Punk guitar

Yesterday i got an e-mail by someone who asked me to post some guitar lessons for Punk Music. I am preparing a whole blog especially for that topic but until then i will post some tips here labeled "Punk Guitar".

First of all , there is actually no such thing as a punk guitar technique. Also the punk music varies. There is the hardcore punk (exploited etc.) ,the old-school generally and the new school of punk (Something like Sum 41,Green day etc.). And i'm not sure about which punk style the e-mail was about (since i didn't get an answer when i asked that guy back).The difference is that almost always those who want to play punk music really wouldn't get too much into the music theory. So in the next tutorials that i will post under the "Punk Guitar" label i will try to cover the techniques that are characteristic to punk music (palm mute,fast downstrokes etc) and analyze the best ways to master those techniques as fast as possible.

For any questions or requests feel free to contact me at feralbreeze@gmail.com

Music is easy...

You may criticize the title of that post but there is a big point there.Yes, the music has a lot of theory, and for some people it's harder and for others it's easier to understand it. Many people are trying really hard to learn every aspect of music theory.That's especially true for the most of those who are trying to learn arranging,orchestration and composition.But music isn't math. A good musician is not the one who were sitting in a library reading books for 10 years or more. A good musician is the one who practiced a lot experimenting, transcripting and analyzing tunes, played with other musicians or bands, learned to hear the music,the rhythm the one who has the metronome in his mind and many more.

My piano teacher said "i was a theoretic for about 40 years, but there is nothing more fun than playing a melody over some octaves,you can always find something new even in the simplest things."

When i asked my guitar teacher what I should do to improve my jazz improvisation ,he told me "listen to jazz music".

After giving my Theory teacher a bunch of some pretty complicated exercises that he asked to bring ,he checked them out and he said "Yeah,ok, i can't see any mistakes, but you have to write MUSIC".

So,as you can see being a theory guru is not the only thing that you will need to become a good musician.No matter what you do, just have fun with it. Do what you like with music. Theory is there to help you,but it won't always guide you. Trust your ears,train your ears, Just try to become good in some things that you like the most in music,and don't try to be perfect in everything.

Music is simple,and if someone tells you the opposite he's lying. Just be creative, patient and have fun...

Theory:lesson 2,Reading From Staff pt.2

Learning the notes:

So now let's become more practical with the musical staff and learn to read notes. If you haven't yet,you should read through the first part of this lesson.

First,let's look at the notes of the G-clef.I will use a learning method that my theory teacher showed me some years ago. You can find your own way to learn them but it really helped me to learn the notes on each line and on each space separately.






So,in the G-Clef the notes on the lines ,from bottom to top, are E-G-B-D-F. You should really give enough time to have an optical connection to the notes on the staff. It will REALLY help you in your music path to easily recognize each note.

Now on spaces:






Pretty easy huh? From Bottom to top again the notes are F-A-C-E.

The range of each clef though can be extended by using additional lines for notes above and below the 5 base lines of the staff.







You can use as many extension lines as you need.However using lots of them can really make the notes unreadable. So always use the appropriate Clef to avoid too much lines.
You can always calculate all the notes by using the clef as a guide to find the G note or the F-note on the F-clef. As you know they are ascending from bottom to top.However knowing the notes optically is crucial for every musician even if he won't do any sight-reading.

Let's take a look at the F-Clef's notes now. I won't show the notes on the extension lines ,you can calculate them yourself using the next notes as guides:





So on the lines the notes are G-B-D-F-A from bottom to top.

As for the spaces:







It's A-C-E-G.


Accidentals:

Ok,so now you know where is each note on the staff. But what about those black notes on the piano ?
I talked about them in the previous part of this lesson. As i mentioned they are the alternations of the natural notes. So the accidental symbols are 5 basically:










So, what do they do?

The Sharp symbol before a note raises it's pitch by a half-step.If you don't know what a half-step is, don't worry i will talk about it in my next lesson on the intervals. For now just think about it as the smallest step that you can make on the piano from one note to another. So if you see a Sharp sign before a D note then this note is called D-sharp (D#) and it's the black note on the piano at the right side of the D note:














I talked about accidentals on piano in Lesson 1 of Theory basics.

