Guitar Lovers

When I was young I always wanted to play guitar but my parents said it cost too much money, so I just let it go and went in the back yard to play a neighborhood baseball game. Back then we did not have the resources such as the Internet, video, DVD, etc. Now with these resources, free guitar lessons can be found and you can use them on a regular basis and practice on your own. Free guitar lessons are usually  taught by professionals, and they’ll cost you hundreds of dollars less than live lessons and you don’ have to leave the house to get them.
With our busy lives; jobs, school, kids, friends, sports and hobbies, if you were to schedule a live guitar lesson and then canceled it because something came up, the teacher would be annoyed and would probably charge you the full amount. If you take free guitar lessons instead, you don’t have to worry about the instructors and charges because you didn’t show up. You can take a lesson when it works for your schedule, and it won’t cost a thing. You could actually take a lesson while on vacation or out of town for other reasons.
Another problem with taking a guitar lessons is that you don’t have time to practice for the lesson and the teacher won’t be happy and you will cost you again for the same lesson because you didn’t practice what you were taught. But you take guitar lessons online, there is no one to say anything to you and you can go at your own pace. You can also take any lesson you want for no cost.
A lesson without a live teacher allows you to move as slowly or as quickly as you want. With these guitar lessons, there is not a teacher to dictate what you will learn that day. If you’re catching on quickly, you can skip lesson, and if you’re having a hard time you can go at your own pace, take a break between lessons or even take a week or month off until your want to get back into it again.
One of bad things of taking free guitar lessons is that if you have a question you may feel like you don’t know who to ask. However, you could go to a local establishment to hear a band, most the time for free, and talk to the guitar players after the show. Once they know your questions, most of the time they would be happy to help you out, because they will there at one point also. You can also go to a guitar player’s forum for similar questions or post a question of your own. Guitar players are generally a close group of people and they will treat you as part of there family.

For those of us who don’t know a lot about music, shopping for the musician on your holiday gift list can be a difficult task.  Here are a few ideas sure to please an up and coming rock star or music enthusiast:

• Guitar Amps – most guitarists who are just starting out won’t own an amp, and several who have been playing for a long time will have an older or decrepit model due to their more expensive price tag.
• Music Sheets – designed for whatever instrument your musician plays, finding instrumentals for their favorite music is sure to be a hit this holiday season.
• IPod – great for inspiration, and for listening to their own music while the other parts of life beckon their attention.
• Microphone – having vocal as well as instrumental talent is important for getting noticed early in your career; a microphone is sure to get your musician motivated on improving their vocals and their talent as a whole.

By Shawn M. Tomlinson

There are three main types of guitars: the classical, the acoustic and the electric. Inside these groups are subsets and hybrids that have specific uses. The use depends on the type of music to be produced. These are some of the general types.

Types

The classical guitar generally uses nylon strings. The classical, or Spanish guitar, is the eldest of the guitar family. It consists of a hollow body and a neck without a truss rod. Nylon strings are used mostly in classical guitars these days because they give a softer sound. It isn’t a good idea to put steel strings on this kind of guitar because the neck isn’t designed to take that kind of force. Most often, this kind of guitar is finger-picked rather than with a plastic or steel pick.

Identification

This is a dobro-style guitar. The acoustic guitar and classical guitar are very similar. Both are referred to at times as acoustic guitars. They both produce sound without requiring amplifiers. Most acoustic guitars are big with bold sound. They are built in the “dreadnought” style perfected by C.F. Martin Guitar Co. in 1916. Martin also was the first guitar maker to use the X-bar bracing design under the top of the guitar. This made guitars stronger and allowed the use of steel strings.

My uncle taught gave me my first guitar lesson at age 7, and many of the tips he shared back then have continued to stick with me. It turned out that while we both have musical tendencies in our blood, we don’t learn in the same way or at a comparable pace. He has an impressive ear for notes and melodies and is able to replicate most songs after hearing them just a few times. I’m not like that at all.

