Music and Guitar -- a self- instructional method
I got my first guitar -- a 3/4 Stella Harmony -- Christmas 1969 (age 18). 6 months later I was getting paid to play it.
I am essentially self-taught. I say "essentially" because I already had a strong background in music -- I knew the language of music and could read notation -- treble cleff and bass cleff. I had learned piano, clarinet, mandolin (self-taught on that), harmonica (got a Chromatica 64 as a graduation present from my parents), and had been singing since very early childhood. And I had a good sense of rhythm-- likely inherited -- and learned - from my Grandfather Hannemann who was a percussionist - first in the USMC Band White House detachment (either Coolidge or Hoover or both) and later had his own band playing in the DC area (which helped pay the bills during the Deprssion). So learning the guitar was a cinch. If you know how it tunes you automatically know where all the notes are. All I needed to start was chord fingering and many songbooks are published for voice, piano, and guitar. Voila -- guitar chord charts with fingerings. I started by simply strumming -- rhythm guitar -- as accompaniment to my singing. If the song was written in a key not in my vocal range I simply transposed it. About a year or so later Scott Snell , son of Mrs Snell my elementary music teacher -- suggested I learn fingerstyle playing. I took a total of 6 lessons with Sandy Larson who was a well known folk guitarist. She taught me some basic finger picking patterns -- arpeggios. At the end of lesson 5 the assignment was to find a song and work out an arrangement using two of the patterns I had learned within the same song. I did "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" but I added the under-lying counter-point part (it was in the piano score) and a strum portion as well to the arpeggios she had taught me. After I played it for she said "you have just gone beyond anything I can teach you" and she gave me a copy of the classical guitar method by Azpiazu she had used in college, saying "this is all your are going to need". I started college in 1972 and in my first semester people in the dorms heard me play and asked me to teach them. I have been teaching music and guitar ever since. In 1999-2000 I was asked to write a series of guitar lessons for what was then the AOLGTRSIG -- AOL's Guitar Special Interest Group. Those on-line lessons eventually became the first book in the series Music and Guitar v.1 Fundamentals.
What you will learn Over the years I came to the conclusion that most introductory guitar methods were woefully inadequate. They teach some of the mechanics, almost nothing about music, and only the open position -- the first 4 frets - on the guitar leaving 2/3 of the fretboard as terra incognita. In Fundamentals -- - you will learn all of the notes on the fretboard -- all 12 frets. - You will learn to read music notation -- not TAB! - You will begin to learn the language of music -- scales, keys, time signatures, rhythms. - You will learn basics of finger style playing for single note lines. - You will learn how to move around the fretboard easily and smoothly and how to choose the best fingering for the passage you are playing.
In Music & guitar v.2 Melody and Harmony -- - you will learn about chords -- what a chord is, what a triad is, chord spellings, how to read chord notation and chord charts, and how to make barre chords - you will learn basics of harmony -- --- how to create a bass line to a melody --- how to choose which chords to use for a given melody - you will learn arpeggios (finger picking patterns) - you will learn basics of finger-style strumming and rhythm pattern - how to create variations on a theme
Using Music and Guitar Music and Guitar was written for self-instruction whether you know nothing about music or the guitar or you already play guitar but want to expand your knowledge and skills. Note -- in order to get the most out of the method read everything. The text is me talking to you as if we were sitting there together. You can also use this with a guitar teacher (if the teacher is willing). I have been teaching my students with this method for over 20 years -- from ages 9 to adult. With regular practice most students complete the course in about 6 months. From there they go tto Guitar Solos -- which you can find on the next page. Melody and Harmony uses "Twinkle" with variations. Mozart wrote 6 variations on Twinkle -- I think I've got 7. You can hear the complete piece on my Soundcloud channel -- soundcloud.com/richard-hannemann.
I am essentially self-taught. I say "essentially" because I already had a strong background in music -- I knew the language of music and could read notation -- treble cleff and bass cleff. I had learned piano, clarinet, mandolin (self-taught on that), harmonica (got a Chromatica 64 as a graduation present from my parents), and had been singing since very early childhood. And I had a good sense of rhythm-- likely inherited -- and learned - from my Grandfather Hannemann who was a percussionist - first in the USMC Band White House detachment (either Coolidge or Hoover or both) and later had his own band playing in the DC area (which helped pay the bills during the Deprssion). So learning the guitar was a cinch. If you know how it tunes you automatically know where all the notes are. All I needed to start was chord fingering and many songbooks are published for voice, piano, and guitar. Voila -- guitar chord charts with fingerings. I started by simply strumming -- rhythm guitar -- as accompaniment to my singing. If the song was written in a key not in my vocal range I simply transposed it. About a year or so later Scott Snell , son of Mrs Snell my elementary music teacher -- suggested I learn fingerstyle playing. I took a total of 6 lessons with Sandy Larson who was a well known folk guitarist. She taught me some basic finger picking patterns -- arpeggios. At the end of lesson 5 the assignment was to find a song and work out an arrangement using two of the patterns I had learned within the same song. I did "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" but I added the under-lying counter-point part (it was in the piano score) and a strum portion as well to the arpeggios she had taught me. After I played it for she said "you have just gone beyond anything I can teach you" and she gave me a copy of the classical guitar method by Azpiazu she had used in college, saying "this is all your are going to need". I started college in 1972 and in my first semester people in the dorms heard me play and asked me to teach them. I have been teaching music and guitar ever since. In 1999-2000 I was asked to write a series of guitar lessons for what was then the AOLGTRSIG -- AOL's Guitar Special Interest Group. Those on-line lessons eventually became the first book in the series Music and Guitar v.1 Fundamentals.
What you will learn Over the years I came to the conclusion that most introductory guitar methods were woefully inadequate. They teach some of the mechanics, almost nothing about music, and only the open position -- the first 4 frets - on the guitar leaving 2/3 of the fretboard as terra incognita. In Fundamentals -- - you will learn all of the notes on the fretboard -- all 12 frets. - You will learn to read music notation -- not TAB! - You will begin to learn the language of music -- scales, keys, time signatures, rhythms. - You will learn basics of finger style playing for single note lines. - You will learn how to move around the fretboard easily and smoothly and how to choose the best fingering for the passage you are playing.
In Music & guitar v.2 Melody and Harmony -- - you will learn about chords -- what a chord is, what a triad is, chord spellings, how to read chord notation and chord charts, and how to make barre chords - you will learn basics of harmony -- --- how to create a bass line to a melody --- how to choose which chords to use for a given melody - you will learn arpeggios (finger picking patterns) - you will learn basics of finger-style strumming and rhythm pattern - how to create variations on a theme
Using Music and Guitar Music and Guitar was written for self-instruction whether you know nothing about music or the guitar or you already play guitar but want to expand your knowledge and skills. Note -- in order to get the most out of the method read everything. The text is me talking to you as if we were sitting there together. You can also use this with a guitar teacher (if the teacher is willing). I have been teaching my students with this method for over 20 years -- from ages 9 to adult. With regular practice most students complete the course in about 6 months. From there they go tto Guitar Solos -- which you can find on the next page. Melody and Harmony uses "Twinkle" with variations. Mozart wrote 6 variations on Twinkle -- I think I've got 7. You can hear the complete piece on my Soundcloud channel -- soundcloud.com/richard-hannemann.