Learn to Accompany Yourself

on The Guitar

With Special Emphasis Put on Playing

Jewish Music.

A Project of

Camp S’dei Chemed International

By Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum and Rabbi Aryeh Schechter

Note: Camp S’dei Chemed International has always been synonymous with Jewish Music and over the years has been fortunate to have had some of the most talented arrangers, composers and musicians such as Yisroel Lamm, Shia Mendlowitz, Abe Rotenderg, Boruch Chait Yigal Calek, Avrohom Fried, Moshe Laufer, Yerachmiel Begun and many others as part of its staff. Our Camp Choir has entertained thousands the world over and has produced many recordings such as Around the Sabbos Table, Camp S’dei Chemed Sings Volume 1-4, Jewish Music to Relax to Volume 1-4, The Pieamentas, as well as many others productions. Music is an integral part of a Camp S’dei Chemed summer program in Israel. No camper will ever forget the inspiring and lively Shabbos zemiros, or the joyous singing and dancing late into the night at the Kotel, at a camp malave malkah, kumzitz, or the sellout concerts in Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv. The Camp S’dei Chemed International Choir is representative of the flavor of the camp itself. It is an international blend of voices; the voices of young yeshiva boys blending together in unique yet diversified harmony. It represents a kaleidoscope of the finest musical talents in Jewish circles. Their melodies awaken and inspire our hearts toward a greater love for Torah and attachment to Hashem. We invite you to join.

Note: We are also planning to make a video to accompany this instruction book.

Table of Contents.

Lesson 1: An Introduction to Music:

Lesson 2: A look at the Guitar:

Lesson 3: Tuning the guitar:

Lesson 4: Frets:

Lesson 5: Strumming or Plucking the Guitar Strings:

Lesson 6: Learning Our First Cord of A minor:

Lesson 7: Learning the cord of E minor and E 7^th.

Lesson 8: Learning to Strum the Guitar:

Lesson 9: Learning a new strum pattern:

Lesson 10: Changing Cords:

Lesson 11: Cord of D Minor:

Lesson 12: Accompanying Ourselves:

Lesson 13: Learning the cord of G Major:

Lesson 14: Cord of E Major or just plain E.

Lesson 15: Completing the Songs We’ve Begun to Learn:

Lesson 16: Learning More Strum Patterns:

Lesson 17: Let’s learn some more songs:

Lesson 18: Understanding a Major Scale:

Lesson 19: The use of a Capo:

Lesson 20: Learning some new Major cords:

Lesson 21: Songs Using the Major Cords:

Lesson 22: Finger picking:

Lesson 1: An Introduction to Music:

Note: You can skip this part if you wish and go directly to lesson 2.

Before we introduce you to the Guitar, we’ll first give you a very short introduction to music. Altogether there are only seven different notes.

We will call them by the first seven letters of the Alphabet. A-B-C-D-E-F-G. Think of it like the seven days in a week. After the seventh note we begin again with the A note.

Being that this A note is the eight note, we therefore call it the octave which stands for 8. It sounds about the same as the first A note but is one octave higher. Let’s look at a piano keyboard and show you these notes so that you can understand what we’ve just explained

If you look at the keyboard you will see that there are white keys and groups of black keys. Notice that the black keys are divided into groups of twos and threes. The one between the three black notes is marked A.

There are many A notes on the keyboard and they all sound the same except that each is one octave higher.

The black notes represent the half notes which lie in between the whole notes. Notice that there are no black notes between B and C and between E and F. That’s because these notes are actually only a half step apart. Think of notes as a staircase with different size steps going up. Sometimes there are full sized steps and sometimes there are short half steps to make the walking easier. The musical staircase looks like this.

						7
					6
				5
			4
		3
	2
1

When we play the notes starting with A and continuing on with B-C-D-E-F-G- and up to the next A without using any of the black notes we have played the key called A Minor also written as Am for short. Notice that the half steps are between step 2 and 3 (B and C) and between step 5 and 6 (E and F).

Any time we follow this pattern it is called a minor scale. It has sort of a sad sound.

Most Jewish songs, but not all, follow this pattern and therefore we will begin teaching minor cords before teaching you Major cords. Later on we will explain what a Major scale is.

