I want to talk a bit about what your left and right hands are going to be doing on this instrument now.
Let's talk about some left hand techniques for fretting notes.
Remember, first fret, second fret, third fret.
Typically what we are going to do and this is a rule we are going to break almost immediately but for now this will get you through the basics.
Your first finger will play any of the notes in the first fret.
Second finger stays in this zone on the second fret.
Third finger will cover the third fret and fourth finger will play anything that lands in here.
That will get us by for quite a while.
What we are going to do now is learn how to press down on individual strings and get a good clean sound out of it.
Let me just tell you right now if you're just starting out
this is one of the most difficult initial hurdles for a new guitar student is how to play those without buzzing.
A couple of things that you can do right off the bat to help minimize that is pay attention to where you actually push on the fret.
Remember this is a wire right here and this sticks up ever so slightly in front of the space in here you know the fret board space.
Right now if I play this string open and we call it open when you're not pushing on the string at all
that string is vibrating all the way from the bridge all the way to the nut.
What you are doing when you are pushing on this string right here on the first fret you are basically telling the first fret that it's now the nut.
The string is going to vibrate all the way from this wire back to the bridge.
We're shortening the length of the string which changes the pitch of the string this changes it from an E note to an F note.
Now more about pushing on these notes.
There is a tendency when you're first starting out and I already told you this was going to be hard so you are going to want to try really hard.
Don't overdo it.
It shouldn't hurt and it shouldn't make your hands tired and sore right away.
Your stamina and your endurance for playing are going to build up over time but this doesn't need to be excruciating.
Start by fretting that note with your first finger on the first fret and you'll notice that I've come up almost all the way to the wire on the first fret.
I'm not over the wire that would be too much and it would go dead at the end but if I'm too far back here it tends to buzz.
You may have watched my video on stringing the guitar and you'll remember how I talked about a bend in the string over that nut.
If you don't have that and you string it wrong and the string flies across that nut straight it will buzz.
The same tendency happens when you push too far back here you are not getting a good angle over that fret and it will buzz.
The closer your finger is to that fret what you are doing is bending that string at a sharper angle.
That will help minimize the buzz and make it a better clean sounding tone.
Again this is something you need to work through and get the feel of
but you only need to press hard enough to get the note to ring without buzzing.
Anything over that, that you do is going to have two problems.
One is that it makes your fingers tired faster and it also has a tendency to flatten out your finger.
The harder you push on something the more your finger is going to flatten out and makes it wider.
If you're ham handed like I am the wider your fingers are and they are going to have a tendency to touch other strings.
Actually there is a third problem as well and that is it's going to slow you down in making changes in between notes.
There you go.
There's three great reasons not to overdo this.
The minimum amount of pressure you need to get a good clear ringing note.
Then you can do the same thing in the second fret with your second finger.
That'd be an F sharp.
We're going to talk more about these note names in a little bit.
This will be the third finger, third fret and notice where my finger is.
It's riding right up close to but not over the wire.
Then the fourth finger can do this.
So you have open. One, two, three, four.
This is not going to sound very musical but to demonstrate now you can do the same thing on the second string.
Open. One, two, three, four.
Every finger has a job and can do that job on all different strings all the way up and down the neck.