(Guitarist) Paul Henry - Classical Guitar : a Beginners Guide with Step-by-Step Instruction and Over 25 Pieces to Study and Play

The sitting position is very important. It allows your hands to work freely and your guitar to remain stable. Beginning guitarists must always strive for a proper, balanced sitting position. Keep in mind that it is nearly impossible to develop a good technique without it.

You will need either a straight-back chair with no arms or a bench. The seat should be flat and horizontal to the ground. You will also need a footstool that can be adjusted between four and eight inches in height depending on your physique. Instead of a footstool, some guitarists use a cushion or another device which props up the guitar on their left leg; however, for beginning guitarists, it is probably most convenient to work with a footstool.

What to Watch for

• Relaxed shoulders
• The head of the guitar should be about eye levelyour footstool will help elevate this to the proper level
• Relaxed left elbow hanging naturally from the neck; rest your right forearm on the guitar allowing the right hand to fall naturally over the sound hole
• Left foot on footstool

This is a lot to remember at first. The important thing is to be relaxed. Review the preceding illustrations frequently as you progress with your playing. You may find yourself unknowingly changing some of these basic concepts as time goes by.

Because every persons body is different, every guitarist will have some variation in his or her sitting position. It takes a little thought and patience to find what works best for you.

Tuning

The tension of each string on your guitar needs to be adjusted properly so that they sound at the correct pitch when played. Tuning quickly and accurately is a skill that may take a while to learn. So while you are mastering this skill, consider using a battery-operated electronic tuner. They are a small investment and will save you a lot of time and frustration in the early stages of learning. The electronic tuner will hear each string as you play it and indicate whether the pitch should be raised or lowered. However, it is a good idea to practice your relative tuning as described below a little bit every day before you turn to the tuner. This will help develop your ear and your ability to tune without the tuner.

RELATIVE TUNING

With relative tuning you will tune each string in relation to each other. Your guitar will then be in tune with itself, which is fine for playing and practicing, however you will not necessarily be in tune with the universally-accepted musical pitch, which is fixed at A440 (meaning that the A note will vibrate at 440 vibrations per second). So before you start relative tuning, it is a good idea to match at least one string to the universal standard. Do this by tuning your low E to the correct pitch obtained from an electronic tuner, pitch pipe, tuning fork, keyboard, or the audio tuning track which comes with this method. The keyboard notes for all the open strings are illustrated here.

Assuming that your low E string is in tune, follow these steps:

1. Depress the low E string behind the 5th fret as shown in the adjacent diagram. Play and listen to this pitch, which is the note A. Adjust the open A or 5th string higher or lower as needed until it sounds the same (or in unison) with the fretted A on the 6th string.