3 string guitar?

Ugh. Sorry. I disagree with the thought behind this. Three strings for "kids as young as six" is just going to give young players another unnecessary learning curve whenever they're "old enough" to move to a six string. Chord shapes they can't learn, tons of songs they can't properly play until they get a six-string. Think about how tough it is for some people to make the jump from a 4 to a 5 or 6 string bass, or how confusing it is for some people to adapt to a 7 string guitar. A lot of players never bother.

For the record, that crappy Harmony I posted in another thread was a gift from my parents when I was 4 years old, and yes, it sucked, and so did I, but I didn't care at all because I was too young to know any better and the joy of playing carried me through. Nothing wrong with a three-stringed instrument as such, but I wouldn't buy one as a "beginner guitar". Start as you mean to go on.
 
Last edited:
If I was going to start off someone young, I might as well get a uke. This 3 string 'guitar' isn't going to help them learn much of anything when they switch to a real instrument...and it is expensive.
 
Seashore said:
Ugh. Sorry. I disagree with the thought behind this. Three strings for "kids as young as six" is just going to give young players another unnecessary learning curve whenever they're "old enough" to move to a six string. Chord shapes they can't learn, tons of songs they can't properly play until they get a six-string. Think about how tough it is for some people to make the jump from a 4 to a 5 or 6 string bass, or how confusing it is for some people to adapt to a 7 string guitar. A lot of players never bother.

For the record, that crappy Harmony I posted in another thread was a gift from my parents when I was 4 years old, and yes, it sucked, and so did I, but I didn't care at all because I was too young to know any better and the joy of playing carried me through. Nothing wrong with a three-stringed instrument as such, but I wouldn't buy one as a "beginner guitar". Start as you mean to go on.
Click to expand...

FWIW starting from 5th grade I learned on a tenor banjo, 4-string tuned in 5ths like a cello just an octave up. In 7th grade I started looking at guitar chord charts and translated the chords and scales I knew onto the 6 strings. I used to sneak my sisters guitar and practice while she was out of the house, and I would go to music stores and 'try' guitars, really just practicing chords that I figured out from translating 4-string banjo tuned in 5ths to 6-string guitar tuned in 4ths. If you just learn music, you can play anything with strings and frets once you know the base tuning of it.
 
beaubrummels said:
FWIW starting from 5th grade I learned on a tenor banjo, 4-string tuned in 5ths like a cello just an octave up. In 7th grade I started looking at guitar chord charts and translated the chords and scales I knew onto the 6 strings. I used to sneak my sisters guitar and practice while she was out of the house, and I would go to music stores and 'try' guitars, really just practicing chords that I figured out from translating 4-string banjo tuned in 5ths to 6-string guitar tuned in 4ths. If you just learn music, you can play anything with strings and frets once you know the base tuning of it.
Click to expand...

That's great. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a 3-stringed instrument. I can even see this being a fun way into music for some people. It's just a different instrument and I don't dig seeing it marketed as a "beginner guitar", as if kids haven't been learning on 6-string guitars for lo these many years. I think a lot of beginners don't have the same intellectual grasp of music that you did, and they need to rely on fingering diagrams and muscle memory while they're figuring out how to make their fingers do the things. And most beginners who I've known want to learn to play songs they like. I can't see much of an advantage to starting someone off on an instrument that won't give them access to a lot of commonly used chords and can't be used to play the songs they're probably interested in playing without a lot of modification.
 
I might buy one just to set it up as a slide guitar, tune it to E,G#,B and see what I can do with it. $200 ain't bad
 
I got their acoustic version for my 18 month granddaughter and love it.. pretty strong, and gets her attention.. at her age, I'm not worried about teaching guitar in general... Just getting her hooked on instruments first (first thing she got was a Casio keyboard;).

And perfect for locking in your three chord comping shapes. I always come home after playing it with slightly tightened triad skills :-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top