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This lesson can open for you a secret of high-speed guitar playing. If take the given technique for 2-3 weeks you’ll feel progress in high-speed playing of complex passages.

The given principle of development of techniques “was tested” not by one generation of guitarists and not only guitarists…

In this lesson we shall concern high-speed technics. Skilled guitarists alredy know that the basic brake in development of guitar high-speed technics is the right hand. Therefore when playing the most ultra-high-speed passages for simplification guitarists play legato (i.e. the right hand does not take some notes, it is done with fingers of the left hand by receptions pull-off, hammer-on).

How to achieve speed?

For this purpose it is necessary for guitarist to develop technics of the right hand - fast alternation of pick stroke upwards-downwards (a variable stroke). The more quickly the right hand will make alternating strokes, the quicker the playing will be.

It is necessary to begin from the most usual tremolo (fast recurrence of one note).

Triplets are the most effective way of learning to play a tremolo. Try to begin each of your lessons with a tremolo. It develops (and well warms up) the right hand. The tremolo notes must sound dynamically equal (all sounding notes of equal loudness) and with equal tempo.

For example, you wish to learn a high-speed passage. I offer the following simple blues phrase in “A” as an example:

___5_________________8___5_______5______________________

First you need to learn in slow tempo and in convenient key with rational pick strokes.

After you’ve done it, play a tremolo of each note, i.e. each note in a passage it is necessary to take three times (if it is the eighth) like this:

___5_5_5________________________________8_8_8___5_5_5__

The tremolo should be loud (a silent tremolo does not make effect). Play thus 10 - 15 minutes (with small breaks) up to feeling of weariness in your right hand. The weariness speaks that muscles work as they must do. In my experience each student playing given technique, develops his own nuances. The right hand as though itself finds the most convenient position while playing, - it is only necessary ” to force it to work”. When you are good at playing this passage with tremolo, try to play it in the original.

I often hear a question: ” How many it is necessary to be engaged so that to come to high speed?” - It’s individually. For someone it’s necessary 2 hours, for another 2 days, and for someone it is not necessary at all (i’m kidding :-). Here introspection is necessary, that is you should feel improvement of technics. Clearly one, that the most effective way - “gold” exercise for the right hand.

Play your own passages by this principle, solos, improvizations, rock, jazz and blues phrases… If you have great patience, you will see huge advantage of this technique and feel the results. If you do not see any result most likely you were engaged either incorrectly or insufficiently long. Though it is possible to play legato or tapping, but it sounds less brightly and energetically.

Yuri Nikitin - guitar instructor, music writer and webmaster. Find more free guitar lessons in varios styles at http://www.guitar-lesson-online.net

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Acoustic guitars are some of the most beautiful instruments and can produce tantalizing music when learned to play properly. Most people who purchase guitars buy them with the intention to learn how to play them, but very few go on to become masters of the instrument. If you’re serious about learning how to play one, you should first learn how to buy one. Serious musicians just don’t buy their instruments from any music store - they learn what the best brands are, evaluate the sound qualities of each, and try the instruments before making an investment.

When buying a guitar, take an experienced player with you if possible. This way, your “personal guide” can evaluate the selection of guitars available and help you pick one that’s appropriate for your level of music education (you can always upgrade later as your skills improve). Without your own personal guide, you can ask for help from the store clerk. Music store clerks are hired based upon their knowledge of musical instruments. If you get help from a clerk, explain your skill level and price range.

Having a wide selection to choose from, try out different guitars by strumming them with a pick and wearing strap. If you’re not sure how to use a pick or wear a strap, the store clerk can help you do both. While you strum and pick each string of the guitar, you want to listen for a good quality sound. If you hear buzzing or any sounds coming from the guitar that you did not intend to make, look for a different one. A good guitar sound is pure and hollow. And if you have your “personal guide” with you, he or she can help you gauge the sound quality of each.

In addition to buying a guitar, browse through the selection of beginning guitar lessons books if available. Most music stores offer lesson books or even classes for those who want to learn to play their new purchases.

