Archive for March, 2009

As far as instruments go, the bass guitar is one of the newest on the scene. It’s a completely original component of today’s bands and modern music and has not even been in existence for a century. Don’t let the name “bass guitar” fool you either, the bass guitar is not actually derived from the guitar.

While electric guitars were developed from acoustic guitars, bass guitars were developed from the double bass instrument. They were originally known (and are still sometimes called) electrical bass instruments or the electric bass.

The original double bass, or simply the bass, are the massive, classical instruments that have been around for several hundred years. They are played with the instrument resting on the ground, using a bow across the strings.

The bass guitar is of course held with a strap on a musician’s body and is played using one’s fingers. As opposed to the back and forth of the bow on its predecessor and the strumming with a pick of an electrical guitar, the bass guitar is typically played with either plucking or slapping movements of the fingers.

It is tuned to sound the same as an original bass with of course the added benefit of being able to be amplified. In the early part of the 20th century, as music was getting louder, the bass was being drowned out and was unable to be heard. And so the quest for an electrical bass began.

Leo Fender and the Creation of the Bass Guitar

Leo Fender was an amazing man, a visionary and is one of the single most influential people in modern music history. All of these things and many more is Leo Fender. However, one thing he is not is the inventor of the bass guitar.

In 1935, it was Paul Tutmarc who developed the first incarnation of the electric bass. It was to be played horizontally and held like a guitar and could be plugged in for amplification. However, his instrument never truly caught on. It was in 1951 that the bass began earning its spot in modern music.

Leo Fender created his Fender Precision Bass, which was mass produced and skyrocketed in popularity. Gibson followed shortly there after and the bass guitar became an important component of jazz ensembles and today, nearly all musical styles and bands.

Just as with the electric guitar, Leo Fender capitalized on previous inventions, tweaked them to his own specifications and mass produced them to extreme success. While he should be remembered fondly for his contributions, let’s not forget the original inventor of the electric bass, Paul Tutmarc.

These are just a few out of the numerous amounts of famous violin players.

Ignaz Schuppanzigh was a celebrated violinist in Beethoven’s time. What is interesting regarding Schuppanzigh is that he began his career as a viola player and then changed over to the violin. This is what almost all musicians needed to do to become leaders. Nowadays Schuppanzigh is thought of only in correlation to Beethoven; still another crucial fact about him is that he was one of the first violinists to make his living mainly as a quartet player.

Maxim Vengerov is one of the lead participants in the world of violin players. At the age of four, he started having violin lessons and before long studied earnestly. The family went through some bad times. Maxim studied heavily and shortly drew the well-deserved rewards.

He started his concert calling only a few months after first starting and was still only ten when he was awarded the Junior Wieniawski Competition in Poland. Besides his global career, Maxim Vengerov also gives a lot of time to instructing master-classes.

There is no musical instrument constructed by the hands of man that holds such a mighty swing over the feelings of every living thing able of listening, as the violin. One of the greatest geniuses of the violin is Niccolo Paganini. He was born in the town of Genoa, Italy in 1782. There have been many stupendous violinists since the finish of the 19th century.

The development of the violin is an issue, which can be retraced back to the Dark ages, but the fifteenth century may be conceived as the point when the fine art of constructing musical instruments of the violin took place in Italy.

It is true that if one wants to learn how to play the violin, one would find it difficult initially but playing violin gives immense satisfaction. One needs to put in a lot of effort to learn how to play the violin. One has to learn to hold the violin properly and to finger and sound the notes in the right manner.

Music instruction is a must when it comes to playing the violin. The very first thing that has to be learnt would be to hold the violin properly. If the violin is not held properly, one would always be uncomfortable playing. The left arm should be curved under the body around over the neck and your hand and fingers must be over the strings. The chin rest should be placed between chin and the left shoulder. Now, put the right arm in the front of the face to play the violin.

