Guitar for Dummies: Special Articulation

All of us have a passion, from playing a sport, to reading a book. However, for me once I first got into music starting from trashy punk rock to the smooth sound of the blues, I wanted to play guitar. I got my first guitar in the fifth grade, and took lessons up to when I started teaching myself in the seventh grade. Sure, I improved since then and I have been playing guitar for five years now, but there are things that I taught myself that I'm not the sharpest at, so here I am learning from the book. This doesn't just apply with guitar, it applies with anyone's craft. Sometimes the best thing to do is go back and analyze the basics until you have fully mastered it.

The song I played here is the intro to "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix which includes techniques I learned from the book. Hendrix is who really got me into playing tougher pieces of guitar. To compare with me, what musician most influenced you into playing music, and if you don't play an instrument what instrument do you wish you could play and why? 

The book is broken up into sections based on techniques, styles, tips, etc. For this instance, I was looking to see how I can make my notes flow better by sliding the guitar. By doing this I can make my playing sound smoother as I try playing music like in the video. I learned little details from the book that made big differences. For example, on page 137 in the section 'Playing slides', "A glissando is an effect where all notes between the two principal notes can be heard"(Chappell 137). With this knowledge, I know varying the speed of my slide from one note to another can effect the overall tone of my playing.

What a slide looks like

Within this song, I had to do a "hammer on" which is when you finger a string without plucking the note but still being able to produce sound (Chappell 137). Traditionally, you do this after you pluck one note and just press on the next note of that same string to the energy from the first time you plucked resonates. During the song I would have trouble in certain scenarios because plucking a note on another string was too fast, but from the book I learned you can hammer on a string without plucking that string previously. All I had to do was just put more force into my finger when I struck the string and it enabled me to play the whole line in a smooth manner.

What a hammer on looks like

As you may tell, the things I'm fixing are just little things that make a difference and that was the point of me learning from this book. Most likely I won't learn the biggest fundamentals of playing guitar, but it can help me tune in on my little mistakes. This applies to anything people do. Professional basketball players are the best there are at playing basketball, but I guarantee you they don't simply stop practicing the small details in perfecting the best shot for a three pointer. No matter how good we are at something, there will always be room for improvement.

Phillips, Mark, and Jon Chappell. Guitar for Dummies. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Pub., 2006. Print.