I was wondering about the origin of this African Guitar and if any of my readers knew the tru name of it or which country it comes from. I did find one image of a similar guitar but not much else if you know anything about this stringed instrument plese tell us more below in the comments section
99% of the time – when someone mentions Skype, people think of phone calls and video calls to different countries. Although this is the most popular (and probably best) use of Skype, there are also other pretty cool things you can do with the application. Below are a few of the advantages of learning and teaching a musical instrument on Skype.
You could be interested in learning the harp, but because you live out in the sticks and can’t find a harpist for miles, you have to pay too much to travel to your teacher. Nowadays, however, you can learn to play the harp on Skype, regardless of where you’re based.
Another advantage is time. If you teach a musical instrument in people’s homes over a wide area, you spend a lot of time travelling between lessons. With Skype, however, you can spend more time teaching instead of travelling, enabling you to teach more people and earn more money.
If you’re a local music tutor, your target market can only ever be people who live within a certain area. If you’re an online music tutor, you can literally teach anyone in the world.
You can use social media to market yourself instead of having to use local marketing techniques. The fact that social media is free could help your finances massively.
5 Tips To Improve at Playing The Guitar
Probably the main difference between a professional guitarist and an amateur one is the level of consistency they are able to play things perfectly. Most professional guitarists that have this level of consistency didn’t have what you would call natural talent.
Instead, they worked hard at developing their skills through practice sessions and learned from their mistakes. If you aren’t one of the rare guitarists that possess the natural gift to play the six stringed instrument there is no way around practicing continuously if you want to get better.
Most beginners struggle with practicing because they don’t know what they need to practice. Check out _ you should focus on to get the most out of your practice session.
Guitar Practice Specific Exercises and Techniques
When a lot of people start playing the guitar they focus too much of their time learning to play songs instead of practicing specific techniques. It’s much more helpful in the long run to practice specific exercises and techniques so you can use them properly in songs that you play.
It isn’t fun practicing the boring and fundamental techniques over and over again until you have perfected it, but trust me it will pay off big time. Some of the techniques and exercises you should be including into your practice session include alternate picking, hybrid picking, hammer-ons, finger picking, bending, slurs, scales, pentatonics, arpeggios, triads, pull-offs, and sweep picking.
Remember, if you weren’t blessed with the natural talent to play the guitar learning these new techniques won’t be as easy as you would want it to be. However, you have to keep practicing them until they become second nature to you.
Building up Hand Strength
The strength of your fingers and how flexible they are is very important if you wish to become a great guitar player. The only way you can build up the strength and flexibility in your hands is to do fretboard exercises like the finger twister.
The finger twister exercise works by getting the fretting fingers to move around in ways along the 6 strings that they normally wouldn’t move in. The flexibility and strength of your fingers around the fingerboard will improve once these unnatural finger motions stick to your muscle memory. Fretboard exercises like the finger twister will also come in handy when you begin playing improvisation of guitar solos.
Practice the Basics of Playing The Guitar
When you start learning to play the guitar focusing on the fundamentals is necessary if you want to improve your skills. Just like everything else, you need to practice the basics over and over again until they become second nature.
Everytime you practice focus on using the proper posture, improve your knowledge of the fundamentals of the guitar and how they works, improve your knowledge of basic chords and how they work, focus on improving your knowledge of the fretboard like where certain notes are located. Even after you have a good understanding of the basics you should continue to practice and keep yourself sharp.
Use a Metronome To Keep Your Playing In Time
You should definitely use a metronome whenever you practice so your timing isn’t off when you play your instrument. Your timing is everything if you want to play the guitar without sounding horrible.
Practicing with a metronome is extremely important if you are a beginner and you haven’t developed a good sense of time. Moreover, when you practice playing the guitar with a metronome you will be able to find out where you are making mistakes when you are playing a certain passage.
Have Goals & Keep Track Of Your Guitar Lessons
When you are ready to start your practice session you are going to want to know what you’re going to practice and for how long. Chances are you have a lot of other obligations you need to focus on throughout the day like a job, kids, spouse, and other things. So you want to make sure you get the most out of each of your limited practice sessions.
It will be up to you to determine what you need to work on and where you need improvements. The best thing you can do is have some goals that you want to accomplish each time you practice.
If you have a goal or a plan for your practice session you will find that you can get a lot more done. Think about using a journal to keep track of your progress and what you have been working on each time you practice.
You can find more from John on his website and guitar forum where you writes even more great information about guitar lessons. You can get more guitar lessons for beginners from the website just click here to find out more.
While looking about for channels to install on my roku lt I found the lecturekings.com channel where you can look at various lectures online for free using your roku player.As I browsed the lectures I dicovered the course music 241 which is instructed by Dr Amy Muchnick from Missouri State University. It contains a full semester of lectures on the “Language of music” however you will need the additional materials such as music cd’s and books for the course.
To watch the Online Lectures you will need to goto the roku channel store and install the lecturekings.com app from the channel store the goto the Missouri State section and select the videos from the language of music course. I have watched the first one which was quite interesting without having the required reading materials and still quite easy to follow. Dr Amy Muchnick seems to be quite a good and entaining teacher and from the only lecture I watched she does seem to be able to help students devlope intrests in styles of music they were not intrested in previously maybe because they never heard them or they have not listened to them with an open musical mind., Such as how in lecture 1 she says that most people do not like opera simply because they don’t understand it and goes on to make a funny translation of an opera. If you don’t have a roku but have iTunes you can also download these lectures click this link here to get the course content on iTunes
Flash cards for the course the language of music 241
http://www.koofers.com/flashcards/mus-final/review
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People are looking for ways to promote their music online but are usually not very good (nor highly credible) at writing about their own music. maybe this is because they can’t find a good definition for it, or maybe it’s because perhaps no two people really experience a piece of music in exactly the same way. Finding time to write music and write about the music you have made can be quite time consuming… Luckily a service can be provided that will help get their music discovered easier through music reviews.
What is the sound of one hand clapping (remember that from the Simpsons episode, “Dead Putting Society”)? We can of course think the same way about music; if nobody has heard it, then how do you explain it to someone so that they will listen to it? And really, as a music customer (or customer of anything, for that matter) do you believe everything the owner/seller tells you about his/her product?
Having your music reviewed, and then publishing the review is a proven way of getting new music discovered…and if you need an expert review I can help you out with that, as I am not only an artist (www.reverbnation.com/timmedrek), but also I have written reviews for many up and coming artists on such sites as Music XRay, Reverbnation and NumberOneMusic, as well as in “private practice” self-employed…I do have the ability to accurately and persuasively describe music. In fact my most recent review client said exactly this after receiving the review of his entire new album release:
“Hi Tim, You have done a great job!!! I love the way you explained my music into words.”
This client hired me because he said he “ran out of words” trying to describe his own music
If you need a professional music review I can help for a small fee get your music reviewed and heard, and help find new fans for you. Check out my music review service and marketing service. I also have a service to help your musical creative process get moving again if you are stuck.
See my page here (I go by the name MusicMaker when providing services through GigCrafters):
http://www.gigcrafters.com/user/MusicMaker
Tim Medrek
a.k.a. timsrock
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