Music

Music plays important part in my life. There's no day without listening to it at least for several hours. I'm a die hard fan of rock and metal, I also listen to some grunge, pop-rock, rock n' roll, blues and the like. I have gigabytes of music on my hard drive and dozens of audio CDs on shelf. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to concentrate only on listening to music, therefore, I make the music play in the background and do some other stuff.

Since my discovering the joys of playing the guitar, I'm wholeheartedly dedicated to this instrument. What a shame it happened only 2 years ago, when already I was busy with programming, not when I was younger and actually had time to play. To the parents out there: do your children a favour and make them interested in music-making as early as possible (but for heaven's sake don't force it) - they may live their whole life without realising how much they missed. And if we're already discussing it, what about you? Do you play any instrument? If not, at least give a try to one of them and/or listen one of good friends playing alive, and ask him how he feels...

As for me, I own two instruments: one is classic guitar made by Everplay, that I've been using for the last year (it's to the left on the picture). Cheap and pretty average, targeted at beginner guitarists that are making their first steps in the realm of music-making, not sure what they want and whether they'll still be playing after a month. When they finally decide that playing is for them, they should buy better instrument, that will allow for further skills development.

I also faced this situation... and guess what. Recently I bought new Garrison AG 200 (to the right on the picture)! There's no comparison with my former guitar, Garrison surpasses it in every aspect by leaps and bounds. AG 200 is acoustic guitar, which means the box is bigger, strings are made of steel, 14 frets are easily available (there's no cutaway in this model) as opposed to 12 in classic guitars.

It uses patented Garrison technology (much praised Garrison Active Top Bracing system), and experienced guitarists claim that guitars with this system implemented sounds better than those without it, but which are twice as expensive! I can't really tell it's true since I held only few acoustics in my life and have nothing to compare with. But what's important to me is that AG 200 produces much louder, better resonating and more metallic sound than old Everplay. In short: it just sounds great.

Links

Some links from my collection. I'm mostly self tought, and they helped me much in learning theory behind music, playing, proper excercising etc. Odds they'll also help you :-)

How to play and exercise effectively

Here's list of advices from many authoritative sources that I collected over total time I learn to play guitar, coupled with my own tips. If you stay loyal to them, you won't waste time.

• You should play only on a tuned instrument. Learn to tune guitar by ear, using different techniques. However, since tuning by ear is rather hard for beginners (I still have problems with it), consider using hardware tuner, or tuning program with microphone plugged in to your PC. I use AP Guitar Tuner: it's free, easy to use, and I heard from authoritative source, that it's very precise; give it a try.
• Don't concentrate solely on technique - it's only a tool in playing great music. Fast running your fingers all across the fretboard may impress layman, but without interesting melody patterns even such people quickly get bored. What will a sculptor do with even the greatest sculpting tools available if he doesn't have any clay to work with? The same is with making music. You have to feel the music deep inside, and in order to do this, you have to improve musically. One way to do this, is to play songs by ear, not only from tablature or notes. How to do this? Turn radio on and start playing what you hear :-) or let Winamp play your favourite band and do the same. Sure, it's very difficult, but who ever said that being guitarist is easy...
• There is an old saying: for every hour spent playing guitar, you should spend another one listening to music. Listen to all types of guitar music types: rock, metal, blues, jazz and misc genres of those, not only the ones that you most like. From time to time pick unknown band and listen to it. Listen consciously: in your mind try to separate vocals from guitars, from bass, from drums and hear each of them separately. Try to recognize what techniques is guitarist using: legato, harmonics, slide? What is the speed and loudness of music, how it is structured? Also, sing along (don't get discouraged by the quality of your singing: you can also learn to sing, you just need practice).
• It's best to play everyday - your fingers may feel even few days of break. However, don't force yourself to do it - if the next day you have very important exam, or you're very tired, forcing yourself to play guitar won't make you any good, you'll only waste time. How much is enough? Andre Segovia, one of best classical guitar players in history, at his 80 birthday said "When I was younger, I was playing guitar a lot. However, now I'm pretty lazy, so I play only 12 hours a day". Clearly, very few people (dedicated guitar players) have the time to play for over a dozen hours every day. But it's true, that even if you effectively spend half an hour every day with guitar, after few years you'll get quite good (as for an amateur, at least). Obviously, the more you train, the better you are. If you're not professional who does guitar playing for a living, but are willing to become good player, I would recommend 1-2-3 hours everyday. Personally, I train 1 - 1.5 hours every day in week, and 2-3 at weekends. (note: practicing times are out of date, unfortunately I have far less time for guitar theese days)
• Plan your exercises, ie. divide them into parts when you learn new and polish old techniques, when you learn new and repeat old songs, when you jam, play chords, learn theory etc.
• At beginning, when you start with some new technique, song or other concept, play slowly. If sth gives you problems, simply slow down, and try to divide it into smaller and easier elements. This way, you'll be able to grasp and learn new idea more quickly. There's an old saying: "the longer you play slowly, the faster you'll play faster."
• Improvisation - as much as you can. Develops your ear and general musical abilities. Alter every song, play what you hear inside you, solo over scales, find out interesting chord progressions. It's kind of a jamming by yourself. And while we're at it...
• Jamming with other musicians, playing for other people - as much as you can, it's very fucking important and I can't stress it enough. By playing with more experienced guitar players you'll progress much quickly than when learning on your own. Also, help those who are less experienced than you are - everybody was beginner one time, and everybody has someone who knows more about guitar than he does. It's important to be open and willing to cooperate. Talk and discuss with your friends who are also playing guitar and/or other instruments. Maybe you could start together a band? That would teach all of you a LOT.
• Singing - it's hard to play guitar and sing at the same time but learn to do it - it comes with practice (few months and you should be able to do it without great pains). Though it has power to impress people, there's devil hidden: when you start singing, people will hear mostly how you sing, guitar will go to the second line - so better be sure that you can sing good enough. If you want to learn singing, I would recommend searching the internet for "vocal coach", "singing lesson" or directly for people like Roger Love and his course "Vocal power", Brett Manning's "Singing success" or take a look here. Good stuff. Also, taking the real life courses/lessons helps immensly, as well as practicing by yourself (duh).

There's plenty of software for guitar players. I'd recommend for you to learn at least using Guitar Pro 5. A few of those of which I came across:

• Guitar Pro 5 + RSE
• EarMaster - great for developing your ears
• Audacity - free n' simple audio file editor
• KRISTAL Audio engine - ditto, seems to have more options
• Audition - commercial n' powerfull audio file editor
• BestPractice - slowing down digital music files without (almost) affecting pitch, good for transcribing music
• Guitar Scales Method
• AP Guitar Tuner
• Melodyne - amazing program which allows to change the pitch of individual notes, even those played in chord. See the video below: