Archive for January, 2010

French Violins – The Three Wise Men

Saturday, January 30th, 2010


French violins are among some of the most popular old violins today. Among the more famous French luthiers of note were J.B. Vuillaume, Nicolas Lupet, and Charles Francois Gand. Let’s take a brief biographical look at each of these three French and the techniques they used in their craft.

In Mirecourt in 1798, J.B Vuillame was born. He was associated with Pique and often worked with Francoise Chanot. It had come to his attention that new violins were not as favorable as old violins. In order to profit off of this public preference, Vuillame made many copies of Stradivarius violins. He not only replicated the varnish, but even details such as the label. Often, Vuillame would travel around Italy looking for old wood and furniture with which he could build more authentic looking violins. Some people today think that their violin is a famous “Messiah Strad”, but it may well be that it is only one of Vuillame’s copies. One can determine if a violin is a Vuillame if it has more French characteristics than Italian. One of the most intriguing and controversial enigmas to this day is the mysterious violin’s real identity.

Nicolas Lupot was born in 1758 and was called the “French Stradivarius”. Lupot established a workshop in Paris in 1798. He was appointed violin maker to the King in 1815 and to the Conservatoire de Paris in 1816. His French violins imitated Stradivari more minutely than anybody else had or ever has done to date. Lupot died in 1824.

In 1802, Charles Francoise Gand was apprenticed to Nicolas Lupot in Paris. His French violins are known for their brilliant and textured varnish. Lupot’s use of beautifully flamed wood in the backs of his instruments also contributed to their popularity. Besides making wonderful violins for the violinists of his day, Lupot himself was considered quite a good violinist in his own right as well.

Guitar Videos – Fast Way To Learn Guitar

Friday, January 29th, 2010


Early guitar players earn my great respect for they master their craft in a long and tedious way. They must have devoted most of their time learning techniques in trial-and-error basis. Guitar players like B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, and others are among the respected names where history testify their superior skill in playing guitar.

Not so long ago, if you want to learn to play guitar you need to buy instructional books with lots of images so you can see how a technique is done. Moreover, you need to watch concerts and see how your favorite guitar player do his riffs. I myself, with an experience of over 15 years in guitar playing, bought a lot of books and watched concerts to improve my skills.

Nowadays, the strong emergence of internet plays a vital role in exchanging knowledge fast that includes acquiring skills from other guitar players who have gone through the long process of learning. A brilliant medium to learn guitar as quick as possible is watching instructional videos which are widely available online. From beginner to a more advanced lessons. Availability comes also to a plethora of genres.

Nevertheless, you can still learn from books and images while reading guitar tabs but not as fast as watching videos. This is due to a fact that you see immediately where fingers should be on the fretboard and how the other hand strikes the strings in motion. Believe me many guitar players today attribute their success to instructional videos. Lessons in DVD and subscription are the choices for videos. If your pocket does not permit you to purchase one, might as well search the internet for free ones. But of course, you may have lots of videos at hand but if you do not practice and stretch your patients you have no where to go.

Play Guitar By Ear – Two Chord Songs

Thursday, January 28th, 2010


When you are learning to play guitar by ear it’s helpful to use
some easy to remember concepts that help relate the new material
to something we already know, this is called connected learning.

Our western music system, is based on the European diatonic
system, the effect of this music system is not unlike the effect
of gravity.

The ‘one’ chord is like our ‘musical’ sun, just as the sun has a
strong magnetic effect on the other planets in the solar system,
our ‘one’ chord has a musical magnetic effect on the other
chords, meaning each chord in a particular key wants to return
‘home’ to the ‘one’ chord.

This musical gravity concept will help us accurately predict the
chord changes in a piece of music, and will make the process of
playing by ear a very simple task.

Our musical solar system:

From our previous studies we were able to place the ‘one’ chord
in the first and last bars of a song. Returning to our musical
solar system concept, if we think of our ‘one’ chord as the
musical sun the next chord closest to our musical sun would be
the ‘five’ chord.

In other words, the chord that has the greatest desire to return
home, because of it’s proximity to the musical sun is the ‘five’
chord.

