Guitar Lessons Can Help

Picking up a guitar and expecting to instantly play like Jimi Hendrix isn't realistic. But, picking up a guitar, taking basic lessons and learning the ropes and building on them is.

The fact of the matter is a guitar isn't the easiest instrument in the world to learn, or there'd be thousands and thousands of Jimi Hendrix knock offs out there. However, good guitar lessons can really help anyone learn to play with a basic proficiency.

So, how do you determine a good guitar lesson from a bad one?

That's going to depend a lot on your proficiency going in. If you're just starting out, you'll want guitar lessons that teach you:

* The basics of the Music instrument. This means the different parts, what they are and how they work.

* Basic fingering techniques. Playing the guitar is all in the fingers. If you don't know where to put them or how hard to apply pressure and so on, you will never sound like Jimi!

* Basic cords, tabs and so on. You need the fundaments down to build on to become proficient in playing.

* Theory and music fundamentals. You don't need to be an expert in music theory, but good guitar lessons will give you a minor run down and will begin to expose you to reading music so you can move on by yourself in between lessons or once you complete them.

* Exercises. Going back to that fingering techniques statement, the only way to really get them down is to practice. Good exercises that help the mind, fingers and ears work together are always smart. Great guitar players instinctively know where their fingers need to go on the neck, and they learned by practicing and through exercises.

* Baby steps for learning. It's all fine and well to understand the notes, the fingering positions and build up speed and accuracy, but if you aren't learning at least very basic songs, you won't feel like your accomplishing anything. Good guitar lessons begin giving you "something to take home" as quickly as possible while still working to instill the basics.

* Repetition. It's not a word most people relish hearing, but when it comes to guitar lessons, repetition can be important. The more you practice, the better you'll get.

Recording Guitar Using A Compressor

Here are some features you may find on a compressor:

Threshold -

This is where you set the limits of the compressor, meaning at what level of dB do you want the compressor to start compressing. Using a setting near to zero would incorporate the compressor ever so slightly, if you want to add more compression set the levels to a more negative number.

Attack -

Attack basically refers to the speed at which you want the compressor to kick in. Do you want compressor instantly or would you prefer it to gradually phase in.

Release -

Once the compressor has kicked in, how fast or slow do you want the compressor to release and no longer compress the signal?

Ratio -

The ratio refers to how much the compressor is going to reduce the range of the signal.

Gate -

A gate is a device that will eliminate any room noise, making recording deadly silent. It works by turning off the audio when it drops below a defined level. When the gate is open it simply lets any sound you plug into the input of the box straight through to the output. A closed gate doesn't let anything through - you just get silence on the output.

When the sound at the input is below a certain level, known as the 'threshold' the gate remains shut. When the input goes above the threshold, the gate opens and the sound is carried through to the output. Then when it drops back down again, the gate closes behind it. It can be used for example, to filter and eliminate any unwanted background noise. When you stop playing, and the sound drops below the threshold it will cut the sound to silence.

A separate outboard compressor is a great tool to have as you can tame and level the sound source before it enters the computer. However there are of course drawbacks to this, once the sound is in the computer you will not be able to “uncompress” the sounds. Use the compressor moderately as too much compressor can drag the life out of your songs. Overuse can result in all notes sounding the same and take away the dynamics of lighter and heavier notes.

Electric Guitars

Live rock concerts were the rage in the 70's and they are still the rage. The essence of rock music does not just lie with the lyrics; it also lies with the electric guitar and the various sounds that it can produce. There are so many kids across the block who would give up anything to play like Ritchie Blackmore, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, John Petrucci, Steve Vai, Kirk hammett, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carlos Santana, Jimmy Page etc. These men are not just some of the best guitarists of their times, they are legends.

Electric guitars are available in a lot of variety, colors, and designs with the aerodynamic designs being one of the most popular. Don’t go for the first electric guitar you see. You need to look around a bit and check out the prices and models before you buy one. In fact, one of the best ways to choose a guitar is by the brand or by the style. Here’s our take on the four important styles:

Stratocaster
This certainly is a show stealer and has a typical style. The most famous is the red and white color combination, which was extensively used by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. The Stratocaster is from Fender and has a neck bolted to the guitar body. Apart from this, it has double cutaway sides, 22 frets accompanied by a tremolo system or the wammy bar and three single-coil pickups. Fender designed the first Stratocaster in the early 50’s.

Everything On Guitar Chords

Guitars, generally, have six strings. This means to play a large chord voicing there might be the need to omit one or more tones from the chord. This is normally the root or the fifth one.

The layout of the fretboard is made in such a manner that sometimes there is no tonal order in the notes of a chord. There is a chance of having it composed of notes that are of the same pitch. It is thus easily understood that a number of chords can be played with having identical notes in the fretboard.

People tune a guitar to their liking; hence there are variations in the tunes, similar to the number of strings found in a guitar. The usual number is six but sometimes they change. The order of tuning is normally, E-A-D-G-B-E. The internal intervals that are there among contiguous strings in the specified tuning can be written 4-4-4-3-4. The intervals are perfect in the fourth and there is one major third interval near the middle. So if one follows the above tuning example, the string that has the highest pitch, also the thinnest, is called the first string. Similarly, the sixth string has the lowest pitch.

To have at least an overall view on everything on guitar chords the need to learn the intervals is necessary. Guitar chords use the intervals between the strings that give the perfect fourths except in the interval between the B (second) and G (third) strings. This gives a major third. It is not uncommon in many forms of hard rock and metal to drop D tuning and use it to make it go above standard tuning. The player is then needed to change the low E string tuning to make it into that of a D note.

If all the strings of the guitar are tuned to play a chord without fretting then the guitar is called an open tuned guitar. Then the user gets a chance to bar every fret of the guitar and makes a chord. Open G (D-G-D-G-B-D) tuning: Here if the player strums all strings open then it would give the sound of the G chord. If the player bar the second fret then it would give the A chord