Guitar Lesson How To Change Guitar Strings

Guitar Lesson – How To Change Guitar Strings

At some point, all guitarists need to learn how to change the strings on their guitar. Sometimes you'll be forced to change one when a string snaps. But usually, you'll simply want to change them, as strings lose their brightness and wear out.

The amount of time you leave between change strings varies depending on several factors. If you play your guitar regularly, then you might like to change your strings once a week or once a month.

Most Professional guitarists tend to change their strings before each gig. But in the end, it all comes down to a matter of personal preference. Something to bear in mind if you're using your guitar for a gig, is that your strings need a few hours of play to break in properly. During this time, your strings will go out of tune as they stretch so you'll have to retune.

Anyway, here's what you do:
Remove the old strings by detuning the machine heads until the tension becomes loose enough to allow you to pull each string away from the headstock.

Another quick way to remove the old strings is to snip them using a pair of wire cutters. Be very careful if you do it this way, and make sure they are loose, since the bare ends of the strings can be sharp and easily flap around. Bare guitar strings are amongst the many things you DO NOT want to catch in your eye.

How you go about installing your new strings will usually depend on the type of guitar you have, as many guitars have slightly different methods. However, the strings are usually held in place at one end by fixtures behind or on the bridge, and at the other by turning the machine head on the headstock.

Here's a small insider tip guitarists have been using for years to get more life from your steel strings once you've removed them: Boil them.

Dropping a set of strings into a pan of boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes will remove a lot of the grimy build up and bring a new life back to what would otherwise be lifeless strings.

It won't last for very long, and you can't get away with doing it too many times, but it can be an effective temporary measure.

I wouldn't suggest you rely on this technique too much, strings aren't too expensive - and using new strings saves you a lot of hassle.

Regardless of what kind of guitar you have, your strings need to be stretched after you've put them on. When you first tune your guitar, put your hand under each string around the pickup area, pull the string a few centimeters away from the fretboard, then release it. If the pitch has dropped, retune and repeat the process. Keep doing this until all the strings stay in tune.

On most electric guitars the strings are either secured at the bridge end by an independent tailpiece (like most Gibson guitars), or passed through the body of the instrument from the back into an all-in-one bridge unit (like most fender style guitars).

At one end of every steel string, you will find a tiny disc of metal around which one end of the string is wrapped. This is called the ball end.

Take the opposite end of the string and thread it through the fixture at the bridge.

Pull the string through until the ball end stops you from pulling the string any further.

Most electric and steel-string guitars use a similar system for securing strings at the machine head. The capstan to which the string is attached stands out vertically from the headstock. Strings can be passed through a hole in the side of the capstan.

The end is then passed around and under, trapping it in place when the machine head is tightened. Some capstans have vertical slots instead of holes. To use these, cut the string to length, and insert into the tip of the capstan. Then bend the string to one side and wind it around.

This leaves the string endings neat and tidy.
Here's what you do next: Slowly turn the machine head for each string, increasing the tension until the string becomes suitably tight.

To save yourself time and energy, you can use a cheap plastic string winder, which simply fits over the machine head allowing you to crank it along more quickly.

BONUS : Guitar Lesson - How To Practice Guitar

If desire is the most important part of learning guitar(without it you wouldn’t have even started), then concentration is the most important part of practicing guitar.

I often say to people that 20 minutes of focused practice can beat, hands down, 2 hours of ‘normal’ practice, or just goofing about.

Many people are discouraged when they are told how much time they must put into practice. The truth is, you don’t have to practice all the time to be a good guitarist.

(I’m not saying you shouldn’t have time to goof off and play around. But if you want to improve quickly, you must keep playing guitar and practicing guitar separate.)

Let me tell you now…

It isn’t how much time you put into practice, it’s the quality of the practice that matters.

When I play guitar, I play to have fun, I play to perform for people, and I play for the fun of playing! That’s why I started learning guitar in the first place.

But when I practice guitar, I focus and concentrate on what I’m trying to achieve, and I work on the goals that I want to complete.

You see, if you completely focus on one thing you are more likely to do it well.

This may sound simple too to some. Some of you may be thinking “this is great, I only need to practice 20 minutes a day and ill improve more than I would if I practicing 2 hours a day”.

Well that’s not exactly true.

Its how focused your practice is that counts, not how long you practice. Can you really focus for 2 hours?

Let me give you this small example to illustrate my point.

Picture a red triangle inside a black box.

Close your eyes, and keep that image in your mind for 5 seconds without letting a single thing distract you – no other thought must enter your mind for that 5 seconds…

How well did you do? Be honest with yourself.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. Most people find this difficult at first. Its difficult to keep a focused mind like this.

I hope this example has shown you that it’s not that easy to keep focused attention & concentration for look periods of time.

But still, you must always remember that its quality and not quantity of practice that makes the difference between a great player and an average player.

This is a perfect time to tell you that you shouldn’t be spending hours and hours ‘practicing’, because you simply can’t focus for that amount of time.

If you are practicing for a solid 2 hours or more you are probably not helping your development as a guitarist that much.

A much better way of using this time is to practice in bursts.

A good idea would be to practice in bursts of 20 minutes or so. You can vary it depending on what you feel like doing, but try not to practice for long periods of time in one go. It’s not helping as much as you think it might be.

Also, it’s important to take breaks from what you’re practicing. You can do something else for awhile, go for a walk, watch TV, or maybe just play around and have fun with your guitar and loosen up a bit before you start focusing on practice again.

It is important for you to have a definition in your own mind of ‘practicing guitar’ and ‘playing guitar’.

This will keep you more focused and allow you to reach your goals as a guitarist much easier.

An exercise for you to try to help you further develop concentration is to sit silently and count slowly from one to ten in your mind.

If anything should interrupt your counting, whether it is a noise, a stray thought, or the awareness of your own breathing, you must start over from one.

Again, it’s unlikely you will be able to achieve this straight-away. It’s a hard thing to do. However how out and 'Zen' this exercise may seem, it will re-focus your mind on the task in hand, and it’ll help you learn faster if you can stay focused on what you’re practicing.

You should try this exercise whenever you start to feel like you’re loosing your focus.