Intonation refers to the notes on the guitar being in tune all the way from open to the high end of the fretboard. If a guitar’s intonation is set properly every E note played on the fretboard will have the proper pitch. If the intonation is off, usually the notes at the nut end of the fretboard will be correct, but they will slowly become sharp or flat the further you move up the fretboard.

A manner of producing or uttering tones, especially with regard to accuracy of pitch.

Source: Dictionary.com

For the average person (like me) it may not be out enough to notice while playing. However, if it is out, once you get it set properly you will notice the difference for sure.

Checking the intonation

The intonation is pretty easy to check, especially if you own an electric tuner. First tune the strings to the proper pitch. After all of the strings are tuned, play the open note on the E string, and then right after play the E note on the 12th fret of the same string. If the tuner shows the right pitch then that strings intonation is set properly. However, if the tuner shows a change in pitch whether it he sharp or flat, the intonation is out. This process can be done on each string to determine if the intonation is out.

Setting the Intonation

If you find that your intonation is out, take your guitar to a shop to have them set it. It shouldn’t cost you too much to have it done. It is best to have a professional do this as you can make the tone worse if you try to do it yourself and don’t succeed.

I basically just explained exactly what action is with that little story. Action refers to how easy a guitar’s strings are to fret. If a guitar’s strings are hard to fret and it kills your hand to play you would say the guitar has bad action. If the opposite is true and the guitar is easily fretted and is responsive to the touch it would be said the guitar has good action.

Sometimes action is referred to as high or low action. In this case it has to do with how far the strings are from the fingerboard.

If the strings are high, and required to be pushed down far to fret them, the guitar has high action. Guitarists who are used to playing electric guitars or acoustics with low action might classify high action as bad action. Generally though, action is a personal preference. A higher action will give a brighter clearer tone and is generally better for rhythm guitar.

Low action is when the strings are closer to the fingerboard. Generally this would be classified as good action, but again its a personal preference. Lower action’s tone isn’t as bright, but will make the guitar much easier to play for someone who does a lot of lead and technical playing. Sometimes a negative side effect of low action is fretbuzz. This happens when vibrating strings actually touch the frets and cause a buzzing sound.

When you are choosing a guitar or getting your guitar setup you want action that is a common ground between ease of playability and quality of sound. If you have a guitar and you find it hurts your fingers to play because you have to press the strings down too far, consider taking your guitar into a shop to have the action adjusted.

At this point I could go ahead and write another set of instructions on how to tune a guitar, but there really is no point. There are so many resources out there which do just as good of a job if not better than I could. The tuning guide at WholeNote for example is a great set of instructions for the beginner.

Here are some quick points I would like to mention though:

A guitar can be tuned many different ways, but standard tuning refers to the most common configuration. This tuning starting from the low string to the high is E – A – D – G – B – E.

A string should always be tuned up to pitch. This means you should tune the string slightly lower than the note you want and then slowly tighten the string until it gets to the desired pitch. If you go beyond the pitch you wanted, turn the peg back below the note and tune back up again. Tuning this way will lower the chance of the string going out of tune as you play.

When you put new strings on a guitar you will have to tune it more often. As the strings get worn in and stretch a bit they will stay in tune better.

You want to make sure your guitar is always in tune when you are playing it, especially when you are learning. You want to do as much as you can to train your ear to the way the guitar should sound, and playing out of tune won’t help you there.

Once you get the hang of standard tuning play around with some alternate tunings, like dropped-d, open, or step down tuning.

If you are going to play with alternate tuning remember that your guitar is setup specifically for a specific tuning and gauge of strings. If you change the tuning of your guitar you may have to get it professionally setup, and in extreme cases you may cause damage to it. If you change the tuning and your strings become hard to play or start buzzing a lot, it’s probably a good idea to change back to standard tuning.

As I said above, the guitar tuning guide at WholeNote is a great resource. If that one doesn’t do it for you just do a simple Google search for guitar tuning and you’ll get a hundred other how-to’s.

I found this program called Guitar Pro a few years ago. Basically what it does is it takes a tab file and it plays it back to you in the form of a MIDI. If you aren’t familiar with the sound of a MIDI, it’s similar to the sound of a polyphonic cell phone ring. Now although you wouldn’t want to jam with a cell phone, it does the trick for helping you learn a song because you can see the tab being played as you hear the notes. Also, the program gives you the ability to slow down the tempo so you can hear and see it played slowly. This feature alone is what makes it an amazing tool. Guitar Pro isn’t a simple program either, it interprets all different forms of guitar technique including slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs bends, muting, harmonics, tapping, tremolo and much more.

The program is also a fully featured tab editor. It allows you to easily enter notes using a keyboard, mouse clicks, or a midi instrument. The program displays both tablature and standard notation and an array of different instruments and tunings. You can create a tab that plays back as an acoustic song tuned half step down, or as an electric in standard tuning. You have complete control over the sound of the instrument.

