“Only they who believeth in their guitar quest shall be granted passage”

  • Blues, why? Why not?

    Some say that when we learn guitar playing, it’s a direct fast lane to Bluesmusic, and i believe that. Some of us might said “no! it’s METAL! distortions! the spirit of on-stage performances take control!” or even such like, “you’re totally misunderstood,  the notes will lead us into harmony, yet jazzy or classical, it’s a way in understanding beautiful scientific-audible math.. bla bla..” “blahh..”

    blues for guitar
    Add blues on your playing

    yes, i still believe in blues. somehow it connects all guitar players, and connecting guitar players to other music players and the audiences. what is blues, actually? it’s only a music genre, right? what’s so special about it? here some thoughts i have about it.

    blues is inside of guitarists’ hands. it’s pentatonic, just like world traditional scales in almost every cultures. when it comes to guitar playing, blues is the place where the wrong notes against the right ones and collaborate. it is allowed us to explore more. No judgements, sins and punishments for the wrong blues notes since they are the part in balancing and perfecting the right blues notes. each note helps each other to become perfect harmony. you can’t be so right in notes without knowing and experiencing the wrong ones.
    “the wrong against the right” – quoted from Don Mock: The Blues From Rock To Jazz.

    other source i agree with, is quoted from Rod Stewart. on my understanding, he said that in modern music, Blues is the catalyst. each of music genre is connected with blues, and they may be the branches from the blues as root.

    one more thing about why it is important in guitar learning is, blues teaches and connects us guitar players in humble way. slow, medium of fast bluestempo will connect various interests. the  bluesnotes trigger the eagerness of beginner guitar players, while the advanced/experienced players will get deep understanding with the history of it. (this music genre carries vast histories among people around the world, see more at wikipedia about blues)

    it’s a brief about blues. very interesting isn’t it? well, i hope you can see it through my thoughts about this and i guess I’ll keep loving blues like i always do.

  • About Eric Clapton

    About Eric Clapton

    this mister Eric Patrick Clapton is one of the greatest guitar player. a solo artist, and was a member of the Yardbirds and Cream. what i really know about him isn’t much, but it’s more than enough for me to acknowledge his achievements. his ability in guitar playing and song writing has inspired a lot of people beyond his generation.

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    for the very first time i heard his voice through his song “wonderful tonight”, i was a 12 years old kid, knew nothing about anything but that song lasts on my mind. it’s like an introduction to mature and stylish love, a decent young gentleman who loves his gorgeous girl with all his nerve and adoration. it has catchy blues guitar licks which made any guitarists want to try it. for me, “Wonderful Tonight” is like a guidance to prom party which will help any young man to get his girl in stylish and decent way.

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    next song which came to my ears is “tears in heaven” when i was in senior high school back then, just few months afer i got my first acoustic guitar. again, i knew nothing about this song until i learnt to play it. what a grieve feeling that shocked my heart when i read and sang the lyrics at that time. “this guy is crazy. he could kill people with his songs”. i continued learning guitar after that moment, forgetting about Eric Clapton, expanding my guitar learning, licks, arpeggios, distortions and whatsoever stuff, yet i will not forget that grieve feeling i experienced just only by listening “Tears In Heaven”.

    next moment was when my friend shared videoclip, eric clapton’s live performing “i shot he sherrif”. yes it is bob marley’s song, but eric clapton’s version brought blues idealism and reggae freedom idea into one clean liveshow. this video tickles me and i start to find anything about eric clapton. his Cream band, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and “arty, blues-based psychedelic pop (quoted from wikipedia, what a quote) is one fine blues. my blues learning was ignited by this guy and i love blues since then.

    Eric Clapton uses many guitars, and Fender Eric Clapton Stratocaster® Electric Guitar and Martin 00028EC Eric Clapton Model Acoustic Guitar are the best you can get from the store nowadays. And you might want to read article about how he love his guitars. it’s amazing story when you heard someone donates his guitars for charity.

    as a guitar learner, Eric Clapton has my respect. his playing and songs have been accompanying and teaching me lots of things. at least 3 minutes talk or a picture of me and him shaking hands would be a life time memorable moment. but actually, i want to meet Eric Clapton and have my first electric guitar scratched with knife by him.

