Guitar How-To

The classical guitar is a six stringed guitar built to give the player a very wide field of expression. It uses nylon strings and the woods used are selected to give the classical guitar player the opportunity for self expression while interpreting the work of another composer from possibly a bygone age. If you learn how to play classical guitar you will be choosing your repertoire from the Baroque, Romantic, Renaissance, Classical or Modern Eras. The names refer to periods in history as well as modes of expression. If you become a student of the classical guitar you will also learn in depth the kind of music typical of each of these periods.

Learning how to play classical guitar does not mean you necessarily have to develop great technique. There are many popular and expressive pieces that don’t need formidable technical skills. Many composers such as Luis de Milan, Gaspar Sanz, Robert de Visee, Alonso Mudarra, Niccolo Paganini, Francisco Tarrega, Dionisio Aguado, Napoleon Coste, Anton Diabelli, Mauro Giuliani, Heitor Villa-Lobos, and Johann Sebastian Bach have simple but musically expressive works in the classical guitar repertoire.

If you are a finger style guitar player learning how to play classical guitar will expand your capabilities for expression, not by teaching you more techniques but approaching your existing guitar techniques in a different way. As a general rule modern music is played by artists who are looking for ways to express their own feelings. The class of musicians who we usually refer to as “classical” are also interested in the fact that they are interpreting the work of another person and that their interpretation, to some extent at least, is linked to getting n touch with the composer’s feelings.

The right hand techniques used in classical guitar are picardo, or “rest” stroke, where the finger is placed on the string and the string is then plucked in such a way as to bring the finger against the adjacent string. All this happens in a fraction of a second. This can only be used for single string playing and is commonly used in scale passages. The “free” stroke is used for playing tremolo or arpeggio passages. This kind of string plucking does not involve the finger coming up against any strings.

The right hand nails of a classical guitar player are often grown longer to make plucking the strings easier. This gives the music a bright tone. The fact is though, it really is not necessary to grow your nails to play classical guitar, if you learn to use just the flesh of your fingertip you will find that playing is just as easy and you may even prefer the warmer tone you extract from your guitar.

The left hand techniques used are hammer-ons and pull-offs which are used in the same way as for other guitar genres – to make sounds without picking the string with the right hand.

Maybe the main thing that separates the classical guitar player from other acoustic guitarists is the continual search for new means of expression. This is almost the same as the electric guitarist getting a collection of sounds he can use through his stomp box. The difference is the classical guitarist has the challenge to approach each piece of music as if he has never played it before, trying out picking near the bridge or the neck, playing loudly or softly, to bring the printed music to life. This approach is an important part of learning how to play classical guitar.

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