In fact, in terms of sound, the amplifier may be even more important than the guitar. How To Learn Guitar Chords FastA cheap guitar played through a good amp can sound good, whereas a good guitar played through a cheap amp sounds poor.

As a guitar retailer, I have sold guitar and amplifier sets that cost less than $150.00. That’s right, the guitar and amplifier together cost less than $150.

As an experiment, I played one of these guitars through a Marshall full stack with a 100 watt JCM 900 tube head. And it sounded pretty impressive-much better than I would have thought. Sure, the bottom end wasn’t as “throaty” as you get from those Gibson Humbuckers. And the overall sound was a little less tight-but we’re talking details here. We’re starting to nitpick. In general, it still sounded really good.   Then I took a Les Paul Standard and plugged it into the small 15 watt amp that came in the set. It sounded like I was listening to someone play the guitar over the telephone. There were no lows and the highs sounded tinny. The cheap amp had totally destroyed the sound chain-even though I was playing a $2000.00 guitar.   So the moral of the story: an inferior guitar shows itself by degrading the sound details. An inferior amplifier shows itself by trashing your main sound.   Most starter amps run in the 10-watt to 15-watt range. Many people buy them as a first amplifier because they are cheap (usually under $150.00). In general, these amps sound very poor and I do not recommend them. They are only useful when playing alone-and even then, they still have bad sound.

My teenage son was in a band a couple years ago. At the time, we had a couple stack amplifiers around the house, and he did not feel like lugging one of those to practice. Instead he would borrow a friend’s little 15-watt Fender combo. The few times I saw them practice, I was not even able to hear his guitar over the drums, bass and other guitar-and neither could he. And he certainly could never play a gig with that amp!

My recommendation is to get at least a quality 30-watt amplifier. Line 6, for instance, makes a nice line of great sounding combo amps in the $300 – $500 range. They sound good and have all kinds of great sounding guitar effects and amp models built in.

If you can’t afford the $300.00 or more, then I suggest that you look for a good quality used amp. There are often some great deals at used music equipment stores and pawn shops. You can also find some pretty good deals online. However, when purchasing online, be sure to double-check shipping charges because amplifiers are heavy items and sometimes shipping can be pricy.

Play EXISTING riffs and patterns with speed and accuracy click here

Above all, the most important advice I can give is: try it out. Listen to the amp. Bring your guitar into the store and play it through the amp. Play it on the clean channel. Play it on the overdrive channel. Try out the built-in effects. If you are going to gig with this amp-play it loud. (Tell the salesman first). But you have to like it. In fact, you have to love it. It’s going to be part of your sound chain.   Choose your amp carefully. It can have an even greater impact on your sound chain than your guitar. Don’t buy the cheapest amp you can find just because it’s cheap. In the long run it will cost you money because before long, you will be out shopping for a better one. If you can’t afford a better amp, either be patient and save some more money, or look for a good inexpensive used amp. It may look a little tattered or beat-but, that’s okay-it’s the sound you’re after.

Robert M. Matthews (better known as Bob Matthews) is currently retired after more than 30 years of engineering and management experience.

As an avid guitar player for more than 35 years, Bob has created a website specifically for guitar players and future guitar players. The site is packed with a wealth of information and articles on guitars, music theory, guitar tips and lessons, as well as many entertaining and instructional videos.

If you have been thinking all your life about learning how to play the electric guitar and you’ve decided to put your dream into action you need to start looking for an electric guitar. Many seasoned guitar players recommend that you never buy new guitars or equipment. There are bargains to be found online and in the music stores, and there are so many new guitars that are of dubious quality that it is better to make it a policy to become better informed about your musical instruments so you can choose from the range of second hand guitars and equipment.

If you are forced to make buy a new electric guitar most of the top brands like Fender, Ibanez and Gibson have basic low price range models for beginners. Bear in mind that some cheap model guitars are difficult to keep in tune and this could take away from any advantage in price. You could take the route of simply getting the same kind of guitar as your favorite artist.

The Vox Pathfinder is a great choice of amp for the new electric guitar player with gain and tremolo built in and enough loudness to satisfy any garage band. The basic guitar effects you need are reverb and distortion. There’s a pedal named Big Muff that does the job nicely and you won’t need to pay a fortune.

For transporting your guitar a hard shell case offers the best protection even though they cost a lot more than gig bags. When you buy your guitar, also get a range of picks in varying thicknesses.

Once you get your guitar and amp home and set up you will then realize that you are not a natural born guitar player and that you are in need of a lot of practice over a fairly considerable amount of time. You have about seven or so chords that you will consider the basic essential chords for the electric guitar player so start learning them and the songs that you can play using them. Also don’t forget to have fun fooling around with trying your chords in different positions on the guitar neck  and making up tunes using your chords.

You need to strike a balance between learning other people’s music and creating music that feels good for you. Your own personal style can emerge from day one of electric guitar playing but it will undergo constant change as you learn more over the months and years ahead. But do not let anyone tell you to put your own style of playing on hold.

Whether or not you think that music theory and sheet music are boring and difficult, the truth is that no electric guitar player who has gone through the effort of learning that side of music has ever said, “gosh, I wish I hadn’t done it”. If you learn guitar without learning theory you will still end up being a guitarist but the sad fact is you will miss out on some gigs if you can’t read music.

