Always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place, perfect make up and lipstick – and painted finger nails….long painted finger nails!

Have you ever watched Dolly play guitar? If so, have you wondered how she can sit down with a guitar and play it without those long, claw-like finger nails getting in the way?

Sure, it’s possible to play guitar with long finger nails, classical guitarists do it all the time. But with Dolly, we’re talking about daggers, nails that can do some real damage!

For her it’s simple. She plays with one finger.

Sounds impossible to those of us who struggle to contort our fingers into all shapes imaginable to form complex guitar chords, but for her it’s easy.

She does it by tuning her guitar to an open chord. Quite often hers is tuned to an open E chord.

By tuning the guitar to an open chord she can strum it without any fingers on it, and be playing a full chord – in this case, an E.

Then by placing one finger across any fret and barring those notes, she is playing another full chord.

Let’s look first at how to tune your guitar to an open E tuning.

6th string (E) – leave it as it is normally

5th string (A) – tune this string up to a B. Do this by playing the note on the 7th fret of the 6th string, and tuning up the 5th string to match it

4th string (D) – tune this string up to an E. Do this by playing either the 6th string, or 1st string, and tuning the 4th string to match it. In this case the 4th string will now become an “octave” of the 1st or 6th strin3rd string (G) – tune this string up to a G#. Do this by playing the note on the 4th fret of the 4th string (after this one has already been tuned higher), and matching the 3rd string to it

2nd string (B) – leave it as it is normally

1st string (E) – leave it as it is normally

Now strum all 6 strings of the guitar. You are now playing an open E chord!

Want to play an A chord in this tuning? Just lay your 1st finger across all the strings on the 5th fret and strum.

Want to play a G chord? Simply barre the strings across the 3rd fret.

If you know the notes on the 6th string, then the note on the 6th string at the fret where your finger is making the barre is the root note for the chord you are playing.

One word of caution. When tuning strings up to a higher pitch, you are adding more tension to them and they can sometimes break if you go too high. Always turn your head away from the guitar when tuning up higher than normal, to prevent a snapping string from striking your face or eyes.

When in this tuning, have a little fun and play around with forming chords and discovering new ones.

Here’s a hint. In this open E tuning, form an open E chord just like you would in standard tuning and play it. Then lift your fingers off and strum the open strings. Do this back and forth a few times, starting with the open strings chord, then going to the E “shape” chord.

Can you recognize the opening chords for the intro to “She Talks To Angels” by the Black Crowes?

Open E tuning is also used quite a bit for slide guitar as well as Dobro.

I have said before that there are times for all of us that our playing gets a little stale. We feel as though we are not playing anything new, like we’re stuck in a rut.

It’s times like these when it can be good for the psyche to shake things up a bit, to do something different and off the cuff.

Next time you feel that way, try switching to an open E tuning and let your creative juices flow!

For Free Video Guitar Lessons designed for Active Adults go to http://adultguitarlessons.com/blog/?page_id=191

By Keith Dean

Keith Dean is founder of AdultGuitarLessons.com and a 30 veteran of stage and studio. He toured extensively as a road musician throughout the US and Europe, was a former lead guitarist for Jason Aldean, and has shared stages with Little Big Town, Wild Rose, Winger, Confederate Railroad and more. He is a published songwriter, owned and operated a successful music store, and has instructed numerous students in guitar. He is a Platinum Level Expert Author on EzineArticles.

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My first guitar was a borrowed guitar from the music school. At the time I could not hear when a guitar was out of tune but even my totally untrained beginners ears could hear that it was an awful guitar. It sounded dark, flat and ugly and I was embarrassed to bring that to my teacher. Needless to say how frustrated it was to learn to play on it. Despite the guitar I practised every day, my parents saw that I was serious and three months later I had my own guitar, a brand new nylon string classical Yamaha guitar.

Choose your instrument with care.

