#allmusicthings Archives - Page 5 of 5 - Larry S. Warfield Music

The Next Level Guitar Lessons is designed to get you playing quickly. You will learn more chords to expand your chord vocabulary. Chords you must know as a guitarist. You will also learn more strumming techniques and a single-note picking technique and songs. One of the most important elements in this Hands-On Method for Beginners is your first scale.

You already know several chords and strumming techniques, right? Maybe you need the Guitar Quick Start Lesson. Check it out and see.

How Long Does It Take To learn To Play Guitar

You have finished the first course in Beginning Guitar. Are you wondering how long this journey is going to take? Did you think you could get to the skill level of your musical idol in just a few short weeks?

Let’s do a little recap on Hendrix. He started playing at age 15. It took 5 years for him to begin playing small gigs in Clarksville, TN., after a year in the military. He continued playing and gradually worked into playing with the Isley Brothers’ backing band and later with Little Richard and another year before getting noticed, hiring a manager and moving to the big time. It took him a total of 10 years to get noticed. Hendrix did it. You can do it with the right commitment – the commitment to play guitar forever.

Ready For The Next Level Guitar Lessons

You are now ready for the Next Level Guitar Lessons. The toughest part, developing the calluses on your fingertips, is behind you. Do you still have some pain? Don’t give up. Hang in there. It will be worth it!!

No, your dream is not going to happen overnight, but it also depends on just how serious you are. Are you willing to start out practicing for a ½ hour a day and gradually growing it to an hour a day as the calluses form on your fingertips? If you are willing to make that commitment you could be playing well enough to play for others in about 6 months.

If you are willing to make a commitment to play forever you will do what it takes to learn how to play well and the 6 months will go by quickly. Later it will seem like such a small amount of time.

If you push too hard you will have a lot of pain in your fingers. You may get frustrated, but don’t quit. Take it a little slower and work through the pain, don’t just practice once a week. By practicing just once a week you will not make good progress. You will get frustrated and quit.

TrueFire's Sample Beginners Lesson

How to Play Acoustic Guitar – Lessons for Beginners – Parts of the Guitar

How to Play Acoustic Guitar – Lessons for Beginners – Holding the Guitar

Tips For Learning How To Play - Click Here

Tip #1. Everybody’s timeline is different. Some can commit to more time than others. But make a commitment to a certain amount of time every day. A key to keeping your time commitment is to make practice fun so you will look forward to practicing. Yes, everyone is going to have exceptions to the rule, but make the exceptions rare.

Tip #2. Make it a practice to pick-up your guitar for at least 5 minutes every day, in addition to your practice time. Become familiar with your guitar. Become accustomed to the feel of your guitar.

Tip #3. Learn how to hold your guitar correctly. Watch the instructor in your videos. Good posture will make your playing easier and more pleasant. As a beginner play sitting. As you become more comfortable, you can add standing and performance appearance. Sit in a chair with both feet on the floor. Make sure you keep your back straight. The waist of the guitar goes on your right leg if you are right-handed and the back of the guitar against your stomach and chest. Don’t use your left hand to support the neck of the guitar. Instead, rest your upper right arm on the upper part of the guitar body. Get into a position that feels comfortable.

Tip #4. The thumb of your left hand should rest behind the neck of the guitar between your first two fingers, with knuckles bent. Use only the tips of your fingers to press the strings. Check out the string pressure by picking a string and changing the pressure each time. It takes very little pressure on the strings to get a good sound.

Tip #5. As you practice with the videos learn to allow your guitar to speak with emotions. Notice how your playing affects others

How Long Does It Take - Answer

The initial question was, “How long will it take to learn to play the guitar?” Actually, if you make a commitment to play forever you will always be learning. From the day you first pick up your guitar and start learning until you feel you have learned enough, which will probably be never. You can learn a few simple chords and one or two songs just to show others that you can play. On the other hand, there will always be something more to learn or improve on. It also depends on your passion for music and your desire to master the guitar and the music you produce. Always play for enjoyment and pleasure, not some external goal. It must be the love of music that will keep you playing and improving.

