If your goal is to play the classical guitar, make sure you understand the time commitment, musical development and the practice requirements in learning how to use the fretboard and guitar strings. The fretboard or fingerboard, is a piece of wood embedded with metal fretwires that constitutes the top of the neck. Pinching a string against the fretboard effectively shortens the vibrating length of the string, producing a higher tone (a string, unfingered, will vibrate from the saddle to the nut; once fingered, it will vibrate only along the distance between the saddle and the fretwire directly before the finger).

Getting Started

Now that you are ready to learn how to play the classical guitar, let’s look at how this guitar is different from the others. It is one of the more popular guitars to learn how to play and is better known as an acoustic guitar. The creativity and music interpretations are unlimited when using this instrument.

The classical guitar is distinguished by the following characteristics: it is an acoustic instrument; it has six strings and some classical guitars have 8 or more strings to expand the bass range, the strings are made from nylon and the classical fretboard is normally flat. Originally, the classical guitar was thought to be suited for bars and pubs and now it is referred to as the “little symphony” because brings depth of passion and expression to classical music.

Learning the Strings

The next step when learning to play the classical guitar is to learn the strings. Having a wider neck permits for the string spacing to facilitate quality notes as the strings can be plucked individually. When practicing the frets, remember these few tips. When there is a number other than zero, you are to use your fingers to press down in the space before the fret of that string and then play that string. A zero means an open string and that translates into not holding down any frets. This may sound confusing but look at the fretboard and place your fingers before strumming to hear the notes.

Keeping beat and tuning is very important when you are playing the classical guitar. Your guitar should be tuned to the musical transcriptions you are performing. It’s good to start with an open tuning which is one where the strings are tuned so that a chord can be achieved without pressing any of the strings, or fretting.

You must bear in mind, when reading music, that most tabs do not show rhythm so you will have to listen to see how the song is played to hear the flow. If you notice a few numbers almost on top of each other, this is the sign of a chord. In order to play that chord, you must fret the numbers at the same time and then strum the strings that belong to that chord.

This may sound challenging, especially if you have never played a classical guitar before, but in no time you will be playing scales and making music. With each note there will be more pleasure and the desire to learn more. This cycle will continue until you have mastered the art of skillfully playing the guitar.