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Hi, everybody. My name is Esteban.
And I'm here today to begin
your little voyage into the world of the guitar.
And the guitar, as I like to call it, is a quiet voice
in a world of confusion and restlessness.
It speaks quietly of what's inside of each of us.
Guitar players that play the classical-style guitar
can get into their emotions and let them come through their hands
and their hearts out to the public, to the
glory of everyone. It's a beautiful instrument, and I hope that
you take your instrument out of the box that you just received
and love it as much as I love my guitar.
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It makes a real difference in your life when you play the guitar from your heart.
And that's the big secret. So together today,
in this video, my goal is to teach you
the very basics of the classical-style guitar
and then teach you a couple
songs. One of them will be Malagueña, the basic melody
for Malagueña, and then we're going to play a Faruka, a flamenco Faruka
dance.
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So let's go to the beginnings.
The guitar came from the Greeks, the
Greek kithara, way back in Greek times. We're going back, back
into time. And it evolved through the centuries until around
the mid-1800s when Antonio Torres
from Spain put a beautiful kind of
bracing under the face of the guitar, and we
call it now Torres bracing, and it made the guitar come alive.
And he made a guitar in the 1800s that looks
very much like the guitar you're seeing right here, and the one you have.
This guitar is a cutaway. The guitar that you have is a more
standard classical model. The cutaway I use
to get up and play the very, very high notes very quickly, and in my performances
I must do that. But the classical guitar that you
have looks almost exactly the same as the guitar that
Antonio Torres designed in the mid-1800s. And it is
a template for all guitars that have been made ever since.
Now we're going to move
into the actual guitar itself. The
parts of the guitar and how to use them,
to explain them. Alright, the first thing we
want to explain is that the guitar is comprised
of a soundboard which is
what makes the sound. This is the actual thing that makes the sound.
The soundboard vibrates as you pluck the string.
Now, the strings are
pulled across the soundboard and attached to the soundboard
by this bridge down here.
The strings are actually attached to the soundboard. They're tied.
You're going to have to learn to change your own guitar strings.
It's not a difficult thing to do. Just look and see how
it came on your guitar and duplicate it. You simply wind it through,
wind it around, and you pull it up tight into the
tuning heads or machine heads. The tuning machine heads
pull on the strings, tighten the strings,
and thereby giving you tension on the face of the
guitar. The strings get tight, making a tone.
Your job right now is to
just simply understand that the guitar makes
its sound by the tuning machine
pulling the string tight against the bridge
and then you plucking the string with your thumb or your fingers. The sound
goes in and vibrates against this and the whole top
makes this beautiful, beautiful vibration.
Well, I'm going to explain
the two positions for the classical style guitar.
The first position and the one that Segovia
endorses, the great master of the classical
guitar and my former teacher,
is this position where you get a block, some kind of
a block of wood or a footstool, and you simply
put your left foot on the stool itself.
You rest the little indentation, the curve of the guitar
right on your leg. You hold the guitar
barely touching the top of the chest so it can breathe
and vibrate. And then your guitar
is touched by the right arm right
at this point here and here is the position
in which most classical guitarists play.
It is the classical position
and it gives you freedom of movement and it's
a very good position. So take a look at this
and what I want you to do is go into this position and see
if it's comfortable for you.
This is exactly how it should look. Just duplicate what I am doing
and then you can determine if this is a good position for you.
Most classical players that play Bach and Scarlatti and the classical
composers use this position for freedom of left hand
movement. The other position is this position.
You put your right foot on the footstool
and the guitar sits a little higher on the chest
and the guitar is more
horizontal to the floor.
And so what we have now is a different position to play
the guitar. Now the reason I use this position is simply
because for me it's more comfortable. I feel more comfortable
playing and performing this way than the other way. I don't
like the idea that I am bent over so much trying to play.
I like to try to sit up as much as possible when I perform.
You can use either position. Stick to it.
Don't change. Whatever one you choose, that's the one that will be
your companion all through your guitar playing days.
There are six
strings on the guitar. They have names.
The names are the standard tunings
of the guitar and the strings are called E,
A, D,
G, B
and another E. The top E and the bottom E
are the same note. They're just octaves apart.
The important thing to remember when beginning
to play guitar is the relationship of the frets to the
strings. This is a little grid pattern here that you're looking
at. You see this? Each individual steel
bar going across the neck of the instrument,
these things are called frets. And the frets
make the different tones as you press
the string. For instance, let's start with this low
E string down here. We play it open.