Maybe it’s because of my classical piano training, but I need to be able to see notes in front of me. Playing by ear just doesn’t work until I’ve got a song down cold. That’s why a guitar tuner is so essential to my playing. It would take me far too long to tune the guitar during a performance without some aid. Perhaps some day I’ll develop a better ear, but until then I’ll have to rely on technology.

When you think of electric instruments, the guitar and bass probably spring to mind immediately. It may come as a surprise that the mandolin – an instrument so often associated with delicate, classical songs – has also been amped up in a number of classic rock and roll standards. Seeking a bridge between the hard-edged electric side and the softer acoustic side of their classic third LP, Led Zeppelin employed an electric mandolin on the old traditional “Gallow’s Pole.”

But perhaps the most famous use of the electrified mandolin came a year later on Rod Stewart’s quintessential album Every Picture Tells a Story. “Maggie May” remains an FM radio staple to this day, and its innovative mandolin solo is easily the most distinctive feature of the flawless composition. It just goes to show that aspiring rock musicians can benefit from adding a bit of variety to the standard guitar-drums-bass lineup.

As anyone who’s ever gotten into an argument over a favorite band knows, musical taste is highly subjective. What sounds particularly pleasant to my ear might just come off as dissonance to you. You might defend your favorite pop song by citing its inventive hook, but it might remind me of a dozen songs that came before. Coming to an agreement about music is often just as difficult and impassioned as finding common political or religious ground.

Still, musical theorists agree that there’s something special about the violin. These stringed instruments come closest to imitating the human voice, which strikes a chord in listeners. There’s something primal about the way violins affect us; their strains tend to stand out above other instruments, rendering them largely incidental. This connection between the violin and the human voice was just as apparent in Mozart’s day as it is in the modern age.

As a young child, I grew up listening to some of my parents’ old records. They had a full complement of Beatles music and some stuff by The Beach Boys. But I wasn’t immediately drawn to the Fab Four’s pop craftsmanship or the sunny surfing anthems coming out of California. Instead I turned to the monster guitar riffs supplied by The Rolling Stones and The Who.

My musical tastes evolved as I got older, of course, but the electric guitar is still my favorite instrument. The versatility of an electric ax is impressive as well. It can be utilized for jazz noodling sessions and Delta blues licks alike. When I pull out an electric guitar, I like to emulate my childhood gods by unleashing a monster solo. Guitar music transports us to another place and time; for that, I will always owe the electric guitar my allegiance.

The violin is a four-stringed instrument that is played in a wide variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, folk, and rock and roll. In fact, a fiddle is actually just a violin being played as a folk instrument. The violin has long been one of the most important instruments in classical music because its tone stands out above other instruments, making it optimal for playing the melody. It is also extremely agile when played by an expert, allowing him to execute rapid and difficult sequences of notes.

Unlike a guitar, a violin has no frets to stop the strings, so a player must know exactly where to place his fingers on the strings to play well. If you’re a beginner, you can use tape or white-out on the fingerboard to mark proper finger placement. However, this is sometimes discouraged because it trains the player to play based on sight rather than sound. Also unlike the guitar, the violin is played with a bow that usually consists of a stick with a ribbon of horsehair strung between opposite ends. Rubbing the horsehair over the strings makes the noise you hear when the violin is played.

Last year, a guitarist named Dave Carroll was travelling across the country with his band. He was waiting for his flight to leave Chicago when he notices the baggage handlers throwing guitar cases to each other – his band’s guitar cases! Upon arriving in Nebraska, he discovered that his Taylor guitar had been smashed. United Airlines did nothing to help Carroll, despite his repeated requests and complaints. So he recently wrote and performed a song called “United Breaks Guitars,” which got more than 3 million views in its first 10 days on YouTube.

United Airlines has probably learned its lesson after the whole world knows that its employees broke someone’s guitar. But the point of this story is that not everyone will handle your guitar as carefully and lovingly as you do, so you should invest in a good guitar case. Even though Carroll’s case didn’t prevent his guitar from being ruined, his situation was the exception – few people would actually throw someone’s guitar like that. In general, a good guitar case will prevent damage to your guitar. Don’t leave home without one!