Monday, April 14, 2008

Playing The Guitar First Time

Looking for a new guitar can be confusing if you are only just learning to play the instrument. Strolling down to your nearest guitar shop will help you determine the different designs, but it will not help you to decide on which guitar to pick. The first time I had received my first acoustic guitar was when I was seventeen. I had no idea how to play it, nor did I know that the strings needed changing or that the frets were a little worn down.

To me it was all about having a guitar and finally being able to learn to play - the trouble is how would I learn how to play? What would I need to do to maintain my guitar and what strings do I need to buy to replace my existing ones? The truth is, I had asked all my friends and decided to visit the nearest guitar shop and gain some helpful tips from them. I soon learnt that I needed to but very specific strings and found they came with varying thickness.

The point is there is no 'beginner' guitar, apart from sticking to a six-string guitar, which can be acoustic or electric. Acoustic guitars tend to need harder strumming, I find, but if you do buy an electric guitar, you will need to buy a good Amp to go with it.

Getting a guitar is about playing and making music with it, so for those who are learning to play for the first time should endeavour to learn more about the guitar itself as well as learning how to play it. So now, you have the guitar you find yourself strumming away to painstaking noises, scratches and distorted tunes. You think to yourself, that maybe you should take another trip to the guitar shop and perhaps buy a guitar playing guide for beginners. Alternatively, you could buy a DVD tutorial, audio CD with an accompanying book or look up for music teachers.

In the nine years, that I have had my guitar I have to this day not learnt how to read or play music, because I learnt how to read guitar tabs. This is a much simpler and easier version of reading music notes. Instead of learning your notes and their tones, you are learning which fret to place your fingers and what string to play that note. They are easy to read and with a short practise, you will be picking it up in no time.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

How To Learn To Play Piano

Though learning piano is a dream for many people for years, deciding to learn and learning wouldn't happen just like that. Luckily, some tools are provided by the technology and this makes it easier than ever to learn the piano even in the busy schedule of our lives. An offline lesson occasionally maybe needed or not along with your online learning materials according to your style of learning. It can be pleasing and beneficial in the growth and restoration of the mind, though learning piano may be difficult at an elder age.

Today, online courses on the internet have come as a great source to people who want to learn piano without leaving the comfort of their home. So you need not surprise if there are a number of piano aspirants moving on to the internet for courses on piano learning. And for the people who have patience, commitment and the money for those CD courses which are costlier, this is a great alternative. However, what about those people who want to learn piano in their style and their own conditions? It would be great if there were websites that provide piano learning aspirants with knowledge they needed to expertise the piano without overstressing them. Fortunately, there are sites which help you learn the piano in your own style, but there are only a few of them. Hence, you really need to research, particularly when many websites try to take your money and leave you disturbed without making you learn any skills.

It would be great if you find such a website, and you can learn playing tunes on the first day itself without any difficulty even if you have not touched a piano key before. And it is possible as there is no reason for you to get surprised by the greatness of this instrument. Nevertheless, a piano keyboard is just a row of buttons, and if you can push buttons, you can create music easily. Therefore, the great determination to make music and being well on your way to become a pianist is what are all really needed.

Sometimes, as people were told that to learn piano one needs to put a lot of hard work, they used to withdraw themselves from trying to learn piano. Now, this wasn't actually untrue some years back, as there were terribly painful exercises to be played by students and learn songs they didn't like for the preparation of the songs which were fearful. In other way, learning piano was made an unpleasing and boring task in those days. Now a days, easy to understand and visual cues and "tricks" have replaced the boring lessons in books, which is a complete contrast to the older ways of learning. With some practical changes like these, learning piano has become so easy and enjoyable than it was.

On the other hand, along with beginners, even qualified performers can take the advantage from the vast piano learning opportunities out there. So if you know the basics already and want to easily play the keys and tones very well, you need not worry, because, if you believe it or not, now you can get a way to many hidden secrets on learning how to play keys and play piano as your favorite musicians do.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Snare Drum


Analog synthesizers have regained some degree of popularity in recent years, as electronic dance music has become more widespread and successful. Although analog technology has become replaced by cheaper digital modeling technology with more features, the goal of VA (virtual analog) synthesis is to be able to recreate the warmth and nuances of the highly variable analog circuits of yesteryear. The ability of digital components to accurately model is the subject of great debate and beyond the scope of this article, but a general consensus is maintained that they are becoming more and more difficult to tell the difference between.

With that in mind, the assumptions that this article works under include the following: That you possess an analog or virtual analog synthesizer with at least one oscillator (VCO), a low pass filter with resonance (LPF) and key tracking (also called key follow on some models), one or more standard ADSR-type envelope generators (EG) that can be routed to affect amplitude, filter cutoff frequency, and preferably pitch, and a white noise source. Even with such a relatively limited palate of sound-sculpting tools, a large number of exciting sounds can be achieved.

Furthermore, these articles will make the following assumptions about the default settings (an initialized patch, if you will) of your synth in the interest of consistency. First, the oscillator footage (or octave) should be an intermediate setting (16' or 8'). The filter should be wide open (all the way up so as to let all sound pass through unaffected) with no resonance. The envelope(s) should have zero attack, decay, and relase with %100 sustain. With these parameters adjusted to the preceding values, most basic synth sounds can be easily realized.

In this article we will examine classic analog percussion sounds similar to the drum machines and synths of the 80's through modern techno and house music. Let's start with a basic snare-type sound. Use a relatively mellow waveform such as a triangle wave, blended with however much white noise is appropriate to your ears. The key here is to find a good ratio between the sound of the shell of a snare drum (the oscillator) and the crack of the "drum head," which is approximated with noise. Keep the filter open for now. Set the amp envelope to have zero attack and sustain and quick decay (a third or less) with a little bit of release. These parameters can be adjusted, depending on whether you are going for a more or less realistic sound.

This should put you comfortably within the realm of the classic Roland drum machines of the 80's, which used ringing oscillators excited by a noise source to achieve their classic sound. For a more Kraftwerk-esque thwipp-type snare, use the filter in conjuntion with an envelope with similar parameters to the amplifier EG. Set the filter cutoff frequency fairly low with resonance to taste (try at every setting, but watch your speakers and ears at high resonance settings!). Use a healthy amount of envelope modulation to keep the transient bright, with a more muted decay. Now you can make some sweet synth-pop snares.