Guitar Lessons in Mississauga

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Guitar Lessons in Mississauga

Guitar classes taught by highly accredited guitar teachers

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About Mississauga Fine Arts Academy

Whether you would like to learn to play the guitar or you are looking for guitar lessons for your child, taking guitar lessons at a professional music school like the Mississauga Fine Arts Academy is the right way to go about it.

For anyone living in the Peel Region, our music school is not only the most obvious choice, but it's the most convenient one that offers professional guitar lessons for children and adults.

We currently offer online guitar lessons for anyone interested. This means that even if you are not in our area, you can start learning to play guitar. The online classes are well structured and deliver a practical guitar learning experience.

All our teachers are college and university trained and have great personalities. They have received their education from prestigious institutions such as The University of TorontoHumber College, York University, Berklee College of Music, Glenn Gould Professional School, and McGill University Faculty of Music. Many of our instructors have gone on performance tours of Canada, the US, and Europe. They have over 30 years of professional performance and teaching experience.

In addition to their teaching credentials, our teachers have an individual approach to each student as we believe that every student is unique and has different needs. They have warm personalities, are extremely friendly, and strive to get to know each student and their parents on a personal level.

But don't take our word for it; just take a look at what our students and their parents say about us in their own words.

Get prepared for your Royal Conservatory Exam

Our professional guitar lessons include teaching rock, blues, metal, country, and classical guitar lessons on electric and acoustic guitars. When taking guitar classes for beginners, you can expect to work on chords, simple songs, and melodies, sight-reading, and music theory.

We balance musicianship and fun by ensuring that each guitar lesson challenges you with a new technical or theoretical concept. However, your guitar lesson always ends with something fun, such as your favourite riff or song.

We use a variety of guitar method books to accomplish this. We always encourage you to bring your music player to your guitar lessons so that you can learn and practice your favourite tunes.

Before starting your first guitar lesson, we thought you may want to learn more about this fascinating musical instrument. We are confident that you will find the text below very interesting, intriguing, and inspirational. We hope it will ignite your talent within and will propel you towards a beautiful guitar learning journey.

Aside from the above information about our music school, we've put together a comprehensive overview of the guitar itself which we think you may find interesting and educational.

Enjoy getting to know the Guitar Instrument like never before!

What's The Origin Of The Guitar?

The English word “guitar” comes from the Spanish word “quitarra.” There is also some word association with the Greek kithara instrument that looked like a square framed harp. Some historians also connect the guitar to the old Persian chartar, a four-stringed instrument.

The guitar is a stringed musical instrument, a member of the chordophone family of musical instruments. The standard acoustic guitar has a flat body, incurved sides, and a long fretted neck. It is played with fingers or with a plectrum (guitar pick). Traditionally, constructed from wood with nylon or steel strings.

Classic Acoustic Guitar Parts
Headstock
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Capstan
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Tuning Pegs
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Nut
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First Fret
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First String
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Fingerboard
7 of 19
Position Markers
8 of 19
Neck
9 of 19
Upper Bout
10 of 19
Rosette
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Sound Hole
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Pick Guard
13 of 19
Bridge
14 of 19
Saddle
15 of 19
Bridge Pins
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Body
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Lower Bout
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Waist
19 of 19

The number of strings on a guitar varies. A standard acoustic guitar usually has six strings. Each string is named, numbered, and has a different thickness. When holding a standard guitar, the topmost string is the thickest one (number six) and then going down, the strings are numbered to string number one, which is the lowest and thinnest one. The thicker the string, the lower the pitch. The timbre of a guitar is determined by its body. In the video below you can hear the sound of the acoustic guitar strings.

Acoustic Guitar Strings Sound
Play Video
Guitar Strings Depicted

The metallic parts on the neck of the guitar are called frets. The acoustic guitar has 20 frets in total and a range of nearly four octaves (see image below). A guitar player uses his/her left-hand fingers to press the strings in the frets' spaces. This changes the length and pitch of the strings.

 

Take a look at this video for a short demonstration of this.

Acoustic Guitar Four Octaves
Play Video
Guitar's Range

History And The Evolution of The Guitar

The guitar is an ancient instrument. Its origins can be traced back to more than 4000 years ago. The earliest string instruments came from the Sumerian, Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, which were in the form of bowl harps and tanburs.