Cords: Cords are a group of notes that when played together make a pleasant sound. There are many different cords but you will only have to learn a few different cords to play lots of songs.

Lesson 2: A look at the Guitar:

As you notice, a Guitar has six strings. The first string which is the bottom string is the very thinnest of them all, while the top string which we will refer to as the sixth string is the fattest of them.

Each string of the guitar is tuned to a different note.

The first string is tuned to the note E.

The second string is tuned to B.

The third string is tuned to G.

The forth string is tuned to D.

The fifth string is tuned to A.

The sixth string is once again tuned to E.

Note: This means that the sixth string has the very same sound as the first string but is a few octaves apart.

.

Top String 6 E

String 5 A

String 4 D

String 3 G

String 2 B

Bottom String 1 E

1

6

Lesson 3: Tuning the guitar:

You tune a Guitar by tightening or loosening the strings. When you tighten a string, the pitch goes up meaning it goes higher, and when you loosen a string the pitch goes lower.

In order to tune the strings properly we strongly recommend that you use an electronic tuning devise. After you get good at Guitar you can learn how to do it by ear.

At the end of the Guitar there are 6 tuning keys which you turn in order to tighten or loosen the strings. You begin by setting the button of the tuner to correspond to the name of the string you are tuning. When the needle of the tuner is in the middle, then it means that the string is properly tuned.

If you are viewing this on the Internet then you can click on the letters below and hear the sound of the strings.

E string 1 – bottom string.

B string 2.

G string 3

D string 4

A string 5

E string 6

Lesson 4: Frets:

The neck of a guitar showing the first four frets.

As you can see, there are metal pieces on the guitar neck which we call frets. Place any finger of your left hand just before the first fret of string 1 (the E string) and pluck the string with the thumb of your right hand. You have now played the note F which is a half note higher than E. Now move your finger to the next fret. Each fret makes the note go up another half note. ( A half note is called sharp and is written #. The F note which is one half note above E can also be called E# but we refer to it as F.).

Let’s now give each finger a number so that you will know which finger to place where.

The index finger is #1,

The next finger is #2,

The next finger is #3,

The pinky finger is #4.

The thumb is not used since it presses on the back of the Guitar.

Lesson 5: Strumming or Plucking the Guitar Strings:

Some Guitar players use a pick to pluck the strings while others use their fingers. The choice is up to you.

There are many different ways to strum a Guitar and we’ll get to that later. For the moment, just use your pick, thumb or fingers of your right hand to pluck the strings in a down or up motion.

Notice that the sound doesn’t sound very pleasant. In order to make a pleasing sound we will now learn about cords and then we will get back to strumming in lesson 7.

Lesson 6: Learning Our First Cord of A minor:

As we’ve already explained, a cord is a group of notes that sound pleasant to the ear when played together. We’ll begin with the cord called A minor which are the notes A C E.

A look at the diagram will show you exactly where to place your fingertips. Remember that only your fingertips should be touching the strings. Don’t touch any other strings with your fingers. Finger 2 goes on string 4 second fret. Finger 3 goes on the 3^rd string second fret and finger 1 goes on string 2 1^st fret. For this cord do not pluck the top 6th string.

Remember: Whenever you press a finger down on a string you must make sure to press it down firmly and also to put it down as close to the fret as possible without actually touching the fret. If you don’t push the string down hard enough, the note will not sound properly. This takes a little time to learn to do. After a few weeks of playing your fingers will get what is called a callous and it then becomes easier. Note: Pluck string 4, then string 3, then string 2, then string 1 in that order. These are the first 4 notes of the song Hevainu Shalom Aleichem. If it doesn’t sound like it, than you know that one of the strings is out of tune and you’d better retune your Guitar.

Cord of A Minor

Lesson 7: Learning the cord of E minor and E 7^th.

Now let’s learn our second cord of E minor which is a very easy cord to learn and only uses two fingers as you can see on the chart.

Cord of E Minor

Note: If you lift up finger 3, and put finger 1 on string 3 fret 1 then you will have the cord called E 7^th

Cord of E 7th

Lesson 8: Learning to Strum the Guitar: