Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Making Money Playing Guitar Over the Internet

This lesson will go over a few ways in which a person would be able to make money by playing guitar over the internet. I'm sure many people are curious how it can be done so hopefully by the end of reading this you will have some idea of where to start.

Skype Guitar Lessons


Guitar lessons are one way to make a steady income by playing guitar. The internet is something that allows people to reach out all around the world for new students to teach or even an audience who will tune in and truly listen. Alternatively to Skype, one could make video lessons or text lessons (similar to mine). By far, the most profitable are Skype guitar lessons.

example: Antoine Dufour makes $75 per hour by giving guitar lessons over Skype.




Youtube Videos and Itunes


Some people overlook this but youtube will pay you for any video that has good traffic. If you are good enough at guitar and can attract enough youtubers to your videos, some money will start trickling in (depending on your videos traffic).

Also, uploading studio recordings of your music and selling the recordings as albums or as singles over the internet can be profitable. Some sites such as Sound Click can ear you money for your songs. You can also sell your songs on itunes with companies like TuneCore. Prices are cheap and fair to get your songs onto itunes. you just have to have songs that are good enough for people to want to buy.



Non-Internet Money Making


The internet shouldn't be the only place one should look to in order to make money doing what they love. For many people, they don't know where to start. hopefully this video will give you some insight as to where you should beging.







Hopefully after viewing this video you will have some idea as to a money making niche that involves playing music. There are MANY options for you to try and explore.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Utilizing Unique Chords

A great way to make your chord progressions and songs sound awesome is to use open chord shapes.
I always love to use these chords to add some flavor to my chord progressions. One of my favorite chords is Fsus2.
That chord has got the whole package for me. It’s sounds beautiful, gentle, tight, cool and rough at the same time.
When you move an open chord up the neck the name of the chord changes and the chord gets extended with 1 or 2 notes. This way you can get beautiful sounds.
While you can play barre chords at every fret on the fingerboard, open chords can only be played at certain frets. If you play them at the right frets they sound amazing, if you don’t… well they just sound terrible. So be careful.
Because of all the extended chord names I didn’t bother to name every single one of them. That’s not the point here.
It’s all about incorporating these chords into your songs and chord progressions, putting your creativity to the test, experimenting with all the possibilities, replacing some basic chords for these extraordinary ones, learning to hear what sounds right and what feels good.
Learn these chords and put them into practice.
Enjoy!
Here is an example of how to read the chords below:
E = eadgbe (the strings from left to right)
E = 022100 (the numbers indicate where to put your fingers on the fret)
E string = 0 – you play an open string. (no fingers on the fret)
A string = 2 – put your finger on the 2nd fret.
D string = 2 – put your next finger on the 2nd fret.
G string = 1 – put your next finger on the 1st fret.
B string = 0 – you play an open string. (no fingers on the fret)
E string = 0 – you play an open string. (no fingers on the fret)
1 – Open chords in the key of E
022100
2×2200
4×4400
577600
799800
9×9900
11×11 11 00
0 14 14 13 0 0
2 – Open chords in the key of E (different approach)
022100
x44200
x66400
x77600
x99800
x11 11 9 00
x12 13 11 00
0 14 14 13 00
3 – E chord shapes
022100
133200
355400
577600
799800
8 10 10 900
10 12 12 11 00
4 – C shapes
x32010
x54030
x10 9080
5 – D shapes
xx0232
xx0454
xx0565
xx0787
xx09 10 9
xx0 10 11 10
xx0 12 13 12
xx0 14 15 14
6 – Open chords in the key of A7
x02020
x04030
x05050
x07070
x09080
x0 11 0 10 0
x0 12 0 12 0
x0 14 0 14 0
7 – Fsus2 shapes
x33011
x55033
x10 10 088
8 – F#m7(11) shapes
2×2200
4×4400
5×5500
7×7700
9×9900
10×10 10 00
12×12 12 00
9 – Bb triad shapes
xx0331
xx0553
xx0775
xx0997
xx0 10 10 8
xx0 12 12 10
xx0 14 14 12
10 – Dmaj7sus2 shapes
xx0220
xx0550
xx0770
xx0990
xx0 10 10 0
xx0 12 12 0
xx0 14 14 0

Written by Klaus
http://www.guitarhabits.com/10-ways-to-play-the-most-beautiful-open-chord-shapes/ 


Monday, March 7, 2011

The Importance of Improvisation

Up until now I have been compiling good lessons that I have found throughout my time playing guitar however today I want to write a lesson of my own so... improvisation and its importance!

The ability to improvise is a very overlooked skill. It takes intuition and creativity on a level that surpasses writing music in a studio. Every experience listening to an improvisation will be different and completely unique to that moment in time. This makes it possible to play the same song over and over again yet still find something new to enjoy, appreciate, and rock out to. hopefully this lesson will help people approach music from a jamming perspective which will in the end help you create new riffs, play music that sounds great without using music theory, and make you a much better overall musician.

So... what exactly is improvising?
Improvising is done everyday by you and me. When you are having a conversation with someone, you are expressing yourself to them without putting too much thought into it. Every thought is spontaneous and based on prior experiences that suggest to you what will express your desired emotions and thoughts most effectively. It is the same principle for music. Based on your past experiences playing music (you will have more as you play music for longer and thus a better improviser) you are expressing your current thoughts and emotions through the median of music. Your thoughts and emotions are always changing and thus your current state of mind creates and experience that will be completely unique to that moment in time.

Components of improvising
-Flowing naturally while you improvise without losing focus or control

-Communication with other musicians.


-Creativity. Sometimes (actually a lot of the time) your going to have to think outside of the box while improvising.
-Technical and harmonic ability to play over chord changes in time or in a way that conveys your thoughts and emotions.

-Past musical experiences to expand upon. Having a skill set of basic vocabulary and phrasing to be able to play over any style of music.

-Control. A key to improv. You must be able to flow naturally and control what you play while playing in time with a band or jam tracks.

Practicing improvisation
Improvising can be hard to incorporate into a "practice routine" because it is not as simple as forming muscle memory by practicing for extended periods of time. Instead of practicing muscle memory, you need to practice and better understand your musical thought process. You need to understand how to transfer different techniques into various styles of music and how to rely on your musical instincts in order to create some kind of art instead of the note-for-note riff that you have been practicing for countless hours. Something else that is very important is utilizing your ear instead of relying on given scales and chords. If you hear something that sounds good, play it. It doesn't matter if it is "correct" because it is you expressing your current thoughts and emotions in that moment in time. more on ear training in the ear training lesson - located here. Some things that are good for helping to understand improvisation are playing along with unknown songs on the radio, learning basic intervals for scales and chords that can be applied to different styles, and jamming along to various backing tracks.

example of an improvisation:


This video is of Jimi Hendrix jamming at woodstock