Guitar All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2

Playing Easy Pieces in Open Position

IN THIS CHAPTER

Exploring counterpoint

Mastering melody and accompaniment

Practicing pieces in different textures

Access the audio tracks at www.dummies.com/go/guitaraio/

In this chapter the fun begins, because you get to play honest-to-goodness pieces of music. The pieces here are all rather easy to play. Where they differ is in texture.

These pieces make use of lots of open strings — and as any guitarist knows, an open string is easier to play than a fretted one. They contain no notes played above the 5th fret. Even though fretting a note at the 6th fret is technically no more difficult than playing a note at the 4th fret, people learning to read music on the guitar customarily begin with the lower frets and find playing music in low positions the easiest. And open strings and low positions naturally go together, because scales and chords played in low positions often include open strings in their very makeup. (The higher you go on the neck, the less likely you are to encounter those easy-to-play open strings.) Finally, the pieces ...