Hi guys, Andy Crowley here and in this series of videos, what I'm naming 'level 0'
of my beginner's course, I'm talking you through the absolute basics (of guitar) and
getting to know your guitar itself whether it's electric or acoustic we'll
be talking you through everything you need to know about the guitar itself,
how to set up an amplifier, how to get your guitar in tune, all of those sorts of things
And as I say, this is what I'm calling level 0 of my b eginner's
course that's available at Andyguitar.co.uk at the website and on my Youtube homepage
So the guitar I'm holding now is a standard steel string acoustic guitar
We can tell us acoustic because we have this hole in the middle which is called
the sound hole which is how it sounds much louder than other types of guitar
that don't have the sound hole
we therefore call this 'self amplifying' basically.
The anatomy is very similar to a person
We have the head neck and the body of the guitar starting at the head
we have tuning pegs which we turn to tighten your strings and get your guitar
'in tune' basically. The strings themselves before they get to the tuning pegs
go over this white part called the 'nut'. We have metal frets going down the neck but
we'd call this area fret 1, 2, 3, etc
As I mentioned previously we have the sound hole, which amplifies your acoustic and we also have usually one of these
things which is called the pick guard, it literally protects your guitar from any
damage from when you're strumming. And finally on the body of your acoustic
guitar we will have the bridge and the guitar pegs which hold your strings in place
Now this type of acoustic guitar is the most common for any pop, rock
blues or any sort of popular styles including country as well
It sounds great it sounds very bright
and is the most common style of acoustic guitar that I would recommend
There is another style of acoustic guitar that looks very similar to this but has nylon strings
These are easily identifiable because of the change in the headstock
The nylon string acoustic guitar has holes in this head start
because of the different way that the strings attach to the guitar
This steel string acoustic guitar doesn't have those holes and it winds around the
metal part of the tuning pegs themselves here
The nylon string acoustic guitar is best for classical styles and also Spanish flamenco styles
though because of its relatively smaller size and relatively smaller expense
these nylon string guitars have become very common for beginners and certainly
for children because they can be easier to press down because of the nylon strings
However I don't really advise going down this route as you are never
going to accomplish the sound that you can get from either a steel string acoustic guitar,
or an electric guitar that I will be talking you through shortly
So if you're looking for a guitar for a child or for yourself and you worried about that
I'd really recommend putting thinner strings on your guitar and if you still struggle just go for an electric guitar because it will be easier
So this is my main electric guitar
I love this guitar the type is called a 'Les Paul' type and on the whole
all electric guitars a very similar to the acoustic in anatomy and everything that
we're going to cover in my beginner's course works on both electric and
acoustic guitars we still have the head, neck and body, 6 strings, same kind of frets,
tuning pegs, everything like this but we have these added controls on the body of the guitar
But what we don't have typically on electric guitars is a sound hole
this is because the soundhole is replaced with pickups which are
essentially magnets that act like microphones so that we can plug into an
electric guitar amp and we get that electric guitar sound which I will be talking through in a second
On this electric guitar in particular we have double
pickups known as 'Humbuckers'. On the next electric I'll show you, they will only
have one of these so these 'Humbucker' pickups essentially allow higher output
from the guitar
and therefore they can sound heavier and with less noise when you turn up the overdrive all the way
Now we have two of these pickups which is selected by this
toggle switch here when it's in the down position this toggle switch activates this pickup;
when it's up, it activates this one of the neck
and in the middle
it activates both of them but keeps the volume even between each pickup
99.9% of the time I recommend this pickup is in the down position which activates this pickup
which is how to get the loudest brightest sound from your guitar itself
and if you want to attenuate the sound at all or turn anything down you would
do that on the amplifier but we want the maximum amount of sound from your guitar
And we're gonna get down by making sure that each of these controls which
include volume from the guitar and turn I turned all the way up to full and you
can do that by screwing them clockwise which means the output is up to full and
that is the same way as you would screw on the top of the bottle.
Then we have the output of the guitar which will need a 'Jack lead' for.
It doesn't matter whether you have a stright Jack lead or an angled one like this, they will all do the same job
and that will take it to your guitar amplifier which I will be talking you
through in the next lesson following this one
I would like to briefly show you the other common style of electric guitar which is the 'stratocaster' style guitar
This is a Yamaha Pacifica so it's not a stratocaster but he has a very
similar look to it and that sort of style characterized by these two is in
the body and the difference in headstock These guitars usually just have the
single coil pickup, though you can see we do have one double humbucker pickup there
These typically give a cleaner sound with your guitar however you can still turn the
overdrive up on your amplifier or your FX and it will sound just as heavy as the Les Paul or other humbucker style
So just to finish up let's hear what the electric guitar sounds
like compared to the acoustic this is with the settings set
to the overdrive channel so that we get some 'Fuzz' which we call 'overdrive' or 'distortion'
and we can also turn that overdrive off so it sounds like the normal steel strings
just amplified
A much cleaner sound, sort of emulating an acoustic in many ways and for any of the
beginners course- typically we would wantto keep your electric guitar on this
clean channel and I will say clearly in the videos when it's appropriate to use
the overdrive and it mainly depends on your song choices
whether you want to activate the overdrive or keep it on the clean channel
So it will be the next video where I will show you about this overdrive & clean (sounds) which is all done on your amplifier
I hope to see you there guys, take care and bye for now!
You can download this video, & the ebook that goes with this
entire course, by clicking in this area here. Click over there to watch the next
lesson here on YouTube, please subscribe if you haven't already and all those
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