Some people feel that acoustic guitar software with fancy animated tablature is better than taking video lessons from a teacher sitting in front of a camera. Well, why not take advantage of the latest leaps in technology?
This approach certainly moves you along. If you are teaching yourself to play the guitar without any timetable or goals you will have a good time learning at your own pace but until you try the systematic approach to learning to play guitar you will not be aware of how you are holding yourself back. So if you decide to use software to learn how to play the guitar, here is what to look for: a tuner, metronome and a chord dictionary. Technology to slow down audio and video without altering the pitch of the music is commonplace now so do not get any program that does not include this feature. High quality video lessons should be a given and audio should be real musicians playing real guitars, not midi files.
Chorducopia Audible Chord Library Software is like a computer equivalent of the chordbook you keep in your guitar case. If you are composing music and you can hear what you want to play but cannot play it, Chorducopia will get you out of trouble.Browse through the nine hundred chords, filter them by key or a variety of other methods, or search for just the one you are looking for, then listen to them. Chorducopia can show you chords related to what you have found for that extra bit of inspiration. Care has been taken with every chord, in every key to provide the most useful and accurate representation. And it sounds great too. We have put great attention to detail into the recording of every chord. We offer chord voicings made up from both the notes contained in the chord formula as well as the actual fingered notes as shown in the fretboard diagrams. All recording was done using state-of-the-art equipment and the results can be heard. Instrument, cabinet, reverb, attack and spread of individual notes in the chord have all been carefully selected for the clearest and most useful representation. We want to make our tools not only the easiest to use, but ones that exemplify their greatest asset. You. Get the idea out of your head and into your song. Product Specifications - Runs on Windows XP/Vista PC’s and PPC/Intel Macs. Contains 990 chord sounds (55 in each enharmonic key name.). Chord Sound library contains 2 banks of 3 instrument sounds each (almost 6000 files.) Bank A - Fretboard Diagram Voicings includes Clean Strat, Classical Guitar and Rock Guitar sounds. Bank B - Chord Formula Voicing Over 2 Octaves includes Acoustic Guitar, Rhodes Piano and Grand Piano sounds. Chord sounds are individual audio clips - plays on any computer with any sound card setup.
Guitar Method Version 4.0 is the best of the softwares available if that is the direction you want to go in. The program will take you from nowhere to guitar player as painlessly as possible by taking you through some basic well-known songs. You get one hundred and sixty lessons. That is alot of lessons.
This video clip shows Paco De Lucia in the early nineteen seventies playing a rumba which appears to be pastiche of rumbas he played on a couple of his early albums. This flamenco guitar music obviously influenced by rock and roll was big departure from the way flamenco of that time was supposed to sound.
Today we will look at learning scales as an approach to learning bluegrass guitar. Bluegrass music is an offshoot of the country and western musical genre. As with country music, bluegrass has its foundation in the music of Ireland, Scotland and England. If bluegrass is centered on one area of the USA, it is Appalachia. The people are of Irish and Scottish descent and in their music instrumental virtuosity is not a poor relation of singing. In most forms of popular music the instruments back up the vocalist, but in bluegrass the vocals and the instruments are all just members of the team. In a bluegrass band everybody is expected to take a solo just as they do in a jazz band. The instruments associated with bluegrass music are acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle and bass.
If you want to learn to play bluegrass scales, learn some tunes. That is what music is made of. The scales are just the foundation of melodies and you need to be able to break out of the confinement of your scale as soon as possible. The other thing learning tunes is good for is developing right hand speed. As you can tell from listening to bluegrass music, speed flatpicking is essential.
If you are interested in learning bluegrass music and you would like to start by learning scales, start with the major scales in the open position. Do not bother with going up the neck of the guitar yet because learning your scales in the open position is crucial for playing bluegrass solos. Learn the scale in the key of G first, then C, D, F, A and E. Learn the keys one at a time so that you are comfortable with one before you go onto the next key. As with all musical learning, the more work you put into it at the beginning, the greater the rewards and the quicker your progress.
When you sit down each day to practice your scales, spend five or ten minutes going up and down the scale alternately. Then experiment a little. Try playing the scale by skipping some notes or playing the notes randomly. You need to become very familiar with the major scale because bluegrass solos rely on major keys. To get further into bluegrass guitar scales, find examples of the major pentatonic and the major diatonic scale.
Another basic scale that is important in bluegrass, blues, country and rock music is the minor pentatonic scale. It has five notes, should be learned in all positions on the guitar neck in all keys, and has been used for lead solos by every guitar player known to man. It is also popularly known as the blues scale. If you do not know much about modes, do an internet search to get some idea of the difference between a scale and a mode. If you have trouble understanding the theory, do not worry, just try playing.
The mixolydian mode is a good “scale” to practice on also:
E—————————————————————-0—–1—–3
B————————————————-0—–1—–3—————
G—————————————-0—-2——————————-
D————————0—–2—–3—————————————-
A——–0—–2—-3———————————————————
E–3————————————————————————–
To get more in-depth knowledge of bluegrass guitar scales, some great bluegrass guitar players to listen to are Vassar Clements, Doc Watson, Darol Anger, Clarence White, Norman Blake and Sam Bush.
Today’s YouTube video is a bluegrass lesson with an emphasis on having fun:
Learn to set up your guitar with this free e-book!! Basic Guitar Set-up 101
by Charles Tauber
The info in this book strictly applies to steel string
acoustic guitars, but the basic theory is the same for classical and
electric guitars, as well as a wide variety of other fretted string
instruments. Download it here!
The book is in PDF format. If you do not have the Acrobat Reader, get it here.
