“I found, after we finished touring, that what I loved spending my life doing was playing the guitar all the time” said John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Turner 193).
For many people, the guitar is a tremendous source of enjoyment and fulfillment in their lives. The study of the guitar is exciting because there is always something new to discover and achieve. The guitar is a unique and versatile instrument with many different parts.
It needs no accompanist because it provides harmony as well as melody through its many different chords. Through these chords many different styles of music can be played: rock-n-roll, jazz, blues, and classical. John Frusciante and Tom Morello are, considered by their peers, two of the most gifted guitarists in present day rock. Frusciante and Morello have inspired many young guitarists to take up playing the guitar. There are many different parts to a guitar.
Some of the most important parts are the peg head, tuning machines, nut, fingerboard, frets, and the bridge. The peg head is found at the top of the guitar and holds all of the tuning machines. The tuning machines are gears that are used to tune the strings to a specific note or key. The nut, which is made of bone, is found at the bottom of the peg head and holds all of the strings into their proper position (Noad 10).
Below the peg head runs the neck of the guitar. The neck of the guitar contains the fingerboard. Across the fingerboard are frets. When placing a finger on a fret, the guitarist can control the pitch of the string, also allowing him or her to play chords. Near the base of the guitar is the bridge.
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The bridge directs the strings down to where they are fastened (Noad 11).
Chords are groups of notes that, when played together, make an enjoyable sound. Some of the most basic chords are major A, C, D, and E (Noad 36).
Many well-known nursery rhymes and songs are played with these basic chords. There are many different styles of music that can be played on a guitar. The most popular styles are rock-n-roll and the blues.
Rock-n-roll is played on an electric guitar, which is plugged into an amplifier. Rock developed out of blues guitar and blues piano sounds. In the 60’s, the Beatles’ Paul McCartney and George Harrison added many imaginative new elements to guitar rock, some of them inspired by the Indian sitar (Noad 198).
The blues began as a folkloric music in African American communities in the late nineteenth century. By the twenties, the blues style was being perfected more and more by guitarists. The most famous blues guitarist is B.
B. (Blues Boy) King. Today the most dominant guitar style is rock-n-roll. Two of the newest and most innovative rock guitarists include the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante and Audioslave’s Tom Morello. Frusciante first joined the Chili Peppers in 1988 replacing Hillel Slovak, who died of a drug overdose. John has helped shoot the Chili Peppers to the top of rock’s mainstream with hit albums like “BloodSugarSexMagik”, “Californica tion”, and “By the Way.” Tom Morello, who first started playing guitar when he was 13, has lifted bands like Rage against the Machine and Audioslave to the peak of rock-n-roll fame.
Though he is not the first to experiment with bizarre and unorthodox techniques, his efforts are groundbreaking-perhaps the most significant rock-based guitar development of the ’90 s (Schroedl 187).
Through learning the different parts of the guitar, how to play, the different styles, and famous guitarists, the guitar can be a wonderful and pleasurable practice. Joe Perry of Aerosmith once said that, “If people love music and if it really gets them off, then they will get a lot of satisfaction from playing guitar” (Stix 14).
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King was a blues singer and guitarist. His full name is Riley B. King. He was born September 16, 1925, near Indianola, Mississippi. An important aspect in King's life was, of course, when he was first exposed to the blues. 'I guess the earliest sound of the blues that I can rremember was in the fields while people would be pickin' cotton or choppin' or somethin,' " he told Living Blues . " When I ...
Noad, Frederick. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Guitar. Indianapolis: Macmillan USA, 1998.
Schroedl, Stix, Turner, et al. Guitar One Presents Legends of Lead Guitar. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2001.
