Guitar Guide Book

Classical Guitar Guide

Also known as the Spanish guitar, the classical guitar can actually be used to play all kinds of music from jazz to folk. The classical guitar is around four hundred years old and has its roots in guitars used to perform renaissance and baroque music. Unlike other acoustic guitars, the classical uses nylon strings and the player uses fingers instead of a pick. Players of the bass guitar also commonly use their fingers to pluck. The thumb plucks down on the lower strings and the rest of the fingers pluck up on the higher strings. The fingers on the other hand push strings down on frets just like any guitar.

Plucking strings with the finger allows for a much wider range of sounds than with a pick. Also, the location of where the string is plucked can cause a change in tone. For instance, plucking near the bridge gives more of a treble, tinny sound. Almost all serious classical guitar players grow and file their nails to pluck strings. Sometimes the flesh of the finger is used to get a certain effect. A big part of playing classical guitar is finding a finger style that brings out beautiful tone, minimizes unwanted clicking sounds and offers a wide range of volume possibilities.

Classical guitarists play music written for a Spanish instrument called the vihuela and the lute as well. A major part of their repertoire includes pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach that were originally written for violin and cello but were then adapted to the guitar. Fernando Sor is the most famous composer who wrote some of the first works just for the classical guitar. Andrés Segovia is also well-known as the performer who made classical guitar popular in modern times. However, the steel string acoustic and the electric guitar are still the most played, largely due to the massive success of rock and pop music.

The classical guitar is made of a fretboard, neck, body and bridge. The neck is a cut of wood that extends from the body of the guitar. The fretboard is a long stretch of wood that sits on the neck. Strips made of metal called frets are placed along the fretboard where the guitar player presses down behind to make a note. The strings attach to a bridge on the body, extend across the neck and then are wrapped around tuning pegs. The guitar body is made up of a wood front panel called a sounding board, a back panel and sides which form a hollow chamber.

The vibrations of the nylon strings transfer to the sounding board and resonate in the body chamber to make the guitar loud enough to hear. The bridge is the strip of wood on the body that the strings are attached to and transfers the string vibrations to the sound board. There is also a new kind of classical electric guitar that can be amplified through a PA system of regular guitar amp. It has a solid body with nylon strings and is much more accepted among pop and rock musicians than with traditional classical guitar players. Since classical guitars use standard tuning, you can always tune the next open string to the note played on the fifth fret above it except for the second string which needs to be tuned to the fourth fret of the third.