Then we play the first fret. The tone changes. It becomes
an F. The next fret, F sharp.
G. So what you're doing is as you place
your fingers on the frets of the guitar,
the tones change. It's important when you
press the notes with the left hand that you press them all the way down.
If you're playing notes, which are these,
or chords, which are these.
If they're
not pressed all the way down, it sounds like this.
It's not clear. It's not clean.
You want clean, beautiful sounding notes. Therefore,
you must develop calluses on your left hand. They're not really ugly.
At the beginning, you might not like the way they feel. They're a little hard.
But if you play the guitar one hour a day,
you'll develop, within a week, calluses on the left
hand. And then you can make these beautiful tones on the guitar.
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Okay. We have the frets. The first
fret is this fret, and the little space behind it,
this entire thing. As I'm pointing, this area is called
the first fret. Here is the second fret. Here is the third
fret, the fourth fret, the fifth fret, etc.
And so you're going to be placing your fingers on the different
frets at different times and places.
Right now, if you took your guitar out of the case, it's untuned. The strings are kind of limp.
You need to tune the strings up. And it's very easy
to do, but it takes a little practice.
For the first week or so, you're going to have a hard time, maybe,
getting your guitar to be in perfect tuning. But let's
use my guitar to tune your guitar. So immediately,
what you want to do is take your guitar out of its case, and
you want to start tuning the machine heads,
turning the strings up, because they're loose right now. You want to get them tight.
Not too tight. So begin turning the sixth string
with your machine head, and you turn it. If you had a clock sitting
here, you turn it clockwise. If you're looking at a
clock on the face of your guitar, there was a clock here. The clock is going this
way. You turn the machine head that way as well.
So now you turn this until you get this tone. Listen.
You tune
this machine head to this tone.
Keep going until you get this tone.
Keep cranking away on that thing until you
get close to this tone right here. That's the
E. You want to keep tuning
that up, keep tuning it up, keep tuning it up.
Now, you can come back to this
point at any time, obviously, by rewinding your tape
to this section. Okay, so let's tune the guitar. Sixth
string. Here's the tone. Make it
sound like that.
Keep fiddling
with it. Alright.
Now, we're going to go to the fifth string.
Tune the
fifth string. That's the one in the middle,
the machine head in the middle, clockwise.
So you get that tone out of the fifth string. These strings are going to
stretch. Take your time. Everything will work out. They'll stretch
in about a couple days. Keep coming back to this section to tune your guitar.
Listen to the A string. That's the
second string that we've now tuned. We started with the sixth,
we're now at the fifth string, or the A string.
Make the fifth string sound like this.
Good.
Now, let's go to the fourth string.
The fourth string is called D.
And now we want to bring the top
machine head by turning it clockwise until you make this tone.
That's D.
Again, come back, rewind your tape to
lesson point one, tuning your guitar. And that's where we are
now. Okay, now we go
to the G string, or the third string. We move to the other side where these machine
heads are, and you tune appropriately.
Make that sound with the third string.
Keep coming up until you get that tone.
Just listen and try to match it directly.
Good.
Good. Now we're going to the second string.
Again, we're turning this thing clockwise, always.
The second string is called B.
And we're matching the tone. Keep turning that machine head.
Turn it up until you get
the same matching sound on your guitar.
And last but not least,
the E string.
Tune the first machine head to that note.
Until it matches.
Now I'm going to go over,
spend ten seconds on each string again, so now
your guitar should be pretty close. I'm going to do it again now.
Sixth string.
Match it up. Fifth string.
Match up that fifth string. Fourth string.
Third string.
Second string.
And first string, or E.
Okay, now your guitar should be
close to being in tune. What I want you to do to facilitate
stretching the strings a little bit is by taking your index finger
and your thumb on the sixth string and giving it a little push together like this.
You're doing this to stretch the string. If you stretch it like that,
each string, you will take the stretch out of
the string very quickly and it will stay in tune for you.
So after you do that on each string, look what I'm doing. I'm taking my thumb
and my index finger, I'm putting them on the sixth string
and you push them together. Same with the fifth string.
Same with the fourth string. Third string. Second string.
First string. Stretch the strings like this. Not too hard.