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When memorizing music there are several things you can do that will make your job that much easier. Memorizing music is important as most people know you play better when having the music in your head rather than having your head in the music. So where to start when memorizing music effectively?

I agree with Fred Noad, when discussing memorization in his book, Solo Guitar playing, he states…Learn to play a piece from beginning to end with absolutely correct fingering and with complete continuity (however slow) before committing it to memory.

To learn music in this fashion helps with an overall visual memory of the piece and it helps with continuity rather than have the piece sound disjointed and fragmented. If you think about it you will realize that our thoughts and memories are nothing more than powerful images or, pictures, if you like.

To prove my point let’s say I ask you to think of an elephant. What do you see? Is it the word elephant written down (which could be a picture) or is it a picture or part picture the animal itself? I bet you I know the answer. Another test would be to ask how you dreamed at night. Do you dream in words or are your dreams a series of pictures rather like a scene from a movie?

You need to work with your brain rather than against it. Why not utilize the natural operation of your memory? It’s crazy not to!

I also know from my days at Teacher’s College that most people have different strengths when it comes to learning something new based on the body’s different senses. Some people are visual learners, some learn better with their tactile (touching) sense and some are strong auditory learners.

What is clear in most literature about memory is that a combination of as many of your senses as possible is a stronger way of learning anything. Because of this we should employ most of our senses when learning a new piece of music. Of course we can’t include taste and smell to any great degree (unless you want to eat your music!) but we should definitely try to use our other senses of sight, hearing and touch.

So, having established a method of learning a new piece of music what comes next? What are the nuts and bolts, so to speak?

I would actually take a step back. That is, start not with playing a piece of music but rather just reading it, just like a book, on its own. What I would be looking for is how it is put together. I would look at the key, form, and structure of the music? What about sequences and repetitions? What about dynamics, articulation and tone?

Breaking a piece up into its component parts first before you start to play it and get a visual memory of the piece allows you to take a short-cut of sorts. If you understand where the repeats are, for example, you have already cut down on the amount of bars you have to memorize. If you know about the dynamics of the piece before you play it physically your brain won’t have to deal with too much information at once.

As Sharon Isbin says in the Classical Guitar Answer Book…”The more you understand the language and structure of a piece, the easier it will be to memorize.”

I liken it to driving to an unfamiliar place or suburb in your car and using a roadmap. If you just turn up and expect to find the street it would be very difficult indeed. But if you look at the map beforehand you stand a much better chance of finding your destination by noticing the signs along the way. You recognize where you are, with much less stress!

Of course, I’m talking about reading the music AWAY from the guitar. This should be your very first step. I would then employ the Noad method after this.

Next I would test my memory by playing the separate phrases in the music. If you definitely know a phrase, try to string it together with the next phrase in the piece and so on until you get to the end of the piece. If you are not confident to play phrases try playing one bar at a time and going back to the printed music when a bar is forgotten.

In this way the music can be overlapped until the whole piece can be played by memory.

I would leave the piece for several days to a week after that. Then I would test my memory again by trying to play the whole piece, making note of where I faltered or needed to consolidate. Leaving it for a period of time allows your subconscious brain to keep “working” on it for you. The subconscious is really quite powerful and when you get out of its way, you’ll be amazed at what it can achieve.

Studying a new piece in this fashion should yield results. And remember, the more you practice (properly) the easier it will become. Good luck!

Trevor Maurice is an Australian, living in beautiful seaside Maroubra, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.

He’s been involved in playing guitar (mainly classical) for longer than he cares to remember and has also taught the instrument for many years. He is teacher trained, having a Diploma of Education (Majoring in music)

He has also taught Primary (Elementary) school for many years and had a long-held dream to build a quality website for the classical guitar that is of use to anyone even slightly interested in this beautiful instrument. He has now made that dream a reality with the highly rated…

http://www.learnclassicalguitar.com/index.html

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A while back, I wrote an article that compared flower arranging to music arranging. While this may seem a world apart, it really isn’t.

In flower arranging, the goal is to create a pleasing whole using different flowers, colors, textures, etc. If you’ve ever seen a beautiful flower arrangement, you’ll know what I mean. The eye takes in the various contrasts and colors and is pleased when it forms into one satisfying whole.

