Country Guitar Lesson » Presents

Mel Bay Presents Classical Guitar Pedagogy: A Handbook for Teachers

Guitar Lover — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:11:53 +0000

Product Description
This comprehensive, illustrated text offers an in-depth look at the mechanics and musical thought process of teaching the classical guitar the “why” rather than the “how” the classical guitarist does things a certain way. In the author’s words, “Classical Guitar Pedagogy is the study of how to teach guitarists to teach.” This university-level text will be of enormous assistance to the teacher in explaining the musical, anatomical, technical, and psychological underpinning of guitar performance. It contains ideas and techniques to help organize your teaching more efficiently, plus tips on career development as a classical guitar teacher and performer. If you make your living as a classical guitar teacher/performer you owe it to yourself and your students to get this book.

Mel Bay Presents Classical Guitar Pedagogy: A Handbook for Teachers

Mel Bay Presents 101 Three Chord Songs for Country & Bluegrass Songs for Guitar, Banjo, & Uke

Guitar Lover — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:51:40 +0000

Product Description
You need only minimal playing skills and three chords – G, C, and D7 – to accompany each song in this innovative book. This is the perfect book for beginners, casual musicians, and teaching studios. The book is absolutely bursting with an abundance of timeless standards, many of which are rarely found in print. All songs are made playable for folks who play for their own enjoyment. Melody, lyrics, and chords are included for each song. We invite your entire family to enjoy this unique book. It is also an excellent, compact fakebook for pros.

Mel Bay Presents 101 Three Chord Songs for Country & Bluegrass Songs For Guitar, Banjo, & Uke

Mel Bay Presents 101 Three Chord Songs for Country & Bluegrass Songs for Guitar, Banjo, & Uke

Guitar Lover — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:31:45 +0000

Mel Bay Presents 101 Three Chord Songs for Country & Bluegrass Songs For Guitar, Banjo, & Uke

Lessons for Guitar PRESENTS Acoustic Guitars the Best Tuners

Guitar Lover — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:42:41 +0000

Tuning your acoustic guitar is the first step in your guitar playing career. Whether by skill, talent or technology, you must be able to get your guitar into tune. One common obstacle to learning to tune a guitar is a certain natural resistance to aquiring new knowledge. This reluctance is present in everybody to some degree. The prospect of learning to tune a guitar by ear can fill some people with a sense of dread. Before we start to tackle the job of tuning, we need to get straight which string is which. The first string is the narrow string nearest your knee as you sit with the guitar in playing position. The sixth string is the widest string, and it is closest to your chin. And the tuning goes like this: 1st string is “E” 2nd string is “B” 3rd string is “G” 4th string is “D” 5th string is “A” 6th string is “E” The guitar pitch pipe plays the notes when you blow into it so you can compare the sounds with your guitar. A tuning fork, when you bang it on your knee and hold it on the body of your guitar, sounds the note you get when you play the harmonic at the fifth fret of the fifth string. Once you get this note right, you tune the rest of the strings to the fifth string. If you have tried the methods of tuning guitars using a pitch pipe or tuning fork, and still feel less than confident in your guitar tuning abilities, then you could think about acquiring a guitar tuner that has a visual aid to tuning. You can always test your skill from time to time by tuning your guitar without the tuner, and seeing how accurate you have become. You can also use a keyboard instrument to tune your guitar to. Start by finding on the keyboard the E note below Middle C. Then GO DOWN ANOTHER OCTAVE to tune the sixth string on the guitar. This is because the guitar’s music is written an octave higher than it actually sounds compared to a piano! The electronic guitar tuner is the simplest way of tuning your acoustic guitar. You pluck your guitar string and watch the indicator on the tuner to see how close you are to the correct note. There are also guitar tuners you can get for free on the internet that work the same way. Online Guitar Tuners often play the notes to you, and you use your ear to see if your guitar is in tune.

