Various styles of guitar Picking.

1.    Finger picking - is the technique of playing the guitar by plucking the strings directly with the fingertips, fingernails, or picks attached to fingers.

2.    Flat picking – is the technique of playing individual notes with finger or plectrum.

3.    Hybrid picking - is a guitar-playing technique that involves picking with a plectrum and one or more fingers alternately or simultaneously.

4.    Pattern picking - is the use of "preset right-hand pattern[s]" while fingerpicking, with the left hand fingering standard chords.

5.    Alternate picking - involves a continuous down-up or up-down motion of the picking hand, used only by plectrum users.

6.    Sweep picking - is almost exclusively applied for arpeggios.

7.    Tremolo picking - in which a single note is played repeatedly in quick succession.

Guitar Basics

Guitar Basics

Guitar - The guitar is a musical instrument of the chordophone family, being a stringed instrument played by plucking, either with fingers or a pick.

Spanish       - The Classical Guitar, also known as the "Nylon String Guitar" — is a plucked string instrument. It typically has 6 nylon strings (the 3 bass-strings additionally being wound with a thin metal thread). The classical guitar is well known for its comprehensive finger picking technique, which enables the solo rendition of melody, multi-voiced harmony and polyphony (in much the same manner as the piano can). The modern classical guitar is usually played in a seated position, with the instrument resting on the left lap - the left foot is usually placed on a footstool. Alternatively - if a footstool is not used - a guitar support can be placed between the guitar and the left lap (the support usually attaches to the instrument's side with suction cups).

Hawaiian - A lap slide guitar is a general term often used to describe any guitar played on the lap with steel.

                                           Versions

Acoustic - The body of the guitar is hollow. The vibrating strings drive the soundboard through the bridge, making it vibrate. The soundboard has a larger surface area and thus displaces a larger volume of air, producing a much louder sound than the strings alone.

Electric - An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of electromagnetic induction (Pickups) to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric signals. Solid body instruments are generally made up of hardwood with a lacquer coating.

Semi Acoustic - Some steel-string acoustic guitars are fitted with pickups purely as an alternative to using a separate microphone. They may also be fitted with a piezoelectric pickup under the bridge, attached to the bridge mounting plate, or with a low mass microphone (usually a condenser mic) inside the body of the guitar that will convert the vibrations in the body into electronic signals.

Strings

A string is the vibrating element that is the source of sound in string instruments,

Thick             6       5       4       3       2       1         Thin

Lower              E       A       D       G       B       E       Higher

Standard Tuning

GUITAR

GUITAR
The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen and eighteen string guitars also exist.
Guitars are recognized as one of the primary instruments in flamenco, jazz, blues, country, mariachi, rock music, and many forms of pop. They can also be a solo classical instrument. Guitars may be played acoustically, where the tone is produced by vibration of the strings and modulated by the hollow body, or they may rely on an amplifier that can electronically manipulate tone. Such electric guitars were introduced in the 1930s and continue to have a profound influence on popular culture.
Traditionally guitars have usually been constructed of combinations of various woods and strung with animal gut or more recently, with either nylon or steel strings. Guitars are made and repaired by luthiers. There are many brands of guitars, but some commonly known brands are PRS, Gibson, Dean, Gretsch, Ibanez, Martin, Jackson, Schechter, and Fender.
History
Before the development of the electric guitar and the use of synthetic materials, a guitar was defined as being an instrument having "a long, fretted neck, flat wooden soundboard, ribs, and a flat back, most often with incurved sides". Instruments similar to the guitar have been popular for at least 4,000 years. While today's classical guitar first appeared in Spain, it was itself a product of the long and complex history that saw a number of related guitar types developed and used across Europe. The roots of the guitar can be traced back thousands of years to an Indo-European origin in instruments, and then known in central Asia and India. For this reason the guitar itself is distantly related to instruments such as the tanbur and sitar, and the Indian sitar. The oldest known iconographic representation of an instrument displaying all the essential features of a guitar being played is a 3,300 year old stone carving of a Hittite bard.The modern word, guitar, was adopted into English from Spanish guitarra (German Gitarre, French Guitare),^[4] loaned from the medieval Andal usian Arabic qitara, itself derived from the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the earlier Greek word kithara, a possible descendant of Old Persian sihtar.

Illustration from a Carolingian Psalter from the 9th century, showing a guitar-like plucked instrument.

The modern guitar is descended from the Roman cithara brought by the Romans to Hispania around 40 AD, and further adapted and developed with the arrival of the four-string oud, brought by the Moors after their conquest of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century.Elsewhere in Europe, the indigenous six-string Scandinavian lut (lute), had gained in popularity in areas of Viking incursions across the continent. Often depicted in carvings c. 800 AD, the Norse hero Gunther (also known as Gunnar), played a lute with his toes as he lay dying in a snake-pit, in the legend of Siegfried. By 1200 AD, the four strings "guitar" had evolved into two types: the guitarra morisca (Moorish guitar) which had a rounded back, wide fingerboard and several sound holes, and the guitarra Latina (Latin guitar) which resembled the modern guitar with one sound hole and a narrower neck.




The Spanish vihuela or "viola da mano", a guitar-like instrument of the 15th and 16th centuries is, due to its similarities, is often considered an important influence in the development of the modern guitar. It had lute-style tuning and a guitar-like body. Its construction had as much in common with the modern guitar as with its contemporary four-course renaissance guitar. The vihuela enjoyed only a short period of popularity; the last surviving publication of music for the instrument appeared in 1576. It is not clear whether it represented a transitional form or was simply a design that combined features of the Arabic oud and the European lute. In favor of the latter view, the reshaping of the vihuela into a guitar-like form can be seen as a strategy of differentiating the European lute visually from the Moorish oud. Meanwhile, the five string renassance guitar and the baroque guitar enjoyed popularity, especially in Italy and France, and indeed, much of Europe from the 15th to the 18th centuries.
The Vinaccia family of luthiers is known for developing the mandolin, and may have built the oldest surviving six string guitar. Gaetano Vinaccia (1759 – after 1831) has his signature on the label of a guitar built in Naples, Italy for six strings with the date of 1779. This guitar has been examined and does not show tell-tale signs of modifications from a double-course guitar although fakes are known to exist of guitars and identifying labels from that period.
The dimensions of the modern classical guitar (also known as the Spanish guitar) were established by Antonio Torres Jurado (1817-1892), working in Seville in the 1850s. Torres and Louis Panormo of London (active 1820s-1840s) were both responsible for demonstrating the superiority of fan strutting over transverse table bracing