Classical Guitar Lessons Review

Series Summary

The classical guitar is a member of the guitar family. It is also known to some as the Spanish guitar. The basic body and style of the classical guitar is similar to that of a normal acoustic guitar but does have its difference. The classical guitar generally has a wider fret board and utilizes nylon strings than other guitars. A notable playing style difference between the classical guitar and its relatives is that it is played by picking the strings rather than strumming.

Our classical guitar expert will take you through the ropes of learning to play this instrument. This series of videos will take you through what you need to know in order to start learning how to play the classical guitar. You will learn everything from the anatomy of the instrument to how to hold it. Our expert will even show you the correct way to shape your fingernails to pick the strings with all of your fingers! The videos will then put those fingers to work as you learn the different strokes, tones, vibrato and tremolo styles of play.

Video Transcript

" Hi my name is Chris. Today I’m going to be talking about some general techniques of classical guitar. I’m going to go ahead and start with a little bit of history. The guitar is derived from instruments like the vihuela and the lute that come from around the sixteenth century. Around the eighteenth century we start seeing what we know now as the modern day classical guitar. They added a fifth string to the instrument; they extended the neck a little bit. They added the open sound hole, and the Rosette. Generally speaking we play the instrument with the nylon strings. The top three we consider the Treble strings; the bottom three are nylon wound with metal around the outside to add to the gage of the string. Generally speaking we play base lines with the bottom strings with our P or thumb and with the upper strings we play the melody and the harmony. So I guess now I will go ahead and show you some of the differences between the classical guitar and say the modern guitar. Generally on a classical guitar it’s a good bit lighter on the neck and the fret board is flatter. A lot of people wonder why that is; mainly it’s because during rapid sections where we are playing a melody a harmony and a base line all at once like so you just don’t want your fingers to get in the way of one another and deaden certain strings. Another thing that’s a lot different than a lot of acoustic guitars you’ll see are the lack of a cut-away. That is because a cut-away tends to reduce a lot of the base tones and we are actually really big on tone and tone development in the art of classical guitar. I’ll explain a little bit more about that later. Other than that it is a fairly similar instrument to anything else you’d see."