Guitar Lessons For Beginners

Twitter has now been the most successful way of knowing what your favorite artist is thinking or doing or what he or she wants to say. It connects fans and artists all over the world, linking them together to create a solid fan base. Although, it has lots of benefits, some celebrities don’t like it because it opens up doors to un ethical harassment by haters and stuff. Stalkers might t abuses it to get to you. But place that all aside; I want to talk about the ten most active twitter users that are guitar players.

1. Joe Bonamassa – he’s one active guy on twitter. Tweeting about almost everything that he does.
2. The Edge (twitter.com/360FromTheEdge) not posting any words, just pictures.
3. Lita Ford
4. Jorma Kaukonen
5. Keb’ Mo’
6. Joe Perry – guitar player for Aerosmith, but he recently stopped tweeting, but I know he’ll be back soon.
7. Katy Perry – 3 million followers! Holy Cow!
8. Nikki Sixx – Motley Crue bassist.\
9. Slash – no intro need, must follow.
10. Zakk Wylde – former black Sabbath

How to follow them? Just go to twitter.com and search their names. If you the words “verified” then that is definitely them.

If you are tired of covering and doing the things that your guitar hero is doing, maybe it is time you develop your own style. If that is your goal then look no further. Everything that you need is briefly discussed in this article to save you the headache of looking for it somewhere else. This article will tell you the importance of having your own original style and the benefits that you would reap as well as the level of difficulty that you will have to deal. I hope that after you read this post, you would have an idea of what to do with your talent or simply know what to do next.

Guitar style is defined as the method used in playing the guitar. an original style refers to a way of playing only exclusive to a certain guitar player of group of players. Why bother to develop your own style when you can copy theirs? It is all about honor and passion. There is no reward in developing your own originality but this would be one epic achievement in your part. You might even get famous by doing so, but that is not the whole point and if ever that do happens, consider it a bonus for your hard labor. Keep in mind that guitar style is some sort of signature for guitar players. Look at Mike Einziger or Brian May or Van Halen? Do they all sound the same? Of course not, somehow, the guitar sound that they produce is different from each other. That is what we call originality.

For you beginners who want to get your hands on an effects pedal, the Boss DS – 1 is right for you. It is basically an easy distortion pedal to use and distortions are the first effects that you should learn how to use.  At first, you might feel alienated with it and finding the right sound would be a bit challenging. There is a manual that comes with it but you won’t really need that because even a donkey could figure out how to use this. But after a while after spending some time with it, you would definitely hit the right spot where the sweet distortion sound is located. It has 3 knobs, the Tone knob, Level Knob and Distortion Knob. The tone knob adjusts the tones, whether you want a dull sound or you like it fuzzy high. The level knob controls how loud you want it to be. The distortion knob gives you the amount of distortion that you wish. Try and experiment with these three knobs along with the different pick up of your guitar. Remember, different guitars will produce different results as well as using different kinds of amps and set ups but don’t worry about that for now. Going back to the pedal, you could use it and power it with a single 9 volt battery or you could use an adaptor for non – stop rocking. But unfortunately, you have to buy your own adaptor since it is not included when you purchase it. Another thing that might inspire you to use this, Kurt Cobain used this on every recording on the Bleach and Nevermind album. Ciao!

What is Blues Orchestration?

One of the greatest things about a guitar is that you could play several notes at a time, like some sort of orchestra. Blues orchestration is exactly that. On blues orchestration, we are doing two things simultaneously; it is called blues orchestration because the riff is taken from the blues or we’re using blues scale and blues licks.

Here’s an example of a blues orchestration:

——-0—–0——0—0——0—-0—-0—–0—————————-

——-0—–0——0—0——0—-0—-0—–0—————————-

———————————————————————————

—————————–2————————————————–

——————2—-4———–4—–2————————————

—-0—–4————————————-4——————————

This blues orchestration has a 4 / 4 bass line that hits the notes E, G#, B, C#, and e. the bass lines goes with the 4 / 4 counting. In between those 4 / 4 measures are the diads that are played on the end of every triplet count.

To further explain this try counting like this: 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a…

The numbers 1 to 4 is where you play the bass line, the diads are played on the last count of every triplet (a).

Put it all together, it creates an illusion that you are playing a flurry of notes, simultaneously but in reality you are just playing it one at a time.

I assume that most beginners have never experienced using a Capo on their guitars. This article is for all of you.

The purpose of the capo is to transpose a chord chromatically higher or lower, depending on the desired pitch without changing the chord shape and progression. Some songs are meant to be played with a certain chord shape and wouldn’t sound right if transposed using the regular transposed chord. For example: the open chord C when transposed two semitones up would become D and the open notes on C would be difficult to play or impossible to play with the D chord. The solution here is to use a Capo. To transpose the Open chord C to D chromatically, place the capo on the 2^nd fret and do the open chord C. you now have transposed it to D but still retain the open chord C shape and other notes but are all transposed two semitones up.