Learn How To Play Guitar for Free with this Sure-Fire 10-Step Method for Beginners

This series of sessions is designed to get you up and running on your first guitar! “Jeff Scheetz, Director of Education here at TrueFire will show you some cool tips and tricks to help you get started, and guide you through a bunch of great video lessons that will have you playing your guitar in no time!”

The first lesson in each style is FREE for the beginner.

TrueFire’s beginning lessons may be a little harder than some other lesson, but upon completing the lessons you can be confident that you will know the guitar basics and ready to progress to the next level.

In the First Steps To Learning Guitar you will learn:

Guitar chord shapes.
How To keep a steady rhythm.
How to change chords smoothly.

TrueFire

Founded in 1991, TrueFire has collaborated with 600+ top educators to produce what Guitar Player Magazine calls “the planet’s largest and most comprehensive selection of online guitar lessons. 2 million+ guitar players, from virtually every country in the world, learn, practice, and play” with TrueFire’s interactive video courses and patented learning systems for personalized and private online instruction. TrueFire’s success has been attributed to the high-quality guitarists and instructors they have collaborated with over the years. Many of their instructors are GRAMMY award winners, top studio artists, and world-renowned educators. TrueFire’s courses are powered by some of the best in the music industry.

The Guitarfella.com states, “TrueFire really excels with its tuition for intermediate and advanced players, with a huge range of courses, lessons, and styles available. You have the freedom to choose your own learning path, which can help keep you interested and focused, even if it involves a little less hand-holding.”

TrueFire's Course Library

Their course library, one of the largest in the world, features 40,000+ interactive video guitar lessons covering all styles, techniques, and levels and all courses are available anytime, anywhere, and is available for any device. TrueFire’s proprietary technologies and patented methods of lesson presentation allows the instructors to specialize one-on-one private lessons or design a lesson for a group anywhere in the world.

TrueFire's Guitarists and Educators

TrueFire’s educators are passionate about music and the lessons they present. Technically, they are all experts in their field of music and music education. Their focus is mainly on teaching the students technique, not just how to play songs, which sets TrueFire apart from the other online guitar instructors. Because of the educators and their technology, TrueFire has earned over 70 international creative, marketing, video, and technology awards.

TrueFire Sample Beginning Lessons

How To Play Acoustic Guitar – Lessons For Beginners – Introduction

How to Play Acoustic Guitar – Lessons for Beginners – Strumming Chords Pt. 2

Student Referral

“At 50 I finally decided to learn to play guitar. With my hectic schedule, I needed something that was ready and available when I had time. Learning Guitar 1 was a fantastic introduction to guitar basics. I love that it started with elementary, straightforward concepts and chords that I could grasp and learn. It even talks about HOW to practice. Then the course built on those simple things by adding other simple chords, strumming, and then working up to simple songs. I’m on my way!” – Daniel Rode, TrueFire Student

Ready to finally learn how to play guitar? Grab your guitar and let’s dig in!

Is your dream to be a great guitar player?
Then you’re in the right place.

First Steps For Beginners

Next Steps For Beginners

You have finished the courses “First Steps For Beginners” and “Next Steps For Beginners” or you already know some chords, strumming techniques, and can play single-note lines, plus several songs. Either way, you are ready to go to the next level after choosing your style of guitar playing. For example, this link is for the Acoustic Guitar: Guitar Quick Start. Each style will have its own Quick-Start Course.

Guitar Quick Start

The Learning Path System in TrueFire has “First Steps For Beginners,” “Next Steps For Beginners,” and “Quick-Start” for each style of music. This enables you to learn the unique chords and strumming patterns for the Learning Path you choose.

In the Quick-Start For Beginners guitar courses, the guitarists must already know the basic skills: several chords and strumming patterns plus are able to play several songs and single-note lines.

As mentioned above, each Learning Path Style teaches techniques that are unique to each particular style. For example, in the Acoustic Guitar Style, you’ll start by learning a classic rhythm pattern, a chord progression, and a Fingerstyle pattern used in many songs.

Acoustic guitars are used in different styles of music, so the techniques taught in the course will vary in style, somewhat. Included in the Acoustic course is the 12 bar progressions used in acoustic blues.

Watch this video by Brooks Robertson to see what the lessons are like.