Lessons for Guitar PRESENTS Besame Mucho Guitar Chords and Lyrics

Guitar Lover — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:38:17 +0000

Besame Mucho is one of the most popular songs of all time, being recorded by an extraordinarily diverse range of singers and instrumentalists. It was written in 1940 by a sixteen-year-old Mexican girl called Consuelo Velasquez. The song was a steamy expression of a young girl’s longing to be kissed. The title of the song means “kiss me alot” and it stirred the imaginations of men and women all over the world. In 1944 a young American singer named Kitty Kallen sang the song with Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra and it stayed for six weeks on the charts of Billboard Magazine. Another key figure in the story of Besame Mucho is Sunny Skylar, composer and arranger who sang with big bands in the nieteen forties. He wrote music and lyrics for many popular songs including: Amor, And So To Sleep Again and Love Me With All Your Heart. There are other translations of the song but Skylar’s seems to be a favorite. Here are the lyrics as interpreted by Sunny Skylar: Bésame, bésame mucho Each time I cling to your kiss, I hear music divine Bésame mucho Hold me my darling and say that you’ll always be mine This joy is something new My arms enfolding you Never knew this thrill before Whoever thought I’d be Holding you close to me Whispering “It’s you I adore” Dearest one If you should leave me Each little dream would take wing, and my life would be through Bésame mucho Love me forever and make all my dreams come true At the time of writing the song Consuelo insisted she had never been kissed but she certainly sounds like she knew what she wanted. I think Skylar was wise in not translating the words “besane mucho” into literal English like “kiss me much” or “kiss me alot”. Just to get the feel of the song, here are Consuelo’s original words: And here are the original lyrics by Consuelo Velazquez: Bésame, bésame mucho Como si fuera esta noche la última vez Bésame mucho Que tengo miedo perderte, perderte otra vez Quiero tenerte muy Cerca, mirarme en tus Ojos, verte junto a mí Piensa que tal vez Mañana yo ya estaré Lejos, muy lejos de ti Bésame, bésame mucho Como si fuera esta noche la última vez Bésame mucho Que tengo miedo perderte, perderte después If you are a guitar player and you know how to play the A minor, D minor, A major and E major chords you will easily be able to play Besame Mucho. As for the composer of the song, she was supposed to have been a classical concert pianist having learnt the piano when she was four years old. Consuelo wrote many other popular Mexican songs including: Amar y vivir, Verdad amarga, Franqueza, Que seas feliz, Cachito and Enamorada. The list of vocal and instrumental artists who have recorded Besame Mucho goes on and on. Some notable ones are: Andrea Bocelli, Artie Shaw, The Beatles, Charles Aznavour, Chris Isaak, Edith Piaf, The Dead Brothers, Leslie Nielsen(!!), Sammy Davis Jr and Stan Getz. For lovers of acoustic guitar, Besame Mucho is included on an album of latin standards by flamenco guitarist, Paco de Lucia. Other tracks on the CD include: Malaguena, Mantilla De Feria, Granada, Manha De Carnaval, Perfidia, La Virgen De La Macarena and Moliendo Cafe. Paco is one of the world’s greatest guitarists and it would be well worth your while to have a listen to this excellent CD. Meanwhile, good luck with your own efforts at playing this luscious song.

Lessons for Guitar PRESENTS Acoustic Guitar Tab

Guitar Lover — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:44:44 +0000

If you enjoy the idea of learning the guitar and you visualize yourself sitting down and playing your favorite songs for your own enjoyment, acoustic guitar tabs give you the possibility of realizing your dream. You can pick up an acoustic guitar any time of the day or night and play without disturbing your family or neighbors. Some people even play the acoustic guitar while the family is watching TV in the same room! Tablature, or tab, is the ideal way for any beginner guitar player to learn or for a more seasoned guitarist to learn new material quickly. A basic definition of guitar tab is a diagram showing the guitar strings with the frets where the guitarist is to play the notes indicated by numbers. Quite often a guitarist approaching a new piece of music will struggle with conventional music notation whereas tab is a quick and easy way of getting the feel of a new piece. Also a pianist or other musician can look at a piece of guitar sheet music and play it right away but would have no hope of playing from guitar tab because it is only written for one instrument. Another limitation of guitar tab is that you won’t be able to learn the rhythm from it. You will need a strumming pattern diagram or, having heard the song before, have some idea of how to approach the playing of the rhythm. If you are prepared to live with these limitations tablature will be a great tool for you to learn your favorite songs quickly. When you search the internet for acoustic guitar tab what kind of music can you expect to find? Well, the variety is astonishing. Basically acoustic guitar tab is written with the idea of the guitar supplying the basic accompaniment for the song. So if you are a singer wanting to interpret the lyrics, your interest in the guitar arrangement may be slight. The second thing acoustic guitar tab usually gives you is the notes for any distinctive melody or riff in the song – music that people recognize before they hear the words being sung. A simple example of this is the few notes repeated throughout the record of “Something” by The Beatles. Of course you are quite free to leave out or change any music to make the arrangement your own. Acoustic guitar tabs are often fingerstyle arrangements of songs. These arrangements will not be readily available in music stores or the usual sources of sheet music on the internet. Fingerstyle arrangements can give you some added depth to your guitar playing even if you don’t utilize all the techniques shown in the tab. Finally there is one advantage to using acoustic tab for electric guitar players. You can learn the muisc for the song without having to set up your guitar and amp. You can work on arranging your song for electric guitar once you know the chords and the basic structure. I hope I have given you something to think about if you have not given tabs for acoustic guitar much of a look so far. If you look around you will be quite amazed at the range of popular – and obscure – music available.