When you learn to play electric guitar don’t be afraid of a challenge. Setting yourself goals to learn riffs and solos you like will keep you getting better. Keep in mind that you want to improve your technique and the way to do that is to try to play stuff that is a little beyond you at the moment. Part of working on your guitar technique is to keep your fingernails on your left hand short. Long nails stop you from fretting notes. To warm up for a practice session spend a few minutes going up the guitar neck in the first position playing frets 1 2 3 4 and then down 4 3 2 1 using alternating up and down strokes with the pick.

The electric guitar is one of the most versatile instruments in modern music. It can create rhythmic/percussive textures in one moment, and smooth, singing sounds in the next. Not only that, but an almost limitless combination of new sounds may be created simply by playing with which effects, amplifiers and types of guitar get paired together.

This sonic variety provides you with a unique opportunity to create a ‘signature sound’. Sadly, most of the current music curriculum for guitarists ignores these issues. The truth is that learning to play electric guitar is process which continues well beyond achieving proficiency in music theory, much less the rote motor skills necessary to manipulate the strings.

For that reason alone, I decided to create this quick tutorial about the use of effects pedals in the hopes of helping you break free from the “three chords and some distortion” rut so many guitarists find themselves stuck in.

The long and short of this tutorial is: You must learn how to ‘chain’ your effects pedals

I am aware that some guitarists prefer ‘all-in-one’, multi-effect pedal units (e.g. Digitech RP series) for their ease, convenience and versatility, and they are wonderful devices in theory. There are plenty of situations where a multi-effect pedal is the appropriate tool for the job.

The problem comes when you tire of the limitations of whichever multi-effects unit you’re using.

You might think “an effect is an effect”, but this simply isn’t true. The electronic circuitry of any effect pedal can add to/subtract from your overall tone in the same way that the type of wood your guitar is made of, or the pickups it uses, will influence your tone.

This is why you’ll see many professional players use a variety of effect pedals, and they’ll often have a favorite model for a particular type of effect.

In order to ‘tweak’ your sound, you must understand the ‘proper’ chaining of effects pedals from guitar to amp. There exists a loose set of rules regarding the placement of different types of effects in a chain for the best ‘signal to noise’ ratio.

While these rules are not absolute, you’ll find that they hold true from a general standpoint a majority of the time. Like the saying goes, though, you have to know the rules before you can break them.

A Good Effects Chain

Guitar -> Wah -> Distortion -> Chorus -> Amp + Delay (sent separately through the amp’s effect loop)

or

Guitar -> Wah -> Distortion -> Chorus -> Delay -Amp

As you may notice above, Delay is typically the last effect in any chain. You will have to plug from the Delay (at the end of the whole chain) into your amp’s input jack if you are using a one-channel amp.

For two-channel amps, it is generally recommended to plug your Guitar-Wah-Distortion-Chorus chain into the input jack, while plugging your Delay (separate from the chain) into the amp’s “effects send/return” loop.

Doing so gives you a more ‘natural’ feeling sound because the Delay will modulate the amplified signal, rather than adding noise (and potentially over-driving the amp) as it happens when you allow the delay signal to be amplified.

Now, in order to ‘break’ the rules, you need to learn more about what each of your effects actually does to the signal put into it. This gets easier once you realize that there are just a handful of ways to shape a signal.

In general, you will find that the effect of your is doing one (and sometimes more than one) of the following things to your signal:

1. Adding to it

2. Subtracting (or ‘clipping) from it

3. Modulating it

A distortion pedal, for example, creates noise (‘distortion’) by clipping the signal. If you look at the waveform shape of a guitar signal, it is pretty close to a Sine wave. The smoother the wave, the smoother and clearer the signal.

Imagine if you clipped off the tops of the ‘curves’, creating something closer to square wave? It’s going to sound harsher and ‘buzzier’. In other words, it’s going to sound distorted!

Likewise, imagine if you could modulate a signal so that the peaks and valleys (amplitude) were more extreme, their spacing (phase) less regular or the peak frequency response (tone) filtered in or out?

In the first case, you would affect volume. In the second case, you would affect the timing or regularity of of the signal. In the third case, you would affect the clarity (as interpreted by the human ear) of the signal. All of these are modulations.

Now, think about this: Would it sound better to modulate a distorted signal, or to distort a modulated signal?

In general practice, the answer is that it depends on whether the modulation has a less than negligible impact on volume. Remember that distortion is created by clipping the peak amplitude of a signal, which also effects volume.

So, you have to look at which effects cause the most significant attenuation in volume, and then chain them in order of most to least. You take the ‘hit’, so to speak, up front rather than allowing the entire processed signal to take a drastic cut at the end of the chain.

Keep in mind, too, that you must also balance the location of volume cuts (as well as boosts) against the amount of noise introduced into the signal.

Again, this isn’t all cut-and-dry. Placement of effects is very much dependent not just on their type, but how many are involved. Figuring out what works so you can shape your sound is one of the most exciting stages of learning to play electric guitar.

My hope is that this tutorial has given you enough basic information to start experimenting with effects placement for yourself, so you can find the exact sound you’re looking for!

For that reason alone, I believe that guitar-centered music instruction should be revised to include lessons on how to shape your sound.

Sadly, most of the current music curriculum for guitarists ignores these issues.