break.