A capo is made out of plastic or sometimes steel.  It is clamped to the neck of the guitar to transpose all of the strings to the desired pitch. Say you want to transpose the open chord G to C, place the capo on the 5^th fret.

To cap things up, the Capo is used to transpose keys easily and changing the timbre of the sound of the chords.

This is one of the things that beginners long for. They thought that if they have this, everything will be okay. They thought that this is the solution to all of their problems. That is alright. It is normal for a beginner to think that way but as they move one to more advanced modes in learning the guitar, they would be laughing while looking back n their former self. Anyway, learning how to quickly change chords is an essential thing to learn for all guitarists and there is no easy way to do it. You just have o get used to it or you to be able to switch chords in an instant. You must get used to the feel of each chord.

In learning a new chord, beginners do it one finger at a time, and that is completely normal. That tendency is due to the beginner’s lack of familiarity with the chord shape and that is pretty much acceptable if you are a beginner. But later on in your learning, you will notice that doing this drags you down, slows down your chord switching. The thing to do is to place your fingers all at the same time to do a chord shape. This will be difficult at first but once you are used to it, you will notice the difference between placing your fingers one by one and doing it all at once.

This is another guitar essential, a must – know stuff about guitars. Tuning your guitar is as important as breathing. No matter how awesome you are in playing the guitar but if you are not in tune, you will sound like crap and crappy sounding guitar players are not called good guitar player. Tuning your guitar doesn’t happen only once; it should be on a regular basis or as often as needed. Just in case you don’t own a Gibson Robot guitar, you better read this and learn how to tune your guitar. (The Gibson Robot guitar tunes itself.)

Methods of tuning the guitar:

1. Relative Tuning – this is the easiest way of tuning it but not the most accurate. It is done by comparing the sound and pitch of adjacent strings. For example, place your finger on the A note on the 6^th string and pluck it. Now, pluck the open 5^th string and compare the pitch of the 5^th string to the A note on the 6^th string. Once the pitch is sync, it’s tuned. This is only good f you have the 6^th string tuned to the standard E.
2. Using a electronic keyboard/piano – this device never goes out of tune (if it isn’t busted) so you could adjust the pitch of the strings according to the pitch of the notes that corresponds to the standard guitar tuning in the keyboard.
3. Using an Electronic Tuner – this is the next easiest way of turning your guitar since you only have to adjust and check if the string is on the right pitch thru an LCD monitor or a meter needle.

Improvising solos has no boundaries and no rules, it is your call. The restrictions created by harmonies are made to be overcome. This is possible through practice and the right type of approach. There are basically two ways of doing an improvisation:

1. Vertical method – this is done by improvising the solo basing it on the chord.
2. Horizontal method – this is done by improvising solo basing it on the scale used.

A good example of vertical method of approaching it is to do the solo according to the change of chord. For example: the main chord is a C Major, in this part, you can base your solo on a Major Scale but since it changes to C Major Suspended, you could switch into a mixolydian scale.  This could help you on those difficult chord changes.

Improvisation is quite difficult and needs practice in able for you to perfect it. But mostly, you must feel the song. You will find it easier that way. Look at John Mayer, his guitar solos are always improve when he plays them live and he base these solos with the feel of the song. You badly need that when you’re playing the blues because I believe that blues is synonymous to emotions and emotions can’t be run through theories and fixed things.

The most important thing? Practice, Practice and Practice.

The most formal thing to do in music is to learn how to read musical notations or sheet music and most schools are teaching us this or require us to learn this. This isn’t bad, and this is quite useful but if you are going to consider people who don’t know how to read sheet music but still want to learn guitar, you have to find an option for them and the best option is know how to read tabs. You might say that it is the same with reading sheet music, yes, in a way it is similar, in essence but guitar tabs or tablatures are much easier to read since it doesn’t include time signatures, G clefs and bass clefs and notes. Tabs only contain numbers and easy – to – use signs that are suitable for beginners.

A guitar tab looks like this:

E ——–3——5——3———————————————–

A——————————5–3————————————-

D—————————————4—2—————————

G————————————————5–2——————–

B———————————————————5–2———–

e—————————————————————-5–3—-

The Letters corresponds to each string, the small cap “e” being the first string or highest string. The numbers are the frets where you should place your fingers. So starting from the lowest string, on the low E string, it indicates the number 3, 5, and 3. So therefore you should place your fingers on the 6^th string, on the third fret, the fifth fret and third fret again. Pretty easy, right?

Regarding the tempo, it’s up to you to figure that one out. Tabs are used just to figure out how to do a certain lick, or riff or guitar solo and to know the tempo; you should listen to the song itself. That’s pretty much it about tabs. There are also signs that indicate a hammer – on, pull, bend and slides and all the basic techniques.