Lessons for Guitar PRESENTS Free Guitar Chords Chart

Guitar Lover — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:43:31 +0000

This article will show you how to make the best use of free guitar chord charts that you can find online. As the internet changes, sites go down and new ones come up, so I won’t risk this resource going out of date by discussing where to find your free guitar chord charts, just how to use them to kick start your guitar playing. You can easily get together a nice collection of chord charts and lyrics to your favorite songs to help you learn to play the guitar. If you feel that you should be learning a whole bunch of musical theory and how to read musical notation, but somehow feel it’s just not you, then that’s okay – start with what you feel most enthusiastic about. Once you have started to learn using guitar chord charts you have bought or downloaded for free, you might see as you go along that you will need to know a little bit about musical theory to see how chords and scales fit together. If, however, you are comfortable learning chords to your favorite songs, then keep at it. So let’s start with the basic baby steps and work up to some really useful knowledge about guitar chords and how the dots on the charts relate to musical sounds. You know the frets on your guitar’s neck somehow show you where the notes are, so let’s get a little more technical. You will see when you use scale charts to learn to play guitar tunes that in a given position on the fret board, you will sometimes need to move up or down one fret or two frets. If you play the note at the first fret, and then move up to the second fret, you have moved up a semitone. If you have moved up two frets, it is called a tone. The distance between the notes E and F or B and C is a tone. The distance between the notes C and D is a tone. So as you learn songs in different keys you will start to see that what you are playing when you play scales is different patterns of tones or semi tones on the guitar neck. If you have watched guitarists play you will have noticed that sometimes they place their index finger across all six strings. This is called a barre. When you begin to learn songs you will be making use of chords played in the FIRST position on the fret board. These are mostly open chords, that is chords that do not make use of the barre. You can try to play barre chords any time, but it’s a bit ambitious to expect to be able to use them until after your hands have done some practice with open chords. When you are learning chords to accompany songs, you will probably make use of your chord charts showing you chords that use all the guitar’s strings. But if you want to get into playing solos start with the three note chords called triads. The three notes in a triad are the basic notes of your chord, so by learning triads you will begin to see how the guitar chords are structured. Also you can move your triads up and down the fret board to make new chords. Here’s an example: The chord of A Major is made up of the notes A C# and E shown in tab form as: E—————————————– B————–2————————– G————–2————————– D————–2————————– A—————————————– E—————————————– Move that shape one semitone (one fret) up the neck and you get A# or Bb. E—————————————– B————–3————————– G————–3————————– D————–3————————– A—————————————– E—————————————– One fret higher is B Major. E—————————————– B————–4————————– G————–4————————– D————–4————————– A—————————————– E—————————————– This shape played anywhere on the neck will give you a major chord. The fret it is played at tells you the key it is in. Here are the notes for the triads of the basic chords: C Major – C E G D Major – D F# A E Major – B E G# F Major – C F A G Major – G B D A Major – A C# E B Major – B D# F# Now the minor chords: C Minor – C Eb G D Minor – D F A E Minor – B E G F Minor – C F Ab G Minor – G Bb D A Minor – A C E B Minor – B D F# Naturally, there will be some points you need to make a little clearer, so you will find more descriptions and illustrations available for free on the internet.

