Blogs

D minor backing track [001]

This is a backing track in d minor, with drums, strings and clean guitar. The backing comes from my original piece, Love In The Rain You can download this backing track here. Guitar Tab Here are the two (slightly) different parts for the clean guitar: This is the first part of the guitar backing This is the second part Scales and Arpeggios From Video In the video, we look at three different scales and arpeggios we can play over the top of this backing track:

How to Remove Stem Lines From Tabs in Guitar Pro

How to Remove Stem Lines From Tabs in Guitar Pro Guitar Pro is a great way to create professional and clean looking guitar tabs, but sometimes it has some annoying defaults. One such default is the stem lines that Guitar Pro insists on showing: To remove these, do the following: Open up the stylesheet, and navigate to the ‘Notation’ tab. You should see this screen: Under ‘Position in Tablature’, change ‘Voice 1’ to Hidden Those annoying tab lines are now removed :)

A review of Zene, mint a boldság hangszere

A review of “Zene, mint a boldogság hangszere” The following is a review by one of my readers, Krisztian Andeo. You can check him out on Instagram here Review Hi Sam, Would like to send some feedback to you if I may. I purchased your book and another one from Hungary half a year ago. The other book’s title is (in English): Music, as the Instrument of Happiness The subtitle is: Get from the bathroom to the stage!

Do Guitarists Need to Learn to Read Conventional Musical Notation?

One of my readers recently wrote: Hey Sam, Thanks for the message! I’ve had a skim read so far - looks like some great advice in there! I wondered what your opinion is on guitarists learning to read conventional notation - particularly the note pitches rather than just rhythms alongside a TAB? Classical and jazz guitarists will tell you it’s a necessity, whereas rock, pop and other genres might say it’s optional… To me it

How to Get Your Child to Practice Guitar More

Recently, a reader messaged me about how he can get his son to practice guitar more. He wrote: “hoping to encourage my son who is 12 to practise more. I don’t think he is that excited by his music lessons, but would like to improve” Here was my response: Getting kids to practice is a tricky one. They’re usually at a level where they can’t do anything too exciting (although if his teacher got him playing to a simple backing track, that would probably be exciting).

Toontrack Superior Drummer 3 Review – When An Apple Loop Won’t Do It

When you start out creating music, as a guitar player, the drums are probably not the first thing on your mind. You’re thinking about writing a great riff, how to capture your guitar and get a great tone. So when you’re at this beginning stage, having drums that exist is usually good enough. Going to an Apple Loop, or Logic Pro’s Drummer is usually where most people start off - even the built in drums in Logic Pro are great for getting started.

The Major Scale on Guitar

The major scale is the most important scale in music theory, and today we will have a brief look at how to play it on guitar. What Is The Major scale? The major scale has seven notes, which we label 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. The first note, note 1 is the root note. This is the note that we start from. From 1-2 is a whole step. From 2-3 is a whole step.

50 Little Things You Can Do To Get More From Your Guitar Practice Time

Set Goals For Yourself and Guitar practice The first step to getting more form your guitar practice time isn’t doing practice, but thinking about who you want to be as a guitarist. Do you want to play rock guitar? Rhythm guitar? Lead guitar? Classical guitar? Do you want to be able to compose or improvise? Read music? Or play songs from tab? What genres do you want to play? Do you want to play in a band?

Getting Your Music onto Spotify, iTunes and Other Streaming Platforms

Comparison of Music Distributors (CD Baby, Tunecore, Distrokid, etc) If you’re a musician wanting to put your music on iTunes, Spotify, Tidal and Deezer (and the myriad other options), then you need a music aggregator. Let’s look at what they are, what your options are and which aggregator is suitable for you: What is a Music Aggregator? A music aggregator is a 3rd party company that will submit your music to all the different online stores and streaming services.

How to Perform Neoclassical Chord Progressions on Guitar

The music theory behind neoclassical guitar is the theory of what is known as “The Common Practice Period”, often abbreviated to CPP, of music. The CPP spans roughly from 1650 - 1900. In terms of music theory, this is what we know as “tonal music”. CPP gave us: a framework for the order in which chords can be played and exceptions for those rules, known as functional harmony guidance on how each note within a chord should move to the next chord (this is known as voice leading) structures for composing music, from the sentence / period, up to the sonata musicians pushing the limits of virtuosity Practices such as counterpoint, 4 part voice leading, complex forms such as sonata form and multi movement forms such as concertos were well developed in this period.