Master Playing With This Amazing Guitar Lesson Book

Today’s topic of beginning guitar lessons is metronome, a device that makes a sound to indicate beats so you can keep in time when you are playing the guitar. A metronome keeps perfect time so that you can learn the songs you love properly. Also metronomes are adjustable, meaning you can make them beat faster or slower. This lets you learn a song at a slower pace before
building it up to full speed.

Older metronomes were like wind up clocks that had a swinging
pendulum and were generally powered by a spring. On the end of
the pendulum was a weight that could be moved to change the tempo
(tempo is a musical term that basically means speed).

Modern metronomes are electronic and generally battery powered. They
are operated by pressing buttons or turning a dial. Older
metronomes make a clicking sound like a clock whereas more modern
metronomes generally make a pinging sound to denote each beat.

Metronomes are very important for all musicians because they
will keep your playing in time. Nearly all modern rock recordings
are made with a metronome and most dedicated professionals practice
with one. The reason for this is that without a constant beat it
is easy for a musician to go out of time. This also applies to
practice as you should be trying to play in time as much as
possible.

Newer metronomes can do some pretty amazing things like
playing differing time signatures like 3/4, 6/8, and 7/8 for
example. They can also be set to make different sounds depending
on the beat. For example you can set most newer metronomes to have
a different sound at the start of a bar so you always know where
beat one is.

When using a metronome you should push yourself but practice
with tempos that you can handle. This will make you a better player
– though you may find it difficult at first it is something that
will pay dividends in the future.

Though I believe using a metronome is very important when you
are practicing, there are times when I think you should play
without it. When you are trying to be creative or if you are
experimenting with different things there is no real need to use a metronome.

So though a metronome is a good practice tool it shouldn’t be used
religiously and every beginning guitar lessons should encourage players to use it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: Beginning Guitar Lessons, metronome

A lot of people learning to play guitar are also interested in
recording their music. It helps them actually hear what they’re
doing.  They can record original songs they’ve written and they can
share their skills and songs with friends by e-mailing them mp3s of
their playing.

Anyway this past week I heard about a recording studio software
package that I thought you would be interested in. It does all
kinds of really magical things – and IT’S FREE! Now usually “free”
stuff isn’t worth wasting you time with, but this software is
amazing.

The software is called “Audacity”, and some of the features are:

Recording

Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or
digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or
minidiscs. With some sound cards, it can also capture streaming
audio.
- Record from microphone, line input, or other sources.
- Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.
- Record up to 16 channels at once (requires multi-channel
hardware).
- Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during, and after
recording.

Import and Export
Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or
new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file
formats.
- Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files.
- Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files) with libmad.
- Export MP3s with the optional LAME encoder library.
- Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to CD.
- Import and export all file formats supported by libsndfile.
- Open raw (headerless) audio files using the “Import Raw” command.
- Note: Audacity does not currently support WMA, AAC, or most other
proprietary or restricted file formats.

Editing
- Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.
- Use unlimited Undo (and Redo) to go back any number of steps.
- Very fast editing of large files.
- Edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks.
- Use the Drawing tool to alter individual sample points.
- Fade the volume up or down smoothly with the Envelope tool.

Effects
- Change the pitch without altering the tempo, or vice-versa.
- Remove static, hiss, hum, or other constant background noises.
- Alter frequencies with Equalization, FFT Filter, and Bass Boost
effects.
- Adjust volumes with Compressor, Amplify, and Normalize effects.
- Other built-in effects include:
o Echo
o Phaser
o Wahwah
o Reverse
Sound Quality
- Record and edit 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit (floating point)
samples.
- Record at up to 96 KHz.
- Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality
resampling and dithering.
- Mix tracks with different sample rates or formats, and Audacity
will convert them automatically in realtime.

Perhaps the best thing, however, is that Audacity will run on
Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems, and the hardware
requirements are amazingly low so just about anybody can use it.
(It will run on a 300mHz processor with as little as 64 meg of RAM!)

You can check it out and download it free at:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/

Popularity: 1% [?]

Technorati Tags: learning to play guitar, recording your music