Yamaha Presents Guitar Basics for Acoustic and Electric Models Hal Leonard

Guitar Lover — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:39:51 +0000

Parts Of The Electric And Acoustic Guitar
How To Hold The Guitar And The Pick
How To Tune With An Electric Tuner, Keyboard, And By Ear
How To Change The Strings
Common Chords, Strumming Patterns

Product Description
**EASY GUITAR INSTRUCTION! 30-Minute Video To Teach You Everything You Need To Know To Keep Your New Guitar In Great Playing Condition. Tom Kolb Demonstrates Step-By-Step: The Parts Of The Electric And Acoustic Guitar, How To Hold The Guitar And The Pick, How To Tune With An Electric Tuner, Keyboard, And By Ear, How To Change The Strings, Common Chords, Strumming Patterns. No Additional Materials. Video Only.

Yamaha Presents Guitar Basics for Acoustic and Electric Models Hal Leonard

Peavey Presents Play It All on Electric Guitar DVD

Guitar Lover — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:34:29 +0000

The Play It All series are Tutorial DVD’s presented in association with respected amplification and instrument manufacturers Peavey. This is a complete Beginner programme for learning Rock, Metal, Funk, Blues and Reggae Guitar. Develop the skills and techniques to play any style of music with master instructor John McCarthy. With a huge resource of tips and tricks, easy to follow close-ups and

Product Description
The °Play It All° series are tutorial DVDs presented in association with respected amplification and instrument manufacturers Peavey. This is a complete beginner program for learning rock, metal, funk, blues and reggae guitar. Develop the skills and techniques to play any style of music with master instructor John McCarthy. With a huge resource of tips and tricks, easy to follow close-ups and a step-by-step approach, this is a fantastic place for novices to start and progress to higher levels. Features include: a CD or °Rock House Jam Disc° with drum, bass and guitar backing tracks, free lifetime membership for online lesson support, authored for Zone 0 and more. 1 hour

Peavey Presents Play It All on Electric Guitar DVD

Lessons for Guitar PRESENTS Classical Gas an Enigma of Modern Music

Guitar Lover — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:37:53 +0000

Classical Gas is one of the most requested and most familiar instrumental pieces of all time. In an episode of The Simpsons called “Last Exit to Springfield” Homer leads the workers of the nuclear power plant in a strike to recover their lost dental plan. While they picket the plant, Lisa plays a bleak worker’s song. As she finishes, Lenny shouts, “Play Classical Gas”. Lisa plays the guitar and everybody watching the episode on TV goes, “Oh, yeah, THAT tune!” Classical Gas is always asked for whenever a bunch of people and a nylon string acoustic guitar are in the same room. It is not really a great technical showcase for finger style guitarists but it is a great vehicle to show off the sound of the classical guitar. Classical Gas was released into the world in 1968. A song by The Doors prevented it from turning into a number one hit but it remained in the second place for two weeks. Forty years later it is still among the most familiar tunes of all time and, along with The Anonymous Romance and Leucona’s Malaguena regarded as an essential element of the classical guitar repertoire. And nobody can say why. The impact of Classical Gas is way more than the sum of its parts. There are very few musical ideas in the tune. It is mainly repetition of a theme made up of a few notes. There are a few parts that are unforgettable “surprises” making use of syncopation, scales, strums, and abrupt time signature changes. Somehow all the bits link together like pearls on a necklace, and the final note adds a sublime resolution. The composer, Mason Williams, states on his website, “I didn’t really have any big plans for it, other than maybe to have a piece to play at parties when they passed the guitar around. I envisioned it as simply repertoire or “fuel” for the classical guitar, so I called it Classical Gasoline. ” Mason Williams’ day job was as a comedy writer and stand-up comedian who had lots of other projects besides writing a classical guitar instrumental. It was Mason Williams’ work on the Smothers Brothers’ “Comedy Hour” which gave him the opportunity to have his pet composition heard by the American public. The original score of the piece shows only chords and a few notes. Mason Williams had a twenty-three year old composer named Mike Post finish off the arrangement. At the Grammys it won Best Instrumental Composition and Best Instrumental Performance for Mason Williams and Best Instrumental Arrangement for Mike Post who has had a career full of triumphs in the field of TV theme music. His latest victory is the theme(s) for the “Law And Order” series. Classical Gas has been employed as the theme music for several news programs, the background music for the Apollo 4 movie, and featured in a number of other movies and TV shows. Many people have mistakenly attributed Mason Williams’ solo version of the tune for a cover by Eric Clapton. Classical Gas is quite an easy piece to play, the challenge is to play it with passion and dynamics because it appears to non-guitarists, more difficult to play than it really is. Maybe this is the reason it is among the most requested guitar pieces ever.