Simple Music Secrets

I wanted to talk about the exact steps to learn to play guitar one step at a time over the next few posts. First up is how to find the guitar itself.
Luckily today there are many very well made guitars for a reasonable price so that is nice. Years ago there were only cheap guitars and expensive guitars. Not much in between. I know I had a Silvertone before I graduated to an Ovation and eventually a Martin.
If you do not have a friend to help you, I would suggest a visit to your local music store or stores to get an idea what you want. Please don’t buy anything for a week or so. Go home, research the exact model numbers on the internet and get an idea if the price you are looking to pay is in line with the current retail price. You can buy online also, although I would not recommend that for a first time purchase because the new player is more apt to be happy with a guitar that he picks out the first time. After a while you can buy online and you will know what to expect from experience.
You can buy a very decent, first time guitar for $300 these days. You can of course pay less and perhaps find a good one on Craigslist or at a garage sale. If you are patient and have a friend to help you check out possible buys that would be the most economical way.
Finally you have to decide whether you want an electric guitar or an acoustic one. Unless you are just dying to play electric, I would recommend starting with an acoustic guitar at first. It requires no amplification (an additional expense), and you can play all types of music on it and is also portable to the campfire or at the beach etc.

Next time;tune the guitar.

Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.
The research by Crystal Gibson, Bradley Folley and Sohee Park is currently in press at the journal Brain and Cognition.

“We were interested in how individuals who are naturally creative look at problems that are best solved by thinking ‘out of the box’,” Folley said. “We studied musicians because creative thinking is part of their daily experience, and we found that there were qualitative differences in the types of answers they gave to problems and in their associated brain activity.”

One possible explanation the researchers offer for the musicians’ elevated use of both brain hemispheres is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments.

“Musicians may be particularly good at efficiently accessing and integrating competing information from both hemispheres,” Folley said. “Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere.”

Previous studies of creativity have focused on divergent thinking, which is the ability to come up with new solutions to open-ended, multifaceted problems. Highly creative individuals often display more divergent thinking than their less creative counterparts.

To conduct the study, the researchers recruited 20 classical music students from the Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and 20 non-musicians from a Vanderbilt introductory psychology course. The musicians each had at least eight years of training. The instruments they played included the piano, woodwind, string and percussion instruments. The groups were matched based on age, gender, education, sex, high school grades and SAT scores.

The researchers conducted two experiments to compare the creative thinking processes of the musicians and the control subjects. In the first experiment, the researchers showed the research subjects a variety of household objects and asked them to make up new functions for them, and also gave them a written word association test. The musicians gave more correct responses than non-musicians on the word association test, which the researchers believe may be attributed to enhanced verbal ability among musicians. The musicians also suggested more novel uses for the household objects than their non-musical counterparts.

In the second experiment, the two groups again were asked to identify new uses for everyday objects as well as to perform a basic control task while the activity in their prefrontal lobes was monitored using a brain scanning technique called near-infrared spectroscopy, or NIRS. NIRS measures changes in blood oxygenation in the cortex while an individual is performing a cognitive task.

“When we measured subjects’ prefrontal cortical activity while completing the alternate uses task, we found that trained musicians had greater activity in both sides of their frontal lobes. Because we equated musicians and non-musicians in terms of their performance, this finding was not simply due to the musicians inventing more uses;  there seems to be a qualitative difference in how they think about this information,” Folley said.

The researchers also found that, overall, the musicians had higher IQ scores than the non-musicians, supporting recent studies that intensive musical training is associated with an elevated IQ score.

Source: Vanderbilt University

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The full version of this story is available online at http://www.physorg.com/news142185056.html

Lately I have been thinking about what methods I use to memorize songs. I am a guitar player and singer so I play the song on the guitar endlessly until the song can play naturally without me having to remember it per se.

I break it into sections, intro, stanzas or verses and ending. Your particular song may be in a different form but the concept is the same.

I try it in different keys to find the best key for my voice and also differrent keys on the guitar require different techniques and may provide me with insight or inspiration. Sometimes you find things you would not have thought of before simply by playing in a different key.