So how do you go out and buy a good standard guitar without having to spent a ton of money not knowing where the threshold is between a good guitar and one of poor quality? Don’t just go out with a couple hundred dollars choosing a guitar within that budget.

The price of a guitar goes from a hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Obviously the more expensive the better the guitar but for six to seven hundred dollars you can buy a decent one that goes a long way. It’s is not cheap but far from expensive and it’s worth saving until you have the money because over time a good guitar will become a better guitar while a bad guitar will never be a good one.

What makes a great instrument – Things to look out for.

If you have untrained ears ask someone with experience to go with you. You want to make sure that the guitar doesn’t have invisible damage or issues.

The neck should also fit properly onto the body. When you hold the guitar the way you would play it look at the neck where it is attached to the body. The body has a cutout and the neck should fit exactly into the space. On some guitars the cutout is wider than the neck. You should not be able to fit your bank card into the space between the neck and the body.

Just remember that what you pay less on buying the instrument you’ll pay later in sweat, more practice time and costs to repair and adjust your cheap guitar. For acoustic guitars I can recommend Martin and Taylor and for electric guitars I recommend American made Fender and Gibson.

By June Moris

June Moris has been playing the guitar since she was thirteen. She has been doing research on the use of effects full time for six months. When you hear her live it’s like there are two guitar players on stage. Some people mistake her guitar for a couple synthesizers. June lives in NYC where she plays her music and teaches guitar. Some of her lessons can be found on her website @ http://www.music.junemoris.com

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Allegedly Ringo Starr uttered these words as he tossed his drum sticks across the studio after numerous takes of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter”. Reportedly there is a dispute as to whether it was actually Ringo who said those words on the recording, or if it was John Lennon. One of the arguments is that Ringo, a drummer, was not as likely to develop blisters “on his fingers” as Lennon, a guitar player.

If you are just starting out on guitar, maybe just beginning guitar lessons or even shopping for your first guitar – you are soon to discover the results of pressing virgin flesh to metal…Ouch!

Hold on – don’t run off just yet! Things will get better, I promise.

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon in the yard raking leaves for a couple of hours, you probably walked away with a couple of blisters on your hands. Painful battle scars for your efforts.

But if, on the other hand, you raked leaves for a living, and did it every day, eventually those blisters would turn into hardened calluses, and you wouldn’t even notice the feel of the wooden handle in your hands.

Guitar playing is very much the same. In the beginning you are exposing the soft flesh of the finger tips to the harshness of metal guitar strings. It stands to reason that, before too long, this abrasive abuse is going to result in some pain!

But rest assured that this is something we all go through in the beginning stages of playing guitar. There is just no way around it – but it is temporary.

Many of my beginning guitar students ask what can be done about it. I know they want some sort of “magic bullet” answer – some insightful words of wisdom that will provide an easy fix.

And although I am sympathetic to their plight, the truth is, there is no easy way around sore fingers in the beginning days of playing guitar.

The only real way to solve the problem of sore fingers is, quite simply, to play guitar! The more you play, the faster your finger tips will harden with calluses, and eventually you won’t even feel the strings beneath your fingers.

Moderation is the key in the beginning. You shouldn’t suffer with agony, and when it gets bad, put the guitar down and take a break.

But by spending a little time each day, even just 20 minutes or so, you will find that your blisters (and the pain) will be gone before you know it!

For Free Video Guitar Lessons designed for Active Adults go to http://www.adultguitarlessons.com/amember/free_lessons_ez800.php

Keith Dean is founder of AdultGuitarLessons.com and a 30 veteran of stage and studio. He toured extensively as a road musician throughout the US and Europe, was a former lead guitarist for Jason Aldean, and has shared stages with Little Big Town, Wild Rose, Winger, Confederate Railroad and more. He is a published songwriter, owned and operated a successful music store, and has instructed numerous students in guitar. He is a Platinum Level Expert Author on Ezine Articles.

By Keith Dean

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