You could break the string if you do it too hard, but stretch it so
you can actually feel it giving a little bit. Then go back,
rewind to lesson point one and re-tune your guitar.
Let's begin
to talk about the hands of the guitar.
Your hands as they adapt to the instrument.
We're going to begin to talk about left hand first.
The left hand is the hand that plays the notes and the chords
that makes the different sounds. If you didn't use this hand, all you could do
with the guitar is this.
You couldn't do much because the right hand can't do
only about 40% of the work. The rest
of the work is done by the left hand and you have to know how to
use it. So therefore, the way
that you put your left hand into position is very simple on the classical
style guitar. You never want to see your thumb. This is a
big point. Your thumb, you don't want up here. You don't want
your thumb ever up here. You want your thumb behind the neck.
Really get this. Thumb behind
the neck. Not coming up. When you grab a chord,
hold your thumb behind the neck. Right in
the middle, usually under the first or second finger,
depending upon what chord you're playing or what note you're playing.
But remember, keep the thumb underneath, approximately
in the middle of the neck. Once in a while it will slide up like this,
but never this. You never play guitar
like this. A lot of people do that play rock and roll guitar and
steel string guitar, but for this kind of instrument, it's not advisable.
What you want to do is keep your thumb behind the neck.
Okay, now what about your finger placement?
The most critical thing about finger placement is the
perpendicular rule, the 90 degree rule. Do you see how
my fingers are on the frets? They're
perpendicular to the strings. All you do when you
play a note is you go in perpendicular and you raise
a little arch up and you touch the string.
You put your finger, let's say for instance, you're going to play a note
right there on the second fret third
string. You see where I am? The second fret third string.
If you're going to play this note, the way at the beginning
you learn to do it is by placing your finger perpendicular
to the strings. You see that 90 degree angle between
the finger and the strings? Okay, that's the proper position.
Now you raise this up and now
what you have is a little arch. This little arch
under your finger is the way you play. You don't play like this, you don't play like that, you
play like this. You want to arch your fingers from
90 degrees, arch them up. So when you're playing a chord,
I'm going to show you three chords in this lesson today. When you're
playing a chord, you put your chord in place,
your fingers are behind the neck, and
you simply start out like this at the 90 degree
rule and then you raise the chord
upward and you arch your fingers. Look at that
arch in those fingers right there. This is what you must strive to do
when you play the guitar, the classical style guitar.
Get this arch in your fingers. You don't want this flat business going on here.
You want an arch. Okay. So keep that
in mind. Those are the most important parts about the left hand technique. If you
use what I just told you diligently, you will never have a problem
with performing little musical
pieces and even difficult things later on. If you get this position
down properly now, you will be set for life and you will
be able to play this guitar in such a beautiful way.
The right hand technique. Now let's move to the right hand.
The right hand does this wondrous stuff on the guitar
that makes it sound like David's harp.
So the right hand, it is a very exciting thing
to be able to play the guitar just by not strumming with the pick. Picks are
great and they have their usage, but on the classical style
guitar, to express within, you can take
the flesh of your hand, touch the strings with your nails
and you can make beautiful, beautiful music.
Alright. Now I'm going to explain to you how
the right hand works on the guitar.
The most important part of the right hand technique is
not playing in the wrong position.
You must play in the proper position. Do not let yourself
get lazy and flip around like this. You see what I'm doing?
A lot of people will play guitar like this
and you can only get so far. You can't excel
playing the guitar like that. You must have your fingers. It's the same
rule as with the left hand. It's the perpendicular rule.
You bring your fingers down and if you look, they're perpendicular
to the strings. You raise your fingers up into an arch
and they are perpendicular
to the strings and yet we are going up.
And now you place your thumb. And you see this little
bridge kind of a thing I have here? This is very important. This little
bridge is one of the secrets to playing
the guitar very beautifully and very well in an accomplished
manner. You don't want to be like this. You don't want to be like this. You don't want to
be like this. You want to have this little bridge all the
time going up from your thumb to your fingers.
Now when you place your hand on the guitar, you place your thumb
on one of the bass notes. Let's use the sixth string for now.
And then what you do is you take each
individual finger and you assign them a string. And the string
for the first finger, your index finger, is the third string
or G. Where'd it go? There it is. Alright.
So the thumb is resting on the sixth
string. Your index finger is resting on the first string.
Your middle finger is resting on the second string.
