Hammond Music

Posts Tagged ‘rock’

Something that has been argued over since rock first began are the best solos, so get those air guitars out, turn the music up as high as possible and lets get some solos out there..

At number five is Smells Like Teen Spirit

This is arguably Nirvanas biggest selling hit and certainly the one everyone will recognise when they hear the name Nirvana. Although Kurt Cobain didnt really like all of the media attention as well as the fame the band bought to themselves buy their rock they certainly made a huge impact to the world when Cobain died in the early 90’s..

At Number 4 is Stairway To Heaven

Another classic, another great solo by Led Zeppelin and sure to be the first song by them to pop into the head.. It is a very long song but also contains a brilliant solo by Jimmy Page.

Number Three is November Rain

Anoither great song, another great solo and one of the band’s best.. This done by the legendary Slash from Guns n Roses has certainly got to be in the top three for the best solos of all time.

At number two is All along The Watchtower

Although a cover, this song by the legend that is Hendrix has a superb solo in the middle of it earning the number two slot on the list.

1- Comfortably Numb

This song arguably deserved the top spot for the best solo of all time. A pink Floyd original, it has been covered many times most famously in 2004 by the Scissor Sisters as a disco-oriented version.

Why not tear out your own solo by getting one of those electro acoustic guitars or perhaps even going a bit lighter with classical guitars.

Hip Hop is one of the genre of music that has conquered the world in the past decades and it is undeniably one of the fastest growing genres in the music industry today. There are even other musicians and singers who would merged their own music to hip hop to make a new kind of sound. Hip Hop and Rap when mixed together makes a sound that is totally out of this world. Heavy metal with Hip Hop beats will surely make one go crazy and wild and musical barriers are opened up because of the various mixtures of different music from Hip Hop, Rap, Rock, Gospel, Dance, Trance and even Jazz. Yes, lots of different bands have merged their Jazz roots with Hip Hop therefore came up with a new kind of sound.

Hip Hop beats do come from Rap beats but they branched out and formed a new kind of groove so that when you mix them together again, they form a new monster. Almost all people have heard a Hip Hop song or two even though how Metalheads they are or how deep they are in the Trance music. Some even went to the core of making their own Hip Hop instrumental beats and make their own music. Even a famous and superb Rock guitar god is creating his own Hip Hop beats and jam it up with his guitar and the sound is simply superb and earth-moving.

Now, anyone can make their own Hip Hop instrumental beats without wasting too much time and all they need to have is some kind of software that will teach them how in a very easy and convenient way. Actually, a lot of software today are created for such purpose. One just needs to find something that suits his taste and his preference and he has to make sure that the software he chooses is something that will make him thing of what to do and not how to do what.

online guitar lessons

The main idea for writing this article is to give you some tips for making it easier when learning other peoples songs using guitar tabs. But first, a little background on what it is to be an emotional player….

As a teacher, I always have students asking me to teach them how to play songs by such artists as Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Slash and many other really famous guitarists. Many of these guitarists are what I call “Emotional Players”. When they write and play music, they do so without much thinking or understanding of what is actually going on with the song. They are playing from the heart and keep trying new things until they end up with a song, lick, chord progression or whatever there looking for. Sometimes this comes very naturally to a player and sometimes it does not. Something to make note of is that when an individual writes a tune, it is usually easier for them to play it than it is for you or someone else to perform it. Although this may seem obvious when you think about it, a lot of people don’t take that into consideration when learning a song.

The hard part comes in when you want to learn to play this tune. Most people will either learn a song by ear or by finding some form of sheet music or guitar tab. If you are going at it by ear, then you just keep trying things until it sounds like the tune. If you are going to learn a song by sheet music, then there is a whole different approach that you will need to take. There are a lot of little changes in songs that can make learning it difficult. Usually good quality tabs will confuse you because they are very specific. This is because most good tabs will transcribe the song exactly how it is played on the recording. Even a beginner easy guitar tab can have some tricky parts to it. What you need to remember is that emotional players rarely play the same thing twice, there are always little changes that happen between takes. This can leave the person learning the tune very confused because it’s hard to understand what it’s like to write emotionally and let the music come out of you without thinking about it. When learning other peoples songs, you approach the performance of it with a different mindset.

If you look at the song “All Along The Watchtower” By Jimi Hendrix for example, look at what he plays during the 1st verse vs. the 2nd verse, you will see that they are totally different. The chord progressions are the same, however the lead parts that Jimi plays are different. Both parts sound awesome over the chords, it’s just two different ways to jam over the changes. The frustrating part for people taking beginner guitar lessons comes in when they try and learn every little detail of every part. Now if you are a perfectionist or in a cover band, then it’s important to play the song as close to the original as possible. However, if you are just wanting to learn the song for fun, then what I suggest doing is to first learn and play just the basic chord progression. Once you are comfortable with this, then try and tackle the more difficult and advanced parts.

Another situation to look out for is when you have a bar of music with a lot of single notes that are very close to one another. The trick here is to understand that all these single notes are usually part of one single and basic chord. Instead of playing the chord with a strum, it’s performed by playing the notes one by one. A great example of this is in the main verse riff to Metallica’s “Fade To Black”. At first glance you see single notes all over the place. Many beginner guitar players try and play this type of passage with just one finger. Now step back and look at it like a group of chords. You will see that the chord progression goes Am, C, G, Em. If you put each of these chord shapes down before playing the part, you will see that you have almost all the notes right under your fingers, all you need to do is play the right strings and your golden.

These are just a couple examples of what to look out for when working with tabs. There are certainly many more tips and tricks you can use to make the process of learning songs quicker and easier but these are the two biggest situations that I see people having the most difficulty with. Keep practicing and learning new songs and the process of using guitar tabs will get easier and easier.

Visit www.rockguitarpower.com to learn more!