Your Guitar at This Stage

When to read this: after Session 1, “The String-Height Check” (5 minutes); after Session 9, “Fitting a Capo” (5 minutes); after Session 19, “A Job for a Guitar Shop” (5 minutes); after Session 28, “A Job for a Guitar Shop” (5 minutes). None of this reading is part of a session’s 50 minutes.

The String-Height Check

This course goes further up the neck than the beginner course did and asks more of finger 1. Both are more difficult on a guitar whose strings sit high above the frets. You do this check three times: once after Session 1, as its reading; again in Session 19, before the first press; again in Session 28, before the first full barre.

1. Tune the guitar first.
2. With a ruler marked in millimetres, measure at the 12th fret, from the top of the metal fret to the underside of the string: under string 6, then under string 1.
3. Write down both figures and the date, and keep the note for Sessions 19 and 28.
4. Press one string with a fingertip at fret 1 and then at fret 5, once each. Notice whether the string is much stiffer under your finger at fret 1.

About 2.5 mm under string 6 and about 2 mm under string 1 is usual.

The result:

• String 6 is clearly more than 3 mm, or a string is much stiffer under your finger at fret 1 than at fret 5: take the guitar to a shop before any barre work (see “A Job for a Guitar Shop”).
• Otherwise: go on.

If the check sends your guitar to a shop, no barre work is done, in this session or in any week’s plan, until the shop has seen the guitar.

Until then you play everything else, in a session and in a week’s plan: each row that the week’s “Barre rows this week:” line names is played without its barre work. Leave out the presses and any drill on a barre chord; in a piece, count through the measures of a barre chord without playing them.

Until then item 7 of the entry check, or a Self-Check Question that needs a barre shape, waits too: it is not a no.

At the second and third check, write the two figures under the earlier ones, to see whether they have changed. The rule for the result stays the same.

The printed figures are usual workshop figures, not measurements taken from your guitar. A shop can tell you what is right for your instrument.

Strings

Your strings need changing when:

• they sound dull;
• they feel rough;
• they show dark spots or rust;
• they will not stay in tune;
• one breaks: then the whole set is changed.

The set to buy is light-gauge acoustic steel strings (.012-.053). The numbers on the packet are string thicknesses in thousandths of an inch. For your first change, ask a shop to fit the strings and watch how it is done. If your hands stay sore, ask a shop to fit custom light (.011-.052) or extra light (.010-.047) strings.

A new string drops in pitch for its first few days, so tune more often.

Fitting a Capo

• Capo — A clamp placed across the fretboard to raise the pitch of all strings. With a capo at fret 2 every open string sounds two half steps higher, and frets are counted from the capo. (Session 9)

Ask for a capo made for a steel-string acoustic guitar. You need it from Session 9.

Fit it in the five steps of Session 9:

1. Tune first, with the capo off.
2. Lay the capo straight across all six strings just behind the fret wire of the fret named, not on top of the wire and not in the middle of the fret.
3. Use only as much pressure as makes every string ring.
4. Pluck the six strings one at a time, with the capo on.
5. If a string buzzes or is dull, move the capo closer to the fret wire before adding any pressure.

If a chord sounds out of tune with the capo on, take the capo off, tune with the tuner, and fit it again closer to the fret wire with less pressure.

Take the capo off when you stop playing.

A line such as Capo: fret 2 means: put the capo at fret 2 before you play. The chord names in the chart are the names of the shapes you finger; the Key line says what they sound as.

In Session 9 you play the “Capo Study in A Shapes” with the capo at fret 2 and at fret 4.

A Job for a Guitar Shop

In a setup, a technician adjusts the string height, the slight curve of the neck, the depth of the nut slots and the intonation. Do not adjust the neck, the nut or the saddle yourself.

The signs that your guitar needs a setup are these four:

• The string-height check fails.
• Constant buzz, with your fingers placed correctly.
• Chords still take a lot of force after several weeks.
• Notes above fret 7 sound out of tune when the open strings are in tune.

For each of the four the instruction is the same: go to the shop. Never press harder to make up for the guitar.

Ask the shop for three things:

• The action (the string height) as low as it will go without buzz.
• The nut slots and the neck checked.
• The intonation checked (the fourth sign above).

Lighter strings can be fitted at the same visit (see “Strings”).