Your ring finger is resting on the third string.
Do you see that? But right now, I'm just putting your
fingers on the strings. So you see the proper positioning
of your hand on the guitar.
Very few people play the guitar properly.
And this is one of the secrets. The proper usage
of the right hand. You see what I'm doing?
And the proper positioning of the left hand.
There are many techniques on the right hand
for the guitar. Many techniques. We can go on and on about them.
We can do strums, raschiaros, we can do tremolos, apollando,
all the different techniques. But the thing to remember right now is just
to place your fingers on sixth string with your thumb,
third string with the index, second string with the middle, ring finger
is on the first string. And just kind of get used to
that. Just kind of pluck them together like this.
Now as far as nails go, if you want to play the classical guitar, grow your
nails. You don't have to have them as long as I do. Mine are about a quarter inch
off the end of the finger. I do a lot of raschiaros, a lot of very hard
flamenco playing, and I need my nails this long because I wear
them down. But normally, you know,
a little less than a quarter of an inch. When you look at your fingers this way,
a little less than a quarter of an inch above the tip of the fingers,
very fine, and you'll do very well that way. Grow your nails.
The sound that you make on the guitar comes from a combination of
the flesh and the nail plucking the string at the
same time basically.
Without the nail, the guitar
sounds very quiet.
And that's the way the guitar was played for many, many years.
It was only a parlor instrument. Nobody could hear it.
Maestro Segovia came around and he said, let's put a little bit of
vibrancy into this music and let's grow our nail
and make a tone.
So that's why we want to use nails.
So the right hand position is very simple.
The position, the little arch, remember the little arch,
fingers are 90 degrees to the strings. Don't come in this way.
Don't come in this way. Your fingers are 90 degrees to the strings.
And as they come down 90 degrees, assign each
finger a string. First finger gets the third, second finger
gets the second, first finger gets the first, and then you put your bass note
in with your thumb. Arch your hand up like that.
Pluck the notes.
Now the sixth string with your thumb,
then the third string with your index finger where it's
resting, the second string with your
middle finger where it's resting, and the first string
with your ring finger. And just go.
That's an arpeggio.
It's a beautiful technique on the guitar. And just get your hand used to plucking
the notes. It's a very beautiful thing to do
as far as making music. Listen.
Music playing.
Music playing.
The first chord is called E major.
And as we begin to play Malagena, this is the bass root chord of Malagena.
Now we're going to take the second finger of your hand.
The fingers are simply numbered.
One, two, three, four. This is not difficult. One, two, three, four.
The fingers on the left hand are one, two, three, four.
So when I say the second finger, that's the one.
We're going to take the second finger and we're going to place it on
the fifth string, second fret.
Now I explained this before to you, frets and strings.
It's the fifth string, this one.
It's not the second string. We're starting at the bottom.
Six, five, four, three, two, one. It's the fifth string,
the second fret. Put your second finger
right there. Everybody sees that.
Now, take your third finger
and place it on the fourth string, second fret.
Right beneath the other finger I just mentioned.
And last but not least, the first finger
is being placed on the third string,
first fret. Now take a look at that position there.
And you'll see the proper position for an E major chord.
That's it. You see how the fingers are arched?
Do you see that the fingers are pressing into the fret?
And you hold that there. And you want to hold
that and press as hard as you can. Take your thumb, strum
all six strings. Slowly.
That's the sound you should get.
If you're getting this,
you're simply not pressing the string hard
enough and you must develop your calluses. Try to make this sound
like this.
Okay. That is called the E major chord.
We're going to do our first exercise on the E major chord
with the right hand. Holding the E major chord in position,
you're going to take your thumb and place it on the sixth
string like we did before. The index finger
is on the third string. Middle finger
is on the second string. Ring finger is on
the first string. You see how my fingers are? You're holding the E
major chord now. Just simply do that same arpeggio
I showed you before. Here we go. We're going to pluck the sixth,
third, second, first.
Those are the strings I'm talking about now. Sixth string,
third string, second string, first string.
Six, three, two, one. Six, three, two, one. Six, three,
two, one. Six, three, two, one. Do that
about five times in a row. And then go to five,
three, two, one. Five, three, two, one. Five, three, two, one.
You're changing your thumb now from the sixth
to the fifth. These three fingers remain the same.
They're doing the same thing every time. Six, three, two, one.
