What You Need To Know About Drum Lessons

June 29, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music 

Maybe it’s the heartbeat inside all of us, but people all over the world, even those who profess to have no musical talent whatsoever, all have some innate understanding of rhythm. Everyone can feel a beat. Drummers usually know this right away, and they’re compelled from an early age to smash whatever’s around them in time, or brush their surroundings (table top, dashboard) with sensitivity like a jazz drummer would with the brushes. If you’re about to learn the drums, here’s what you ought to know.

There isn’t a musical instrument in the world that can be mastered without a lot of practice! But, especially with drums, you’ll need to practice your piece, or your fill, or whatever you’re learning, slowly, before gradually increasing the speed. It’s necessary to get it down perfect, however slow, before you increase the speed. If you increase the speed before you have it down cold, the mistakes will become more evident and sound even sloppier when it gets faster.

As a drummer, it doesn’t matter if your technique is dazzling if you don’t have good time! It’s obvious, but drummers need it. The musicians in your group are depending on you. For this reason, teachers will frequently use a metronome with their students. This will help you do drills slowly and on time, and you can incrementally increase your speed as you improve. Frequently it’s actually harder to play more confusing bits slower, but your teacher will sort this out for you! That’s what he’s for.

At first, you’ll have your hands full keeping the different hands sorted out, and then you’ll have your feet to worry about. It’s true that each drum is a different instrument, with different tones and temperaments, and what you’re doing is learning how to play them all. The drummer’s first job is to learn how to syncopate, which is the act of maintaining a beat while simultaneously hitting against it. This will become easier as you go along, but at first it’ll seem like a mountain that you can never climb. You’ll get there! Psychologically, it’s crucial to understand that this will seem beyond physical possibility, but after practice it gets easier and easier until one day you can kind of do it. The mountain’s peak will be in sight. Remember this going in and hopefully it’ll prevent you from being discouraged off the bat.

Finally, you can expect to be playing along with recordings. Obviously, drums are an accompaniment instrument (unless you’re doing a solo…) and to help keep track of the other aspects of the song it’ll be necessary to play them in the back. With guitar, piano or drum lessons Surrey you can play the bulk of the song yourself. This also helps improve your ability to listen, something all musicians need to do while they’re playing.

If you keep these tips in mind you should be excited to learn a new skill, have some fun, and make some good music! Best of luck.

Long & McQuade’s Musical Education Center offers piano lessons Bedford and drum lessons Vancouver. When trying to learn a musical instrument be sure to visit the professionals at Long & McQuade – one of Canada’s largest music stores.

Guitar Instructional DVD: Become A Pro Learning With The Pros

February 24, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music 

Like you probably have done, I have read a ton of interviews with great players and articles written by many of these same players. I often found it frustrating whenever the subject of learning to play guitar came up or when advice was offered on improving one\’s playing. With a small number of exceptions, very little time and space was offered on this.

Its not uncommon to see the player\’s advice be summed up in a grand total of three words: Practice! Practice!! Practice!!! Well of course we all know that practicing is the main ingredient. But rarely are we told much more than that. In my long quest to become an excellent player and to help my students do the same I carefully took note of what worked and what didn\’t. What parts conventional wisdom is accurate and what parts are (at least in my opinion) are not. I believe the twenty concepts that have proven to bring great results to those who use them are:

But no matter how good you get, there will always be something you can learn from someone else. Seek out those people, get to know them, jam with them, discuss music and guitar with them. Be willing to give as much (or more) as you want to take. If you are fortunate enough to be above the level of other guitarists in your area, seek out great bassists, pianists, violinists, drummers, etc. You can learn from them as well. (Even if you are not better than your guitar player friends, seek out musicians that play other instruments as well anyway).

You may need to revise certain aspects of your strategy as time goes on and that\’s ok, but don\’t try to go forward without one if you want the maximum results in the shortest amount of time. In my early days learning to play guitar, I wasted a lot of time aimlessly desiring to get better without having a clue as to how to plan for it. Sure I practiced a lot, but without direction and without an efficient path to follow. Most of my substantial progress as a musician came only after I developed a strategy and worked with it.

The way you view yourself (as an artist and not merely someone who owns a guitar and plays it sometimes) is very important to the way you will think about what you are doing musically. The way you see yourself will also effect the results you will get as you are expressing yourself.

Now that we have the proper attitude in focus, let\’s talk about how to go about \”managing\” the process of changing bad playing habits. How do we actually conduct ourselves, and our practicing and playing? As I have said, some people become paralyzed, afraid to play, afraid of undoing work done in practice sessions by what they do when they play. And for those who play professionally, it is of course, absolutely necessary that they continue to play, even if they are doing \”remedial\” work on their technique.

What I didn\’t know was that even though I was learning to keep up with these chord changes, I had so much muscle tension in my arms and other parts of my body, that I was locking in tensions that didn\’t have to be there, and would come back to haunt me a few years later as I attempted the classical repertoire, where you don\’t really get away with things like that. As the years went by, and especially in teaching others, I realized that it doesn\’t have to be that way for anybody! There is a way of going about it that doesn\’t create or allow this situation.

For instance, practice chord changes. Perhaps switching from an F barre chord to a D open is driving you crazy. Spend ten minutes going over and over the change.

What you just learned about guitar lessons is just the beginning. To get the full story and all the details, check us out at guitar instructional dvd

Free Ultimate Guitar Tab

December 19, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Music 

There are both free and paid services where you can find an ultimate guitar tab website online. The free guitar websites have become very popular.

One of the best things to do is find a whole bunch of free ultimate guitar tab web sites first and then join a pay site if you do not find the tabs you like. Pay sites can be expensive although they may have a larger selection.

One of the fastest ways to learn how to play a song is by learning from an ultimate guitar tab book. Although learning the chords and scales is beneficial, this takes a lot of time. Both methods help build finger strength and coordination.

You can learn just about any song you like in a few hours by trying the guitar tabs. I learned how to play many songs from ultimate guitar tab books and still do so today.

Guitar tab is usually said to be a huge shortcut to learning how to play the guitar. You can learn songs quicker, but in the longer term it is maybe better to learn the chords and scales so you can learn how to play any song.

The guitar tab is simply a shortcut that many folks use when they really want to learn how to play a song quickly. Instead of spending hours blundering with the chords and scales and going from your chord book to the sheet music, you can learn how to play a song faster by learning an ultimate guitar tab song.

Playing a particular song with great accuracy is very important to most people and you can see every single little note with an ultimate guitar tab transcription. If you are someone who just plays songs with the chords alone, you are probably playing very simple songs and not complicated finger-picking songs.

If you have ever played a song using just the chords, you probably are wondering why you cannot get it to sound the same as the recording. You are probably missing some of the notes. If you used an ultimate guitar tab sheet to play the song, you would have them all right there in front of you.

You can really impress any person you like by playing the notes to their favorite song to them in a couple of minutes. There is not any faster and simpler free way to teach yourself how to play the guitar than by learning an ultimate guitar tab transcription.

Stan has written another interesting and practical article that you can read before you download anything online, so make sure you check Stan Stewickivas poston ultimate guitar tab music for the rest of this article. For a very short time you can visit us to get your free easy ultimate guitar tab download.