GuitarNut

Beginner Guitar - Counting on Guitar - Triplets 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a ... 1 e and 2 e and 3 e and 4 e and ... https://www.wikihow.com/Count-Music http://totalguitarist.com/lessons/rhythm/

Using the right hand thumb to strum the two lowest strings, E and A, in an 8th note pattern that goes like 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and ...

Why are there starving artists? Because so many artists supply art in an abundance far beyond actual demand. Your moms refrigerator only has so much space on it to pin up photos and other art. I call that vertical real estate. The value of vertical real estate is often overlooked, even though it may cost more to rent certain billboards than it does to rent an apartment twice its size So a child’s artwork occupies space on their parents refrigerator, because its sentimental, And this childs artwork is competing for this very valuable space with all the commercial “art” that would like to occupy space on your refrigerator... things like magnets for local food places, your car dealership, your next dental appt... So when the supply of art far exceeds the demand for art, the price collapses to zero, or less, And in some cases, just to stay warm, some people burn will paper money, which is just paper, with some “art” on it, “art” that in most cases devalues the blank paper its printed on. So anyway, musical instruments are kind of the same way. Musical instruments are mass produced to the point where pianos are often given away for free, if you haul... How does this relate to the title of the post? Ive never worked in a guitar shop, or accepted any money for a guitar repair. That being said, i see the economics of a guitar shop like this Is it better to sell one $1000 guitar, Or to sell ten $100 guitars? Consider the relative economics of a set of new strings If i bought this guitar for $12, then a $6 set of new strings is a relatively big investment compared to initial investment. Are new strings worth it? I think new strings are always worth it! Because its not just the feel of the new strings, but the rest of the guitar set up. Micro-adjustments. Cleaning. So in the musical instrument business, there us always far more of a supply of work that needs to be done, than can ever be supply of the skilled labor it takes to do the work. Every guitar needs to be tuned. Every piano needs to be tuned. How many people do you personally know who can tune a piano? So the reason i was able to find a nice guitar for $12 is because the guitar was bought at a big box store, and then the guitar broke a string, and the guitar got returned to big box store as defective. Big box store decides to “donate” 4 guitars, (along with other defective “goods” ) to a local charity (maybe thru goodwill idk) I buy 5 string guitar for $12 Which is kinda funny because i would put new strings on even if one string wasn’t broken. There’s really no good substitute for the feel of brand new strings Brand new strings bring an instrument up to an established standard, or starting point. So if i buy a guitar for $12, and “invest” $6 in new strings, plus the $60/hr “shop rate” my time is worth ($1/minute shop rate is common. Literally charge by the minute) But if i spend a minimum of 3 hours cleaning, adjusting, etc thats $180 in labor So what is the guitar worth? Look it up online. Find out what they sell for brand new. I was standing in line at pawn shop to buy what i thought were good deals on gear. I looked up value of two items, and both items were priced exactly what they were priced brand new online. That was a big “ah ha!” Moment for me. How did pawn shop know what item was worth? They looked it up! How much did pawn shop pay for item? Its irrelevant to the price now! They probably pay as little as possible, and get back as much as possible. Buy low, sell high. In the musical instrument repair business, you are handling other peoples sentimental belongings, So right away there is separation anxiety of guitar owner when guitar is dropped off at guitar shop. Then theres the frustrating feeling that it is taking way too long to get your instrument back to you... And if you scratch, or ding, on accident? You will be working with heavy, hard tools, such as wire cutters, in close proximity to a soft, high gloss surface that will show any ding or dent if you drop a tool just wrong. So for me, its safer just to buy an instrument outright, own it outright, and then if i take too long, Or if i do some experiment that goes horribly wrong... never wet a magic eraser with rubbing alcohol!! And by experimenting with my own instruments, i am able to continuously improve my guitar tech skills, without all the risks of working on other peoples property. There’s a million $12 guitars. They are sitting in attics, and garages, and closets, and under beds, and in car trunks, and storage units... They have one broken string, And nobody to fix it. So i buy a cheap guitar, practice my guitar tech skills, and... No... I don’t sell my guitars. My dream is to have a library, of sorts, of musical instruments that are available for people to check out like books from a library, And on the Library end, have students and apprentices who service every instrument when its returned. This means finding owners manual online, printing off a hard copy to keep with instrument case, at library shop, etc. Binge watching how-to videos, before ever attempting to do a job, so you know what tools you’ll need, etc. And building a small bay, with a good work bench, and a kits of good quality tools, and supplies, for each instrument. It used to be that you could “rent” an instrument, but the economics of that seemed to have failed where-ever it is tried. So how can we make good quality, well set up instruments available to people to use for a while, while on the other hand anticipating the problems of the instrument rental business. I feel that every piano that is not tuned, is a lost opportunity for someone to learn how to tune pianos. And that the local musicians are always limited, by how well the local instruments are adjusted and tuned. So is it worth it for me to shim this neck? Probably some day but not today. Sanded shim by hand the first time. Looking for excuse to buy bench sander now. Bench sander may be $80 to $500. Stew Mac sells shims for $8... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIUzd0IjchU https://www.stewmac.com/tonewoods/shop-tonewood-by-instrument/electric-guitar-bodies-and-necks-and-wood/electric-guitar-necks/stewmac-neck-shims-for-guitar.html?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=CP%20%7C%20MF%20%7C%20BNG%20%7C%20SHOP%20%7C%20NBR%20%7C%20All%20Products&utm_term=4578572614422301&utm_content=All%20Products

