Posts Tagged ‘Learn’

Learn How To Teach Piano Music History

May 29th, 2011

Piano is perhaps the most popular type of musical instrument in the world. It has been in existence for over centuries and has inspired performers from Beethoven to Elton John to place their fingers over the keys for bringing soulful music before the entire world.

An instrument which makes noise when several strings are hit by a keyboard has been around since very long time, more specifically in the form of hammered dulcimers. However, the piano as of today, evolved as itself in 1698. Teaching music history of the piano would inform you that Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the instrument while working as a keeper of instruments for Prince Ferdinand de Medicini.

The earliest pianos were built on technological invocations on previous inventions, including clavichord, which comprises strings struck by several tangents and the harpsichord, struck by quills.

Teaching music history of the piano could be an engrossing affair. The piano is a common accompaniment in bands, orchestras, solo performances and even as itself, thereby making it a popular instrument in all performances. Besides, teaching music history enable the students get an in-depth knowledge about the instrument.

The instrument has earned so much popularity that countless children in the Europe and US attend piano lessons. Teaching music history to these students undoubtedly helps them to unearth the rich heritage of the instrument. Often unlike guitar or drums, the piano is viewed as a high class instrument to be played only by intellectuals across the world.

There are two different types of piano available. One is the grand piano while the other is the more compact piano. They are available in different sizes. The total number of keys, 88, remains the same. However, the larger instrument produces a more complex and rich sound compared to its compact cousin, as teaching music history of the piano would tell you.

Learn to Play Guitar Rick Washbrook Aurora Guitar Teacher

May 13th, 2011

Learn to Play Guitar  Rick Washbrook Aurora Guitar Teacher

PRIVATE LESSONS & GOOD PRACTISE HABITS   Learn to playing guitar is a combination of using your own ear, visualizing, watching other great players, learning the principles of music, and a list as long as my arm can stretch. Signing up for weekly lessons to build a routine, this is a must. Last but not least practice, practice is the key.  Enjoy yourself; try creatively what your heart tells you to do.  With that said, it is important to point out that how to learn to play guitar is much more than what a simply stated answer can be.  

THE LAW OF POTENTIALITY   The Law of Potentiality is a phrase that holds so much meaning through all walks of life.  It means we all have potential.  It is the field of all possibilities and creativity.  What you want, you will attract.  This is how to learn to play guitar.  

TECHNIQUE   Let’s first start with the technical side of playing guitar.  Committing to lessons is something that every aspiring artist must do.  The way you pick, the tone you are looking for, and the speed in your scales all covers the topic of building technique.  Lessons allow you the opportunity to not only learn the basics and grow, but it also leads you to discover more about whom you really are while learning your own little ideas, trying to learn musical phrases from your favorite guitar players you hear on CD’s, or learning to read the music from the beginner to advanced level books.    

 HAVING A TEACHER YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH   With the help of a well seasoned professional teacher that has been around the block many times, he watches and guides you from right up close. During your lessons, my best piece of advice is to let go of the need to control.  Learn to flow and go where the music takes you.  Trust your teacher, trust the process.  This key component, although difficult at first, is the first step in having many good lessons, and a great attitude for learning in general.   

BIO RHYTHEMS / GET RELAXED AND WARM   It is a great practice routine to slow things down during the guitar lesson as well as during home practice. This means you have to get your heart beat and bio rhythms calm so new information can come into your experience to try to play on your guitar. Play something on your guitar in a silent room and then stop.  Do not play anything else for a couple of minutes. You may hear a little few notes of a musical answer in your mind.  Try it again, playing it slower and then stop. Listen to what your imagination conjures up in that silent room. The key here is many folds.  One major point at this stage is you do not play the notes on the guitar to find them.  You hear the notes in your head.  Try to then remember the notes you heard and figure them out on the guitar.  Always record these types of practice sessions. When you hear inside yourself the musical notes of your choice that is your home spun answer to what you played on the guitar.  Do this a lot.  When you go back to learn how to play what you heard inside, on your instrument, you will find it is simply and beautifully placed in the musical bars, with a natural, very relaxed, in time manner.  You may not comprehend the exact idea that is being taught here the very first time, but through practicing you will learn.     