There really are way too many features to go over in a post like this, it would require 10 posts to really cover the feature list. However, I have to mention the ones that apply to developing guitarists. There is a fully functional digital tuner, a scales tool with dozens of exotic and mainstream scales in every key, and a chord database with pretty much everything you would need.

Here is a short screencast video that I made that shows some of the basic features of Guitar Pro 5. In the video I play a tab of the live version of Stairway to Heaven. I show you how you can slow down and speed up the tempo, mute individual tracks, and change the tuning and type of strings. These are the best features for the learning guitarist.

As you can hear in the above video the sound quality is very good considering it is synthesized. That is due to the Realistic Sound Engine (RSE) that is new in Guitar Pro 5.

Here is a video of Guitar Pro 4 from the Guitar Pro website that shows how to compose a tab. Guitar Pro is in version 5 now, but this video still applies.

Here is a summary of the long list of Guitar Pro 5 features:

• Mac OS X and Windows compatibility
• Realistic Sound Engine (RSE) for better sounding instruments
• Create, Edit, and Play tablature
• Select 25%, 50%, 75%, 125%, or set your own tempo
• Supports all guitar playing techniques (hamer-ons, bends, and so forth)
• Mute individual instruments or mute all but one track with one click
• Select from hundreds of instruments and tunings
• Includes learning tools like chord and scale charts
• Digital tuner included
• An active online community with thousands of tabs to download
• The ability to import text tabs, midi files, MusicXML, PowerTab, and more
• Amazing print features that print professional looking music sheets
• Export to PDF
• So many more features it’s mind boggling.

I can’t stress how powerful this tool is. I can accredit so much of the skill that I have learned over the past few years to this program. I am just learning sweep picking now and I would have been lost without it. Once you get yourself a copy of Guitar Pro check out GProTab.net and MySongBook.com. They both have an awesome collection of song and lesson tabs as well as an active forum community.

What you will need to learn guitar on the Internet

Everyone’s situation is going to be different. Some people may have some musical experience under their belt already. In their case, learning the musical theory behind the guitar might be a good course to take. For someone like myself who didn’t know squat about music before I picked up the guitar, diving straight into learning songs was the best method. Learning songs allowed me to get a taste for music and made me want to learn more. When learning songs I would be required to study new chords and practice them in order to play the song. This is how my playing progressed. Eventually you will want to write music or play with others and you will get into things like scales and keys.

Regardless of whether you have previous knowledge or not you will need some basic personality traits to teach yourself to play guitar.

1. Patience – Learning any instrument requires patience. Because there is both a mental and a physical aspect to playing the guitar practice is essential. It won’t come easy and sometimes there will be things you wont be able to play.
2. Determination – Learning chords, scales, picking techniques, and fingering techniques will take regular practice. Since you will be learning on your own, you will require the determination to teach yourself these skills.
3. Passion – Finally you will need an interest or a passion to play. If you aren’t passionate about playing what is the point of learning at all? Passion can be the number one factor in determining the speed that you learn.

How much of each of those qualities you need depends on what level of playing you wish to achieve. Metal guitar gods like Zakk Wylde and Alexi Laiho have said that they would spend up to 12 hours a day practicing their playing. Their level of playing is a direct result of that determination.

How I learned to play guitar

I would consider myself an experienced guitarist. I have strengths in a lot of areas, but like every other guitarist there is always something new to learn. It didn’t happen over night. However after 8 years I am playing at a level now that I didn’t even know was possible when I started. Here is how I learned to play the guitar.

Learn Songs You Like
When I started playing guitar I wanted to learn to play Nirvana songs. I knew a friend who played guitar already and I had seen him using online tablature to learn songs. Tablature is a form of music notation that is very simple to read. It tells you directly what strings to pluck and what frets to press. That day I went home, picked up the guitar we had and searched the Internet for come as you are tab. I was able to learn how to play the verse of the song pretty well in about half an hour.

That night I went through my musical collection listening to songs trying to find others I could learn. Many sounded too difficult to me. Some I tried to learn and gave up because they were obviously beyond my playing ability on the first day. Although I don’t remember many of the songs now, I know I learned some parts of different Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, and Collective Soul tunes. By the end of the week I had a few songs I could show off to my family and friends.

Challenge Yourself to Learn More
Eventually in learning I became aware of chords. Initially I only learned power chords because they were the choice of Kurt Cobain. Power chords are 3 notes that have the same finger formation. All you do is move them to a different location on the guitar to make a different chord. When I began playing some Classic Rock I learned the concept of open chords. These chords all have different finger formations and are usually played near the end of the fretboard. As I would try and learn new songs I would have to study and practice different chords.

