Choosing guitar strings is a very important decision. After all, this is the junction between your hands and your instrument.
Guitar strings come in two forms: unwound (plain) or wound.
Unwound strings are your High E (1st), B (2nd) and G (3rd) strings*. These are a solid strand of metal and they feel smooth to the touch. Unwound strings are suited for higher pitches.
Wound strings are your Low E (6th), A (5th) and D (4th). They are plain strings with metal wrapped around them to produce lower pitches. You can see the difference between wound and unwound, or simply slide the edge of your pick against the strings. Wound strings will produce a jagged, scraping sound.
(*Occasionally you might encounter a guitar with a wound G (3rd) string. This is a throwback to the early days of electric guitar when wound G’s were the only type available. )
Modern guitar strings offer many options– composition, string gauge, round wound/flat woundand coated/non-coated.
Composition-
For electric guitar, the most common string materials are stainless steel and nickel.
Stainless steel strings have great volume, tone and sustain. They’re also the brightest sounding. Given its magnetic properties, it’s a good match for electric pickups. Stainless steel is also very resistant to corrosion, much more so than nickel. These are a fine choice, but some players believe they feel a little “stiffer” than other strings.
Nickel-plated strings are essentially stainless steel strings with a light plating of nickel. The plating makes them feel less stiff than pure stainless steel and also takes away some of the brightness. Nickel is also a smoother surface so they produce less “whisper” ( string noise). These are probably the most common type of electric strings.
Pure Nickel strings are another popular choice. They are less bright than stainless steel and nickel plated strings and they also have more “give” to them.
String gauges-
String gauges are another option to consider. Sets are usually referred to by the size of their thinnest strings. These can vary from very light (8’s) to heavy (12 or higher). Some common string gauges are: 9-42, 9-46, 10-46, 10-52.
***It’s important to understand that the higher gauges are more difficult to bend on. Their additional mass makes them difficult to budge at concert pitch. Higher string gauges are usually preferred by rhythm guitarists and “doom and gloom” metal heads that tune their guitars WAY down. Drop tuners need additional mass to make the strings sound fuller. (A set of 8’s tuned down to Drop C feel like cobwebs and sound about as heavy.)
Round wound/flat wound-
We’ve already learned that a wound string is nothing more than a plain string with windings around it. They are also known as Round wound strings.
Flat wound strings are Round wounds that have the windings ground down to have less of a serrated feel. They produce a mellower tone and are most commonly used by Jazz guitarists and bass players.
Coated/non-coated
Non coated strings are any of the strings mentioned above. They are wound or unwound lengths of plain metal. But since strings are subject to breakage and tuning issues due to body oils and dirt, several companies offer an additional option of “coating” each string in the hopes of prolonging string life. Manufacturers claim that string life can be doubled or even tripled-but then again the prices of coated strings reflect this.
*I like to get my “bend” on, so I prefer light gauge strings.
Guitar picks (or plectrums as they are sometimes called) come in a variety of different sizes, shapes, gauges (thickness) and composition. I’ve seen and played picks made out of real tortoise shell, copper, brass, stone, wood, bone, feathers, carbon graphite, synthetic resins and celluloid!
They each have their pros and cons, but you’ll find certain types better suited for different styles and playing techniques.
Size-
Face facts…SIZE DOES MATTER!!! A ridiculously large pick
doesn’t help your technique at all.
The idea is to have your thumb and index finger holding close to the center of the pick.
With a large pick, you have too much “sway” on the striking side (and opposite side). Imagine trying to sweep your floor with one hand holding a broom in the middle. There’s a lot of wasted motion to compensate for the big broom’s size. Now imagine the same chore using a small hand broom. Each sweep is more productive and you are much more accurate with a small, easy to manage tool. The same concept holds true for your pick…
So…OVERSIZED picks are BAD!
Shapes-
The most common shapes:
*All of these shapes are small enough to be accurate and manageable. Try several to find a shape that suits you.