WHEN IT STARTS COMING TOGETHER   The moments that you sit there, not playing, are the times for you to hear the other sounds or musical answers, inspired from your playing.  This is where technical ability and passion meld together.  This is how to learn to play guitar.    

YOU ARE THE MUSIC You are the music, not the guitar.  It is all coming from you, it is your inspiration. When you take time to listen to it, your abilities will grow, and you will always be the music. What you sow is what you reap.  We are constantly involved in musical decisions, stimulated by everything around us.  We learn to make decisions that will make us happy, and make decisions on how we feel emotionally when we practice effectively. The music, rhythms and melodies you make without the instrument are so much greater and more advanced than what you may be able to transfer through your fingers to your instrument.  Don’t fear this.  This is the best thing that can ever happen to you.  You have a library of many Symphonies of musical notes to tap into when you play an idea, and you can train yourself to listen, to be silent and hear the musical note answers.    

IT IS AMAZING THE AMOUNT OF INTUITIVE MUSIC THAT IS IN YOU.   Through time and practicing tuning into your inner music, or musical inner ear, you will learn how to transcend your abilities and transfer it to the guitar. It is amazing the amount of music that is in you.  Tapping into your sounds and rhythms in your head is how to learn to play guitar.      

THE TIME WILL COME TO PLAY WHAT YOU FEEL   Once you achieve a more advanced level of playing you will learn to posses a mental detachment to all the things you play and instead your musical energy takes over.  You will get there one day.  You will find with all the complex things you learn, and work so hard on, there will come a time when you let go of it all.  You come to a point where you don’t have to prove anything – you just play, you are the music.   

YOU ARE A SERVANT TO THE MUSIC You are a servant to the music. The least effort expended when playing with effortless ease is the principle of non-resistance.  The more we practice this, the more it will expand in our minds and cross over into other disciplines in our lives.  Cats don’t try to lick their paws, they just lick them. The knowledge is infinite.  I say that you are the music.  This is how to learn to play guitar.  

By: Rick Washbrook Aurora Guitar Teacher  

 

“Washbrook is touched by a giving spirit, besides driven by a tenacious vision; guitarist Rick Washbrook stirs the juices of string-sensitive guitar purist.” Quote from Jazzreview.com Karl Stober

“Rick Washbrook is one of the best guitarists in North America. He is humble and never has shown an ego about his talent or acted like he is the ‘amazing guitarist’. I admire that about him.  Many musicians that are fortunate to be around Rick love jamming with him, and sharing his laughter. I have studied with Rick Washbrook and seen him play live many times.  I have all his CD’s.   I recognize through Washbrook that we can break on through to the other side. He transcends when he performs. Rick Washbrook plays the music, not so much playing the guitar.” Fraser MacDonald: Music critic

“Rick Washbrooks music is always welcome. His solo new Flamenco & Latin CD “Roncesvalles Tango” Is In the top Percentile of all Canadian CD Submissions in 2007.”  CBC Radio /  Mark Rheaume

Learn to Play Guitar  Rick Washbrook Aurora Guitar Teacher                                              

Learn Guitar Easy with Classical Music Notes

April 30th, 2011

The guitar is probably the easiest musical instrument to learn. It is also one of the most beloved musical instruments that man has ever known. It’s a very compact musical instrument and it is also a very versatile one. There is one thing about guitars that tells you why any person, who has an appreciation for music deeply values its form and composition. That is the fact that you can never be lonely if you have a guitar and if you know how to play a tune on it.

