MusicMyLife

Okay, we have been covering the topics of "What a musician needs to know" - my blogpost from a few weeks back - a lot on this blog. I will finish the remaining two topics, but first let's take a break. Apart from what a musician needs to know, there are many people out there, who want to learn guitar. I am on this Google + (as Fluedix) community for guitarists, and I came across this post where a guy or girl wanted to start learning guitar. Many people left suggestions in the comments, first one being "learn drums". That could really be a downer. Anyway, this is for all of you who haven't started learning guitar and want to learn the guitar: 1)Waste not, want not : If you have an acoustic guitar at home already, no matter how dirty it is, clean it and use it. Remember, it is what you play, not what you play it with. A true guitarist can make the worst guitar sound beautiful. Also, don't make unnecessary additions to your guitar.  2)Make it Soft: No n...

Now, we all know that there are a lot of music genres in the world. We can study them all, but that will take a lot of time. If one has the time, then studying them all would be great, but this post is for whoever doesn't have that much time. We are going to study some of the most popular music forms, and some famous bands which play that genre, so you have some new knowledge. After reading this post, you shall be able to answer any person who asks you about a particular genre. Since we are studying the most common ones, it's unlikely to be asked any other form, except if you're talking to an advanced musician who has been in the industry for quite a few years. HIP-HOP : By some, this is regarded as the most famous music genre in the world. However, others disagree. Surprisingly, many people who listen to hip hop music don't know it's hip hop, they just know the artist and listen to their music. Either way, hip hop is a rhythmic type of music. It involves all ...

So I guess it's time to get over my Trinity examination (if you don't know already, check my previous post) and talk about music again. Today I will be explaining to you how Arpeggios and Chord Families work.  Arpeggio s Let's start from scratch. What is Arpeggios? It did sound a bit weird to me when I heard it for the first time. So I'm not going to state any definition here. An easier way to explain what arpeggios is, I believe, to tell you how it is done.  Take your guitar in your hand and hold a chord. For now, let's try the A chord.  Now that you've done that, pluck any string, followed by another, followed by another, in any order and time, as long as it sounds good and covers a bar. While you're plucking your strings, (remember, one at a time) you will hold the A chord. You just played arpeggios.  Now that you got an idea of how it's done, let's move on to understand why it is played. Now again, remember that out here I will st...

Today was the day I was waiting for since a year. It was finally time to show my skills to an examiner from the United Kingdom. I was not nervous, I don't know why. It was just another exam for me. The examiner did not look any different from the other Trinity examiners. I was giving the Trinity Rock and Pop guitar examination - Grade 5. I entered the building where the exam was to be held more than half an hour early, with the intention to warm up on the guitar. I met a friend there, who was also waiting to be called in. Sure enough, just a few minutes after I came he was called in. He was giving the Grade 6. I showed the assistant waiting in the same room as me my hall ticket and photo ID. Then I removed my guitar to practice. It was only 15:10, whereas my exam was to be conducted at 15:38.  After I moved my hands a few times across the fret-board playing a number of scales, I thought it would be better if I removed everything I needed for the exam out of my bag and keep it...

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...

Since you were a kid, you have been reading and writing and doing various things with your language. Similarly, even western notation is a language. It is indeed something you can read, write and speak. This post will make it easier for you to understand and come up with some new creative ways to improve your reading and writing skills in western notation. 1) Practice : People say practice makes a man perfect. Even though nobody is perfect, you have to practice, and work towards perfection. Only then will you really become good. So pick up random pieces and start reading them, and if you can, play them too.  2) Question : If you don't understand something, you can always seek help from a friend or anyone in the field of music. Questioning helps you understand western notation better and develops your mind in a way that cannot be done without clearing doubts. 3) Basic : If you construct a building with a weak base, and a heavy top, it will collapse. Therefore, you need t...

