Guitar Heat

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Digital recording of guitar music has become very popular these days and is equally preferred by professionals as well as amateurs who use it for recording their work. Although connecting a guitar to a computer is quite easy and uncomplicated, there are various points to be considered, especially keeping in mind the quality of the recording that is expected and the overall impact of the recording.

Although a guitar can be easily connected to a computer merely by plugging it up, the quality of sound needn’t be all that good. For obtaining a degree of clarity and excellence in audio output, it is necessary to connect your guitar to a computer by means of a separate ‘high impedance’ input as otherwise you may be plagued by noise problems. Preamp is also necessary for good sound clarity.

Most musicians, whether amateur or professional, who are into digital guitar recording, will be familiar with the term preamp. The function of the preamp is to amp the signal before it enters the plug-in. This is a very important criterion that will result in a boosting up of the signals of the guitar when it is connected to the pc, which is not an amp. If you are the sort of person who would like to go in for more components in your recording ventures, you can always go in for a separate preamp apart from your sound card. This will actually help you in getting greater signals from your guitar and enhance the quality of the sound produced too.

One of the greatest qualities of digital music is its flexibility and portability apart from the fun aspect. The output which comes in excellent quality can be transferred to your laptop or pc in a jiffy! Moreover, with the availability of various types of guitar recording effects, it is absolutely possible to gain access to many types of sounds and settings as well. This literally makes it a dream come true for the aspiring guitarist who can record any type of music easily.

If you are still at a loss about how to connect your guitar to a personal computer, you needn’t worry much because there are lots of online sites which give information to this regard. Online tutorials can easily help you in your digital recording venture. A computer guitar tuner can even be brought online so that your pc becomes a wonderful world on its own where all your musical needs are met implicitly. Smart players actually record parts of the music and send it to musicians living just about anywhere in the world. All that is done with just a guitar, some relevant software and a computer with internet connection!

For the determined player who has figured out ways of creating digital music by connecting their guitars to computers, the opportunities are unlimited and excellent too. There is a whole new world out there who are willing to hear your creations.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Viagogo is the leading ticket exchange hub in Europe, the most secure and easy way to sell event tickets you don’t need or to buy the tickets you’re searching for. By matching sellers with purchasers and guaranteeing the security of sales and delivery of the tickets people want, Viagogo has established a sterling reputation of quality and convenience for both parties.
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Musical Notes

There are a very few people who can pick up a guitar and begin to make music without knowing the theory behind it. The rest of us need to learn the basics, at the very least. So let’s get started!

There are 7 core notes in a musical scale, from A to G. Those seven notes make up an Octave, or a set of tones at a certain pitch. An E note is the same as the E one or two octaves higher; the pitch just varies. These seven basic notes also have flats and sharps—a half note lower (flat) or higher (sharp). These semi-tones add color and flavor to music and form the basis of many exotic scales. You may have seen musical notation and noticed a “#” sign; this indicates that a note is sharp, or a half tone higher than the core note. On guitar, an E# is made by simply moving your finger up (toward the body of the guitar) one fret. A flat is half a tone lower so you would sound the note one fret lower, or toward the headstock. The “b” indicates a flattened note. Sharps and flats are are located between notes; a Db is the note between and C and D, a semitone lower than D.

The exceptions are E and B. They have no sharps because the notes F and C are directly “beside” them with no semi-tones in between. In other words, an E# is actually an F and B# is a C.

All these tones and semi-tones, a total of 13, are used for every piece of music written. Using different octaves, intervals and rhythm gives the music variety and distinguishes one song from another.

Finding the Notes on the Guitar

Now that you have a better understanding of notes, it’s time to learn where they are on the guitar. Since each of the six strings is tuned to a different note there are many places on your fretboard for each note aside from the open string played without fretting a note; by depressing the sixth, or thickest string, at the third fret you would be playing a G note. Further up the neck, toward the body, you can also find the G on the same string at the fifteenth fret but it would be an octave higher.

In standard tuning, the strings from lowest (thickest) to highest are E, B, G, D, A and E. The thinnest string is also called the first, the thickest is the sixth. Each fret represents a semi-tone, or interval as they are sometimes called. Remember the sharps and flats? By fretting a G on the third fret of the sixth string then moving your fretting finger one fret higher, you’ll be playing a G and a G# (or Ab, if you prefer).
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Electric guitars are a lot like acoustics but there are a few important things to know about the differences. Let’s look at the Fender Stratocaster, the basic standard for so many electric guitars manufactured today. Here’s a typical model:

Tuners, or Machine Heads, are used to adjust the pitch of the strings. Depending on how you wind your strings, of course, turning them clockwise will raise the note and counterclockwise will lower it.