Learn guitar easy with a few pointers to remember. First of all, you really need to have your own guitar. It is one thing not to own one’s personal musical keyboard when one wants to learn how to play the piano or the organ, but a person will find it very hard to learn guitar easy if this person does not have his own instrument to practice on or to learn with. You can always borrow your friend’s guitar or a relative’s guitar if you can’t afford to have your own guitar, at present. So this first tip shouldn’t really be a problem for beginners. The next thing that you have to do is to determine if you want to learn classical guitar or modern guitar. With classical guitar, you will have to learn how to read formal music sheets as the guitar techniques that you will encounter will be presented to you in a rather formal way. For modern guitar methods, you will be learning how to play a tune on a guitar through the help of chords and these musical chords are also known as musical chord progressions. For many reasons, people tend to learn guitar easy when they use instructional books and manuals which teach you to play guitar using the different types of guitar chords and the types of guitar chord progressions. One of the reasons behind this can be attributed to the eagerness of people to learn how to strum on the guitar. Whereas for people who would really like to learn how to play this instrument because they would like to distinctly make use of most of the guitar notes, these people are more comfortable with formal classical lessons. You see, it is often a misconception that the world’s greatest composers did not create classical music for guitars. Well, it is not true that the world of guitar belongs to this world’s rock bands. Some great composers like Mozart and Handel created music for guitars and if you are someone who would like to learn Mozart for guitar, you can say that you are interested in classical guitar lessons.

Here is a tip for those of you who would like to learn guitar easy or those who want to play classical guitar. You need to familiarize yourself with formal musical notation first. Ask someone to teach you how to locate these notes on the fingerboard of a guitar. Afterwards, you’ll have no trouble, as a beginning guitarist. You’ll see; you’ll have no trouble at all.

Classical Music a Kind of Music to Learn?

April 27th, 2011

These days it’s quite common to meet people, especially young people, who claim that they do not like classical music.  How can anyone love something they’ve never tried? There are people who understand, appreciate and love it. This does not mean you are not smart enough to understand it.  Children need music to learn about the different types of music that exist.

Everything in our world changes and develops and music is no exception.  Modern rhythms differ considerably from what composers wrote centuries ago.  A person’s taste in music and what they listen to also change and develop over time.  What we hear creates our world of impression. All this makes a huge impact not only on our character but also on our life. Music as you know consists of sounds and each sound is comprised of a certain vibration (if you remember physics). Each vibration carries a stream of energy. In other words, when we hear music, we are filled not just with sounds, but something much greater than that, it is energy. Whatever music we listen to, influences our character development.

Sometimes when we turn on the radio or TV and hear music we can say immediately if we like it or not. This is because the stream of energy which produces the music either coincides with our internal vibrations, or is does not.  Deciding which music to learn is up to us and it must be music we like or we won’t learn it.

Using simple music as a test we can define what kind of person we are and attribute this to what level of spiritual development we achieve. In fact the more beautiful music we listen to, the softer and kinder our heart becomes and the music acts as our spiritual food. Teenagers and youth intuitively use the above described method to define a new person who wants to join their group. They only ask one question of this person and that is what kind of music they listen to.

Now let’s imagine if a person was unable to listen to music or read a book.  Have you ever spoken to people who do not read books?   Have you ever heard music that was comprised of undefined noise where the melody is difficult or impossible to distinguish? Were you pleased by such music? Listen to music that is soft and nice and you will really be able to appreciate the beauty and art of the music. So what is classical music and what does it give people? Wikipedia defines classical music as “music produced over a broad period of time from roughly the 9th century to present times that has passed the test of time and that has an audience in a modern society”. Due to ideal harmonious combinations of sounds, classical music carries a powerful stream of energy that listeners want to listen to over and over again, regardless of how old the piece of music is. This energy awakens feelings in a person that are remarkable and makes their life more fulfilled and interesting.

Having music to learn and finding out about classical music it is easy to confuse yourself and others. You just have to remember all those times when you heard a familiar tune and started to whistle it or to sing along. You often do not know the name of the piece you’ve heard, but the fact remains that it has influenced you in the most positive way.  If you are not sure what classical music gives you, all you have to do is go to a live concert.  It is best to attend a concert that is accompanied by historical and bibliographic data on the lives and creative work of the composers. It will help you see new colors and feel new sensations that you’ve not felt before.