In this video, i demonstrate how i finish guitar string ends to leave a nice little loop instead of a sharp thorn or a fish hook. Tools needed: needle nose pliers, wire cutter Finishing the string ends is the final touch between the guitar tech and the guitar player, And it sucks when a luthier goes to all of the effort to make a beautiful guitar, only to have it poke the guitar player and make them bleed. Theres probably a blues or metal song about getting poked by your guitar string ends and bleeding on your guitar. It sucks when you, the guitar buyer, spends a lot of money on a nice guitar, only to get poked by a sharp guitar string end. Many years ago, i started curling the string ends into a loop like this, and then for a few years i quit finishing the ends... And then i remembered why i started finishing guitar string ends the first time. I think i will stick with this method for now unless i discover something even better!

Beautiful guitar and case (for its age). Just needs a little work. Found that the tuners were not original, because i found the footprint of the original tuners, and some old screw holes, underneath these newer tuners. The holes for the small woodscrews that hold the tuners in were all pretty much stripped out, so i did the toothpick and glue hole fill trick. That seemed to work well. All the screws bite good, except for the one screw thats missing. Note to self: I should get myself a wood screw assortment kit with every screw size and head type... The tuner pegs themselves are made of a shiney yellow metal (brass?), and had burrs around the string holes in the pegs, which is probably why i broke a string up near the tuning peg. I used to just shrug off a broken string, but then one day i broke like 3 in a row, same string every time, same place. Finally i decided to inspect the guitar and tuning peg holes and discovered the burrs that were probably breaking my strings. Now whenever i break a string, i inspect the guitar in the area where the string break happened (usually at the tuning peg or by the bridge). So far, like 5/6 of the guitars i have inspected have had burrs or sharp edges on the tuning peg string holes, and/or at the bridge end. On this job today i just used two diamond tip dremel bits and used them by hand like tiny files. The (brass) was soft and scratched easy, so i didn’t want to go full power tool on it and do some damage... I was able to find a better machine screw at a shop close by, so now the tremolo is back to functioning like it should. The old screw that was in there was so long that it bottomed out on the pick guard before the tremolo even moved! The underside of the pick guard was disgusting. I could have cleaned the pots and switch but since i tested them before i started i was fairly confident that they were ok, and i don’t like using contact cleaner unless i have to, for many reasons... Got the guitar strap swapped out for a cotton strap. Tried to set the bridge intonation, but the set screws ran out of adjustment. StewMac sells a bridge pin offset that might work to fix this. I honestly never noticed the intonation was off, never bothered to check! Oiled the fretboard. Polished the frets. There were a few areas of string wear, but they were mostly smooth and you couldn’t feel them. Where there was a burr, or any roughness, i polished it out. The last thing i want to do cut the string ends near the peg head, and curl the ends into a nice loop, instead of leaving 6 sharp barbs ready to poke some poor soul...

Star Spangled Banner Left Hand View.

