With so many guitar strings on the market its hard to know how to pick a bargain that will suit you and be reliable.So you want to play guitar and make some of those sounds you have grown to love but which guitar strings sing?,you’ve got your guitar and a few picks and a tuner and your eager to learn but then aahhh you over twist that e string and lose 1/6 of your armory.

Most guitarists at this point (after swearing and possibly throwing something heavy around) would recommend replacing the set that way your set wears in together and adopts an identical tone and harmony. But where do you start choosing a new set there’s so many brands well there are a few rules which may seem obvious but are nice to hear from someone talking from experience just the same.

1)If your budget allows never buy from an Asian country now I don’t say this as I’m a bigot as we all know the east has been responsible for many great practises unfortunately string making is not one of them.

2) If in doubt always choose a lighter gauge this will facilitate faster playing and make those difficult chords that bit easier.

3) Find names/brands you can trust and utilise them for instance its no coincidence that Mark Knofler (Dire Straights), Jimmy Hendrix (the experience) and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) all used the exact same make and model of Guitar (Fender Stratocaster).

In nearly every business there are a handful of names you can trust and rely on this applies to strings as well and Martin Strings from www.sound2u.co.uk/are… as reliable as they get no matter which gauge you prefer whether you are a light stroked rhythm player using 09 gauge or a heavy handed soloist using 14’s they will cater for you needs.

About the Author
Hi, I’m Hugh Stirzaker from London(29) I’m a working musician and web-site owner and the aim of my articles is to help inform or at least entertain, happy reading..

If you want to learn to play guitar tabs, it would be a good idea to have a basic understanding of music before you begin. While you don’t necessarily need to know how to read music, you will need to familiarize yourself with your guitar.

You should just play with it for a while, try to figure out a few songs on your own, or maybe play along with your favorite tune. It is vital to become comfortable doing basic things like scales before you even attempt to learn to play guitar tabs.Once you know the feel of a guitar in your hands, it is time to learn to play guitar tabs. Guitar tabs are simply music that is written in a specific way in order to help those who cannot read normal sheet music.

Tabs are written in a 6-line format, and each line represents a string on your guitar. So when there is a note listed on a specific line, you should play on the corresponding string.

When you learn to play guitar tabs, it is best to go at it in steps. Try playing just the correct strings, and do not worry about your finger position. Once you have become comfortable with the strings, you can move on to the actual notes.

The note system is fairly simple, but can get very confusing if you don’t learn it properly. When looking at a guitar tab, you will see numbers on the lines. The number simply tells you which fret you should play the note on. So if there is a “3″ on your A string, you should place your fingers on the third fret of the A string. If at any time you begin to feel overwhelmed, simply take a break and have some fun with your guitar. Go back to whatever you feel comfortable with. Play along with some of your favorite songs, or just jam!

It doesn’t matter if you are playing the right notes, as long as you are enjoying yourself. After all, what would be the point of spending hours learning to play an instrument that you don’t even enjoy playing? When you learn to play guitar tabs, practice is essential. Try to practice as much as possible, and as often as possible. Unfortunately, playing guitar tabs is not like riding a bicycle. You must keep practicing if you want to progress.

If you decide that you don’t want to learn to play guitar tabs, and would rather learn a different method, there are many other ways. You could learn normal sheet music, neck diagrams, or chord diagrams. However, guitar tabs are considered by most to be the easiest to learn, so don’t expect other methods to be easy. When learning anything, nothing works better than asking a professional. If you are struggling with guitar tabs, consider purchasing an online learning course, hiring a tutor, or ask one of your “music savvy” friends.

About the Author - Eric Stromsodt
For additional resources on reading guitar tabs, please visit www.playguitartabs.com/.

If you are one of the many people looking to learn guitar notes, what are you going to do with these notes when you learn them? There is an idea alive and well in alot of people’s heads that if you want to learn how to play the guitar, all you need is to find out where to put your fingers to play the notes, and there is nothing more you need to do.

In fact, learning the guitar notes is a very small but important part of guitar playing. So let us take a look at the other pieces of the puzzle.Guitar playing is based more on learning chords than on playing single notes. If you listen to solo guitar playing, it usually consists of a combination of single melody notes, bass notes and chords. Anyway, having established that there is much more to guitar playing than learning guitar notes, let us take a look at these notes we are so anxious to learn. 

Standard tuning for a six string guitar is, starting at the lowest note, E A D G B E. If we take an acoustic guitar without a cutaway body as having the minimum number of reachable notes, that gives us twelve frets worth of notes to play. But the guitar can only give us a total of thirty-seven different notes, so that means we have lots of different positions on the guitar neck to play the same note.

Now let us go back to basics for a bit. You probably know that musical notes are named after the first seven notes of the English alphabet. At least, they are if you play the guitar in English. So starting with the sixth string that plays the note E, on the first six frets you have F G A B C D, then you start again at E on the seventh fret, right? Wrong! The steps between notes are not uniform.

Starting with the open string E, the first fret is F, but the second fret is not G but F sharp there are sharps after A C D F and G. There are no sharps between B and C or between E and F. So if we look at the sixth guitar string again, instead of starting the next octave with E on the seventh fret, we start with E on the twelfth fret.

So let us look at the notes on all the strings of the guitar up to the twelfth fret:

E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E
B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
G G# A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G
D D# E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D
A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G# A
E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E

So the notes at the twelfth fret of each string on the guitar are the same as the notes sounded by the open strings. You can use this diagram to pick out tunes if you already know how to read music. If you do not know how to read music yet, you can start finding out how to learn the guitar notes by finding recurring patterns up and down the fretboard.

About the Author - Ricky Sharples
Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.