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Saturday, July 4, 2009

Guitar Instructional DVD: Determine What And Where To Practice

By Kyries Hall

Like you probably have done, I have read a ton of interviews with great players and articles written by many of these same players. I often found it frustrating whenever the subject of learning to play guitar came up or when advice was offered on improving one's playing. With a small number of exceptions, very little time and space was offered on this.

Surround yourself with better players (or at least with those on your same level.) When you started out playing guitar, everyone was better than you, but now you have grown and there are less people better than you than before. The better you get, the harder it will be to find others who are superior to you to hang around or jam with.

But no matter how good you get, there will always be something you can learn from someone else. Seek out those people, get to know them, jam with them, discuss music and guitar with them. Be willing to give as much (or more) as you want to take. If you are fortunate enough to be above the level of other guitarists in your area, seek out great bassists, pianists, violinists, drummers, etc. You can learn from them as well. (Even if you are not better than your guitar player friends, seek out musicians that play other instruments as well anyway).

Create a strategy! You need a strategy that will layout exactly how you are going to reach your goals. Dreaming alone won't take you anywhere. Telling yourself that you are going to play your guitar everyday isn't enough. There is a lot more that goes into being an excellent player than simply playing your guitar.

For instance, the process may go like this: I notice I have trouble with a fast scale passage in a piece I am playing. I notice a particular note starts disappearing when I reach a certain speed. The note is being missed.

I notice the finger responsible for playing that note is the third finger. It is not getting to the note because it is going up in the air in reaction to the second finger being used right before it in that particular scale passage. In other words, it is tensing in reaction to the movement of it's neighboring finger, and I have not been paying attention to it. I realize this is a bad habit that pervades my playing, a third finger that tenses up in reaction to the use of the second finger.

You can undo bad habits you have learned along the way. You can begin the process of undoing bad habits right away, when you begin to acquire the correct understandings, and use the approaches based on them.

Think about the masters of music. Mozart was probably most naturally gifted in only three of the musical areas: technical skill, a great ear (perfect pitch), a great musical memory. But he had to work hard at all the other areas of music just like everybody else. - 18418

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Deciding Between Turntables and CD Players

By Nik Levesque

DJ turntable vs. CD players: which is which, you might ask. Well, that depends on two things. One: what do you intend to use the music player for. And two: how much money are you really willing to spend on the player. By the way, these are two very different players. For starters, a DJ turntable is basically a phonograph or gramophone, which uses vinyl records as its primary medium. Speaking of which, vinyl records as a form of recording style has been supplanted by digital music in 1991. Although there are still some artists and recording companies who use this medium to store music, most of the vinyl recordings carry music only from the late 1920s to 1990.

On the other hand, optical discs are the primary medium for CD players. CD discs have a wider range of music selections, primarily because new music is being constantly added to the play list and music companies are re-recording "classics" on digital formats now. At the same time, amateur musicians can record their own music and have these burned on CD formats easily.

There is also no such thing as a compact DJ turntable. This equipment can be rather bulky, and not really the type you can play on you lap while you take the bus home. Most CD players are very portable. However, these are limited only to the conventional CD music format, and will not play any other forms of recordings (e.g. MP3s.)

Saying this, let us now tackle about your actual intention for acquiring said players. Naturally, playing music is the number one reason here. It should be noted that both players do not have the capacity to burn or scratch music either on CD formats or vinyl formats. However, these can work well enough with playing their respective mediums. DJs also use the turntable to scratch, mix, or spin music - which is something that conventional CD players cannot do. Scratching is the distinct repetitive sound made when the DJ's hand moves the vinyl record back and forth in little motions. Mixing and spinning music can only be done using two turntables and a music mixer with crossfader functions. The main goal of using turntables is to play, mix and scratch music for the benefit of others. Very rarely will you see a DJ mixing music for his or her ears only.

Conventional CD players do not have this same capacity. These can only ever play pre-recorded music, and only at the sequence specified. Because the songs are digitally recorded as a whole, CD players cannot start the music other than its introductory area, and you certainly cannot mix part of the song with another song in the same disc without skipping to the next tune.

As for costs, turntables are more expensive by far. Complete turntable units can cost as much as $7,000; this still does not include the rates of the vinyl records you have to buy. Some of the higher end CD players can cost about $200, while the portable ones cost less than $40. - 18418

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Guitar Instruction DVD: Cover All The Styles

By Eric Fitzpatrick

Once you have got an idea of the guitar players you should be listening to and watching, you will be able to go looking for bluegrass guitar tabs. With these you can learn picking patterns that you can apply to any songs you learn. You will also be able to pick up tabs for bluegrass fiddle tunes you can learn to play on the guitar, try any bluegrass forums you find, as well as tab archives.

The first thing I will say to you is this: Unless you are practicing to be a professional, don't pick up the guitar unless you actually want to. The most valuable part of a practice session is that you actually enjoy it. If you want to be in a band, or want to play on the jam circuit, then I would recommend picking up your guitar once a day and spending at least an hour with it.

