If your electric guitar is under your bed gasping amongst the dust bunnies, it is not too late to revive it and give the kiss of life to your electric guitar ambitions.

Do you have an electric guitar under your bed silently reminding you of a dream which is for the moment, buried? Did you fantasize about fame and female attention or was your dream about the music? Did you believe you could make a lot of progress in your musical education without much effort? Maybe you even spent a little too much money on your first electric guitar, hoping it would somehow fast track the learning process.

Well the guitar by itself isn’t really much help. The most effective input has to be from you, the aspiring guitar player.

But wait a minute! It was you who put the guitar under the bed, leaving it alone and wondering what it had done to incur your displeasure. What happened there? Why did you bury your dream? Did the fame and female attention arrive by some other route? Well obviously they weren’t what you expected or you wouldn’t be reading this. I think the issue is that you just need to look a little more closely at the process of learning the guitar.

The most obvious things to look at are firstly, did you give yourself enough time and space to practice, and were the guitar lessons you tried really suited to your needs?

If you live in a busy household you are going to have to fight for time and space. Your family or house mates may be willing to cut you some slack at first but the time will come when you pick up your guitar you will hear groaning noises from the people who a short time ago were so encouraging. You are going to need to examine your day. The hours you spend working or studying. The time you need for household chores. Are there TV programs you just can’t do without? You need to include those. If you practice in the living room you need to do it when other people aren’t using the area. You get the idea. If you end up with much less time to devote to guitar lessons than you thought you had, don’t give up. Just use the time you have available. As your guitar playing progresses you will begin to make more time for yourself.

So what kind of guitar lessons do you feel you could derive the most benefit from? The fact is learning to play the guitar will flow much more smoothly if you feel comfortable and receptive. So give some consideration to what works best for you.

So let’s look at the simplest solution – buy a guitar lesson book. Too simple? It might be all you need. Some people can’t do without the input of a face to face teacher or the experience of seeing their guitar lessons on video, but there are many people who do quite well with printed instructions and music.

If you need a more intense experience, but you have a live guitar teacher near where you live then give online electric guitar lessons a shot. With online lessons, you just sit in your room and absorb the teacher’s instructions, and then do your practice. No time wasted travelling to your teacher, and no putting up with a teacher you do not care for!

Some people do better without a teacher standing over them, encouraging them to play it until they get it right. Online electric guitar lessons are more student-friendly in this respect. You can approach any obstacles in your own individual way, in your own sweet time.

One of the most outstanding advantages of online electric guitar lessons compared to tuition with a live teacher is the expense. You can get even the very best lessons on the internet for a fraction of what you would pay your local guitar teacher!

You can also buy your guitar lessons in video format. Video lessons are available for students of all genres of guitar music whether they be beginners or advanced students. With videos you can review your lessons as many times as you want, and even if you lose your enthusiasm for learning the guitar, your video lessons will be waiting for you when your muse returns.

Live rock concerts were the rage in the 70′s and they are still the rage. The essence of rock music does not just lie with the lyrics; it also lies with the electric guitar and the various sounds that it can produce. There are so many kids across the block who would give up anything to play like Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, John Petrucci, Steve Vai, Kirk hammett, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carlos Santana, Jimmy Page etc. These men are not just some of the best guitarists of their times, they are legends.

Now if you are interested in learning how to play the guitar then the first thing you will need to buy is a guitar. Most people start with an acoustic and graduate to the electric guitar. It is quite difficult for anyone to choose the right electric guitar since there are hundreds of models and several brands out there in the market. If you are buying an electric guitar then you will need to also buy amplifiers, pick-ups, pick, tuner etc.

Electric guitars are available in a lot of variety, colors, and designs with the aerodynamic designs being one of the most popular. Don’t go for the first electric guitar you see. You need to look around a bit and check out the prices and models before you buy one. In fact, one of the best ways to choose a guitar is by the brand or by the style. Here’s our take on the four important styles:

Stratocaster
This certainly is a show stealer and has a typical style. The most famous is the red and white color combination, which was extensively used by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. The Stratocaster is from Fender and has a neck bolted to the guitar body. Apart from this, it has double cutaway sides, 22 frets accompanied by a tremolo system or the wammy bar and three single-coil pickups. Fender designed the first Stratocaster in the early 50’s. Some of the popular designs include:

