2009 19 Nov

Playing In Position: What Does It Mean And Do You Need It?

As you listen to complicated-sounding guitar music played by virtuoso guitarists, you may imagine their left hands leaping around the fretboard with abandon. But usually, il you watch those guitarists on stage or TV, you discover that their left hands hardly move at all. Those guitarists are playing in position.

Playing in position means that your left hand remains in a fixed location on the neck with each finger more or less on a permanent assignment to a specific fret, and your fourth finger plays the eighth fret gets its name from the fret that your first finger play.

Why play in position? Why not use open position and open strings all the time? We can give you two key reasons:

* It’s easier to play high-note melodies. Playing In open position allows you to play only up to the fourth or filth fret. If you want to play higher than that, position playing enables you to play the notes smoothly and economically.

* You can instantly transpose any pattern or phrase that you know in position to another key simply by moving your hand to another position. Because position playing involves no open strings, everything you play in position is movable.

People have the idea that playing guitar in lower positions is easier than playing in higher ones. The higher notes actually aren’t harder to play: they’re just harder to read in standard notation it you don’t gel too far in a conventional method book (where reading high notes is usually saved till last). But here, you’re not focusing on music reading but on guitar playing — so go for the high notes whenever you want.

Playing exercises in position

The major scale (you know, the familiar do-re-me-fa-sol-la-si-do sound you get by playing the white keys on the piano starting from C) is a good place to start practicing the skills you need to play in position.

P laying rock ‘n’ roll guitar is arguably the most fun that you can have with an inanimate object in your hands. With the volume turned up and your adrenaline flowing, nothing’s quite like laying down a chunking rhythm or ripping through a searing lead to screaming, adoring fans — or even to your own approving smile coming back at you from the mirror. All you need to do is figure out how to play a couple of simple patterns and you can be gyrating like Elvis, duck-walking like Chuck Berry, and windmilling like Pete Townshend in no time.

Stripped of all bravado and showmanship, rock guitar is just like any other guitar style. You absorb it in simple, easy steps and then practice, practice, practice until it conies naturally. After you pick up some rhythm and lead passages and get the techniques down, the real work begins: standing in front of a mirror and perfecting your moves.

Is it realistic to learn to play guitar? Well, all the guitar playing icons have started somewhere and at certain period of time they have been guitar students as well. So, if you dream to learn to play guitar, then you should better put your question like this, “Where can I learn to play guitar with maximum effect for me?” And this is where the links that you see can help – they will send you directly to the web site with guitar lessons reviews.