The same thing concerns the fine arts. If a person were not familiar with art they would go to the art gallery and wander the halls looking at the exhibits.  They would end up only being impressed by one or two works (and possibly none). But if they take a tour that is conducted by a guide who gives insight on different pieces of art then our dilettante will be impressed by quite a few paintings. Try it and you’ll see that it really works.

All children without exception love music. It takes music to learn how they will react. If the child reaches for it, it means that they need this beauty. If the parents did not get musical guidance from their moms and dads during their childhood they may think they don’t like classical music. It does not mean that you should deprive your child of this art. What if it is their destiny? Give them the energy that classical music brings, and you will see how the life of your child can change.

Interesting Way To Help Students Learn Music History

April 27th, 2011

History as a subject has always been considered as a very boring subject and all of us run away from it. Music also has a rich history which needs to be explored but it can be quite boring at times. For this reason, music history is also one of the least liked subjects among most of the music learners. The present age group too finds it to be dull and often questions about the prerequisite of it in their musical profession.

This idea is slowly turning the history of music into a dull topic both for discussion and study. That is why music faculties are finding it hard to turn their students towards this one subject and is considered as an old fashioned thing to learn. Teaching history of music is not that easy as it seems to be.

Before taking music classes, the music faculty has to convince their learners to opt for this subject. It is completely on the music faculty to turn their students positive about the subject. A faculty in this case should be very creative in convincing his students through showing the advantages of the subject.

Ensure that you carry out music classes in a proper manner bringing the students to tell about their personal music likings linking such things with the history of music. As you are in charge of teaching music history, make sure your music classes do not become stereotyped with the same uninteresting lectures and studies.

Make it enjoyable by including activities that give confidence students to partake in them. Bring on old and exclusive instruments to your class; let them know about the development of such instruments. This will help the students to work on their artistic sides and your purpose will get fulfilled. Only this way could in reality work for instruction of music history.

Why Pick Classical As the Form of Music to Learn Even If You Think You Don’t Like It

March 12th, 2011

People these days, especially the younger generation, claim that they don’t prefer classical as the type of music to learn and enjoy. But how can you like something if you have not tried to understand it? Classical music has its own fans who appreciate it and love it. Aren’t you as good?

The world is an ever changing place and everything in it including music changes over the years. Tunes and rhythms of today are far different from those of the past. But remember, whatever you hear creates a world of impressions on your character, which ultimately decides the quality of your life.

Music is made of sounds, and sounds are made of vibrations. Vibration carries energy. When we listen to music, our being is permeated with a stream of energy that influences our character! Hence we need to be choosy about the kind of music to learn and enjoy. More melodious the music we hear, the kinder and softer our heart becomes. Music is food for the soul.

In fact, you can easily make out what kind of person somebody is, simply by asking him one question: “What kind of music do you listen to?” This is so intuitive that teenagers employ this exact method to enquire about a newcomer to their group.

Can you imagine how a person deprived of art, poetry and music to learn and hear would be like? Just speak to someone who does not read books or listens to only loud music containing no melody and just noise. Remember how you feel about the conversation. Now, speak to someone who appreciates beautiful music and carefully chooses the kind of music to learn himself. Notice the difference? Huge!

Classical music is an ideal combination of sounds that creates vibrant energy and makes the listeners want to listen to it again and again, no matter how old the music piece is. The energy rouses deep feelings in us humans and makes our life enriching and fulfilling.

If you don’t yet comprehend the benefits of choosing classical as the form of music to learn, just attend a classical music concert that also depicts the creativity of great composers of yore. It will open a new dimension to your life and feelings!