1. Fender Deluxe Stratocaster: approx $600
2. Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster HSS Electric Guitar in Rosewood: Approx $1200
3. Fender Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar in Maple: Approx $400
4. Fender Standard Stratocaster Electric Guitar in Rosewood: Approx $600
5. Fender Stratocaster Eric Johnson Signature model: Approx $1800

Telecaster
The Telecaster is another creative instrument from Fenders. It is more than just a guitar it is a complete orchestra. It is a solid body electric guitar and comprises of dual pick-ups. The first Telecaster was manufactured by Leo Fender in the 1940′s and has a single cutaway body. It doesn’t have the tremolo or wammy bar but has two different single-coil pickups. Some of the popular Telecaster models include:

1. Fender American Telecaster HS guitar: $900-$1000
2. Fender Standard Telecaster Electric Guitar: $400-$500
3. Fender 63 Telecaster Relic Solid Body Electric: $2500-$3000
4. Fender 72 Telecaster Custom Electric Guitar: $700-$800

Les Paul
This is a classic guitar that has been designed by Gibson. The salient feature of a Les Paul’s is its set neck construction, which means there are no joints or bolts. The body is a single cutaway and rounded. It is equipped with two humbucker pickups as well as a raised scratch-plate. If you want to play distorted sound then the Les Paul’s will provide you with a varied range of such sound. Some of the legends who use the Les Pauls include Eric Clapton, Kirk Hammett (Metallica) and Slash (ex-G’N’R). Some of the famous Les Paul models include:

1. Les Paul Custom Electric Guitar: $3000-$3500
2. 1959 Les Paul Standard Guitar: $5500-$6000
3. Les Paul Vintage Mahogany Electric Guitar: $700-$800
4. Les Paul Classic Electric Guitar: $1800-$1900

Gibson
Gibson is one of the greatest brands in music and all their guitar models are classic and can’t be compared to any. Gibson was actually started in 1902 by Orville Gibson and has been responsible for giving the world some of the best acoustic and electric guitars. Some of the famous models include the arch-top Gibson L5 model, the ES-150 electric, Gibson Explorer, Flying V etc. Some of the legends who have played a Gibson or are still using it include Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Ace Frehley (KISS), Frank Zappa, and Toni Iommi (Black Sabbath) to name a few. Some of the popular Gibson models include:

1. Gibson Flying V Electric Guitar: $500-$600
2. Gibson SG 61 Classic Electric Guitar: $1500-$1600
3. Gibson Faded SG Special Electric Guitar: $550-$600
4. Gibson Explorer Pro Electric Guitar: $1100-$1200

These are the best brands in electric guitar. The other aspects that will help you to pick up a guitar include fretboard, the pick-ups, and the body. Full-bodied guitars are normally preferred as they can produce some of the best sounds that you will ever get to hear.

Electric guitars have made their home in our universe. There are even classical pieces composed for electric guitar. This is a new kind of musical instrument. Not only is the sound amplified by electronics but the sound itself is MADE by electronics. Can just anybody learn to make music on this twenty-first century instrument?

Well first of all it is best to start to learn using a nylon string acoustic guitar. Steel strings are rough on the fingers when you are just learning how to play. So whether you get it from ebay or the local music store, you need an acoustic guitar that’s halfway decent. It doesn’t need to be expensive, just playable.

When it comes to buying an electric guitar, you can easily start off with one of the less expensive models. You can get the buzz from playing a real honest to goodness electric guitar on whatever no-frills Stratocaster copy your music store has, and it will get through your initial guitar playing experiences.

If there’s one single lesson that all guitar students of all styles of music need to learn, it’s TAKE IT EASY – SLOW DOWN. The music will still be there, you don’t have to rush out to meet it. If you have a tendency to go too fast, to try to force your body to do chord changes before the muscles have learnt them properly, ask yourself how you want to be sounding in a year’s time. Because if you don’t slow down when you are learning you are going to be sounding like a hat full of baby seals in one year – and probably twenty years time!

An important aspect of learning to play electric guitar is how you are going to be holding the guitar during your long hours of practice. If you do not pay attention to this stuff now, you could end up with back, neck and shoulder problems later from straining your muscles and skeleton.

Now you have your guitar, and of course a decent amplifier. A practice amp is good for use when playing near loved ones if you want to remain loved yourself. Another good idea is to get some kind of guitar effects program for your computer but be aware that some of them can be very hard on your computer’s resources.

