The Guitar Players Club

Underground Method of Learning the Guitar Fret Board!

Underground Method of Learning the Guitar Fret Board!
By Samuel Malama

Many have come and gone, they have seen and conquered; yet there is one thing they have failed to achieve-knowledge of the guitar fret board (found on the top of the neck with metal bars across it)! Unfortunately whether you believe it or not, knowing your frets is the key to success.

Many guitar players always find it difficult to do so. One would think rocket science is a walk in the park just by the way they go about it. Frets are exactly that, frets! There is no need to fear them. After all, if one has no knowledge whatsoever, how do they expect to play chords?

Yes, you heard right, chords…one of the most petrifying words in guitarville. Frets and chords go hand in hand, if guitar is your thing, better learn or die a slow death. There are different suggested ways of gaining better knowledge of frets, the highly proclaimed being mentally.

MENTALLY

This employs the method of learning away from your guitar. You can learn a fret at a time (in your mind), memory cards or games, mnemonics. They all work; you just need to find which one is the easiest for you. Let us look at all these in detail starting with the mind method.

Learning With Your Mind

The mind is capable of a great many things; humans underestimate it way too much. The best way to go about this technique is to take each fret at a time. Make sure to know all the six notes (if using a six string guitar) on the fret by heart before moving on to the next. Keep doing this 'till you are done.

Memory Cards

This is a great way of going about it; you can even get someone else to hold up a different card each time. Each card has the number of a fret, for example the number three. When you get this card you have to say out the notes G C F A# D G respectively. It goes on like this until you get all of them.

By the way, you don't have to go and buy these cards; you can simply make some at home. No need to spend unnecessary money. (After all, we have too much to worry about with the high gas prices).

Mnemonics

Mnemonics are a sure fire way of learning to some degree. Mnemonics are simply assigning words to correspond with the various letters. An example of this would be the positions of the planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

This would become; My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nice Potatoes, get the point? You can assign each note with any word that you can remember.

What Next?

What next is that you go out and put what you have just learned into action. Knowing your frets will take time, but it is very doable. Don't be afraid of it, it is just the fret board and nothing else.

Article Source: http://www.affsphere.com/Entertainment/Musical-Instruments/Underground-Method-of-Learning-the-Guitar-Fret-Board.html

Investing in Vintage Electric Guitars
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lowry_Gibson]Lowry Gibson

In the current world of investing for the future, one sure way to beat inflation and devaluation of the bond market is to put your money in vintage electric guitars. The demand for original flying v or Paul McCartney left handed guitars continues to rise in spite of recessions.

Especially in demand are vintage Gibson hollow-body, Fender's vintage sunburst Stratocaster and vintage Fender guitar amplifiers. Nostalgia for early rock is only one reason for the high valuation of vintage guitars and accompanying guitar equipment. The main reason demand is so high for vintage guitars is the sound they produce is as unique as the instrument itself.

Decades ago, when vintage guitars were new, the technology to produce them was in its early stages and many of the electric pick-ups had to be hand-wound or if they were machine made, each was just a little different. A few less strands of wire in the pick-ups caused a little different sound. The bodies were not completely uniform either, making the sound-box on each just a little different from the next guitar being made. As a result, each guitar was just a little unique. Additionally, over time, the electronics degraded a little causing even more difference and variation from instrument to instrument.

Original Fen

The Beginnings of the Vintage Electric Guitar
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lowry_Gibson]Lowry Gibson

That beat up old Fender vintage guitar has had a lot of history associated with it since it was first made nearly sixty years ago. The true beginnings of the electric guitar started with Gibson Guitars as early as 1920, but the design was not successful and was shelved. Rickenbacker made the first successful pick-up in 1931 and installed them on their "Flying Pan" Hawaiian steel guitar. Dobro placed electronic pick-ups on a few of their steel guitars in 1932.

The real success of the electric guitar was with the ES-150 Gibson (which stood for Electric Spanish guitar) in the late 1930's and made popular as part of the Benny Goodman Orchestra. World War II intervened and progress and development of electric guitars all but stopped.

The famous Les Paul experimented in 1929 with his own design of electronic pick-ups but wanted to resolve problems of excess vibration affecting the sound the pick-ups gathered. As a result, Paul started working on a more solid body electric guitar which allowed the sound of the strings to be the only thing picked up by the electronics. Les Paul, Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby worked together to make a solid body guitar to eliminate unwanted vibrations on the guitar's top wooden plate. Epiphone Guitars, at the same time experimented with solid wood bodies that resembled a railroad tie with a neck and pick-up.

