Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

I’ve been discussing with my wife whether or not to purchase a Mac Mini. The reason I’d like the computer is for Garage Band. Garage Band is an included application. It functions like a multi-track editor and song composition tool. It is neat, easy to use and just the ticket to help me evolve my Wife’s Song.

Additionally I recently got my hands on to an iPhone (I love the little thing) and Apple released the Software Development Kit (SDK)… I had some ideas on Guitar related applications that I could write for the iPhone. As some might know, professionally I’m a software developer, and I found out the hard way that you need an “Intel Based” Mac to utilize the SDK. I currently have all windows base machines for development or otherwise.

I became a windows developer because that is what I had access to. And let be honest, a majority of businesses use Windows over Mac for whatever reason. I’ve always developed for Windows and it is what I ended up specializing it.

Why do I share this at this time? Well, I recently learned that a Mac was the first computer to be hacked in a Hacker’s contest!

What is a hacker’s contest? A hacker’s contest, a term I just coined (maybe), is a contest that security companies (often) hold to “test” and learn about particular operating systems – mainly security vulnerabilities. Basically they pay prizes to people who can break in to a given system – in this case the prize was $10,000.00 (US).

This contest that I’m referring to used a Windows Vista, Linux (not sure which flavor) and a Mac OS X based computers. They, as always, invited participates to “hack away.” Of course when money is involved there are specific rules on routes that a given hacker can take.

For all the details see: http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/08/03/27/Gone-in-2-minutes-Mac-gets-hacked-first-in-contest_1.html

Long story short, after relaxing the rules a bit on the 2nd day of the competition, the Mac was hacked within two minutes of that day’s contest start!

I just wanted to share this since I’ve been looking at getting a Mac for music production and now software development. I thought it was interesting.

Would this stop me from buying a Mac? No.

As a developer I know the complexity of software and I know companies like Apple and Microsoft are always struggling with themselves to add features without opening security holes. And when they do open a hole they plug it as fast as they reasonability can.

Besides, I wouldn’t be a target to a high-level computer hacker.

So, I’m suppose to be going to IG’s CAGED series… But I found right now, that I’m not really in the mood to follow something specific… I’m just in the mood, for now, to bang around on my guitar and make “noise” — Though, I do want that noise to sound good, I’m not really following any sort of specific chord progression or material.

What I’m trying to say is sometimes I just want to bang around on my guitar… Is that a bad thing?  Does that hurt my learning to just not follow any specific material and to just play random chord with random strum patterns… Oh, all of this is done without a metronome…

What do you think? Any guitar teachers out there? I’d love an opinion from you…

This will be a quick post, but a post none-the-less….

IG Blog was actually the first Guitar blog I started to follow… It is actually the inspiration for this blog… On IG Blog, quite a while back I found a series that IG posted about the CAGED chord system; I’ve been meaning to go through the system for quite some time but every-time was deterred by something else in my pursuit of the guitar.

Anyway, I’ve finally “forced” myself to start going through it. So far, I’ve gone through the first and second “pages” and am, thus far, very happy with it. The information on these pages are very valuable to any level of player.

http://igblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/02/a-good-approach-to-guitar-chords/

http://igblog.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/a-good-approach-to-guitar-chords-part-ii-caged/

Back when I was working with an instructor, he tired to convey this information but unfortunately, wasn’t too good at it.  I want to encourage any beginner or intermediate guitar player looking for solid information on Chords and theory to at least check out these articles that IG posted. I will continue the series either tonight or throughout the rest of the week. Expect more posts on this topic…

It’ll probably take me at least a few months before I’ve got everything pat…

I wonder if IG has posted anything on the Pentatonic Boxes?…

As some might know, I’ve been slowly working on a song for my wife. It is something I’ve always wanted to do and so I decided to start sooner rather than later. Some might say I’m rushing things, but it helps me learn, so what the heck!

With that said, I’ve written the first chord progression for the song. I figure I’m going to keep building on it and modifying it until I feel it sounds good.

I made three recordings, and I will be honest — each of the recording contains mistakes in one way or another. Originally I was only going to post one of them, but I thought “why not post all of them.”  I’ll just put myself out there.  I’m not really sure which one is the best or closest to what I want but If I had to guess I’d say recording two or three…

Recording 1:

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Recording 2:

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Recording 3:

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As a beginner / intermediate guitarist, I’m always looking for tools to help teach me more than Chord diagrams could teach me.

The poster mentioned at the link below is of extrem interest to me. Rythm guitar can be challenging and while I’ve learned the concepts, I’m not sure I’m applying them correctly.

I’m gonna try to grab myself one of these posters. You might want to take a look at it yourself.

http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2008/KRM-Rhythm-Guitar-Poster.html

Image Courtesy of Harmoney Central

I’ve been considering selecting, learning and posting one new scale a week.

I believe that on Sunday, I’d select a scale and start prepping the content to post. I’d be posting the tab and music and a recording my me playing that scale by Monday night — probably at 40 BPM.  At the end of the week on Saturday, I’d post another audio file of me playing it, hopefully faster.

What I’m wondering is if there would be interest in a program like that? Would other beginners (or anyone really) be interested in following along and basically participating?  I’d gladly post any audio or video files that one would submit.

I just want to increase the amount of educational content that I post here, and I feel that scales might be a good place to start.

What do you think?

I just saw this on YouTube… I stumbled upon it really, but I thought I’d share.

I know to some people, this might not be particularly impressive. However, to someone like myself (beginners) this is impressive and it makes you wonder how to get there… Perhaps one day I can post a video like this.

I hate it when I go in to a music / guitar store to find an accessory and the store doesn’t carry the exact item I’m looking for and (to further frustrate you) they don’t even carry something like what you were looking for.And then on top of it, they offer to “get” the item for you or to order it for you. See, here is the thing, if I was willing to wait for the item, I would have ordered it my self from one of the many big-name online music stores retailers as opposed to have gone to a music store to (1) look at and play with the item, and (2) purchase it on the spot.

I like to look at what I’m going to buy before I buy it and I like to leave with something when I spend money – it’s just how I am. Is that bad?

What I’ve been looking for is the Chordmaster II by Planet Waves. It is a simple device that tells you how to play different chords different ways. I wanted to use it to help with the song (or chord progression, at this stage) I’ve been working on…

I have a book, but feel it is sort of incomplete, and I understand that the Chordmaster II has 7,400 chords contained within it… That is a lot more then my two books…