Gauges-
Gauge refers to the thickness of a pick. Usually they are rated:
Extra thin/light (.44mm)
thin/light (.45-.69mm)
medium (.70-.84mm)
heavy (.85-1.20mm)
extra heavy (1.20-3mm & beyond)
The thinner the pick, the more “give” it has. It is ideally suited for lightly strummed acoustic guitar chords or even funk guitar chords that you might want to sound “softer” and not so heavy handed. Thin picks don’t have enough mass to really move the string hard-they have a little play in them. These are a good choice for beginners.
Thicker picks don’t give nearly as much as thinner ones, so their contact with the string is more forceful. These picks are excellent for single note runs because they don’t bend at the end of a pick stroke. Given their extra thickness, heavier picks respond more immediate than picks that bend or “wag”. These picks take a while to adjust to (many beginners hit the strings so hard that they pull the guitar out of tune).
A good player should be able to play with any size and gauge. Compensating for the differences is a sure sign that your picking hand is progressing nicely.
Composition-
The composition of a pick has a big impact on the sound and feel. Dense materials like stone and metal have a brighter sound than porous materials like wood or ceramics. They also are considerably more durable.
Nylon is another popular pick material, but it tends to wear down much quicker than other composites.
A word of advice: stay away from “novelty” picks. You know the kind that change pictures when you tilt them. These are usually nothing more than stamped cardboard with a thin coating for the design. A few hours of real playing and they become confetti in your hand…
I use custom-made 351 shape “glow in the dark” picks by Steve Clayton USA (medium to medium/heavy thickness).
When I was teaching myself about music theory, it always seemed disjointed and confusing. No textbooks I read clearly showed me how chords, scales and arpeggios worked together. They were spending so much time showing me every individual branch of every tree that I never understood thatthey were all part of the same forest.
This little system of mine works like a charm to demystify quite a bit of theory while also making several important theoretical connections.
Now if you have read up to this point you understand that there are only 12 different notes in music. We can apply any formula (scale shape, chord shape, etc.) to any one of the 12 notes.
Imagine a row of 12 buckets.
Now let’s pretend that each bucket represents one of the 12 Major scales. Each bucket contains an infinite supply of notes from it’s Major scale.
This C Major bucket contains an infinite amount of notes only from the C Major scale ( C D E F G A B C).
A G Major bucket contains an infinite amount of notes only from the G Major scale ( G A B C D E F# G).
NEARLY EVERY SONG USES ONE BUCKET TO CREATE IT’S SCALES, CHORDS AND ARPEGGIOS!!!*
The bucket that we choose for a song is often called the KEYorKey Signature.
Let’s say we want to write a song. The first thing we have to decide is which of the 12 buckets we want to use. Let’s assume we chose C.
You can reach into the bucket and pull out any note in any order to make a melody. (Remember that there is an infinite amount of C Major notes in the C Major bucket).This melody may be your vocal line, guitar solo or whatever.
I can reach into the same bucket and pull handfulls of notes at a time. This produces chords.
Q:Will your melody line work with my chords?
A: Of course! We are drawing from the same source or collective of notes.
We should stop for a moment, let this sink in and learn a new vocabulary word: diatonic.
Diatonic means coming from the same source. The chords and melody we produced came from the same bucket/source so they have to work together. If for some reason I add an errant note to the mix(Example= I add a G# note to a chord), the chord is no longer diatonic because I have added a new element that contradicts the notes you are playing.
If the melody and chords stay true to the original bucket/source, we are staying diatonic.
This is a very “safe” way to play-meaning that if you stay within the bucket you won’t hit any ugly notes.
*Because it is so commonly heard, some styles of music (namely Jazz and Classical) might dip into several different buckets over the course of one song. The trick is to have the melody and chords switch buckets at the same time.
We’ll refer back to this concept often so please make sure you understand it before moving on.