Through learning songs from tab files there were a lot of symbols like “/”, “^”, “h”, and “p” that I didnt understand. Searching the Internet for an article on how to read tab files I found that / was slide, ^ was bend, h was hammer-on, and p was pull-off. These guitar playing techniques were all new to me and again I had to search the internet for tutorials on each technique.

A few months into playing guitar I started playing songs with other friends who played guitar. While jamming with my friends they would often improvise in their playing and I wanted to learn to do that. It was confusing to me how people could learn what notes to play so that it would sound in tune with the other guitars. Again I searched the internet for “how to improvise guitar”, “how to solo guitar”, and “how to jam guitar”. Through the articles I read I became aware of the world of scales. I think this is where things really started to make sense for me. I learned a lot of things over the next few months. The basic scale to learn seems to be the pentatonic scale. So I learned that one and was improvising in no time.

The next thing I learned was barre chords. Barre chords are difficult to learn because they usually require all of your fingers to fret them, but once you learn them you arent limited to open chords when you want to play rythm. Barre chords really improved the strength in my fretting hand and allowed me to play with more precision and speed.

At this point I had a bag full of techniques and chords under my belt and I was finding songs were much easier for me to learn. I think I began to plateau at this point and really focused on perfecting the skills I had learned. Eventually I grew tired of playing acoustic guitar and started lusting after electric guitar. My musical tastes had moved from Classic Rock to Thrash and Metal. I was listening to Metallica, Pantera, and Ozzy and I wanted to learn to play Metal.

I started focusing a lot of my attention on my soloing skills. I learned several solos note for note and practiced my speed and precision.

Resources

So enough talk, simply what can you find online to help you play guitar? Probably the first thing you want to find is tabs. Find a song that you like, that in your opinion doesn’t sound too hard musically and search for a guitar tab for it. If you find a tab and you don’t know how to read it, search for “how to read guitar tabs”. Once you get the hang of reading guitar tabs start searching for guitar lessons. Most guitar lessons use tab notation to teach you, so you will need to know how to read them first.

Tablature and Chords
Tablature (or tabs) and Chords are another guitar player’s interpretation of how to play a song. Tablature ranges in detail but will tell you where on the fretboard to put your fingers. Chords tell you the names and the order of the chords in a song. Learning the rhythm or picking pattern is up to the player.

There are millions of tab and chord files online and depending on the popularity of the song may be multiple different versions from different guitar players.

Lessons
Lessons are also easy to find online. Many guitar related sites offer lessons written by site members. Some sites provide video or audio to go along with the lessons. Some just are plain text. Lessons range from beginner to expert. One note, you should never have to pay for lessons online. There is an abundance of free lessons and nothing you pay for will be any better than these.

Offline Resources
Although the Internet is an excellent source for guitar information, sometimes sorting through it all can be difficult. Many online material is written by amateur writers and therefore can be hard to grasp. For that reason, I think it’s a good idea to also look into books and guitar magazines for learning material. Since they are written by professional authors they should be easy to read and not too cryptic. Guitar magazines are also a great source of tabs. Each magazine usually comes with 5 or 6 tabs of recent and classic songs.

What You Won’t Find
The Internet can’t teach you everything. Because playing the guitar is a hands on activity sometimes there will be things that will be difficult to learn from print. There are just some techniques that would be much easier to learn if there was someone to guide you and give you feedback.

Since everyone and anyone can put a guitar lesson on the Internet it is hard sometimes to tell which technique is best or “proper”. Some really bad habits that will be impossible to break can be picked up by teaching yourself. However, some of the best guitarists were self taught and their “bad habits” have become something that amateur guitarists aspire to perfecting.

In Review

The Internet can be a great resource for learning all sorts of new skills, including playing the guitar.

What You Need

• Patience and Determination
• A working guitar to practice on
• An interest and a passion to learn

What the Internet Can Offer

• Tab and Chord files
• Lessons on scales, chords, and techniques
• Lessons on guitar care and maintenance

What the Internet Can’t Offer

• Hands on teaching
• Guarantee of “proper” technique

Links

WholeNote – The Online Guitar Community
Ultimate Guitar.com
Guitar Noise – Online to On Stage
Cyberfret.com – Your source for free online guitar lessons

Please, feel free to comment with your online learning resources.

To check out his series of posts starting with Zakk Wylde Then and Now, head over to Half a Pica Distance.

To sum up his post:

• Spend as much money as you can afford
• If possible spend $300 minimum for a cheap guitar
• If you are not experienced with the ins and outs of guitars, ask a friend to come shopping with you
• If you don’t have someone to help you, read guitar reviews online

He also provides some tips for people buying used guitars as their first. Buying a used guitar can be like buying a used car. There are a lot of issues that may not be apparent until you get a few hours of playing in.

One thing I would like to add to his article is make sure you budget for a case. If you are buying a cheap or an expensive guitar you want to be able to keep it in the best condition possible. You can get a cloth case, or even better go for a hard-shell case.