  • How the circle of fifths is described in my understanding

    well, indeed it’s easier for us to understand the circle of fifth than the circle of fourths in guitar learning. There are two reason for this. first, we can always find the fifth note on the guitar fret board, simply by pick the string right above the root note (for the root note on the 3th, 4th, 5th string and the 1st string, the fifth note is right above it; for the 2nd string, the fifth note is half-note-down above).  it’s visually known by our eyes and our fingers can touch it right away.the second reason and the real reason is that the circle of fifth is obtained from the notes order linearly. there is something that we called tetrachord. the wikipedia definition:

    a tetrachord is a series of three smaller intervals that span the interval of a perfect fourth, a 4:3 frequency proportion.

    the circle of fifth is obtained from diatonic tetrachord (this is sh!t, there are too many difficult words for beginner guitarist like me to understand!). I’ll try to explain what is in my mind and let pictures redefine all these.

    let’s divide an octave into 2 parts,
    1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1into 1 2 3 4 and 5 6 7 1
    put them on a paper and write down the note intervals

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    now we have separated and identical intervals, 1 2 3 4 = w-w-h and 5 6 7 1= w-w-h

    put the alphabet notes, then we have C D E F and G A B C plus the intervals.
    the rest is easy. pay attention to the fifth note and observe how each fifth note is transferred onto the first(root) note. there you can see the number of sharped notes in each transferred note. here is the complete picture.

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    from that picture above, we can make a circle of notes called ” the circle of fifths”
    here i share picture of it from wikipedia

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    please, correct me if i shared the wrong information via your comments. your feedback is my teacher. thanks

  • Learning Guitar tips for very beginners

    What is the exact method in learning guitar? This is a question which has inspired since the day one of learning guitar as my music expression. And yes I’m a beginner for a life time. I have seen so many guitarists and virtuosos with their bright achievements and at some point I feel so down just by hearing their compositions. But I’m not a quitter. So I made this blog as my approaching method in learning guitar. Yup, by sharing what I’ve learnt so far and asking responses around the internet, again and over again then learn the new knowledge I got from doing that. That is my guitar learning system.
    What I got so far actually is very helpful, and I’d like to share them here as Learning Guitar tips. Some tips for beginner guitar players just like me. Here are some of them.First, choose your own guitar. It’s kind of difficult thing, because, as a beginner, we can’t be sure which guitar suits to our learning. Well, there you must have friends whom you trust to accompany you to guitar shop, or, you read carefully about guitar around here on the internet. Some technical stuff those can’t be ignored about guitar is:
    – Woods. Regular guitars are made from woods and definitely you can’t miss this. There are so many kinds of woods for guitar. Mahogany, maple woods, alder, nyatoh woods, rosewood are among them. Each has its own characteristics in building the output sounds.  What we really must concern is, the wood must be dry and strong.  All guitar brands put this on top priority.
    – Crafting and precisions. Both hand-made and machine-made guitars need to be precisely built. This is vital point that you can’t ignore. Some guitars just fit to our hands and we ne need to try them at guitar shop before we buy them.
    – Pickups and other accessories. Latest technology made them possible to get the highest quality and precisions. The bridge, headstocks and guitar strings are things develop rapidly these days, you can read more details on the internet about this and get amazed on how far they go for this.Second, tune the guitar. For me, tune guitar strings learning is the basic idea to deliver us to the next level. Without this knowledge, we will wandering around and achieve nothing in progress. The standard tuning for guitar is:
    – High E for the first string,
    – B for the second string,
    – G for the third string,
    – D for the fourth string,
    – A for the fifth string,
    – Low E for the sixth string
    It is known by the name EADGBE tuning (last E is for the smallest string) and I think that all of us need to know this before we learn chords and lead playing or any other skills. You can get help in tuning your guitar with guitar tuner online here.

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    Third are notes and their intervals on guitar. The dots on guitar help us mark the notes. All things about scales and modes, circle diagrams or other kind alike, need to be converted on guitar fretboard so we can translate the notes fluently.  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (C D E F G A B) is the best thing to start. You can use guitar learning software if you want to. Indeed it helps a lot.

    Fourth is learning guitar chords. After we learn about the notes, the next thing is finding out about how those notes build the chords. Chords consist of notes that played in one at a time. There are various ways to approach this section, so far stuff that comes in handy when we learn the chords, and at least there are basically five kinds of chords:
    Major chords        : consist of 1-3-5 (C – E – G)
    Minor chords        : consist of 1-3b-5 (C -E flat -G)
    Dominant chords    : consist of 1-3-5-7b (C – E -G -B flat)
    Diminished chords    : consist of 1-3b-5b (C – E flat – G flat)
    Augmented chords    : consist of 1-3-5# (C – E – G sharp)

    Pick only your favorite songs to learn guitar. There we will have the never-end spirit in learning  guitar songs learning is my best way.

    Of course this is only a brief guitar lessons. There will be more detailed posts about all these. This tips I made is for beginner guitarists who want to know some stuff the guitarist can’t be ignored. I hope this helps. Any responses, please?