In guitar, there are many ways of counting many different things. In this video, we learn about scale length, root note, octave, half-steps, whole-steps, Perfect 4th and Perfect 5th All the minor and major scale degrees, The blue note Relative Minors and Relative Majors “Learning to count” is a series of lessons that identify the various ways musicians “count” many different things... When it comes fo the fretboard, the first thing we are taught is, this is the nut, and this is the bridge, and here is fret number 1, 2, 3, ... So naturally we then begin to relate how we think about the fretboard in relation to how we are taught to count frets, However, counting frets is just a temporary crutch, a bridge you use for a while, before you move on. So, instead of showing a guitar student, ‘this is fret 1, this is hand position 1, heres some cowboy chords...’ We take it a step further, and have the student count the frets from 1 to 12, Then talk about the two dots, how the 12th fret is the middle of the scale length, And how every exercise is easier at the 12th fret, because thats the middle of the string, where its most flexible. Do an exercise, for example, a bend, up a half step, Do the bend string up half step at the 12th fret, then the 11, 10, 9 down to 1, And note how much harder it is to bend a note on the 1st fret. Then do bent note up half step exercise back up from fret 1, to fret 12, And note the 12th fret feels easier than the 1st fret. Then continue on to 13th etc frets, feeling how each bend at each fret feels slightly different. Define scale length as the precisely measured length of guitar string from the nut to the bridge. Get the student thinking in terms of the full string length, scale length, and fractions of the scale length 1/1 is open string length, the root note, in this example its the E string 1/2 scale length is 8va also E 1/4 scale length is at 5th fret, Which is located exactly below the perfect 4th harmonic node on the vibrating string. 1/3 scale length is the harmonic node point on the vibrating string, that is located directly above the 7th fret. The 7th fret is 7 half steps above an open string root note. 7 half steps is the perfect 5th. The 4 bass strings on an E standard tuned guitar are offset such that each set of adjacent strings is offset by a perfect 4th, ... And how at a ‘lower’ fret number, you are using more of the scale length of the guitar string, and have a ‘lower’ sounding tone. Do rote listening exercises. [On an E standard tuned guitar EADGBE] Root-octave (compare ‘is’ with ‘is not’). Do listening discernment exercises, where you listen and compare the two E sounds, of the root and the octave, (open, 12th, open, 12th... ) During exercise, say out loud, annunciate, in a loud singing or chanting voice that could be clearly heard by an audience (Low E, High E, Root, Octave, One, Eight, Zero, Twelve...) And then do listening discernment exercise where you listen and compare ‘E’ and ‘NOT E’ Open string root note E, and 12th fret is E Open E, 11th fret is ‘NOT E’ Open E, 13th fret is ‘NOT E’ And go back and forth, tick tock, sounding the open E root note, as a reference tone that you are actively listening to, and telling yourself that the sound is E, and verifying the sound is E, with a tuner. Go from the 12th fret, down to the 1st fret, and tick-tick, listen to E root open string, and the sound of each fretted note from 12 down to 1, listening, and saying ‘E, NOT E, E, NOT E... and verify by listening that each of the sounds made by the other 11 frets were ‘NOT E’. For the purpose of this exercise, we only want to discern, by active listening, that a root note, and its octave, do sound the same, which is, ‘E’ And to discern, by active listening, that your root note is E, and all other notes/frets are ‘NOT E’ From 12 down to 1, and back up from 1 to 12, And beyond 12, to as many frets as your guitar has, And then beyond the last fret... ‘is E, or is not E? ... that is the question!’

Ive been wanting to do this for years, and today I roughed it in. Its kinda hard to find a place to mount underneath that isn’t obstructing some moving part, or a full roll being too close to something and dragging. Downside: its a tinderbox. Need to tuck them back under further to use the desktop as a natural hood to prevent anything from falling off the desktop and on the roll.

This is the celebration of two bright ideas! First, who knew that brown paper bag is just the right amount of abrasiveness and durability for polishing frets? Then who knew that wrapping a scrap of brown paper bag over a guitar pick would give you the perfect tool to polish frets? Guitar pick small, flexible, flat, tight radius on edge. Lets you get in close without blocking your view. BEFORE YOU START, ALWAYS VERIFY, that your fretboard wont scuff or scratch with these tiny polishing blocks, by gently testing on an inconspicuous part of the fingerboard. Protect your fingerboard, if necessary, with masking tape to cover wood, while you work on metal.

In this exercise, we use the right hand thumb to pluck the string, as we count 1-2-3-4 I would say most of my guitar struggles came from me not ever learning how to count and keep time. I would recommend to any musician to have an into to drum kit lesson, just to get used to the concept of having each hand, and each foot, make a different sound. And also to learn how to intuitively keep count and keep time, How to play it harder if you want it forte, How to play it gently when you want it piano. After you spend 4 hours on drum kit, come back and apply what you learned on drums, to the guitar, beginning with basic counting, keeping time, being in the rhythm section...

In this exercise, we use the right hand thumb to play only one string. This exercise may be a little more difficult because you are trying to play ONLY one string, so you have to move enough to play one string, but not move so much that you play more than one string.

