Aug 10
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
Here are 5 tips on how to play guitar to help you progress quickly.
1.Practice slowly Every new movement you make with your fingers must be practiced slowly.. and i mean very very slowly. If you have a metronome set it to about 60 beats per minute and move your fingers to each new position for an entire 4 clicks of the metronome. gradually build up speed once you feel you can move accurately.
2.Keep your body relaxed Keeping your body relaxed is extremely important. If you do not make a conscious effort to keep your body relaxed, especially your shoulder and your hands, you will never build up speed. Speed only comes when all the muscles and tendons in your limbs are in a state of relaxation. This achieved through practicing slowly.
3.Do not move forward until you are ready Moving on to more complex and complicated pieces will hinder your progress. when you practice something, make sure you can play it all the way through without mistakes. If you need to, go back to something a little more basic to work on any problems you may have realized.
4.Practice in short bursts. Practicing for hours and hours will not benefit you as much as practicing in short periods. Practice intensely for an hour or so then take a break. Do this intermittently though out the day and your progress will be a lot faster.
5.Keep yourself entertained Sometimes practicing the guitar can be a little tedious. The trick here is to spice things up a bit with variety. If necessary keep a schedule of what you want to work on. Don’t work on one thing for a long period of time as this will make you feel bored. More
Aug 08
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
Looking for a good beginner guitar lesson online is one of the first challenges that new guitarists face when learning their new instrument. On line there are thousands of websites geared toward new guitar players looking for information on how to start playing.
Many of these websites are poorly designed and are often written by people who have limited knowledge in guitar playing itself, OR they maybe an excellent player but do not know how to convey and teach the principles new guitar players need to know.
The reason I mention this is simply because learning the guitar is an extremely satisfying and fulfilling adventure, but learning the wrong way will cause you to suffer frustration and de-motivate you to progress to the next level.
If you come across a beginner guitar lesson online that is not up to standard you maybe heading down the wrong path right away and will need to backtrack and re correct any misinformation or incorrect techniques that you may have ingrained into your playing.
The best way to avoid these problems is to find guitar lessons that are written by successful guitar players who are also…. Teachers. Doing this will ensure you will start playing the guitar the right way and avoid the many pitfalls and mistakes that so many new guitarists face. More
Aug 07
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
When searching for a beginner guitar lesson online, the first thing you should be looking out for is how reputable and accurate the information being offered is. There are a ton of websites and lessons available in the Internet, and thanks to this fact, learning the guitar has never been easier.
Unfortunately, being a guitar teacher myself, I have noticed in forums and on websites themselves that there is a lot of information that is incorrect or sometimes blatantly wrong.
Lets just say that the blind are leading the blind.
So to learn the guitar what you need is correct information about what to play, and how to play it. I myself went my first 6 years playing the guitar the wrong way day after day for hours until I asked myself “why am I not getting any better?” I discovered after researching and watching myself practice that I was doing it all wrong and thus leading me to frustration and to a certain extent..despair.
I realized that I went wrong from day one because of the very first lesson I had. Nobody told me that I had to move my fingers in such a way that would help my fingers memorize each movement. I also had been fed information that was incorrect, so not only was I not playing the right way, I was playing the wrong thing the wrong way!
What I am trying to convey is that learning the guitar does take time, but if you start off the wrong way you will ultimately become stuck and have to unlearn all your mistakes, which… is a lot harder than learning the right way in the first place.
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Jul 16
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
When we wonder what guitar tab we need to get to begin to make up our repertoire, we usually think only about songs we like. We know that our choice in music does not suck in the slightest but if we are going to be playing our guitar and singing for audiences we need to get used to the idea that our taste in music will not match what our listeners want to hear. We may even take a look at popular choices in songs and get the uncomfortable feeling that we might have to play songs that we do not like. One thing guitar players are famous for is standing on their principles and not compromising on what they are going to play. The other thing they are famous for is giving the audience what they want. So a mixture of these two attitudes is probably going to form in your psyche as you peruse your list of guitar tabs on the internet. While we are on the subject of lists of guitar tabs remember to pay a visit to your local music store or online merchant for ready-made collections of easy guitar tabs. You can find titles like “Popular Songs for Acoustic Guitar” or “CMT’s 100 Greatest Songs of Country Music”.