In music the object is the same. When arranging a piece for New Age piano, we work with sections. We can label the sections (A) and (B) and then “arrange” the sections into an order. The most common order is ABA form. It has the benefits of simplicity and is a good place to start with New Age piano.

Most times, I’ll use an 8-bar phrase for the (A) section. This gets repeated 2 or 3 times. Then it’s time for some contrast - the (B) section. This can be a 4 or 8-bar phrase depending on taste. Then the (A) section is repeated one last time.

Now, there are other elements that go into our arrangement such as introductions, transitions, and endings. Using these elements, we can create a pleasing musical arrangement that satisfies the minds need for order and beauty creating art!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

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You know the phenomenon, everytime you hear music playing in the background you think about the clip associated to the song.

Many years ago, music was just about sounds. Skilled people with beautiful, at times selfmade, instruments entertained other people. Back then, music was a gift.

But with the introduction of MTV and various other tv-broadcasters, clips are now a must for artists. If you don’t have an attractive, high-tech clip you know you’ll fail on the billboards. People associate these clips to the quality of the music. If the clip they see is bad they’ll stop listening to the song and turn off the screen.

Sexy girls dancing with little clothes on, rappers acting tough, ..It’s all been done before. Artists now look for computerized video images, with special effects which match with the sound they produced. It sweeps the watcher along for about 3 minutes, enough time to hear the song and perhaps like it.

Music needs the images, but needless to say the images definitely need the music. You could even say that music videos are a modern version of opera. In an opera, you have music and acting together as a package. It tells us a story, just like most music videos do. As we all are curious at times, people tend to like stories. Makers of music videos know this and try to make a story with their music videos.

The story symbolizes the music: if a song sounds sad, the story will not be a happy tale.

In the future, artists will have to keep on spending much time in developing their attractive clips, perhaps even more time than they dedicate to producing music.

So I’ll give you a good tip: don’t always see the music, hear it..

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>From the town that gave birth to such notables as Nu Shooz, Dandy Warhols and Everclear, Portland, Oregon is making waves again with the newly revised element57, its astounding DIY ethic and its penchant for snagging national accolades for itself.

The band’s impressive way of doing business and getting itself in the national spotlight means you’ll undoubtedly be seeing something of it well beyond Oregon’s borders.

Once called 4th Plane Jaiant, element57 has relaunched themselves under a new name and a brand new sound that is powerful, sleek, gigantic and yet thoroughly filled with hooks. Gone are the slightly jam band vibes of 4th Plane Jaiant. With the new album, “Radiate,” element57 has reinvented itself in a poppy yet intelligent, arty manner, creating a sound that is highly distinctive, even difficult to describe.

At the center of the new sound is a giant wall of fuzzy guitar, like some rumbling colossus that comes out of a guitar amp. It’s slightly surreal and even a little alien, but always massive and thoroughly setting the band apart from just about everything out there.

Picture the harder edges of Bush, Stone Temple Pilots or Audioslave, with the linear, single-minded, fuzzy lines of Morphine (without that band’s dreary, psychotropic blues elements, however). Bits of funk or straight ahead rock are given this blurry, hazy treatment, while the songwriting is poppy yet sophisticated, in a style not too dissimilar to Peter Gabriel’s “So” period or The Police’s “Synchronicity” era.

Singer Chris Galyon even sometimes sounds like Gabriel or Bush’s Gavin Rossdale, emotive the whole time and mysteriously blending in (almost too well) with the fuzzy wall of guitar.

The album opens with “Woke Up Late,” with a driving, grinding kind of disjointed funk, as Galyon’s melodies soar above the roar of their signature sound.

“All Remaining Pieces” has a pleading, plaintive quality in a more straight ahead rock vein, where Gabriel’s “so” aesthetic really comes into light.

“Speak So Loud” has a slower grind, is slightly dreamy with that enormous guitar sound lumbering in a pleasant way. “Swept Away” has a poppy quality, a little like Semisonic with much bigger balls. On “Too Close, the fuzziness gets a little mellow and quiet for this somewhat somber tune, and the album closes with the memorable “Freedom,” which brings on Bush just a bit.