Six, three, two, one. Six, three, two, one. Now
we go five. Five, three, two, one. Five, three, two, one.
Five, three, two, one. Now we go to four.
Four, three, two, one. Four, three, two, one. Four, three,
two, one. Now watch how my fingers look as they pluck
strings 6 3 2 1 6 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 3 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 so here we go in one
after the other now 6 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 6 3 2 1 5 3 2 1 4 3 2 1
the second chord that we're going to learn is the A minor chord in Malagueña
as in the little Faruka the A minor chord is the second chord you play you
know it's a very simple thing the A minor chord you're holding the E major
chord and all you do now watch this is you drop each finger one string down in
the same position watch you see what I just did there that's now a minor back
to e major watch we just moved it back up one string moving back to a minor one
string moving and now the A minor chord takes your thumb strum the strings
sounds like that beautiful the E major chord listen to it again back to E major
a minor
I'm going back and forth between the E major and the A minor simply using my
thumb strum beautiful sounding chords so the A minor chord the way you put it on
let's say for instance that you are putting it on fresh you do the same
thing as the E major only down a string take your second finger you place it on
the fourth string second fret take your third finger you place it on the third
string second fret take your first finger place it on the second string
first fret and there we have a minor now the exercise for a minor is the same
exercise is for e except you don't use the sixth string you start with the
fifth string with your thumb very simple your index is on the third middle on the
second ring finger on the first strings and your thumb is now on the fifth
string
see that
that's the A minor chord exercise so what we want to do with this one is take
thumb hitting five three two one five three two one five three two one now
move the thumb to the fourth string four three two one four three two one four
three two one here we go five three two one four three two one five three two
one four three two one that's what we want to do back and forth on the A minor
chord
the third chord you're going to learn in the video is D minor D minor is not
needed from Malagena but for the little Faruqa that we play at the end it is
needed the D minor chord is easy as well it's a little bit more of a stretch but
quite a simple chord take your first finger press it on the first string
first fret take your second finger press it on the third string second fret take
your third finger and place it on the second string third fret we're to say it
again first finger first string first fret second finger third string second
fret third finger second string third fret your thumb of course is under the
strings and you see the arch the old arch we're talking about you want to
keep that there just like that all right that's D minor and in D minor we do the
same thing with the right hand that except only this time you only play the
fourth string with your thumb and then the index place three two one so here's
the fourth string with the thumb for three two one four three two one four
You want to practice the E major, the A minor, and the D minor like this.
The first thing you want to do is instead of plucking the strings, make it easy on yourself
at the beginning and just concentrate on the three chords at hand, the E major, the A minor,
and the D minor chord.
Take your thumb, play each one four times in a row.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, back to A minor.
One, two, three, four, back to E major.
One, two, three, four, so you go four times in each chord.
E major, A minor, D minor.
Put your fingers down one at a time.
A minor, put your fingers down.
E major, put your fingers down.
Now practice that a lot.
Practice it a lot.
If you're watching TV, put them on.
If you're listening to the radio, put them on.
Just do whatever you can to get those three chords in your fingers.
It's called soul memory, it's called.
Now, what the big secret is, is now you try to do it without stopping the beat.
So you go one, two, three, four, keep the thumb going.
Don't stop it now.
Every beat counts.
At the end of four, you change to the A minor and be in that chord before your thumb comes down.
Keep this going like a clock.
You see that?
It's going to take you a little bit of work to do that,
but if you want to go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one.
I'm just changing the chords with a beat, a simple four beat.
Okay.
Here's mulligania.
Take your thumb, play the fourth string.
Got it?
Take your index finger, play the first string.
So you're going to go on this mulligania, four, one.
You're holding the chord all the time.
Don't move this chord yet.
Four, one, then we go to three, one, three, one, two, one.
So over and over, you're going to play four, one, three, one, two, one.
And you want to continue to do that.
Four, one, three, one, two, one, four, one, three, one, two, one, four, one, three, one.
Until it's easy for you.
Four, one, three, one, two, one, four, one, three, one.
Those are the first three notes of mulligania.
You repeat it though.
Four, one, three, one, two, one, four, one, three, one.
Now, that's the first part.
Then you move to your A minor chord.
Place it in position and play these notes.
Three, one, two, one.
Then the big trick, first time, you've got to take your index finger off of the A minor chord to play the next note of mulligania.