A tuner and a metronome are essentials. These are two bits of equipment which are part of the discipline of electric guitar playing. Get into the habit of tuning your guitar from time to time during practice sessions – you might be surprised how far out you can get without being aware of it! While you are first learning how to play electric guitar you probably won’t be able to do too much jamming with friends until you develop a familiarity with your instrument. So once you feel you have gotten the hang of a song or a riff, try it out with the metronome. As slowly as you need to; you are not doing anybody any favors by rushing.

Do you need a teacher for electric guitar? Can you get all you need from books in your local music store or off the internet? It’s true that looking for a person who can teach you what you need to know in a way that you can handle it is a bit of a trial. It’s like any relationship, a lot better without the other person, but what can you do? If you want to try learning without a teacher then make Google your friend. If you are not used to using search engines, just type any questions into the search box in your own words, and the results you get will at least point you in the right direction. Start by looking for guitar forums. This is where you will find people like yourself who have questions together with people who have answers.

There are many ways online to learn to play guitar, some involve buying packages of videos and books which will be delivered to your house. Some give the less expensive option of downloading the videos and instructions. For the most part these guitar teaching methods are excellent. Another way to go is an online course where you can interact with your teacher and ask questions by email or on a forum. This is by far a better way to go because it can’t be quite as easily forgotten about as a course that consists of physical goods or computer files.

As the distinction between electric guitars and synthesizers becomes less distinct the novice electric guitarist gets more opportunities to reproduce the sound of his or her favorite artist. But as your guitar skills expand you will have a world of electronic music to play with. Enjoy!

The idea of this article on making your own electric guitar is to give you a real, practical idea of the magnitude of the job and the skills, tools and raw materials needed to make your own electric guitar. The original electric guitar was a railway sleeper with strings. The designer, Les Paul, finally marketed his invention with a guitar shape because he felt that was what people expected of an electric guitar, not because any particular shape was really necessary to make music. One thing you need to get straight on now is you will not save money by making your own guitar. If you want a cheap electric guitar, there’s one with your name on it at your nearest music store.

So if you fancy yourself as a designer, you could try making an electric guitar to your own specifications but you will need certain materials to work with. The first thing you will need is a love of working with wood. The second is an arsenal of power tools like drills, routers, saws, and fiddly bits of hardware. Your environment is also crucial. You will need a workspace which is not too hot or cold or wet or dry!

When you design your home made electric guitar, you will need to know how long your neck is going to be and how far apart your frets will be. You will also have a choice of the basic shape of the head of your guitar – the part that holds the tuning pegs.

You probably already know that a pickup near the neck gives a deeper sound than a pickup close to the bridge. The placement and configuration of the pickups on an electric guitar is a science in itself.

Solid body electric guitars are usually made from maple, ash, mahogany, alder, basswood or nut because they possess proven sound qualities for guitar manufacturing. You will need to buy your wood from a sawmill in lengths rather larger than needed for guitar making, and you will need to cut the wood down to size before making your guitar. You will also need hardware like machine heads, pick guards, fret wire, bridge and whammy bar mechanism. You will also need hardware if you use a bolt-on neck.

For the electronic parts of your electric guitar, you will need pickups – single coil or humbucker, shielding to cut down hum and associated knobs, nuts and grommets.

The first job in making your own electric guitar is making a template of your instrument from plywood. The template is your exact pattern for your finished guitar, and needs to be crafted with care. If you find yourself cutting corners at this stage you may as well stop this project and continue with the home brewing you started two winters ago.

To finish off this short essay, I should mention that there exists another solution for people wanting to make their own electric guitar – the electric guitar kit. As an example, the Yamaha EG-112PF Electric Guitar Kit contains: EGP112 Electric Guitar 2 Single coil pickups 1 Humbucking pickup Vintage vibrato system 5 position pickup switch Tremolo bar Master Volume and Master Tone controls Maple neck Chrome closed tuning hardware Bolt-on neck construction Rosewood fingerboard Basswood body No coil split Scale length: 25-1/2″ (648 mm) Nut width: 1-5/8″ (41mm) Radius: 13-3/4 (350 mm) Frets: 22 Color: Black with white pick guard Guitar cable included GA10 Amplifier 7 watts of power 5″ speaker Volume, Tone Bass, Distortion / Clean controls Headphone jack Dimensions: 10.4″ (w) x 10.0″ (h) x 6.4″ (d) Complete Starter Kit Electronic tuner — YT120 Special Yamaha gig bag Extra set of strings Picks Strap with Yamaha logo String winder Capo Guitar method book. I found it on Amazon while looking through 1,320,000 results for a Google search on “electric guitar kits”! Best of luck!