Visually, think of the ‘five’ chord as the planet Mercury
orbiting the sun.

Two chord songs:

Now, we will apply this new information to musical situations
that will increase our ability to understand how musicians play
by ear, without any written (visual) information.

Two chord songs reference chart:

Key of C – Chord 1 = C | Chord 5 = G

Key of C# – Chord 1 = C# | Chord 5 = G#

Key of Db – Chord 1 = Db | Chord 5 = Ab

Key of D – Chord 1 = D | Chord 5 = A

Key of D# – Chord 1 = D# | Chord 5 = A#

Key of Eb – Chord 1 = Eb | Chord 5 = Bb

Key of E – Chord 1 = E | Chord 5 = B

Key of F – Chord 1 = F | Chord 5 = C

Key of F# – Chord 1 = F# | Chord 5 = C#

Key of G – Chord 1 = G | Chord 5 = D

Key of G# – Chord 1 = G# | Chord 5 = D#

Key of Ab – Chord 1 = Ab | Chord 5 = Eb

Key of A – Chord 1 = A | Chord 5 = E

Key of A# – Chord 1 = A# | Chord 5 = E#

Key of Bb – Chord 1 = Bb | Chord 5 = F

Key of B – Chord 1 = B | Chord 5 = F#

Here is a typical eight bar, two chord song template in the key
of ‘C’.

| C/// | C/// | G/// | G/// |

| C/// | C/// | G/// | C/// |

Get this progression off the paper and into your head, play this
progression over and over until you own it!

This progression is the basis for all your ear training, knowing how this progression sounds and feels will turbo charge your ability to play guitar by ear.

Gospel Songs For Guitar

Monday, January 25th, 2010


Gospel standards that are essential repertoire for every aspiring
guitarist – great for playing at jam sessions and for family,
church, camp or other venues for sacred songs. We learn to play
gospel chords for guitar by developing our ear.

Learning to play gospel chords on your guitar will help develop
your overall emotional connection with your audience. While
gospel music is strongly entrenched in the African American “folk
church” tradition, it also attracts many who identify as much
with its expression of African American values, aesthetics, and
life experiences as with its expression of religion.

The founding fathers of gospel music are:

James D. Vaughan

R. H. Harris

Albert E. Brumley

Thomas A. Dorsey

If you are just starting to learn gospel chords for guitar, start
by training your ear by playing a simple two chord gospel song
such as:

“He’s got the Whole World In His Hands” (two chord song) – is
just one of the many gospel songs for guitar using easy chords.

Common keys for Gospel Songs are:

Key of C

Key of G

Key of D

Key of A

Key of E

Of course many gospel songs are played in keys such as the key of
F, Bb, Eb etc

Many of the flat keys are difficult to play on the guitar,
particularly if you are a new player. The solution is to use a
capo with easy chord shapes you already know and enjoy.

Let’s say you know the three main chords in the key of G

They would be G C & D by placing a capo behind the first
fret you would produce the following chords without having to
learn any new shapes.

capo 1st fret, produces the following chords:

G = G#/Ab

C = C#/Db

D = D#/Eb

Here’s a short list of three chord gospel songs for guitar.

Amazing Grace

Faith Of Our Fathers

Farther Along

Gloryland Way

I Saw The Light

I’ll Fly Away

In The Garden

Jesus Loves Me

Just a Closer way With Thee

Nearer My God To Thee

Old Rugged Cross

Softly And Tenderly

That Old Time Religion

Where Could I Go (But To The Lord)

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

It’s possible to add additional chords to any of the songs listed
here, however the idea is to here the basic chords and learn to
“hear” where the chord progression is going before using chord
substitution.

I sincerely hope you enjoy learning these gospel chords for
guitar, as they will be very helpful in developing your overall
musicianship.

Free Guitar Software

Sunday, January 24th, 2010


When you are learning guitar the use of software often makes the learning curve less steep. The good news is that much of the guitar software available on the net is free. There are many musicians developing their own guitar software and sharing it with others. Software for learning chords and scales, guitar effects, and free guitar tuners are all available for download. Because the internet is changing all the time, websites go up and websites go down, I will just give you the names of the software I have found and leave you to do a search for the latest version.