In this exercise, we use the right hand thumb

In this exercise, we listen to a root note, and then the perfect 4th of that root note. A perfect 4th is 5 half-steps, or 5 frets. The perfect 4th is an interesting concept, because “4th” means like (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th), Literally the 4th note in a scale... And also 4th is like 1/4th like (1/2, 1/3, 1/4) If the length of an open string is a root note, then a perfect 4th is 1/4 of the length of the root / string. However, must consider the functional part of the string. If we fret the string at the 5th fret, we have divided the string into two parts. The un-used, non-vibrating part behind your finger is 1/4 string length, and the used, vibrating part in front of your finger is 3/4 string length. So our “perfect 1/4” may actually be 3/4 X root / functional length of string... Also, the perfect 4th is the fundamental tonal offset between most adjacent strings on a standard tuned guitar or bass guitar. E-A A-D D-G NOT G-B B-e So where-ever you are fretting on the thick E string, you know that the same fret on the A string will be a perfect 4th higher in pitch. This is helpful because the perfect 4 is a very common interval, and its also a good anchor point, as you use it as a tonal and physical reference point to know where other notes should be in relation to it. The perfect 4th is the IV part of the I-IV-V also known as 1-4-5 Also known as 3 chord song, or 3 chord trick The I is the root note, 1 So all you have left to do now is learn about V, the perfect 5th (7 half steps)

In this exercise, we start with our finger on the root note, and then lift the finger off the root note, off the string, and jump up a half step and back down. These exercises might be a little harder because you do not have the benefit of being able to feel the string, or hear the pitch, so you just gotta launch your finger and hope for the best. This is a good rote exercise that can be practiced everywhere on the fretboard. After doing this exercise with your eyes open for a while, do this exercise with your eyes closed. After you have developed some muscle memory, you will be able to launch off from where-ever you are, and land where-ever you’d like to be, “by ear”

In this exercise, we start at the root note and slide one finger up 1 half step and back down, then up 2 half steps and back down, etc This exercise is good for intonation, or the skill of being able to slide to the pitch you want to hear, by ear... The exercise is good for strengthening the finger, hand and forearm muscles, and for toughening up your fingertips/callouses

Beginner Guitar Listening Exercises. Root thru 5 half steps

In this exercise, we use the pointer finger to fret several notes along a single string. The idea of these exercises is to develop good habits, and break bad habits before they start. The good habit here is the idea that your pointer finger is mobile, and can access many frets, and make many sounds, And the bad habit of assuming that a certain note must be played with a certain finger. Ideally, you want to run all 4 of your fret hand fingers thru the same grueling rote listening exercises, to strengthen, callous, attenuate, muscle memory, etc So that almost no matter where you are on a fingerboard, your fingers know where they are, relative to each other, and what they have to do to get where you want to go next.

Guitar Listening Exercises - Root, 1 half step, 2 half steps, 3 half steps

Finishing guitar strings is very important. Its the final touch between the guitar tech/ luthier, and the guitar owner/player. The problem with guitar string ends is, the shorter you cut them, the more stiff and pointy/pokey it became. So every time the guitar player goes to tune the guitar, they get poked by sharp string ends. These string ends, especially if the string is cut at an angle, become sharp and needle-like. They will scratch your fingers,hand. Its the worst experience in trying out a new guitar. You get a new guitar in your lap... You are rubbing its curves, and body, and neck and ... BAM! Snake bite! Next time you go into any guitar shop, Inspect the way the ends of the guitar strings are finished. Its usually some “6 sharp barb” configuration. It is said that each guitar string finish job is the signature of the person who did the work. And most peoples “signature” is sloppy. Here is how to finish your guitar string ends. Get the smallest tip needle nose plier that you can find. Cut your string end long enough so that you can grab very tip of string end, hold, and roll pliers, to point the string end directly at the hole in the tuning peg. Start by clipping guitar string ends to a distance that is the width of the gripping tip of the pliers, plus the length around the outside surface of the pliers tip. Cut first string, document length. bend tip in. Evaluate how well last tip length did with curling. Adjust cut and curl on next string. Re-evaluate on each string, Adjust your tools and techniques to perfection. I prefer to curl my guitar string ends in the same way that the string is wound around the peg. I prefer the loops to be as small as possible. The perfect loop will have the very tip of the guitar string is pointed directly at the tuning peg hole. The pliers should be held in such a way that when the wire is bent into a loop, that loop is parallel to the headstock. So just plan each step in advance, so that you can complete the job in one continuous motion... the pinch grab, the pliers handles, plan how to maintain pliers perpendicular to headstock, and how to maintain pinch grip on string entire time.