As a guitar player, I’ve been trying to get my hands on every technique that I could learn, but that was when I was a beginner, and that Is very wrong. The common mistakes that beginners do, including myself when I started playing the guitar, is learning everything all at once and trying to play it fast too soon. The secret in guitar playing is starting it all in a slow pace. Yes, that is right, start slowly at first. Then eventually build up speed. Playing it fast too soon kind of develop the tendency of you having bad timing habits which is bad and creates tension with your muscles both in your fretting hand and your picking hand as well. I know sometimes we get carried away with the rock or metal music that we play, that’s all good but in learning guitar, you must also learn how to shut it all out and focus in the technique. Start in a slow pace and gradually rise up the notch when you feel like you have perfected it. Up unit you reach the point that shredding is effortless. Once you get to that point that shredding is like a normal hand function, that’s the time you learn another new thing.

No, this is not another reality television thing, this is real. Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne, will have his genetic code mapped and studied. This is to research the reason why he’s managed to stay alive long enough despite of all the things he’s been popping in his mouth, like bats, for instance.

The mapping will be sponsored and executed by the Company, Knome from the United States. They willingly agreed to undertake the task in hopes of finding the answer on why is Ozzy still alive and kicking despite of decades of alcohol, drugs and other stuff that we all knew could shorten your life.

I’m keeping my hopes up on this one. Why? I’m just wondering, like every other guys who heard this news, that maybe if somehow they would find the reason for Ozzy’s long life, I’m hoping that it is because of the excessive abuse of alcohol and drugs. I’m just kidding, but I’m honestly keeping my hopes up.

Or maybe they are planning to mobilize a large battalion of soldiers made out of Ozzy’s DNA. Maybe they’re up to something terrible in the eyes of the pop world and would turn our planet into a rock and roll habitat. Or maybe I’m just thinking too much, what you think.

If you are a Blink 182 fan, you might as well be as confused as I am with the band’s current state. Blink 182 has just recently reunited and had been performing together at some shows as well, but contrary to the statement that they would be doing another album together, these guys doesn’t look like they are working together.  Tom DeLonge, the band’s Guitarist and vocals, says that the album won’t be finished this year, but he is currently working with his other band, Angels and Airwaves. Mark Hoppus is busy as well, doing production stuff with other bands and Travis, is as usual busy with everything from various musical ventures and stuff.

Mark Hoppus finally made a statement regarding this matter and said that this is how they focus. They go off and give each other space to pick up some new stuff from different sources and bring them all back together. He said that that’s how the band works. Thru listening to different kinds of stuff, they help each other in making a new sound for the band. DeLonge was interested and is currently listening to 80’s stadium kind of rock and Travis is interested with everything while he is into indie weird kind of music. A mixture of all of this stuff is what makes Blink 182.

Their new album will be anytime this year, and they will make sure that it does get finished this year or next year.

After performing in a sold out show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the group announces a UK tour in November.

Fans that missed watching the group can now have their chance get a taste of the positive vibrations of Owl City, with a string of shows in UK. Adam Young, the group’s main man has spent the last 9 months of his life touring and is looking forward to a peaceful vacation in which he’ll be planning to write the next Owl City which is said to be released this December. Owl City will be hitting the road together with popular acts like Maroon 5 and John Mayer before he kicks – off his worldwide headline tour together with Tokyo Police Club and Unwed Sailor as the support acts for the European Leg of the tour.

So far, Owl City has been having a fantastic year, rising from the unknown up to the chart smashing achievements, and we saw the song, Fireflies rose to the top of the charts all over the world, including UK where it stayed on the top for three weeks.

Owl City is something that you would listen when you want to be happy without taking drugs, lots of feel good themes talking about fireflies, bicycles and all the happy stuff.

Laughing gas, please.

Performing on a gig is like a battle, you must be prepared. Your weapons and gears should be double checked because going to the battle unprepared is suicide. Same goes with performing on stage. A drummer without an extra pair of sticks is committing suicide. Guitarists who didn’t checked the tune of his guitar is completely the same. So you see, this is a very critical part of your career, so prep up for it. Check this few things out to help you in your preparation.

1. Double check your accessories.

-          Check if you brought with you your cords, gadgets, batteries for your wireless apparatus, extra strings and slings.

1. Tune your guitar.

-          Tune your guitar or guitars ahead of time. No matter how good you are in playing but if your guitar is out of tune, you will still sound like total crap, so double check it, tune it or have your techie do it for you.

1. Sound check

-          This is the most important and the most critical part as well. Always do sound check hours before your performance. This way your output will be properly mixed, you’ll get used to the feel and sound and you could also suggest and check you settings and your monitors and stuff.

Follow these basic reminders and you will be up and running and will perform a worry free gig.