It's not very easy to rock the stage, specially if it's one of your first. Here are some small things which can make a great difference: 1)Involve the ones: This part of a concert is very very important. People have payed to come to your concert. The least you could do is involve them in your performance. Its not like you have to bring them up on stage or anything, but what I am trying to say is make them repeat what you're saying. In this way, they won't only enjoy your music, they will also have fun. If you don't involve the audience, a major part of the audience will get bored. 2)Get some effects on there: This is not important, but it will really really affect your music. There are various ways to improve your music, and this is one of them. You cannot really do any of this stuff with the drums, but on other instruments, for instance, the guitar or the keyboard, you can. For a guitar, you can get an effects foot-pedal which will give you a wide range of ef...

I know this post may be offensive to some people, but it is important to have your own judgement on things, even though you don't say it out loud. If you really don't have a judgement on this kind of a topic, you are a confused soul. I am against judgements made on things you're not clear about. However, in this case you've heard DJ music, (if not, which world are you living in?) you've probably tried to get a virtual DJ for your computer and stuff. So you are pretty familiar with DJ music.  I am going to help you make your judgement in this post. So here, the first thing we're looking at is whether a DJ uses instruments. No, he does not. He has an electronic system where he uses the songs played on instruments and adds his own effects to it. Hard to admit, but its a fact. Now this very clearly shows that the electronic musicians can't play the drum beats in real but have them stored in memory and then get them out of the speakers through a...

A lot of times, we hear that music involves theory, and people give their 'theory' exams, and things like that. Let me clarify one thing: Theory is just lines of information meant to explain something, in brief. Music theory is like a musical language. For instance, if I typed all of this out in Latin, half of you wouldn't understand what I'm saying (even I won't). However, if you understand Latin, you will be able to understand what I am trying to communicate. Similarly, we need to learn music theory to help us understand music better. Look, now if I show you the C chord on a guitar, and I tell you to find me the A chord, some of you may be able to show me, some may not. It creates an understanding of how things happen. Just by showing you the position of the chords and telling you their names, you may play well. But if someone asks you to show them another chord which I haven't taught you, you would go blank. However, if you learnt music theory, this kin...

Surely, it is important for us to make certain parts that sound good and mix them up to make a complete solo on a track. However, beginners always have some question or the other. Why is it that though all the notes of a certain scale sound right in accordance with the backing track, we still create certain patterns which we use in our solos? It actually has a very simple answer. The answer is that though the notes sound right, the patterns make it sound much, much more professional. It not only adds emotion to the song, but it also prevents you from repeating the same motion again and again. When you don't make patterns in your free time, and you come across a certain stretch that sounds really good, you tend to keep playing that in your performance on a track. It makes you think that it sounds really good but actually it just bores the audience. They may like it once, they may like it twice. Some may like it a 100 times. However, if you keep on doing it past a point, ...

Hey guys. In my earlier post I talked about how you can play fast at the same tempo...which many knew. Now it is indeed a common misconception that whole notes are far more easier to play than quarter notes. Frankly speaking, to musicians who have been practicing for over six months..or one year (to be safe) it will make no difference to them, because they are used to it. However, for beginners, it will make a difference. For people who are just entering the world of music, understanding rythm, beats, tempo, takes a while and counts (specially) is a major obstacle for some. If a person is taught how to use a hammer, he may hurt himself once or twice, but once he gets used to it, he hardly makes a mistake. The same way, any worker will get used to what he is doing after a while. Just like these two examples, if you tell a person to play a particular note at equal intervals, and you help him start off, he may go off beat once or twice, but then in just 5 minutes he can continuous...

Now before I start, I want to tell you a few things. This is just a small and basic topic I am covering up tonight, so most of you readers who are into music will understand this just by the title. However, there are always exceptions, and by reading this the exceptions wouldn't be exceptions anymore. P.S. if you don't understand this post, read it again slowly. So the title is kind of confusing huh? How can you possibly have different speeds on a definite tempo? Actually you can. You might have to read up a little more on this because I am explaining in brief, but let's say you have a tempo of 32bpm. Now you can play whole notes, which means in four counts you can play only once in four counts. People find this to be the easiest.  Then there is a quarter note, where you can play four notes in four counts. People find this super easy, easier than the whole notes. Any guesses as to why this happens? I will explain that in another post. Till then, keep thi...