One fact that has emerged from field tests conducted by buskers, night club performers and covers bands is that you should look for your repertoire in the songs of years gone by. Oldies are goodies. Another thing you should think about is whether or not you are an audience participation kind of performer. If you are still wondering about it one second after the thought enters your head, then you probably aren’t. So stay away from songs that require you to yell, “Everybody now!!” or “Just the girls this time!”. Likewise if you play solo acoustic guitar and have a voice like Johnny Cash you might want to stay away from Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. But do not walk away from songs you enjoy just because they might not seem immediately doable.Remember Jose Feliciano’s “Light My Fire” and Eric Clapton’s unplugged “Layla”.
Of course what songs you choose is not going to matter much if you do not pay attention to how you sing and play the guitar. People pay to see performers who are better at something than they are. Which is where playing material that you like comes in. If you are playing a song that you consider to be a crowd pleaser but you personally think is a load of stomach chunks you give attention to the part the audience likes. You already know what that is. That is why you do not bellow, “Hello darkness my old friend” or shirk on the enthusiasm when you sing the line, “Welcome to the Hotel California”.
Okay so what we get out of all this is first, there are songs that crowds of people like and second, you can sing and play these songs in a way that highlights your particular talents. Now for a basic list of songs that have been known to please a crowd or two over a period of years:
Wild World by Cat Stevens
Imagine – by John Lennon
Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin
Catch the Wind by Donovan
Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley
Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks
Angie by the Rolling Stones
Everybody Hurts by REM
50 ways to leave your lover by Paul Simon
The 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon And Garfunkel
American Pie by Don Maclean
Both Sides Now by Joni Mitchell
California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and Papas
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door by Bob Dylan
Mrs Robinson by Simon And Garfunkel
You’re so vain by Carly Simon
Blowin’ In The Wind by Bob Dylan
Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
I Walk The Line by Johnny Cash
Tears In Heaven by Eric Clapton
Gloria by Van Morrison (or Them)
Hotel California by The Eagles
Behind Blue Eyes by The Who
White Room by Cream
Sex And Candy by Marcy Playground
Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers
What Its Like by Everlast
Alison by Elvis Costello
Life By The Drop by Stevie Ray Vaughn
Melissa by Allman Brothers
Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones
Seagull by Bad Company
Mediterranean Sundance by Al DiMeola and Paco De Lucia
Classical Gas by Mason Williams
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Jul 12
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
Anybody interested in modern music sooner or later asks the question, “Where did it begin?” Well, if you leave blues music out, you will not have much of an answer. So let us look at where the blues came from, where it went and who it met on the way. We will also take a look at the “blues sound” and how it has its unique effect on our feelings.
The blues as a musical phenomenon began around 1911 when W.C. Handy published popular songs, notably “Memphis Blues” and “St Louis Blues”, which affected the hearts and souls of the black people. By the nineteen twenties the general population were beginning to hear this new music through its influence on jazz. Early blues singers like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday sang with jazz bands while others played with “jug bands” accompanied by fiddle, kazoo and washboard.
Of course to people like W. C. Handy who were brought up singing in church, the piano was the natural instrumental accompaniment to their songs. But the guitar is portable and always was popular so it had to have a place in blues and jazz. Blues guitar players like twelve string guitarist Leadbelly and future electric guitar player B.B. King were making sure the guitar would be an integral part of the blues. Other blues guitarists made their living in smoky saloons playing slide guitar using a bottle neck or the blade of a knife to fret the notes.
After the Second World War young artists like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were wrapping the blues in a new package called “rock’n'roll” and the players of the electric blues guitar like B.B. King were heralding the arrival of the lead guitar, soon to be a great attraction for both musicians and audiences. Throughout the evolution of the blues the guitar had always taken its turn for solos in jazz bands but now it competed with the singer for the attention of the audience.
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Jul 03
musicsurveyormusic Guitar, music
When you watch somebody play fast on the guitar do you always wonder if you could learn to do that? Let us look at what resources we need to increase our own guitar playing speed on a regular basis.
The very first thing you are going to need is a metronome. You can buy one from your local music store, steal one from a maiden aunt or download one for free on the internet. If you choose to steal one, then I am afraid you will not make much progress in your quest to play guitar fast because shortcuts just do not work. Most of us look for the quickest and most painless way to do things, and that is why most of us are not playing guitar at the speed of light.
Okay, you have your metronome and an attitude adjustment. You are ready to begin. The next thing you need is something to practice. It can be a solo passage from a song. It can be an exercise, like a series of arpeggios or a picking exercise. You need to choose your material carefully because you will need to know exactly how fast you want to play in terms of the settings on your metronome. You may or may not need to spend time learning your passage from scratch as some familiarity with the piece is necessary to start increasing how fast you play it. By familiarity I mean the muscles in your fingers, hands and arms need to be able to play your piece without hesitation.
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