And that's two, one again.
But this time it's an open string.
So I don't want to lose anybody here.
We're starting back on the A minor chord.
When you make the switch to A minor, you play three, one, two, one.
Take your finger off, two, one.
Okay? Then you go three, one.
And then you go three, one again.
But this time you take the other finger off A minor.
Just watch my fingers and do what I do and you'll be fine.
And then the last thing you do is you place this same third finger on the fourth string third fret.
And you play four, one.
That's the entire part of mulligania that I want to show you.
When you put it all together it makes good sense.
Now I'm going to start slowly.
You watch my fingers and what they do.
I'm going to try to show you slowly.
So here we go.
E major, four, three, two.
The one is playing in between each of those now.
Four, three, two.
Four, three, two.
A minor.
Three, two, open.
Three, open.
Press the fourth string third fret.
And then you slide it back to E major.
And you repeat it.
E major.
Four, one, three, one, two, one.
Four, one, three, one, two, one.
A minor. Three, one, two, one.
Take your finger off the A minor.
Two, one.
Then you play the third string.
Three, one.
Take your finger off the third string.
Put the third finger on the fourth string third fret.
Slide it back to E major.
That's part of your E major chord.
And you revolve that entire thing.
When you do it slowly here's how it sounds.
Now watch my fingers up here.
It'll give you a good perspective on what I'm doing.
Change.
Did you see that?
I'm going to do it again down here.
You want to play it like this.
It's not difficult.
It might sound difficult, but it's not.
Very important to make it flow like water.
Make it flow evenly.
And I'm going to do it one more time
so you understand exactly what I'm doing.
E major chord.
Play four, three, two.
Four, three, two.
That's the easy part.
Now we go to A minor.
It's also easy.
Move your chord.
Play the third string.
Play the second string.
Remove your first finger from the second string.
Play the second string.
Play the third string.
Remove your finger from the third string.
Place your third finger on the fourth string third fret.
Slide back down to the E major and repeat it again.
So it's a very simple process, and how beautiful that is.
You can play the beginning bars of Malagena,
and you can play it sound professional in less than a week.
If you practice your chord changes
and if you practice the right hand technique
and just work on moving them smoothly from one chord to another,
you'll be able to play Malagena beautifully.
Now we're going to begin the Faruca.
It's called Duende, off of my Duende album.
And we're using the same three chords that we just were playing
that you've been practicing, of course, all these last few days, haven't you?
E major, A minor, D minor.
And we want to be able to switch those chords smoothly.
So I'm warning you, don't begin this Faruca lesson
until you can change these chords easily.
And what I mean by that is
you must be able to take your thumb and play downstrokes.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four, change.
One, two, three, four.
You want to be able to switch these chords smoothly.
If you can't do that, don't start this section.
Practice these chords until you can do them smoothly.
You should be able to go, really,
you should be able to play them with your thumb.
One...
...becomes muscle memory after a while.
It's very simple.
Every beat, I'm changing the chords on every beat
instead of every four beats.
I'm changing every beat. Watch.
That's what you should be able to do.
Doing that...
You will have a hard time playing the Faroukha
if you can't do that.
The Faroukha uses altered chords.
We're going to be playing the E major chord,
but we're going to be playing it in a little different way.
We're also going to be using the index finger of the right hand
to do a technique, a downstroke, upstroke technique
on the strings.
It's a strumming technique with the index finger only.
You rest your thumb on the sixth string,
and you simply do this.
I want you to practice this. Watch it from the side.
Thumb on the sixth string, index finger plays
down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up,
over and over again.
When you come back, you don't have to hit all the strings.
Just whatever your finger hits, maybe the top two or three.
But down, you're getting all five strings.
You use the thumb to brace it.
You're really not playing the sixth string right now.
That's the technique for the Poukha.
I'm going to show you the first beginning chords.
It's an E major chord, but you take your third finger off,
and you're going to be placing it in a moment.
You're going to be placing it on the second string second fret,
and then you're going to be placing your little finger,
the first time you've used your pinky, on the second string third fret.
You're going to be doing this.
Just take a look at that one I'm showing you right now,
because this is what you're going to be doing.
You hear me making that noise.
Those are called hammer-ons, but don't worry about that.
Here's the technique then.
Watch my index finger.
On the E major chord, you simply play E seventh.