The bowl harps used tortoise shells and calabashes as resonators. They had a bent stick for a neck and one to two gut or silk strings.

The tanburs most likely developed from the bowl harps. They had long necks and egg or pear-shaped bodies, arched or round backs with soundboards made of wood or hyde.

There have been many archeological findings of artifacts from Persian and Mesopotamian cultures. Some of these folk instruments are still used in many cultures like the Greek bouzouki, Balkan tamburitza, Iranian setar, and Turkish saz.

The oldest preserved guitar-like instrument can be found at the Archeological Museum of the city of Cairo in Egypt. It is a 3500 years old tanbur that belonged to the Egyptian singer Har-Mose. This tanbur had three strings and a plectrum hanging from its neck.

The soundbox was made of cedarwood and rawhide as a soundboard.

Har-Mose

The oldest image of a guitar-like instrument was found in Turkey of a 3300 old Hittite guitar-like instrument that resembled today's guitar.

Other guitar predecessors are the oud and the lute. The Moors brought the oud (also called ud) to Spain from North Africa in the eighth century AD. Its name is derived from Arabic “Al Ud,” meaning “the wood.” The oud is a traditional Arabic instrument even to this day.

The evolution of Guitar

The oud has a large pear-shaped body made of wood that is hollow and rounded at the back. It has a short fretless neck, sharply angled peghead, and many strings ranging from the prehistoric three-string ouds to ten, eleven, or thirteen strings, organized in doubles (also called courses), with one left as a single string. The oud is played with a plectrum.

The Europeans extended the neck and added frets to the oud and came up with the European lute, which was played throughout Europe in the Middle Ages for over 500 years.

They also had the barbat, a lute of Central Asian and Persian origin, brought to the Byzantine Empire between the sixth and the ninth centuries AD, probably even before the oud.

Many other stringed folk instruments existed in Central Asia and India (some of them used even today). Their names ended in “tar,” which is derived from the local Ancient Sanskrit word “tar” for “string.” The prefix on “tar,” translated in modern Persian, indicated the number of strings. Therefore, the two-string instrument was called dotar, the three-stringed was called setar, the four-stringed was called chartar, and the five-stringed was called panchtar.

In the Renaissance period in Europe, notable innovation included Baroque guitars in the form of four-coursed (four pairs of strings) “chitarras,” that further evolved into five-coursed “chitarra battente,” an Italian folk string instrument still used today.

The Baroque guitars were narrower than the modern guitars, had gut frets tied to the fingerboard, and had very ornate, sometimes carved designs on the soundholes.

The earliest known music written for the guitar was written for the four-coursed chitarra (quitarra) in Italy and Spain by composers like Giovanni Foscarini, Angelo Bartolotti, Francesco Corbetta, and Alonso de Mudarra.

The tuning of these guitars was set at A, D, G, B, E (same as the top five strings of the modern guitar). These first guitars almost always had eight frets to the body of the guitar, which slowly evolved to ten, then twelve frets.

Quitarra

In the seventeenth century, guitar makers in Europe included one more course of strings (one pair of strings) to the five-coursed guitars. Later on, this was changed to the six single-string guitars known today.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the guitars looked more and more like the modern guitars of today, except they had smaller narrow-waisted bodies.

Antonio-De-Torres-Jurado

Torres' Guitar

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the Spanish musician and Luthier Antonio De Torres Jurado (1817-1892) designed a guitar that kept its original design more or less until today. Torres' guitar design included an increase in the size of the body and the waist curve, which changed the proportions of the guitar. The wooden pegs were replaced with a machine head, and he introduced the “fan” top bracing on the guitar. This improved the volume, tone, and projection of the guitar. This guitar design became the construction standard.

Below is a video of a beautiful composition titled “Home” played on Torres' 1888 guitar by Andrew York.

Andrew York plays Home on an 1888 Antonio de Torres
Play Video

Can you imagine taking guitar lessons and learning to play the guitar like Andrew after watching him perform? He is truly inspiring!

Then And Now

While Torres was designing and making his famous fan-braced guitars in Spain, European immigrants to America (German-born Christian Fredrich Martin being one of them) were also making guitars. When they left Europe, they brought steel-stringed versions of Spanish guitars to the United States.

