Guide To Choose The Right Guitar For Your Guitar Lessons

Deciding to learn the guitar is a very exciting idea. But many aspirants will be confused with a lot of questions about what Guitar to buy, what style of music they should follow, how often they should be practising and so on. A few tips on these aspects will help your guitar lessons easy, enjoyable & fun.

There are many different types of guitars and each type feels and sounds differently. Choosing an inappropriate guitar for your lessons can make it so hard for you to learn and the instrument will never going to sound right. The right type of guitar for you is one that matches the style of music you want to play. So, it is essential that you should have a fair idea of the styles of music that you want to pursue before your guitar purchase.

Any instrument purchase is an investment that should be serving you right and also for a long time. So, when it comes to deciding on a guitar for your lessons, you should be doing some basic research, spend wisely and choose the right kind of guitar with the quality that matches the price. We recommend you not to settle for low quality guitars just because of the price point, but rather be aware of the quality of the wood, the craftsmanship, electronics & other components. You can read more about the importance of the quality of the musical instrument here.

Classical Guitars

This type of guitar is the main choice for classical music. Other than classical music, classical guitars are used in a variety of genres such as Folk, Flamenco, Pop, Jazz and so on. Classical guitars are easy to play and feels easier on the fingers as the strings are made of nylon and they have less string tension and have a wide fretboard.

The low string tension helps you in a way that you don’t need to press so hard with your fingers to play a note. So, your fingers are less likely to hurt in the beginning when you start playing a classical guitar.

A classical guitar is mostly played with the right hand fingers rather than using a pick.

Steel-String Acoustic Guitars

Steel-string acoustic guitars have a brighter tone when compared to classical guitars because they use steel or metal strings. Their brighter sound makes them the most common choice for music styles such as Rock, Blues, Folk, Country, Pop, Bluegrass, and others. They are normally played with a pick/plectrum.

Beginner students can effectively learn on a steel-string acoustic guitar. The steel strings do require more pressure with your fingers, but a good guitar teacher will properly introduce you to the right finger posture and techniques to avoid excessive pain on your fingers and also to build up your finger strength.

Steel-String Electro-Acoustic Guitars

An ‘electro-acoustic’ guitar is basically an acoustic guitar that you can connect into an amplifier or a mixer via an instrument cable. They appear almost identical to a normal acoustic guitar apart from a few added features. The facility to connect your acoustic guitar into an amplifier means that you can use effect pedals and obtain different tones which are usually impossible to get from a normal acoustic guitar.

Electro-acoustic guitars feel exactly the same to play like the normal acoustic guitars. If you have some performances in mind for the later, the benefit of plugging your acoustic guitar in to an amplifier or effect pedals will give you a multitude of tone options.

Electric Guitars

Electric guitars are used for almost all styles of popular music today. They’re the primary choice for so many musical genres such as Metal, Rock, Punk, Blues, Country, Rockabilly, Jazz and so on. You will probably never see a Metal or a Hard Rock band without electric guitars!

As a beginner, it is alright to start your music lessons on an electric guitar. Certain electric guitars require more dexterity and finesse to handle, but the string tension on an electric guitar is typically lower than that of a steel-stringed acoustic guitar. If you are opting for an electric guitar, you need to buy a Guitar Amplifier & an Instrument Cable as well.

Bottom Line

There are also a few other elements to be considered before you make your final purchase decision. One of them is the size of the guitar for the age group. Many guitars come in various sizes to suit the player’s age & requirements. The most common guitar sizes are; Full Size, Three Quarter (³/₄) and Half Size (¹/₂). If you need expert advice on what guitar suits the best for you or your child, our expert guitar teachers at The Young Musician Music Institute or the knowledgeable sales team at Musicians Corner are more than happy to help you.