MusicMyLife

Now, we all are aware of what a scale is. We play scales mainly because the notes in the scale sound good when played one after the other during a solo, and anything which is outside the scale sounds odd or as others would call it, "bad". A PENTATONIC SCALE The first thing we have to understand, before we go into a pentatonic minor scale, is what a pentatonic scale is. If you break up the word into two parts, 'penta' means five, and 'tonic' means notes. So if your teacher makes you play a pentatonic scale, it will not sound like a normal major scale we play.  Where are such scales used? A pentatonic scale may be used in blues, rock and pop music. I personally, love this scale and I love to use it in almost every key. I don't dislike other scales or anything, but pentatonic scales are one of my favourites. A PENTATONIC MINOR SCALE A pentatonic minor scale is basically a pentatonic scale played in a minor key. For example, a minor pentatonic...

This is going to be an interesting topic. One of my favourites, actually. Let's get started. Now, what you need to understand is a musical note is nothing but a sound representing a pitch. One can say that it is a pitch itself. The base musical notes are sung in different ways in different countries. However, the most popular way of singing them is in "Do-Re-Mi-Fa..." Like I said earlier, in other countries different letters are used for representing the different sound or pitch.                             OCTAVE Octaves are extremely easy to understand. You may have to read twice, but you will understand. It is really not that difficult. So an octave is generally a series of eight notes, where one note may be half or twice the frequency of the other. Now in case you read the above twice and still didn't understand, I will further explain the sentence.  C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. Examine the abo...

Most of us play an instrument or another, but I wrote this from the point of view of a guitarist. By this, I mean that if a person says he knows the instrument, these are some of the basic things he should know. THEORY In this post, I will only name a few topics of theory that is necessary to know. They are: 1)Number of notes in music. 2) The formation of a major scale: the seven positions. 3)Pentatonic Minor and Blues scales. 4)The Three types of minor scales. 5)Arpeggios. 6)Chord Families. 7)Styles of Music. 8)Mode/Modal Theory. 9)Transposing. 10)Rhythm Patterns. Note that I plan on covering a topic or two of these every post from now on. So be sure to see my next blog post! Thank you.

Today, I am going to give my opinion on  a very, very interesting topic. Have you ever heard anyone tell you 'Practise hard and success will follow'? Well, I do not believe in this theory at all, whereas most of you might be believers. I'm going to tell you why. Nobody can but agree that every individual in this world is different. If everyone had equal capabilities, and would think the same way, there would be no balance, no breakups, no sadness and so on. Similarly, everyone has different capacities and likings in music too. There may be people who love Coldplay, others Metallica, still others Nirvana.  Some people may love playing simple chords, some may love complicated solos. There is no good, bad or better here. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Let's take my example. I love playing the basic chords every guitarist or pianist learns when they first start off, and frankly speaking, I am not even that good at music theory. If you go to see, all the songs I ...

Let's say you're a musician. Let's say one fine day, you go to your music school/instrument class and you're given the opportunity to perform at a gig with a few other students. Would you? Let's say you would. Since you go to that school/class, and they set up the gig for some students, they will decide how to go about the gig. So they will decide the instruments, placement, practice, microphones...basically the whole set-up. You are given two songs to play. Now for your own interest, you have been learning how to play a song which you like, and they are performing that song at the gig. You tell them that you are prepared for it. They agree, and test you. You play it perfectly, you hit the notes, you keep up with the beat, and its wonderful! Clap clap. However, they may not feel the same. They will tell you something is missing. I have nothing particular that I am talking about here, it could be anything. In this post, I am going to tell you about a trick. Th...

This is a question that many people have to ask is that when they use the exact same pedals/amplifiers/other such things, but different guitars (one Gibson), why does the Gibson sound different/heavier? This post will explain why.  The answer is simple: the guitar has more wood. You might have noticed Gibson guitars are quite fat, comparatively, and heavier weight-wise. This is because it has more quantity of wood. Wood makes the guitar sound much heavier. Let's go back in time and see how this happened. When Gibson guitars were introduced, they were really really heavy. However, the sound was what attracted guitarists. Gibson still thought it was necessary to reduce the weight, so they came up with a lighter one. However, that affected the sound and the sales reduced. In this case, Gibson wanted to make their guitars lighter, but still wanted to maintain the sound. Can you guess what they did? I bet you can't think of what they did. Even if you did, I doubt it wi...

This is a very common question asked by many of us. The actual reason is something so obvious that its capable of making you punch yourself for not thinking of this before.  There is not just one factor, but quite a lot of factors affecting your recording.  One reason may be the noise around you. If you're in a noisy, or even in a quiet environment, there is surprisingly a certain type of sound that affects your recording. I don't know in detail about this, but it is the main thing that a microphone mutes, which is what people use most of the time. Second, your own sound. If you don't play the correct notes, or if don't mute the strings properly, or if you hold a note for too long, your recording will be affected. This is one of the major causes Third, your effects may affect it. If you add certain effects to your music, like fade-in or fade-out, then it may affect your recording. If the effect you're using has any kind of unwanted sound in it, then you know...