Children, by nature, love music to learn, play and enjoy. It’s plainly visible through their reactions. And if your child himself asks you for the chance to learn it, he really does need it! Dear parents, if you did not get a chance to appreciate classical music in your childhood or later, it doesn’t mean that your child will not like classical music. Let him pursue his destiny! The energy that it will bring in his life will transform him and you too!

Good Songs to Learn on Guitar: Know the Basics

February 25th, 2011

Well it is the tendency of amateur guitarists to search for those musical tracks which are punched with prolonged parts on their own instruments and often with extreme skills, which are even challenging for professionals. But remember this tendency may be dangerous as you may end up giving up with the notion that you will never learn it at all. But the truth is that, those tracks are not good songs to learn on guitar as a beginner. It is just as silly as to start with symphony 5 on your piano as a beginner.

Though we recognize piano with Lionel Monkton, Brahms, Beethoven etc. yet they are not for beginners. Here I offer you some materials that will be useful for you to practice as a beginner or as an intermediate. Start with—

“Hello in there”- This is a track that would be the most apt for beginners. Along with its simplicity one can get preliminary ideas on choosing keys and chord voicing. Then move on to—

“Banana Pan cake”- This is something where you will gain thorough knowledge on barre chords, rhythm and string muting. After that —

“Play with fire”- This will give you some strumming / picking pattern skills.

After you complete these three you will get an initial idea on good songs to learn on guitar, as such you can now move on to the following list , but keep it in the same order.

Time After Time, After the gold rush, Don’t panic, Imagine, Julia, The needle and the damage done, Your song, Wish you were here, Driver eight, Like a Hurricane,

Bop, The Sweetest Thing, What’s Forever For, I Don’t Call Him Daddy, I Let Her Lie, Little Red Rodeo, If Bubba Can Dance, We Danced, You and I, Austin, Pour Me, Complicated, Daddy’s Money, Old Enough To Know Better, Single White Female, little Goodbyes and many more are some of the good songs to learn on guitar.

Now you can call yourself an intermediate and can easily switch to those tracks which have always attracted you, as now you can digest them if you want. Well that is all I had to say about good songs to learn on guitar.

Learn to Play Piano With Classical Music

January 15th, 2011

People love to learn a new musical instrument or just an instrument in general. For the beginner who is looking at learning the piano, now is just the time for you. There are websites popping up all over the internet where people all over the world can begin to learn classical piano music or any type of music they want. Want to know something else? You can begin to learn for free. Okay so maybe you are not a beginner, maybe you already know the piano but you are tired of playing the same thing over and over again. Well guess what. You are also in luck. There are many websites available to you, to allow you to download sheet music from any of your favorite songs. Again this is for free as well. So nows your chance to print off sheet music and start playing some of your favorite artist’s songs.

Since there are websites that offer you the chance to learn how to play any type of piano you want too, and that’s including classical piano music, what are you waiting for? A lot of these websites will allow you to begin to teach you the basic chords and notes by just using your computer keyboard. A lot of these websites will also teach you how to read sheet music as well, so once you have that down and piano playing, those free sheet music websites will come in handy for you. A lot of people think this is a great idea, allowing people to begin to learn for free. One of the main reason’s being is that going out and purchasing a piano or a keyboard is not exactly cheap. So you can begin to learn at home and find out if this is truly the instrument you want to learn and after you have your basic chords and notes down you can then look at paying for lessons and purchasing equipment if you wish to do so.

A lot of people love to learn a new instrument just for the fact that when they have company over they can simply begin to play right then and there for them. One of the greatest feelings in the world, said by many people and artists is just having a group of people over and everyone begins to jam together for an afternoon or an evening.

People all around the world consider the piano to be one of the most diverse instruments ever. The sound that comes from it is beautiful and soothing, so what’s stopping you from learning to play classical piano music? Nows your chance, even if your free time is limited.

If you have already chosen a method on how to learn to play to play piano, you must then have a proper practice combined with determination and commitment to learn. Learning to play piano can be a lot of fun and if you have already mastered it, it becomes a very rewarding experience as well. Patience is also very important for you learn fast and easy.