As wood dries, it shrinks. Fret wire does not shrink lengthwise. So fret ends will stick out, leaving a razor sharp burr that can make your hands bleed without even feeling it. Learned that the hard way. Problem is, if you file down all the fret ends, then if the wood ever gets humidified, the wood may expand beyond the newly finished fret end, leaving a dent at every fret end. The last few times i did this humidity job, i used kitchen garbage can liners. This time i am using a gig bag that is breathable, so will see how it turns out. Its critical to check instrument every day, to develop a feel for that instruments fret ends, and you can “feel” the progress as the wood expands, by referencing it to how much fret end you could feel the day before. One problem with shrunken wood is, even after you swell the wood back up, the frets have pushed up thru the binding or finish. So you just humidity and get the guitar wood back to a baseline size by humidity and temperature, and feel. And then you re-assess the guitar, and go on from there. Humidifying your guitar might be one of the reasons it takes your guitar so long to come back from the guitar shop! Its not that they are working on it for 7 straight days, but they are nursing the guitar, checking vitals, and just waiting for things to humidify. One thing to think about with fretboard oil. You know you oil fretboards because oil repels water, and oil floats on water. So what you have to do is humidify your guitar wood until it is done swelling, and then apply fretboard oil to seal the moisture inside the wood. For some reason, for the longest time, i thought fretboard oil was to keep moisture OUT of the wood, Like if you sweat on fretboard, or spill a drink on fretboard. Living in an area with 4 distinct seasons, guitars are constantly in need of service. You may even need to tune your guitar between songs! Constant temperature and humidity flux causes endless need for adjustments. And because these adjustments are not made, the local music scene suffers. What needs to happen, is that every guitar player needs to split his time evenly between playing/practicing and tuning/maintaining. Every guitar player should commit to tuning their guitar every day, whether they want to play the guitar or not that day. Just make a commitment to the daily maintenance for one full year. In one full year, you will have tuned your guitar in many different temperature and humidity scenarios. Never take a warm guitar with floyd rose from warm house out into cold garage and try to tune up. Tremolo springs and strings sensitive to temperature

In this video, we inspect the frets of a guitar for fret damage. Its good to develop the good mental habit of expecting to find some damage, rather than the bad mental habit of expecting frets to be flawless. Depending on what the previous owner did during practice, there will be uneven damage across all the frets. Some frets will be flawless, while other frets are heavily damaged, and maybe just under one string. So you have to inspect every inch of every fret, especially the areas under every fret. Why is this so important? Because horse teeth. The horse poster at the vets office says a horse will only live as long as his teeth, and not even one year longer... Guitar frets are like horses teeth, in the sense that a guitar will only live as long as its frets, and not one note longer. So when you do your fret inspections, get it straight from the horses mouth. Don’t assume the frets are in good shape. Worn out frets are usually the death of an average, low-end student model guitar, because the cost of doing a fret repair job exceeds the value of the instrument. Fret jobs are tedious, time consuming work thats usually done by a highly skilled guitar tech, or luthier, at full shop rate. So unless your guitar is a collectors item, or has sentimental value, its usually better to spend your money upgrading your guitar, rather than “investing” a lot of money in a guitar that will probably not ever be worth it. These worn out guitars do have some value, if they are donated to a student who wants to learn fret work on a low-risk job. The guitar student can work on gathering tools and supplies they need for this project guitar, and then spend 8 hours developing a feel for the tools and materials, so that they are better prepared mentally, physically, materially, technically... One good way to work on fret maintenance skills, is to take a small scrap of brown paper bag. Wrap it like wrapping paper around a guitar pick, and use that as a tiny sanding block. Use that sanding block to polish each fret to a mirror shine. The abrasiveness of a paper bag is just about perfect for this job. Its just abrasive enough where it can do the work and get the job done, But not so abrasive, that if you accidentally take a few extra passes it will cause a problem. (Some) fret wire is softer than you would think. Thats probably why most people just assume frets are ok, because they don’t think to check, they don’t have a reason to check... Even normal everyday playing will leave dents, nicks, gouges, peening, And these tiny, hand-made sanding blocks can clean up 95% of your fret problems. And even if there is no string damage on the frets, the frets still usually need to be polished back to a mirror shine. Fret material is so soft, that if you were to take a hardened metal tool such as a file and made one scratch in a fret, it may take you hours to polish that out... So be careful with files. Gentle hand, gentle touch. If you are a student of guitar, at any level, from cradle to grave, you should make a plan to do a fret polish job on your guitar. Pretty much every time you change strings, is a good time to think about polishing the frets. Expect to spend 8 hours on the job. So plan it on a weekend, un-distracted... That 8 hours will include, using old strings to tune up the guitar, and check for playability, and document 100 point check-list. Also, complete detail clean, includes checking all hardware for tightness. Polishing hardware, screws. Lifting pick-guard, and polishing inside and out. Cleaning switch and pots. Installing new strings, including gentle break-in stretching. As you can see, planning an 8 hour job for a $50 guitar doesn’t make sense in guitar shop economics. Guitar Shop rate is $60/hr, X 8 hours = $480 The guitar owner can simply upgrade to a much nicer guitar, for $480... But for any guitar player who has never personally done a polish job on their own frets, they need to plan to do at least one fret polish job. Its like learning to wash and wax your own car, by hand. And then taking it to the car wash because you appreciate how much work it really is to wash and wax a car by hand. So when you have your next guitar, you can take it to the local guitar shop and pay good money for fret service, But then you are not paying the Guitar shop because you can’t do the work yourself, you are paying because you know all too well how much work it is, and therefore you highly value the work the guitar shop does, and you don’t mind paying $60/hour shop rate.