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After learning about how to construct the modal formulaes, lets learn about the Chords usage while playing Guitar Modes. For those who are not aware of how chords work and how they are formed, refer back to these two chords lessons. 1)Basic Chord Theory,  2)How Chords Work. With all said, lets start with how you can apply these Chords in different Modes.

Now, there are four different types of triads, and these are:

Major 1 3 5
Minor 1 b3 5
Augmented 1 3 #5
Diminished 1 b3 b5

Modes and there Classification
1)Major Modes(3)
2)Minor Modes(3)
3)Diminished Mode(1)
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I will try and explain the whole theory behind modes in this lesson.
1)What are Modes?

Modes are much like scales. Modes are of all kinds like are scales. But for now i will only explain Major Modes. Now from a scale i can get 7 different modes. For example, the C scale - C D E F G A B C, now i can have 7 modes from these notes of C scale, starting at different root notes. They are named as:
Ionian
Dorian
Phrygian
Lydian
Mixolydian
Aeolian
Locrian
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One of the most widely used methods in modern rock is Tapping. It is basically a combination of hammer-ons and pull offs. For those who dont know about these, hammer on is basically plucking the string once and playing two notes where the second note is higher to the first one and pull of is playing two notes where the second one is at a lower fret as compared to the first note. Hammer-ons and pull-offs are formally referred to as “slurs” in music theory.

In tapping we do slurs with our picking hand and we don’t pluck the string at all. We use the force of the string hitting the fret to cause the string to vibrate.well. For example this excercise

D|-5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7
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After the first lesson on Chord Theory, here i will try and explain in more details how chords actually work. Lets first understand a major scale, the major scale is the thing that sounds like “Do re mi fa sol la ti (do)”, let us change each of those syllables to the numbers “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (8).” Each number represents the corresponding scale degree above. So… “4″ would mean the fourth degree of the major scale, “fa.” #4 (sharp) means that the fourth scale degree is raised by a half step, or one fret, and b4 (flat)means it is lowered by 1/2 step.

As i explained the formation of major and minor chords in the previous lesson,
Major–1  3  5
Minor–1 b3 5

So apply the following notes on your major and natural minor scales and you get the respective major & minor chords.
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This lesson is for those who want to practise a lot more of string skipping. As i mentioned in my First lesson(Guitar String Skipping) that it is not an easy task to master. But with corrct practise you can get a lot better. As i had mentioned in part one about Paul gilbert and his skipping, in this lesson i will post some of his famous patters as well. Here is Paul Gilbert’s rendition of “Pachelbel’s Conon.” Everything is in 16th notes.

Exercise 1. “Pachelbel’s Conon”

E B
|-16-12—————-12—————————-|
|———————————-12-16-12———-|
|——-16-13—-13-16——————————|
|————-14————-13-16———-16-13-|
|————————-14—————————–|
|———————————————————|
excercise cont. [Read more →]

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String Skipping one of the difficult techniques a guitarist has to master. But once done properly can help you create some wild licks. Some of the Guitar Guru’s that do a lot of string skipping is Paul Gilbert. Paul has a lot of instructional videos(which will be available on Guitar Heat soon!!) share a lot of methods/licks on string skipping. Here is the first excercise.

Fig 1:
v = upstroke
^ = downstroke

v ^ v ^ v ^ v ^ etc.
e|-12-13-15———————————-|
B|———————-12-14-15————-|
G|———-12-13-15————————-|
D|——————————–12-14-15—|
A|————————————————|
E|————————————————|

e|——————————————————|
B|——————————————————|
G|-12-13-15—————————————-|
D|————————12-13-15—————–|
A|————12-14-15—————————–|
E|———————————–12-13-15-12~|

Using a metronome along with this will really help you to correct your timing, build your speed(refer to the Guitar Speed Pattern 1 & 2), and will help you master these skipping excercises. Also, if you followed the picking arrows correctly, you might have seen that you were using ‘outside’ picking, meaning that with each string skip, the pick first travels over and past the string in the direction of the last pick stroke, changes direction and hits the string on the ‘outside’. The alternative to this is of course called inside picking. Here is another example that you can try.
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