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Know Your Instrument (and Tutors Do Your Job)

How students should learn the workings of their chosen instrument, and that their tutors have a duty to explain this as soon as possible.

Date : 08/10/2015

Author Information

Philip

Uploaded by : Philip
Uploaded on : 08/10/2015
Subject : Guitar Electric

I met a new student last night, and as I do with all new students, the focus of our session was for me to discover what their understanding of guitar was. Along the way, a very familiar shortcoming cropped up.

The student had brought along an electric guitar, which they'd owned for a few years; they'd also just embarked on Rockschool Grade 4 (for which tuition had been received previously), and was therefore no outright beginner. However, despite this, the student had very little idea as to what the different controls on the guitar did; indeed, some were unknown to the student, were named in error, or could not be named at all.

As far as I am concerned, knowledge of your instrument is vitally important, and should be taught from the outset - how else is anyone going to get the best out of it? In my first lesson with any student, I check to see if they know:

- The names of the instrument's different parts

- What they do/are for

- How they work

- The effect they have on the sound of the instrument

This becomes even more critical when your student has chosen the electric guitar. Over and above the structural components it shares with its acoustic counterpart, the electric guitar's voice is determined by its pickups, plus the associated controls for selecting them, and modifying their output. Let's look at the most common (and underused) of these.

Whilst some of these controls may seem baffling to the layman or novice, everyone knows what a volume control is, and does. Yet most beginners treat it like an on-off switch: put it on 10 when you want to play, and on 0 when you've finished. A decent tutor can demonstrate that the tone of the instrument changes according to how the volume is set. As an example, 10 gives you the fullest, broadest sound (as well as the most distortion if you're playing with a high-gain sound); reducing the volume reduces the signal, which means bass frequencies are lost, thinning out the sound, and lowering the amount of distortion. You could go from outright filth to quiet clean using just this one control - don't you think that's something worth knowing?

A lot of students end up with a Stratocaster-style guitar, which, seemingly, has a lot of electronics: three pickups, a pickup-selector switch, two tone controls, and a master volume. Now the pickup-switch is typically a five-position switch; it chooses each pickup individually, as well as combining each outer pickup with the middle one. What this produces quickly and easily is five very distinct and individual tones, yet most beginners leave the switch on one pickup (usually the bridge), never realising the potential they are missing out on.

I could go on, but I'll conclude with two thoughts:

Students: be curious. Look at your guitar and ask yourself if you REALLY know what everything on it is for. If you don't, go to the Internet, ask a more experienced guitarist, or better yet, find yourself a tutor who can adequately explain/demonstrate it all to you.

Tutors: This sort of thing is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. If a student comes to you, check that they understand how their instrument works. Point to a part on the instrument and ask them to name it, because if they can't do that, the chances are that they don't know what it's for, or how it affects the instrument's sound. And if you don't tell them this because YOU don't know yourself, then FIND OUT.

This resource was uploaded by: Philip