Note that the E# is actually the F note because there is no black note between them. The same applies to the B# note.You may ask then "whay do we need to call the F note E# sometimes,if it's the same note?". That's a pretty frequently asked question ,but you will understand the reason when you'll get a bit deeper to theory.So , for now just keep all that in mind.

The Flat symbol before a note will lower it's pitch by a half-step:
















Again, the Cb is the B note and the Fb is the E note.

We haven't actually talked about the measures and the rhythms but i will just tell you that every piece written on the staff is divided to measures. You can see that in the next example. Do you see the vertical lines? These are the bars that are dividing the measures. So from one bar or the beginning of the staff to the next bar is one measure:










I'm talking about that because the accidental ,if it exist before a note ,applies to the same note for the whole measure. So if there is and F# in the measure and after it there is another F without a # sign before it ,the note still will be sharped (sometimes the # inside a parenthesis is used as a reminder of the existing sharp) .






Also the accidentals symbols are often written right after the clef or at the start of the staff line.If that happens then that accidental applies to the whole composition (Global accidentals) or after a change of the global accidentals.(if there is a double vertical bar and there are other accidentals after it it's a change of the global accidentals). You will understand why that's important when i'll discuss the scales and the modes.

When you want to cancel the accidental symbol in a note to make it natural note you must use the Natural symbol before it. This will cancel both the global accidentals and the local (inside the measure) accidentals on a note.The natural sign also applies only for one measure.

1st Example:








2nd Example:








Here you can see how the C note is changed due to the accidental symbols and after the 5th measure notice the global accidentals change (the double bar and the new symbols).

The global accidentals are used to show the Key of the song. I will talk about keys in another lesson.

And before i end this lesson, you may noticed that in the accidentals image that i posted above there are two more symbols.These are the double flat and the double sharp symbols. I believe that this is self-explaining. The double flat symbol lowers the pitch two half-steps (that makes a whole-step) and the double sharp raises the note for a whole-tone.






Here you can see the double-sharp first (the X symbol) and the double-flat symbol (bb).

There is much more to learn about the theory basics ,but i hope that i made this aspect of theory as easy as i could to understand,and didn't forget anything important. So in the next lesson i will discuss the rhythm,the rests, the note durations and some more. Happy studying...

Writing Music Software

This time i want to give some ideas to those who are willing to write music using computer software.

Writing music is my favorite way to express myself. And this is true for many other musicians. This process can be very fun if you found the right software for you and learned to use it. With the software that exist today it's not really necessary to know music theory very well (i believe though,that the result should be much better if you do) .But this process also can be very frustrating if the software you are using is unknown to you.

For someone who isn't new to music, the software that I'm mentioning here should be familiar.

For mac users i would suggest using the Logic Studio. It's really great for composing using software instruments. For both the WIN or the MAC users the best software for me is the Nuendo (it's kinda expensive though but it supports video scoring) and Cubase (which is almost like Nuendo but much cheaper ). There are also some other software available like Reason,or fruity loops,but they are pretty limited in some aspects.

That software are DAWs. By using them you can record audio,use software instruments ,use midi keyboard to write,mix,add effects and do many other fun things. With these you can simulate pretty realistic instruments and the result can be very very nice even for beginners.

The other way to write music ,if you are pretty good with music notation and pretty familiar with the musical staff, is by using a notation program. The best software for that out there is the Sibelius and Finale. They are both very good in what they do ,but i prefer Sibelius.

Another notation program which uses tablatures (i will write a lesson on tablatures and how to read them soon)and is very nice for writing ideas for your band especially if you are a guitarist,is the Guitar pro application. It's really easy to use if you know how to read a tab and the rhythms and there are lots of tabs available on websites (my favorite is the http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ ,which is a great source for tabs) if you want to learn a tune on your instrument.

In notation applications you can always hear the composition,though the quality of the instruments is pretty bad and plastic.

So this is a quick overview of some software available for musicians. I will discuss some of them more closely later.