Practice With Jam Tracks

Trust assured the instructors will demonstrate key examples on the practice jam tracks when necessary. This will show you how the techniques are used in real-world settings. You will also get the feeling of playing in a real-world context. All the pertinent information will be tabbed and noted in your jam track, reference, and study materials.

Playing with TrueFire’s jam tracks has definitely made a change in how you practice. You have control of the jam tapes to slow them down, repeat areas needed. You can also slow down the tab and notations for easy learning.

If you are concerned about having to learn to read music and learn music theory, don’t be. You will play your way through all of the guitar courses until you are ready or find the need to learn how to read music.

What You'll Learn and How It Works

You’ll get in the groove with a classic rhythm pattern.
Learn a chord progression that many songs use.
Versatile Fingerstyle technique for use in any song.
Acoustic guitar techniques.
Acoustic blues.
12 Bar progression.
New chords.
New essential rhythm patterns.

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Acoustic Rhythm Guitar Playbook – Acousta Soul – Corey Congilio

You will see demonstrations of all the key examples played over jam tracks (if applicable). This will give you an idea of how to play them in the real world. and how to apply them in a musical, performance context.
You will also see key examples of tabbed and notated charts for your practice. Everything you need for practice, reference, and studies are included in the lesson.
Also included are the Guitar Pro files which enable you to play, loop, or slow down the tab and notation as you practice the lessons. You can repeat any section as needed so you can really learn the material. It is all under your control.
The great thing is that all the jam tracks are yours to use as you work on your own.
Take the course at your own speed. Go at the speed that is comfortable for you. It gives you the opportunity to really learn the lesson before moving on to the next lesson.

Are you ready to get started?

The Next Step Towards Being The Guitarist you want to be will be in one of the Learning Path Styles, such as the Jazz Guitar Lessons.

Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available if you want to dig deeper or wider into any part of the material covered in the core course. The Supplementary materials contain more examples, techniques, and insight from the top TrueFire teachers.

More Resources:
10 Lessons My Dad Taught Me About Learning How To Play Guitar
7 New Year’s Resolutions Guaranteed To Make You A Better Guitar Player
Join TrueFire to get all access to 30,000+ video guitar lessons with tab, notation, and jam tracks!

Digital Audio WorkstationWhat are DAWs? And what is the Best DAW for beginners?

I got that strange look from my wife when she read the title. DAWs are Digital Audio Workstations (DAW). DAWs range from the massive, very expensive recording equipment to the FREE and simple that offer the basic recording and editing capabilities of multiple tracks. My first DAWs was Audacity, which I still use. In this post, I’ll cover some of the equipment used in the Best DAW For Beginners and some of the equipment I used in the beginning.

My Musical Beginning

I have been a singer-songwriter since the ’60s and have had various experiences with multi-track recording. My first attempt was a cover of the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man”.

Impressed with the elegant simplicity and power of the vocal harmonies and the eloquence of the lyrics, I recorded my own tribute version in the bathroom of my freshman dorm room at Mackinac College on Mackinac Island, Michigan in the fall of 1966. The acoustics were perfect.

I played a Sunburst Gibson Acoustic Guitar my mother had bought me new in 1963 when she saw I was finally serious about learning to play a musical instrument. I had thoroughly calloused my fingers learning on my first guitar, a gray and black acoustic Silvertone with high strings, and a split almost all the way around the bottom of the shell and no case or strap. But I could strum out a recognizable version of almost any song I heard that had less than seven or eight different chords.

We lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan, so Gibson was the guitar of choice. My first wife smashed it in the driveway one day while I was at work in the late ’70s. She told me she felt I loved it more than her. She was probably right. It was that day I realized the fact that we were not destined for a long future together.

Best DAW for Beginners

My version of “Nowhere Man” was recorded on an AMPEX (Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording) suitcase stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder with a small hand-held black plastic microphone. I sang the melody to the rhythm guitar, then bounced the first harmony, then the second and lead guitar using the sound-on-sound feature. I thought it sounded great and I was really proud of it, but I was too shy to play it for anyone, except maybe my friend, Tom Houghton, our resident photographer geek. We were geeks way before being geeks was cool. Tom, who is now a famous cinematographer for the TV show Elementary and others.