Steel-strings became widely available at the beginning of the twentieth century. Even though they made guitars louder, they increased the pressure on the fan-braced guitars Torres designed. This, in turn, led to the X-braced innovation by the guitar designers in America. These X-braced tops on the guitars were able to withstand the extra pressure from the steel strings. This became the standard for the flat-top steel-string guitars.

The tight steel strings on the new guitars led to different guitar playing styles that made use of a pick. This led to the development of the pickguard below the soundhole on most models of flat-top guitars.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the archtop acoustic guitars were introduced and patented by Orville Gibson. Some of the design features of these guitars included an arched top and back, a hollow body constructed more like a cello, oval soundholes, and a movable adjustable bridge, allowing for increased volume and tone. These guitars were embraced by jazz and country musicians and later adopted by bands.

The quest for adding more volume to the guitar lead to the invention of the Electric guitar. This was made possible in the early 1930s by Adolph Rickenbacker, an electrical engineer, and George Beauchamp, a musician who played the Hawaiian-style lap steel guitar. They pioneered the electromagnetic device that converts the vibration of the guitar strings into a clear resonant sound. They came up with the first so-called “Frying pan” amplified electric guitar.

In 1936 Gibson came up with his first electric guitar, the so-called ES-150. This guitar was made famous by the great guitarist Charlie Christian who brought the guitar back to the forefront as a solo instrument and not as a background rhythmical instrument. Furthermore, Gibson and the famous guitarist, luthier and inventor Les Paul, released famous solid-body electric guitars in the 1950s.

Other electric guitar makers include Fender (the maker of the famous Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars), Ibanez, Epiphone, ESP guitars, Yamaha, Charvel, and Kramer Guitars, just to name a few.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the electric guitar, the cranked amplifiers, and power cords and effect pedals would become the cornerstone for musical genres like Jazz, Rock, and Pop.

Electric Guitars

Today there are many different types, subtypes, and categories of guitars, including:

  • Acoustic guitars
  • Electric guitars
  • Electro-acoustic guitars
  • Twelve-string guitars
  • Archtop guitars
  • Flamenco guitars
  • Steel guitars
  • Resonator guitars
  • Bass guitars
  • Double-neck guitars

Famous Guitar Players and Composers

Classical guitar music composers started writing music for the guitar as early as the sixteenth century. Later on, as the guitar evolved, many composers wrote music for the electric guitar for many different genres.

Here are the names of a few guitar music composers.

The guitar is the second most popular instrument in the world. Many guitarists have shaped the world of music. Some of the most influential and accomplished guitarists include:

Phil X knows a thing or two about the best way of learning to play the guitar, as he used to teach guitar lessons in Mississauga via Skype.

For “Those About To Rock” Phil has one simple message: “Don't believe in shortcuts. Practise, Practise, Practise.”

The guitar can be a magical instrument, and learning it a journey full of joy and accomplishments.

Whether you would like to start taking guitar lessons for beginners or you have some guitar knowledge and are looking to improve your guitar playing skills, our teachers at our music school will tailor your guitar classes according to what you want and need to learn. We are sure that you will fall in love with this beautiful instrument and that the guitar will bring joy not only to you but to anyone listening to you play.

The Mississauga Fine Art Academy is a music school where young talents are ignited and steered towards success.

Our students participate in an annual recital and many music festivals during the school year, including the Peel Music Festival where they have received many awards.

Our Academy of music provides many other different types of private lessons. To accommodate your busy schedules and lesson preferences we provide in-person music lessons in Mississauga (Peel Region) and online music lessons, including:

We provide one on one private guitar lessons in person and online.

Visit us and see for yourself why we provide the best guitar lessons in Mississauga.

Our current rate is $37.50 per 30-minute private guitar lesson.

Lessons are scheduled once a week and available seven days a week. There is a one-time registration fee of $25.00.

No prior musical experience is required to start lessons.

Don't delay your discovery of the bright and exciting guitar world! Sign up today.

The Academy's passion is not only to see children and adult students fall in love with music and play musical instruments but to also spill over their joy and love onto others. Make this world a better place through music, come, and learn to play the guitar at the Mississauga Fine Arts Academy.

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