You take your fingers off.
You only have these two on now, so you go...
See what I just did? I just went down, up.
This is simple. Down, up.
Put the third finger on the second string second fret.
Do it again.
Put the fourth finger on the second string third fret.
Take the fourth finger off.
So we're playing...
Here's the technique. I want you to make it sound like this.
Open, second, third, open, open, second, third, open.
I'm talking about the frets now.
Second, third, open, second, third, open, A minor.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Second, third, open, A minor.
That's the beginning of the foruca.
You're setting this beautiful rhythm.
The dancers used to dance on tables with this very exciting form of flamenco guitar and flamenco dance.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Okay, I want you to do that. This is not hard.
E chord, you just take the fingers off.
Leave the first and second fingers on.
You're going to be placing them on second and third frets of the second string.
It's not hard. We go like this.
Open, down, up, second, down, up, down, up again.
We're on the third, open, A minor.
Get that much first.
Don't do anything more until you get that.
Then come back to the lesson.
Okay, continuing the lesson.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Now, you have to now flatten out the first finger onto the F note, which is the first string, first fret in the A minor chord.
This is not difficult either.
All this means is you're playing the A minor, and then you flatten it out.
Then you go down, up, and then take it off.
Go back to your A minor.
So now watch. Together, slowly.
E, we're starting the whole thing over.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
So in A minor, you go twice. One, two, flatten your finger, and then back to A minor.
So you're really doing down, up four times in the A minor chord.
Two of them, one of them, flatten, and then one more.
Okay, so now the whole section sounds like this.
Open, second, third, open, A minor.
Get it that good, and then go to the next part, which is the D minor chord.
Very simple also, but again, make sure you've got this much perfect.
Repeat it.
Making sure your fingers are arched, everybody.
Remember, now my thumb rides up a little bit because my hands are huge.
Most people's thumb you can keep under here, but when I'm playing, I'm still arched,
but my thumb rides up a little bit, just to let you know that this is not incorrect if you have large hands.
But your normal thumb position is under here. Keep in mind, your fingers are arched.
Do it the right way. Don't cheat.
And you'll be able to play this foruca with such grace and vigor after a little while
that you'll be just the happiest person in the world. Here we go.
Now, after you do that, we go to the D minor chord.
You have to switch to the D minor chord, and you have to play it one, two, three, four, four times down and up.
Very simple. So the whole thing is now going to E major. E seventh now with your fingers off is called E seventh.
Normally E major is there. E seventh fingers come off. We're ready to play our little melody.
Again, E minor, A minor, E seventh.
That's the whole basic foruca. All kinds of exciting things to do after that.
We'll go into that in lesson two, but let's make sure that you get this foruca down perfectly.
We're going to do it one more time from the beginning, slowly, and then I'll bring it up to speed.
We're going to have the E major chord. Fingers are arched. Of course, you have your calluses by now.
Your E major chord is ready to go. Fingers off. It's now an E seventh chord.
You're strumming down, up, sharp little strum, up, up, up, up, like this. Here we go.
Down, up, down, up.
There's four down, ups, and a row there. A minor. We're going to do four again.
Two of them straight. Flatten the finger. Back to A minor.
We're going to repeat that cycle on E seventh again.
Repeat it again. Three times you repeat this cycle.
Go to D minor chord four times.
A minor chord four times. E fourth. This time it's E major.
Four times, and you end on A minor one, two, three.
Now I'm going to do it to speed.
That's it. That's the basic rhythm of the Faruqa.
What I've shown you in this lesson is the very beginning techniques of how to play on the classical style guitar.
On the classical style guitar you can play love songs, flamenco music, rock and roll music.
You can play classical guitar. You can play the flamenco guitars I was doing, jazz.
You can play everything on the classical style guitar.
Your job in this lesson is to learn two songs. Malagueña, the beginning form, and Faruqa, the beginning form.
Get these smooth. Make them beautiful. Put your own expression into them.
You can vary it a little bit, but mainly play from your heart.
I'm going to play, as we go out of this, I'm going to play a Faruqa a little bit for you in a more full version.
With some additional techniques. Watch my fingers, what they do.
You might be able to learn some of these. I will not show you these in this lesson, but I will show you these in lessons to come.
This is the Faruqa.
The Faruqa.
The Faruqa.
The Faruqa.
The Faruqa.
The Faruqa.