KD’s Guitar Utilities developed by Kent Dalton, this package is a group of utilities that help you in guitar fretboard learning. They began life as a basic set of chord and scale diagram generators and is offered as copyrighted freeware at the moment. These utilities generate scale diagrams, generate chord diagrams, give you chord names based on fingering, generate arpeggio diagrams, determine chords that fit into a given key or scale, and determine scales that fit into a given chord progression. The programs support a range of custom tunings. If a scale or tuning is not known to the tools, you can input custom scale patterns and tunings.

GuitarScales v1.0 is a scale visualization program which can see scales visualized on a fretboard using plain dots, dots with special markings for the root notes, note names and degree numbers. The user can add guitars and scales using a simple interface.

Audio Tuner v0.9 will tune your guitar, ukulele, violin or other musical instrument. The program lets you tune your instruments to pitch perfect. Tunings are included for Guitar, Ukulele, Violin, Piano, Bass Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, Autoharp and Cello.

Denzo Guitar Software III is a unique guitar related application that can manage concepts such as chord/scale relationship, inversions, subscales, similar chord, tonality, harmonization, fourth harmony, analysis of a chord from its notes, plus other harmony tools. Denzo Guitar Software III offers a wide range of functionalities to map notes on the fretboard with different rules, so you can think C, E, G as a chord and you can find all possible positions or inversions of this chord. Alternatively you can think C, E, G as an arpeggio and ask the program which are the best positions to play it in.

PitchWorks DX 1.2 is a plug-in which lets you adjust a music sample’s pitch or tempo, or change both pitch AND tempo. According to the specs input parameters are: Pitch in semitones (cents) in range

Karaoke Songs For All Ages – Age Groups & Its Effect on Karaoke Music

Friday, January 22nd, 2010


Almost every age group we have, has karaoke lovers, and they all seem to enjoy the karaoke songs no matter what age group they are most applicable to. Having said that, every age group pretty much has its favorites though. If you are a Karaoke Disc Jockey it might be beneficial for you to know what songs would fit in best or be most popular with the general age group of your audience. Here are just a few examples of how you could categorize your music according to audience age group.

Suppose you are doing a birthday party for pre schoolers or entertaining a family group. Here is where your job is really going to get challenging, trying to please such a wide diversity of age groups. Perhaps at one time the little ones would have run off to play while the adults did their little sing along. Not anymore these little ones want in on the action. Most likely if they have learned how to talk then they are ready to sink karaoke songs.
Often these songs that are favored on the nursery rhyme or kindergarten songs such as, Baa Baa Black sheep, Oh Susanna, or old MacDonald had a farm. Think back and you’ll remember how much you enjoyed them as a kid.

Ok, so now you have tired out the little ones lets move onto the preteens. These are so hard to please. They pretty well choose their karaoke songs based on what the older ones will like. Only problem here is if parents are present then they might not be too happy at their pre teeners belting out some heavy metal music. Try and find a happy medium here. You just might convince the kids to sing out some Daddy A Go Go karaoke songs. They may or may not be their favorites but they do find them amusing.

For all the in-betweens now is going to be your easiest part. For the teens you are going to need a selection of the most current karaoke songs, in rock, heavy rock and rap. Then for the parents you’re looking at songs from the 50′s up to the 80′s. Oh yes there’s a bit more that has got to be included here. For each of these eras you need a selection of rock and roll, country western, jazz, and perhaps some blues.

For the senior there something sad about their music, and that’s becomes it comes from a time when so many of their loved ones were killed in the wars. So the music they seem to play and love the most is what is called the old war songs. To your best to have a selection of Karaoke songs to fit this age group. Such as the white cliffs of Dover, or I’ll take you home again Kathleen. One only needs to look at the face of one of the seniors singing these songs and you will see a flood of memories pass across their face.

So doing a karaoke party for a mixed group can be pretty challenging when it comes to the music. After all you do want to be popular amongst all age groups. If you have a tight budget however, you might want to stick to entertaining the age group that you have the most music for.