How to Choose a Guitar for a Child

Video Transcript

"Hello! I'm James Manuele. I'm a guitarist and guitar instructor here at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington and I would like to speak about choosing a guitar for a child. There are many different styles and types of a guitars out there that ideally you would want to choose in acoustic guitar because of the box. Many electric guitars are smaller bodied and very thin making him very difficult to leverage or hold the instrument. While there in acoustic guitar whether it's steel string or nylon it's much deeper in body, making it easier for the child to hold and leverage the instrument. There are many different sizes of guitars, half size, three quarter size and full size of the instrument depending on how tall the child is or how long their arms are. You one way to measure a good size for the child is usually if their arm is straight out and they can reach over the headstock of the instrument then that's the size of guitar they should have to have to begin with. Whether it's a full size, they have three quarter size and they have half size instruments. Being a instructor I've taught students of all ages and of course the smaller size box will help them learn how to hold the instrument better, leverage the instrument and have enough distance from the right arm to the left arm to play the instrument. Any local music store will always have guitars to buy of course or to rent and usually will always carry or can order different sizes of guitars. For the most part, the other two choices you have is to either order a nylon guitar or what they call a classical guitar or a country guitar or an steel string guitar. The classical guitar neck is usually a little bit wider and larger making it somewhat more challenging to forms chords for the very first time but giving the student or the child more spaces between their fingers for more room for air and having nylon which is usually a lot softer to press down than a steel string. The steel string guitar's neck is usually very thinner than a classical guitar and the spaces are smaller but having a steel string sometimes the metal string sometimes will cut through their hands not have because they have not developed their callouses yet. So, I would recommend first guitar for a child to be a nylon or classical guitar making it a better technique for the left and soft to be pressed on because of the nylon strings and again you can purchase, rent any size of instrument."