Inspecting a used Jasmine by Takamine. This guitar has been partially converted from right-hand play to left hand play. The nut doesn’t sit quite right. This results in high action on nut end. I think sanding the bottom of the nut would allow it to set a little deeper and fix the string action/ nut alignment. Not sure if the nut is a deal-breaker right now, so may just leave nut as-is. Also not too sure i want to mess with the bridge /saddle intonation The bridge / saddle intonation is still set for right handed. Jimi Hendrix played Woodstock with a right hand guitar, flipped over and strung upside down and played left handed. But Jimi Hendrix’s guitar saddle intonation was still left set up for right handed. Just a bit of trivia to help illustrate that not all adjustments, repairs, modifications are deal-breakers... Changing bridge is probably going to be a big can of worms that im not sure im ready to open today. Probably the same reason the previous owners never messed with the bridge. However it should be mentioned that with the bridge intonation so far off, it would probably not sound a single note correctly, When i sound not-so-good on guitar, i have to remind myself to check my tuning, and usually this is the root cause for sounding “off”. However with a guitar with intonation like this, there is no way to get it to sound like a western scale, which if you are a music student trying to attenuate your ears to certain notes (perfect pitch) and note intervals (relative pitch), this guitar would make learning the proper sounds, scales, and chords nearly impossible. The fret ends are sticking out, indicating a fingerboard that has dried and shrunk. Right now the guitar is in a gig back with a humidor, and a humidity meter / thermometer I check on the guitar every day, and feel if the fret ends still stick out. Humidifying guitar may take 7 days give or take. Its been in the bag for 2 days now. While thats happening, ill probably binge watch videos of acoustic bridge jobs. This is a great project guitar. Bought it cheap, and the usual strings, maintenance, cleaning are minimal. The nut and bridge jobs are things i need to have more experience doing, so heres my chance to learn important new skills. Id like to mention, the reason i got this guitar was *because it was a lefty*, and i have taken a keen interest in left handed guitars. It has come to my attention, that left handed people are often told to learn to play guitar right handed. And many left handed people do play right handed and progress, And so this left handed player has become invested in right handed guitar practice, And consequently there are very few lefty guitars available for sale at any price, Some models of guitar will never be available in lefty. One reason for this no lefty option, is because in order to do a good guitar set up, the person doing the set up has to be able to play the guitar, and have a feel for each unique instrument, And the odds of finding a lefty guitarist to do the final set up on your lefty guitar is very slim. Because all of the would-be lefty guitarists are pushed into playing right handed.

In this exercise, we use the pointer finger and the pinky finger on the same string, to fret two different notes, that are 3 frets apart. Also known as 3 half-steps, or a step-and-a-half.

In this exercise, we use the pointer and ring finger, on the same string, to fret two different notes, a whole-step apart (or two half-steps) Once you master this exercise at the 12 and 14 fret, move your hand up a fret and master it at the 13 and 15 fret, and so on, until you have mastered this whole-step ear hand coordination training exercise on all frets and on all strings.

This exercise is like ‘walking’ or ‘marching’ in place with two fingers. As one finger comes down, the other finger comes up, back and forth, back and forth