When one has learnt how to hold the violin, the next step is learning how to finger the notes. Guitars have frets that help find the notes but that is not the case with violins. The ears of the violinists have to be trained to identify where the notes are located on the fingerboard. A violin has four positions. The first position is considered to be at the end from the violinist’s face. It gives out low-pitched notes. The last i.e. fourth position is near the neck and produces the highest notes. The strings are tunes G, D, A, E from lowest to highest. Violin could be played open strings i.e. without pressing the strings. The tone of the string could also be changed by pressing it.

The next step would be the sounding of notes. One could drag the bow across the string/strings that have to be played. It would create a long steady sound. Another option is playing pizzicato which means plucking the strings with the help of the fingers of your right hand. It would produce a sudden staccato sound.

But does knowing how to play prove sufficient? Well, one should know what to play as well. Reading music is also a part of music education. There are many who like playing by the ear that ascertains that the sound of their violin would sound good in company of other’s also.

There is one question that needs answering first. Why do you want to play violin? It is the enjoyment that one gets out of it that makes the whole effort worthwhile. But if you take playing violin like any other task you have to do, you would soon get bored of it and your progress would hamper. It is true that you need to spend time practicing violin but it is also essential that you take out some time to play what you enjoy playing.

In the beginning, your hands would hurt a little. With time the fingers gain strength and your muscles start getting accustomed to this unusual posture of holding the violin. Your body would feel strange holding the violin initially but with practice everything would seem normal.

A violin player or for that matter any music professional has to keep up with competition right from the very beginning. The bar has to be kept high all through the period one plays violin. It might seem daunting in the beginning but one gets accustomed to it with time.

Easy piano lessons to get you started on the piano! If you have just started learning the piano and that too on your own, you need to plan your lessons. It is always better to keep practicing regularly and choose your beginner piano lessons in such a way so that the complexity of the lessons increases gradually. Doing a full bang approach where in you try to learn all the aspects at one go is not a great idea, though you will be tempted to do so occasionally.

It is always better to plan your practice sessions else you will be tempted to play songs each time you sit to practice. You should ideally be starting with some finger exercises for a few minutes, then revise the lessons which you recently learned and then move on to learn new lessons / songs. You should be able to manage all these in a 30 min slot, which is something you should be able to devote for a practice session.

Initially, you will need to plan your easy piano lessons so that you can grasp the important topics, some of which are listed below; each of these lessons build up on the earlier lessons.

Notes on piano – Getting started with the Basics
Staff, Clef, and Ledger lines – How the notes are written
Treble clef Notes
Bass clef Notes
Accidentals – Learn the Sharps and Flats
Learn about Arpeggios
Note Types / Rests – The duration of the various types
Whole Notes, Half Notes, Crotchet, Quaver, Semi-Quavers

Knowing the above topics and to be able to use them in your playing should be on your agenda for the first few months. These are the easy piano lessons which you should plan to learn at the earliest.

You love the soothing sounds of relaxing piano music. But have you ever thought about actually going to your piano and creating it yourself? You can thanks to Edward Weiss’s online piano course.

This course teaches beginning adult students how to play piano using a chord-based approach. The lessons are designed in an easy step by step fashion that shows you what chords to play and how to improvise and create your own music.

You already know how therapeutic listening to solo piano music is. Creating it on your own is much better because you’re actually involved in the process. Making music forces you to be in the present. And once you get a taste of how good this feels, you’ll want more and more.

For instance, take the free lesson “Winter Scene” Here we have a relaxing piano lesson that teaches you to play 2 chords in your left hand while your right improvises melody.

To the complete beginner, this may seem like a lot. And it is until you actually try it. Once you start to play the chords in your left hand and get the pattern down, it becomes quite simple to jump in with the right and begin improvising a melody.

I always advise students to go as slow as they need to at first. Speed is not important at all. Playing with sensitivity is. If all you can do is play one note in the right hand while your left is busy playing, than you’ve accomplished quite a lot.

It won’t take long for you to freely improvise and create your own relaxing piano music!