“Radiate” is a nifty debut for a new band built from an old one, showcasing a truly unique and innovative sound. With a mere six songs, it’ll be more than a little interesting to see where element57 goes next.

Band members are: Galyon (guitar, vocals); Jason Wilbur (Wind synthesizer, saxophone); Andy Kallenberger (bass) Jim Sanders (keys); and Joe Gardner (drums). Find more at www.element57.net.

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Last month, I went with my brother to attend a marketing conference in Chicago. It was a really great time, and I was very excited to see the speakers and eat the great food that Chicago has to offer. One of my favorite parts of the conference was a lesson on basic marketing strategy by Mike Filsaime. Mike has a huge heart for those of us that struggle in the marketing arena, and you could see it at this conference. I learned so much about the things that I need to change in my business, and I owe most of it to the conference and the many great speakers I got to see.

Are you in a funk in your small business? Do you lack consistent customers? The way to change this trend is not to blame the economy, but to get into the exciting world of marketing. The problem with so many businesses is that when they lack customers, they cut their budgets. Mike Filsaime is a marketing guru that knows that this is usually a mistake. Most businesses lack cash flow because of their lack of marketing. Cutting it further just strengthens the problem. I geared up our marketing after watching on of Mike’s videos, and it has made all the difference in my job.

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If you are selling your house you want it to be presentable so that whoever is interested wants to buy it. It is not like you can just put your house up for sale and not do anything to make it look better and expect to get top dollar for it. If you don’t want to do it yourself, then get a company that will come in and do it for you. For just a few thousand dollars they will come and make your place look inviting for the possible buyers. They can make it so when the prospects come in, they can’t refuse it. They want the house so bad that you will get full price. So for a few thousand, you could end up with way more than that.

If you have a yard, then you will need to get landscapers to come in and make it green and beautiful. Have them plant flowers and trees and make the grass look great. Get rid of any clutter or garbage. People can often make a decision if they want to buy a house within the first two seconds of seeing it. That first impression counts. Seeing it and smelling it are very important. Pretend that you are a prospective buyer looking at it for the first time. Imagine yourself in their shoes and you should be able to sell your house that much faster.

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Why is it so hard for many guitarists to read sheet music on the guitar?

Probably the answer is easy. They haven’t done anything about it. An old used tyre can stand leaned against the wall of a car garage for thousands of years. Why? Nobody has thought about moving it. Could it be that easy also with playing guitar sheet music? I think so. Sometimes we consider ourselves poor sight readers or not able to read guitar sheet music at all and we think this is part of our personality. Every person who wants to learn to read guitar sheet music notation properly has already taken the first step towards changing that condition, just like you have done by reading this article.

Climbing the “Reading Guitar Sheet Music” mountain starts with step one

Surprised? Well, I have been teaching guitar playing for many years and I have found that learning to play guitar is like many other activities. People, not you of course, often want to start from another position than from where they are. I would like to suggest that we approach the sight reading assignment from two directions. First by learning to find our way around the guitar and learning the notes on the fingerboard.

Make a string safari on your guitar

With the conventional tuning on your guitar you will have the note E on the first open string. I guess you are aware of the fact that you can find the same note on the second string too. If you don’t know on what fret you will find it you can listen your way through the frets on the second string until you’ll find the note that sounds the same as the first string. Now I will be frank and tell you that E on the second string is on the fifth fret. Maybe you have already found that out. E on the third string is on the ninth fret. Practice to play E on these different places and jump back and forth until you can find the frets without effort.

How to proceed learning the guitar fretboard

In a similar way you can invent small exercises on you guitar fretboard like playing all E’s on all six strings until you can play them with ease or finding all C’s and play them consecutively like a picking exercise or as an exercise for your right hand fingers.

Knowing the notes on the guitar fingerboard will be a great help for you, not only when playing guitar sheet music but also when you are playing by ear or improvising a solo.

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Full copy of an email sent to wrogn record label

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:00:47 +0000 (GMT) From: martin thom To: lisamaffia@mafiarecords.co.uk Subject: yo

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