Also ,a very good software for writing ideas for your band

Theory:Lesson 2,Reading from staff pt.1

Welcome to the basics of music theory lesson 2.

So,now that we looked at how to recognize the notes on the piano it's crucial for every musician to be able to recognize them on the staff. The philosophy behind this is very simple, but to master reading the notes quickly (and you should learn to do that as i wrote in my Music learning tips )
can take some effort and time. It's a very basic aspect but no one should skip this knowledge ,especially not the theory guys of music (Arrangers,composers etc.).

Ok,so what is the musical staff? Take a look at this image:








These are two staffs of a piano.Each staff has five horizontal lines.You can see now that there are 4 elements in the staff beside the staff lines. So what are those things? The first element to the left is the Clef. You can see two clefs here the bass clef (or the F-clef) and the treble clef (or the G-clef).The clefs are symbols that are always exist in the beginning of each staff and they determine the pitch range of the notes of each staff.So how they do it? The way is pretty simple but first let's look at the piano keys because it's one of the instruments out there that has the largest range of notes (that's another advantage,by the way, of the piano for composers and arrangers):



As you can see in the image here the notes are repeated many times on the piano keys.Actually there are 7 octaves and a half as you can see by the numbers i wrote above (i talked about octaves in the First Theory Lesson). So what the clef does is that it shows you in which range the notes located on the staff are.The middle octave as you can see has the number 3 ,so the C in that octave will be named C3 to be clear. To the left they are descending and ascending to the right.The notes on the staff can be located on the lines or on the spaces. So if the C note is on a line then the D note will be on a space, the E note on line again and so on. So the G-clef shows you where the G3 is located.It's the point in the middle of the clef where it's starting point is :

So you can see that it's on the second line from the bottom and that will be the G3 in the G-clef. The F-clef is showing the F2 note and it's the second line from the top on a F-clef staff. There are also two more clefs available to use but they aren't used as often as the other two. These are the Alto and the Baritone clefs:


Both of them are showing the C3 note,so their ranges are located between the ranges of the other two clefs.

Because of the "popularity" of the G and F-clefs I will concentrate on them.

The material about reading from staffs is pretty huge so I will continue this aspect in the Reading From Staff Lesson pt.2.Until then,best wishes from me.

Learn piano online #1: "Why Learning Piano?"

Ok, I believe that to be a good musician it's very helpful to know how to play the piano.I don't mean that you should become a piano virtuoso,but being able to play the piano freely is something very important if you really want to dig into theory,arranging and composing music. You could ask "why?" of course. The piano is an instrument where the polyphony can be played much more easily than on the other instruments. On piano you can play the rhythm part along with the melodies,or play two,three or even more voices at the same time pretty easily.You can play the bass part,the accompaniment,the lead melody, the counter melody simultaneously.That's what makes it the best friend of a composer or an arranger.And of course if you are using technology to write music you MUST know how to play a bit of piano to make the MIDI recordings much more humanized and real.But do remember that the piano can't really substitute a band or an orchestra, because the timbre and the color of each instrument in an orchestra ,and the balance between them is what creates the color of the orchestral music.So,if you are an arranger then you should also learn to hear the timbres of the instrument that will be used.

Myself,after being a guitar player and a songwriter for many years I took jazz piano lessons for a year and that was one of the best choices I made in my music live. Not only I enjoy playing piano and my compositions are now written much more easily but it also helped my guitar playing pretty well. On piano ,practicing the theory becomes a very easy subject and I strongly recommend that if you are serious about music, that you learn at least the essentials of playing it.

In these articles of my blog named "Learn Piano" I will post some essential guides and tips for learning the piano to help you obtain your skills much more quickly and easily.Also it's important to know basic theory to understand the piano more easily so check out my Theory Lessons.

Remember that whatever you learn,will always come in handy some time .So give it some time and learn playing piano and I'm pretty sure that your effort will pay back very very soon.