I find that if there are particular sections that are difficult or have a challenge of some sort that I need to work on this section first in my practice. This makes sure I do not overlook it and get lazy. If I always play through the song and stop when I get to the “hard” part then I will not ever get past it and it will actually become part of the final version. You must face yoru demons and work on the hard part.

Oh and the last part is to remind you that there are no shortcuts really. You have to play the song over and over and over and over and over…….

Did you always want to learn to sing, but never had the time? With college and career, marriage and children, and then your kids college and careers, and their marriage and children, the years have a way of spinning away from us. Before you know it, you have gone from being a young adult to an empty nester in the blink of an eye. You and your spouse may find yourselves retired, looking at each other over the breakfast table saying, What should we do now?  You may think of hobbies you never pursued and think you might be too old to learn to sing.

Luckily the voice is unlike other muscles of the body in that it can be used with very good results well into advanced age. It would be silly to think you could be a world class athlete at middle age for the most part, but you can learn to sing with effort and the right teacher or course. I certainly can tell you that you are never too old to learn to sing.

If one of the things you or your spouse always meant to do but never got a chance to, was learn to sing, do not push that aside, thinking you are too old. You are never too old. Singing is excellent low-impact exercise. You are up and moving, getting your blood pumping a little. Singing helps to increase your stamina and strength. It improves breathing and coordination, and it helps to relieve stress. From my experience I can say that only a few minutes of singing a heartfelt song will bring joy to my soul, tears to my eyes or laughter to my face in a very short time. It is amazing.

Singing is not only great exercise; it is also a lot of fun. Taking singing lessons is such a fun thing to do that many people do not really consider it in the same category as taking an exercise class like aerobics, for example.   Aerobics and singing are actually similar in the fact that they are both very physically demanding. The difference lies in the intent behind the movement. While singing, the focus is on the body itself. The enjoyment is in the sound as you are singing and any health benefits that happen while singing are a bonus, but the joy and fun of learning to sing is the singing itself.

Singing is also very romantic. As we live our normal lives with jobs, kids and the activities of everyday life, we can lose touch with this part of ourselves and this part of our love relationship. Think back to when you and your spouse were dating.  There was probably a little singing involved, right? Believe it or not, that flirtation and fun that you shared when you were dating is still there within both of you. You just have to give it an opportunity to be expressed.

Think of how it would be if at the right time you could serenade your lover with their favorite song. If you want to re-kindle your love flame, learn to sing and you will find you are never too old for a whole lot of other things as well.

Learn to sing and you will find a great way to connect with other people and enjoy being the focus of attention for a short period of time. Going out for dinner and singing with friends is a great way to spend any evening.  Even the old family summer barbeque that you have had for years can be livened up by setting up a small singing area and some music. If you bring a guitar and just take it out of the case, you will find that people gather around and say, do you know such and such a song? This is your chance to shine.

So if you have ever thought that you would like to learn to sing, there has never been a better time to do it. Learning how to sing is something you’ll never regret and remember, you are never too old.

start a rock band

Like many artists before you, you want to be in a successful band. You have a artistic desire and a song in your heart. How can you start on your road to greatness?  Many factors affect the make up of the band, personal preference and the characteristic of the music.

The common make up for a rock band would be guitars, bass, drums and a vocalist. When you have a new band, you must not fail to practice enough. It goes without saying that this must now be the most important thing in your life if you want to compete.

You need to be so familiar with your music you can perform it many times in a row with no mistakes. There are many ways to keep things interesting for your other band players. In addition to playing in public, provide new songs to learn so members keep their interest up. It helps to have some recording time also so members can critique their own playing.

Respectful treatment is the order of the day between you and the members of the band. Band members are indeed like family, perhaps more so. It is also imperative to listen and watch other bands play live.

Have a band meeting every so often. At meetings you can discuss common goals and problems. If you want to be like a family, all must have their say. Technical issues should also be discussed at this time so you can avoid disasters on the stage.

Take a vacation once in a while to recharge. Vacations can allow your mind to get fresh creative insight.

It can be difficult to keep a band together. These suggestions will definitely help you to keep your band together. If you can follow through, practice and communicate, you will be on your way fast.