My later adventures included recording my first composition… “I’ll keep trusting you, Lord”… In my cousin, David (Keys) Johnson’s 16-track studio in Austin, Texas. My baby sister, Anita, sang harmony. She couldn’t carry a tune when we were little but grew up to sing like Phoebe Snow… (Knocked me out!)

The Early DAWs for Beginners

8-Track-Tascam When I started trying to sound sketch demos of my songs, I set up a home recording studio with a 4-track TASCAM PortoStudio Cassette Recorder. I still like to listen to those recordings so I have managed to keep a cassette deck that still plays, barely. I captured many original songs and a few cherished covers. In the ensuing years, I upgraded to an 8-track Tascam recorder, (at that time cassette recorder) then a Roland VS-880 hardware digital recording workstation before I temporarily burned out my enthusiasm for songwriting and recording and just focused on building a sales and marketing career.

DAW Software

My first personal experience with Digital Audio Workstations – recording software was when, after not playing music for about fifteen years, I got the bug again, when I recorded a couple of cover CDs as rehearsal demos for a talent contest our marketing company sponsored as a team-building exercise. I asked my new friend, who was a Guitarist and Bass Singer at Country Tonite in Pigeon Forge to help me record a demo of a song I had written named, “Hiding In Plain Sight”, which you can now get on iTunes.

Protools - Best DAW for Beginners He used ProTools and it was fascinating to watch him teaching the soundboard operator, how to use it. In my attempt to remix the raw demo at home, I downloaded a free version of AUDACITY, a Digital Audio Workstation ProTools clone. With a considerable learning curve, I found I could make the edits and additions I wanted, along with the mixed demo. My friend had graciously provided me with all the individual tracks of WAV files on a CD. Including the Bass and Rhythm guitar tracks, a stereo drum track, the keyboard tracks, the vocal lead and harmony tracks, and a lead guitar track he, himself, had played. The ProTools featured here is about $600, but they have several other versions as low as $100.

Digital Audio Workstations

After learning to create or download drum tracks to build my demos in my FREE DAW, Audacity, I began to increase my songwriting output. This hit a snag when I tried to use my AT3035 Cardioid Condenser microphone I got for my Roland VS880 on my laptop computer, so now I use an MXL Mics 770 Cardioid Condenser Microphone. I Focusrite Scarelett 2i2 - Best DAW for Beginners MXL-Mics-770-Cardioid-Condenser-Microphone needed a USB Sound Card Interface. I decided on the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, another DAW, but not FREE, largely because it came with a free trial version of ABLETON Live 9, which has been upgraded to ABLETON LIVE 10. WOW… WHAT A BEAST – that DAW!!!… I mean the ABLETON LIVE 10.

Check out this Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Suite

Audio Software

I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do… Non-Destructive editing (time-stretch a cut clip to include what you accidentally cut off)… tuning individual notes by pitch-shifting by semitones or cents… warping wave file speeds without changing pitch… auto-syncing wave files of different speeds… Digital effect manipulation. Just to mention some of the capabilities.

AND in addition to the “normal” ARRANGEMENT mode that looks like ProTools with horizontal time-scale synced wave or digital signals stacked like tracks of long recording tape that scrolls by on the screen… there is a SESSIONS mode of the same tracks arranged like a soundboard… tracks vertical and side by side. They don’t scroll while they play. They just sit there with gauges and controls and switches for you to monitor, adjust, mix, start or stop as they play or loop as a recording or live performance… Phenomenal!!!

Not to even mention the mind-blowing level of access to digital sources of sounds and controls…

Sometimes, I have to struggle to shut it down to go to sleep…

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software has revolutionized the music production and recording process. It has made the recording available to the home studio owners. No matter what type of recording you are doing there is a digital audio workstation perfectly suited to your requirements. There are many different types of recording software to choose from for Mac-, PC- and Linux and in any price range and functionality.

by Larry S. Warfield, LarrySWarfieldMusic.com

To Play The below songs, click on the name of the song. The player will open. If you would like to download a copy of the MP3 click the three dots on the side of the player.

Giving It Back To You
Hiding In Plain Sight
Sharon Rose

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