Learning Music Tip #1

Hopefully,if you are willing to study an aspect of music you would take a theory course or get a book on musical theory. Regardless of your musical orientation (Modern or Classical) it's really IMPORTANT to learn the basics REALLY good. And i can't emphasize that enough.When i say learn the basics i don't mean that you should be able to find the tones and the half tones in an interval or know the formula of a mode,i mean that when you have to you should have the notes of the scale ready in your mind without having to count the tones and find it out. I MEAN IT!!!

There are many people who got bored of music because they don't know the basics,especially if they want to become composers or arrangers. And for a period of a time i was one of them myself,until i figured out that i had to review all those things that i thought i was really familiar with.

Music shouldn't be something very complicated but you can easily get frustrated and confused if you are missing things out.

There are some things that you should learn very very good before trying . Some of them are :

1.The notes on the staff. You MUST know which note is where on the staff by just glancing at it.(very important).

2.The intervals. You should be able to very easily play an interval from each note on your instrument , and if you are playing a string instrument you must know how to play that interval on multiple strings and not only horizontally.Also you should learn to easily recognize them on the staff. I suggest doing some sight reading even if you aren't going to play by using a music score.

3.Chords ,arpeggios and scales. You should be able to play and recognize all the basic chords arpeggios and scales in many positions and inversions.

4.Know the scale's sharps and flats.Know what sharps and flats each scale has.

5.Pentatonics.Especially important for improvisation.

6.Tensions. Something VERY IMPORTANT. You must learn the available tensions of the chords in each situation. Not really basic but when you do learn them give much attention and don't skip material.

So these are some things that i have in my mind now worth learning very very well. I guarantee that if you know at least these things perfectly the music will be much more fun and much more interesting for you. So happy learning...

Theory:Lesson 1

Ok, the basics are basics,and it's really important that you understand the theory behind the music very well no matter which musical aspect you will be studying.

So first of all, let's learn the notes that are used in music.
The notes,as you may know are 7 which are : A,B,C,D,E,F,G these notes are the natural notes that many people heard of. But actually the notes are 12 because each note has the alternations and these alternations are the black notes on the piano.We will get into that a bit later.
I really believe though that you should learn the natural notes with different sequence. I believe it's much easier to start recognizing them starting from the C note. It would be better if you remember them as C,D,E,F,G,A,B. But again that's just my opinion,and you will understand why i'm saying that when you get into theory a bit more.

For the sake of easier understanding i will use the piano keys to explain the theory.
So,look at your piano if you have one or at the image below.

As you can see,you can easily find where each note is located on the piano keys. The black Keys,which are the alternations of the seven basic notes are following the same sequence each time they are repeated. The sequence is 2 black notes-3 black notes as you can see on the image.

So to find out every time where the C note is you find the two black notes and the white one before the first of the two black notes is always C. As you noticed all the notes are repeated each time on the keys. The block of notes between two same notes is called an octave.For example all the notes between F and the next F is an octave. As you can easily see in the next image.The natural notes within an octave are 8.But of course you can see that there are also the black notes. So, what are those black notes? As i said these are the alternations of the natural notes. Each note has two basic alternation the Sharped note (#) and the flatted note(b). The sharped note is a note which is a step higher than the natural note. So the black note after the F is the F#(G Sharp).After the G is the G# etc. The flatted note is the one that is one step before the natural. So the black note before A is the Ab(A Flat).

Now you know what are the white and the black notes. But what about the spaces between the black notes? Does the C note has a flatted note? Well, yes it does. The Cb is actually the B note because it's one step before the C. The same applies to the B# the E# and the Fb. That step as a distance between the note (The distance between two notes is called an interval) is called half-tone and as you can see there are no other notes between a half-tone step.Don't get confused about the intervals,i will discuss them on another lesson but for you just have to know that to find the natural's sharp or flat you have to do a step up or down on the keys.

Note that this lesson is very basic, the only thing that you have to remember is where each note is located on piano, so don't get frustrated if you can't understand a thing or two that i mentioned here,i will discuss everything else in my next lessons.

So, here are all the notes together with the flats and the sharps (The alternations are marked Red):


There are also the double flatted and double sharped notes but i will get into them in the next lesson where i will be discussing how to read notes from the staff. Good luck.