Guitar How-To

Posts Tagged ‘Classical Guitar’

There is some confusion amongst music lovers and guitar players about the difference between classical and flamenco guitars. To the untrained eye they look similar to each other and to any “folk” guitar you will see in your local music store.

Classical guitars were developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries specifically to play classical music on. Flamenco guitars were developed a little earlier than classical guitars to accompany flamenco singers and dancers.

Classical guitars and flamenco guitars are both six string guitars that are fitted with nylon strings. They are both descended from the same line of stringed instruments but they have different sounds and different “actions” – the way they feel when you play them.

The most obvious difference to anybody looking at a classical and a flamenco guitar standing side-by-side is that the flamenco guitar is fitted with a tapping plate, or golpeador. This is a piece of thin plastic stuck to the body of the guitar just below the sound hole. Flamenco guitar music was originally developed as the accompaniment to flamenco singing and dancing and part of that accompaniment consists of the guitarist tapping on the body of the guitar, either between strumming strokes with the index finger of the right hand or in unison with rest strokes with the thumb.

Another difference between classical and flamenco guitars which has been gradually phased out over the past thirty or forty years is the use by flamenco guitar makers of wooden tuning pegs. These pegs are much lighter than the machine heads found on other guitars, which was very helpful for guitar players who held their guitars in the traditional flamenco position which meant the guitar rested on the guitarist’s right thigh and the left hand supported the neck.

The flamenco way of holding the guitar was abandoned in the nineteen sixties and seventies when the “new wave” flamenco guitarists adopted a position where the guitar player sits with legs crossed, with the guitar resting on the left and right thighs.

Classical and flamenco guitars are made of two different types of wood to give each kind of guitar its distinctive sound. Classical guitars have a deep, sonorous tone and are usually made from cedar or spruce and rosewood. Flamenco guitars have a drier, thinner sound and are usually made from spruce and maple or sycamore. In recent decades, though the flamenco guitar players have experimented with a more classical sound.

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.

If you, like many people, are intrigued by the classical guitar and are wondering about how to play it, you might enjoy this little expose. I will be talking about the ways the classical guitar is different from other acoustic guitars and, of course, the techniques employed in playing classical guitar music.

If you look at a classical guitar the first difference you will notice is the way the neck joins the body. Electric guitars and steel string acoustic guitars often have a cutaway neck to allow the guitar player to fret notes at the top end of the scale. This kind of neck is actually a modern innovation. Even though classical guitar players have always utilized the uppermost notes on the guitar fretboard, classical guitars stuck with the original guitar shape.

Another difference between the classical guitar and other kinds of guitars is the width of the neck. On the steel string acoustic guitar the neck is slightly narrower than the original design retained by the classical guitar. If you try to play a classical guitar for the first time you will probably find this difference a little hard to get used to.

The classical guitar uses nylon strings exclusively. They have a very warm, mellow sound. Of course, it is debatable that the nylon string sound is the best for classical music (just look at the success on YouTube of the kid playing Pachabel’s Canon on electric guitar) but the use of nylon strings is due partly to tradition and partly to the fact that steel strings are alot harder on the guitar player’s fingernails.

Now to the way you play the classical guitar. The basic thing to understand is that plectrums and fingerpicks are not used by classical guitarists. The sound produced is a product of the guitar player’s fingertips or fingernails plucking or striking the nylon strings. It is the guitar player’s choice whether to use nails or just the flesh of the fingertips. Many people think that it is more difficult to play the guitar without nails, but players who just use their fingertips say it is no more difficult to learn to play that way. If you have your right hand close to the bridge of the guitar you will produce a sharp, dry tone. If you pluck the strings with your right hand nearer the neck you will get a warm, mellow sound.

The plucking of the classical guitar strings can be done in two ways. The “rest” stroke is where the thumb or the fingers pluck the string and come to rest on the next string. The “free” stroke is where the thumb and fingers attack the string in such a way as to avoid the adjacent strings. If you need to know more about the difference between these two techniques a search on the internet will give you videos and pictures that illustrate the two strokes. When you try to use these techniques you will notice the marked difference in sound. Another technique used in classical guitar playing is the tremelo technique where the right hand thumb plays a bass note followed by the index, middle and ring fingers playing melody notes in quick succession. A famous piece employing the tremelo is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega. Finally a rather tricky technique is used for playing solos using the sound of harmonics. This involves the right hand index finger damping the string while the ring finger plucks.

When you play chords by scraping the right hand fingers or thumb across the strings it is called a rasgueado. You can strum chords with the thumb using a down stroke, the index finger using up or down strokes or, less commonly, by using the flamenco rasgueado which entails the little finger, ring finger, middle finger, index finger and thumb following each other in a down stroke across the strings.

I realize that you are going to need to do further research to see what these guitar techniques look and sound like, but if you are interested in playing classical guitar or using classical techniques to play modern music, sheet music and tabs for classical guitar are readily available on the internet.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.