Leo Fender started the Fender Electric Instrument Company in 1949 and made the Broadcaster, soon to be renamed the Telecaster in 1950. In 1951 Fender invented and made the first electric bass guitar and began marketing it. Gibson introduced the Les Paul model of electric guitars in 1952. That same year was the introduction of the three pick-up Stratocaster by Fender.

Since 1952, electric guitars are almost the same with the exception of some modifications to the pick-ups to take advantage of the ability to make them smaller such as use of piezoelectric pick-ups, "humbuckers" or the use of transistorized pre-amps embedded in the guitars themselves. Because of little changes over the years, the values of vintage electric guitars increase. And by studying production numbers of some vintage electric guitars, some instruments are very rare.

George Harrison played a Rickenbacker 360 12 string guitar in the early 1960's to obtain a fully rounded sound during recordings. His guitar may have been one of the total of 36 ever made! Because of the low numbers of this model of guitar (360/12 OS), finding the other one made during that year would make this vintage electric guitar extremely valuable.

Harrison was also given one of two Fender Telecaster electric guitars hand-made by Fender in Rosewood. Fender serial number 235594 was the only prototype of the Rosewood Telecaster outside of the one held by the Fender company itself. A similar Rosewood Stratocaster was given to Jimi Hendrix. The current owner of the Harrison Telecaster is Delaney Bramlett of Delaney and Bonnie. Bramlett received the guitar as a gift from George Harrison for bringing him back on stage after several years retirement to play along side long-time musician friends including Eric Clapton.

Inside the fraternity of guitar players, specific vintage guitars are passed to others because of a unique sound it provides. For example, Jeff Beck gave a 1959 Fender Stratocaster to Jimmy Page during one of their recording sessions because of a particular sound that guitar produced in the hands of Page. Joe Walsh gave Page an 1959 vintage Gibson Les Paul. In fact, almost all of the guitars used by Page are 35 - 60 years old! Vintage Gibson guitars, vintage Fender Telecasters and Stratocasters as well as Vox and Rickenbacker vintage 12 string guitars make up most of his collection. [http://www.vintageelectricguitars.net/Fender.html]Vintage Electric Guitars are not only an interesting topic of conversation but also a unique investment opportunity.  But before you embark on that get some basic information first.

For a wide selection of electric and vintage electric guitars visit [http://www.electricandvintageelectricguitars.com]Vintage Electric Guitars dot com today for the best prices anywhere

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lowry_Gibson http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Beginnings-of-the-Vintage-Electric-Guitar&id=1528434

I thought it appropriate to mention the death of Richard Wright today. In case you don't know, he was one of the founders of the fantastic band, Pink Floyd.

Wright met Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and he and friend (late) Syd Barrett, joined their band Sigma 6. That band was named Pink Floyd and would make musical history in a big way.

Keyboardist Wright and Barrett were considered the bands dominate musical forces and were probably the main influences for their early psychedelic styled music.

Wright wrote "The Great Gig in the Sky" and "Us and Them" for the 1973 album 'Dark Side of the Moon', which sold 40 million copies. He also worked on "Atom Heart Mother," "Echoes" and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond."

Unfortunately, the tension between Wright, Roger Waters and guitarist band member David Gilmour, caused Gilmour to insist that Wright be fired. Wright was to be only a session musician on the tour of 'The Wall' and didn't perform on 1983's album 'The Final

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Perhaps you've heard of the blues scale, perhaps not. Regardless, the blues scale is a soloing tool you should have in your repertoire. Below is a diagram for the blues scale. If you start with your index finger (left hand) on the 'A' of the sixth string, which is at fret 5, you would be playing an 'A' blues scale. Obviously, if you moved your index finger up two frets to the 'B', you would have the 'B' blues scale.

If you had to guess what kind of music you might use the blues scale in, I'd bet you'd probably say the blues. Bingo...but, the cool thing about the blues scale is it's versatile. Of course it is used extensively in blues music, but it can also be used in other styles of music. The best thing to do, is to memorize the scale formula, and try it out when you're soloing. The added blue note creates tension, and can be very useful when soloing.

The blues scale, in case you haven't noticed, is a minor pentatonic scale with the addition of a single note...the 'blue note', as it's often called. The added note is a flatted 5th. So if you're playing the the key of 'C', you count up five (counting the C) to the 'G'. In the minor pentatonic, you already have the 'G', but to the scale, you now add the Gb (flat). The G flat being the blue note.

In the diagram above, the blue note is depicted in, yep, blue.

It's advisable to remember the blues scale, as well as the other scales, in all the positions.