Although the electric guitar has originated in blues music, it is rock that gave its popularity. With rock music, the electric guitar became a massively expressive instrument. All guitar lessons have to touch on rock as well, but if you want to learn to play rock guitar, there are special modules you can take up. These modules focus almost exclusively on rock music.

The things you will be taught when you learn to play rock guitar can be roughly spread into three modules: first lessons, where you will learn the basics about playing the guitar, electric guitar improver and power chords.

First Lessons

These lessons are mostly for beginners. If you have some knowledge about playing the guitar, you may skip some of these. This is up to your teacher to decide.

However, if you’re holding a guitar for the first time, this is where your teacher will usually start. You will be taught the fundamentals about playing a guitar in general and playing rock guitar in particular. You will learn the basics about rock lead guitar and power chords. After these first lessons, you will have some idea on how to play classic rock guitar. If you get these right, you are on your way to actually playing rock guitar.

Electric Guitar Improver

In the next lessons, you will probably be taught various rock techniques, such as sliding, string-bending, pull-offs, vibrato and hammer-ons. These tips will enable you to play some fairly good rock solos. You will also learn about scales and chords that will help you start making up your own music.
There might be a lot of blues references within these lessons. Going through all these will help you understand the relation between blues and rocks, which is essential if you want to learn to play rock guitar like a pro.

Power Chords

Power chords are two or three string distorted sounding chords used in some of the most popular rock songs of all times. You will learn to play several rock songs during the first few lessons of this module. Afterwards you will be very familiar with the fretboard and surprise yourself with the sounds you will be able to play.

If you seriously want to learn to play rock guitar, don’t get frustrated or discouraged if you’re not playing the way you would like to at the beginning. If you enjoy playing, the progress will come at some point. Find a guitar teacher you communicate well with, design a workable schedule to practice and, most importantly, try to have fun while you’re learning.

The main idea is recording your guitar play and makes it as ringtone. Because the ringtone is generated by your guitar sound, your mobile phone must support wave ringtone. The polyphonic ringtones cell phone will not support.

What do you need to make your own guitar ringtone?

1. Guitar
2. Guitar Cable ¼ inch male mono to ¼ inch male mono
3. Interconnect cable ¼ inch female mono to 1/8 inch male stereo
4. Personal Computer (Ms Windows)

Step by step recording:

1. Plug your guitar cable and interconnect cable to your PC’s microphone input. Try to play your guitar. Configure until your PC produce the guitar sound.
   
2. Start “Sound Recorder” software. (Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > Entertainment > Sound Recorder). Press record button, play your guitar and start recording.
3. Record your guitar sound about 1-2 minutes. Save as .wav file.
4. Upload to your mobile phone. Your own ringtone ready to be used.

Above recording steps is the primitive way to make your own ringtone. To get best result you can download more advanced recording software. You can create many guitar ringtone styles. You can create classical guitar ringtones, hip hop ringtones, even dance ringtones with your guitar.
Happy create your very own ringtone!

Just found this website, MusicNation.com. This website is an online music community. Bands can upload videos. Bands have friends and fans. Fans can share their favorite music videos. Fans vote their favorite videos. The most voted video win the competition.

Yes it is a music social networking. You can sign up as a band, music writer, singer, guitarist, music talents, or just music listener. There are two accounts in MusicNation.com; one is regular account and the other is artist account. As an artist account you will be able to enter the competitions and connect with your fan base.

What you can do with regular account? Like myspace, you can add friends, add galleries, comments other profile, create your own blog, upload media, create events, and more available features. The different from myspace are you can create your own favorite artists, create favorite musical styles, you can connect to other music hobbies. You can discover music and videos from all over the web.

What the advantages of artist account? Instead of the basic features above, you can promote your own music videos. This is great word of mouth marketing. When your fan likes your videos they can share and tell others about your videos. You can go to competition and win the prize. Bands that get a lot of play have a chance at getting signed by MusicNation.com’s partner EPIC RECORDS!

If you are a band, artist, music talent, or just fan, check this MusicNation.com website!

