Guitar How-To

If you have ever played a violin or similar instrument, you will understand the affinity some guitar players have for the fretless guitar. You will learn to find the notes as you play, and after some practice, you will love being free of the restrictions of fretted instruments.

Fretless guitars are not a well-known item so not too many music stores keep them in stock.

You can make a fretless guitar from an electric or acoustic guitar but steel strings will be tough on a wooden fretboard.

To make a fretless guitar from a nylon string acoustic, you need to slide the frets out of their grooves. If they are glued in, heat them with a soldering iron or small blowtorch to heat the glue.

Before filling the fret grooves, try playing your new fretless guitar as is. If it plays okay, may as well leave it. If you do fill the grooves, leave the lines visible to serve as markers. Fretless guitars are often sold with fret lines and the dots on the side.

Here is a nice tune that shows what you can do playing fretless:

Our furniture is designed for lounging in, not playing the guitar. The first step to playing the guitar is not twisting your body up when you pick up your instrument. There is an art and science to holding the guitar and it is just as important to learn these skills as it is to learn picking and strumming.

Giving in to gravity when the body’s center of gravity is too far back will cause a flattening of the lumbar spine (Norris 39). While this is acceptable for many activities -due to the fact that it will require less energy than sitting “up straight” in a poorly designed chair- it is not necessarily advantageous for playing the guitar. Playing the guitar for several hours a day in this position can put a dangerous strain on the back and can also limit one’s capacity to breathe. In the words of Richard Norris, M.D., director of the National Arts Medicine Center, “flattening of the lumbar curve results in flattening of the diaphragm, limiting its excursion and thereby decreasing the air flow” (39). A forward sloping chair will redirect the body’s line of gravity over the sit bones and will not only discourage flattening of the lumbar spine, but it will also allow for fuller breathing as well as decreasing the amount of work that the body must do in order to sit upright, thereby reducing the risk of pain and fatigue.
The Humane Guitarist on holding the acoustic guitar

Here is a video on playing the steel string acoustic when sitting down.

There are also rack-mounted effects which sit in a big case looking really cool an allow you to control them with a bunch of pedals. The effects of the rack-mounted variety are mostly of a better quality than your built in effects.

And then there’s the effects that sit on the floor with the pedals and allow you to keep your favorite effects as presets. Here is a video showing you the benefits of the pedal board.