Second, there are larger sites that offer a wide range of different types of educational tools to assist you in learning guitar online. For example, these sites might offer to you video presentations that can assist you when it comes to learning guitar, including such techniques and practices as finger picking.

We want a healthy regular 6 string practicing lifestyle that will create healthy practice habits. Avoid the get quick fix guitar diet of always hungering for the next "learn to play fast musical diet." You will find that by making a healthy commitment to learn your guitar on a regular basis will lead to a healthy normal part of life that includes practicing your instrument the right way and for the long term, rather than just for a little while.

You've got the blues, you've got a guitar--now you need to learn the scales. Those distinctive, southern, pre-Elvis post gospel scales. When it comes down to it, there are only 3 chords you really need to master. Every blues song consists of three chords. They're the one the four and the five.

In the brick and mortar world, you might want to turn to one on one lessons if you really are intent at improving your ability to play guitar. While these types of guitar lessons can cost you more than other types of guitar lesson options, for many people one on one lessons are ideal ways to learn guitar initially and then to master the instrument to a greater degree on down the road.

There are guitar players who swear by either of these ways of playing and some who use both. Generally speaking the advantage of having a stiff wrist is speed. A relaxed wrist does not take as readily to playing fast but many guitarists feel that it gives then greater control.

A little tip for you here: If a string breaks on your guitar, I would recommend you change the whole set, other wise you will end up with spare strings lying around everywhere, and for some reason, I always find there is a difference in quality of sound when I only change one string. Maybe I'm just a perfectionist, who knows? As far as practice is concerned, there are a couple of ways to approach it. - 18418

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Handy Information To Hurry Up Your Movie Download

By Amanda P Carter

If you use a dependable site to download movies from the Internet it can be one of the best ways to get the movies that you want when you want them. Downloading directly to your computer is a terrific way to see the best new movies.

It does take some time to download though and that seems to be the one grievance that repeatedly comes up. Your download speed has to do with your computer speed and your connection but if you utilize a couple of techniques you can hurry up the process or at least cut the annoyance.

One thing that seems to work well is to set it up to download when you are away from your computer, just before departure for work or going to bed is always good. Out of sight, out of mind and when you get back it is all done.

You can also take advantage of your bandwidth by downloading a few movies at the same time. This way your download can go quicker and you will wind up with a few movies in the same amount of time that it usually takes to get one.

Try using a Firefox web browser instead of Internet Explorer. You can only download as fast as your browser will tolerate so research until you find what works best.

There is a free Windows program that is free online that can optimize your Internet connection. Do a search for TCP optimizer and follow the advice. This will help you to find the optimum TCP window for your connection speed. That should help speed up your movie downloads.

When you sign up for a movie download site look for information pertaining to their download speeds. The majority of them will offer some tips for downloading including doing it quicker.

Downloading movies is still the greatest way to get the movie that you want when you want it. The technology is there now but it is only going to get better and better. - 18418

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Acoustic Guitar Lessons DVD: Private Lessons At Home

By Johnathan Jones

In this essay, I am going to apply a number of the Principles of Correct Practice to a technical area that is of major concern to players. For beginners, it poses one of the most challenging difficulties, and an incomplete appreciation of it's difficulties dogs many an advanced player (sometimes without them being aware of it).

Of course you will be working on many guitar skills: various guitar techniques, chords, scales, soloing, etc., but don't neglect other skills that are not guitar specific like, ear training (also called aural skills), songwriting, improvising, creativity, reading, music theory, etc.

Here is a simpler scenario for beginning players. Perhaps you suffer from the common complaint of not being able to change chords smoothly so you can sing that old favorite of yours without feeling like a new driver learning to drive a stick shift (go, stall, go, stall, etc.)

Turn your musical frustrations into an asset in the form of a motivating force. I wrote a whole article called Musical Frustration. I don't want to repeat here everything that I wrote in that article, so read it if you haven't already. If you have read it, it may be worth your time to read it again now.

The sculptor visualizes what he/she wants to create. The act of carving away at the raw material is a form of "destructive creation". In the beginning there is only a block of marble, stone or wood. The sculptor must remove all the material that is not needed so that only the finished sculpture remains!

Staying with that feeling positions you in the best possible way for being able to see what your obstacles to growth really are. As soon as you think you are "complete" in some way as a guitarist, you will be unable to see your own weak spots.

Stevie Ray Vaughn never learned to play fusion or metal. Great country players usually don't study Progressive Rock. Of course there are examples of players that do learn and play in more than one or two styles, but most of the really great guitarists are known for the style they focussed on.

They are masters of their style, they are specialists, not a jack-of-all-trades type of player. Don't listen to people who say something like, You must learn blues before you can learn heavy metal or classical guitar.You do not have to be well rounded. - 18418

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