- the pick you use
- the brand of strings
- the gauge of strings
- the age of the strings
- the fingerboard material
- the nut material
- binding
- tuners
- finish
- tone woods
- long vs short neck tenon
- pot metal vs aluminum tailpiece
- tailpiece height
- through vs top wrapping
- Nashville vs abr-1 bridge
- truss rod routing
- sheath vs no sheath on truss rod
- carve of top
- weight relieved vs non-weight relieved
- pickup height
- neck relief
- string action
- sitting vs standing
- guitar strap material
- type of strap buttons
- neck profile
- potentiometers
- capacitors
- pickups
- guitar cord (straight vs coiled)
- effects pedals
- order of connection of effects pedals
- effects power supply
- amplifier
- level of tube saturation
- tube quality and life
- speaker quality
- acoustical environment
- and if you mic …
- mic used
- single vs multiple mics
- mic saturation level
- distance from cabinet
- angle from center axis
- mic cables
- mixer console
- settings on console
- output cables
- amplifiers used
- PA speakers used
- height of PA speakers
- placement of speakers relative to the listener
- room to speaker interaction
- guitar amp to PA speaker interaction

and last but not least, your ability to play

So, if your instrument does not produce good sound, don’t just blame your instrument. Look at above list and you will find the answer.

As beginner guitar player, you probably better to learn accoustic guitar at first. If you know how to do with your guitar and you feel happy with it, you can go to learn electric guitar.

To learn electric guitar you need extra money, you will need new electric guitar. Electric guitar is more expensive than accoustic guitar. You will need amp to, the better amp cost higher.

If you want to master electric guitar, you must learn hard. You can go to music school nearby your home. Learn from the master, and you will be a master someday.

Well established professional music instrument manufacturers have become hard pressed to compete at the lower price range, and with the added input of the internet and user reviews, they can’t afford to compromise too much on value for money.

Here are my tips for finding a decent beginners electric guitar

1. Look primarily at brand names that have been around for a good while.
2. Read user reviews on unbiased review sites
3. Look for what kind of wood is being used on the body and neck of the guitar. The most common decent woods for the neck are maple and mahogany, and for the body Alder, mahogany, basswood and maple. Occasionally woods like Korina or Limba, Nato (Eastern mahogany)and agathis are used. These are also good.
4. If a company describes a guitars body wood as hardwood, but won’t tell you what it is, then don’t trust the particular product, even though they may be a reputable company.
5. Look for brand names on other parts of the guitar, for example the tuners or pickups. This generally denotes a higher quality guitar. Good examples of this are Grover or Gotoh tuners, and DiMarzio or Seymour Duncan pickups. Sometimes these will say designed by that company, but that is also reasonable.
6. Often when buying a cheaper guitar from a less known company, or a company that specializes in cheap guitars, the wood that is used is of lower quality, even though it is a decent type of wood, it can be that it hasn’t dried properly or is just not well selected. Again I must recommend that one looks for a reputable company. 
7. For a beginner electric guitar I would look for something with a hardtail bridge as opposed to some kind of floating tremelo. A beginner guitarist is highly unlikely to master the art of using these things correctly in any short space of time, so they would be superfluous.An exception to this would be the standard tremelo as found on the stratocaster as these won’t add extra price onto the guitar or become a distraction.
8. Look at guitar packages, as these provide you with an amplifier, tuner, bag and cable. They are the basic essentials for learning to play electric guitar. This is provided you don’t want to go ahead and buy a full size amplifier. In either case, a small little practice amp can still come in handy.The downside of this though, is that the packages may not have the best possible beginners electric guitar, albeit still fairly decent.
9. When buying a beginner electric guitar for someone else, something that might help you to make a decision as to what to look for, find out who their favorite band or musician is and see what guitar they’re playing.Usually guitar companies will have a cheaper look-alike guitar designed to emulate the more expensive version. Again, look at the components that make up the guitar for quality, and try to aim for a reputable company whilst also reading user reviews on the internet from places like www.harmony-central.com
10. The kind of pickup configuration I personally prefer for the greatest tonal flexibility in an electric guitar is the humbucker – single coil – single coil configuration, also written as HSS 

Ultimately, finding the best beginner electric guitar has more to do with what really grabs your attention looks wise, and knowing by following the above guidelines, reading reviews (preferably user reviews) and how much you can afford to spend.

I would look in the 100 to 250 dollar price range, although there may be some bargains and specials below 100 dollars

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