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We’ve all heard the Beatles song that says; “There’s nothing you can sing that can’t be sung-all you need is love.” And, well, maybe we thought this was just a product of the times or controlled substance speaking.

Well here’s what another well known musician of his day had to say about the subject;

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Learn to Play the Guitar

Success by following your bliss

There are two important formats involved with digital recording; .wav and .midi. It is important to understand the differences between these two formats when learning about digital recording.

Midi is basically a signal sent from a midi compatible electronic instrument to a sound card, sampling bank or software synthesizer.

In midi recording, it is usual to ‘midi in’ a keyboard or other midi compliant instrument. The tracks of your audio recording program will be aligned with either the sound banks in your keyboard or your sound card or a software synthesizer. It is important to note that there is technically no such thing as a ‘midi recording.’ What this means is that you cannot put a ‘midi recording’ on to a CD or save it as an mp3 without converting it first to the .wav format.

The quality or resolution of the sounds that you get in doing this will utterly depend on the sound quality of the keyboard sound bank, sound card or software synthesizer that you are using to do this. Whereas you can save a .midi file and even upload it to a website, the sound quality that the listener gets will entirely depend then on the quality of the sound card they are using and it’s usually not so great.

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The question of whether music evolves or not would certainly run hand in glove with the question or whether society itself evolves, or has evolved.  Every generation certainly has a feeling, to one degree or another, that it is somehow hipper, more knowledgeable and has it more together than the previous generations.  

The ‘classical music‘ stream turned avant-garde in the early 1900’s and on into the 1960’s or so and was popularly regarded as the ‘new music.’ From the jazz of the 1940 and on, rock music arose and this was also heralded as ‘new.’

Many still regard the avant-garde as the ‘new music,’ even though it’s at least fifty or more years old. Since rock, there has been ‘New Wave‘ and ‘New Age.’

“In order to take the spiritual temperature of an individual or society, one must mark the music.” Plato.

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Here’s a couple of contrasting opinions for you;

“Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.”   Bill Cosby.

“Music is what unifies” Seu-ma-tsen, Chinese philosopher.

I guess it comes down to the question my good friend Fritz Kundler has posed; Do you wear your music or listen to it?   Does this song make me look fat? 

Without a doubt, many people wear their music which is a function, as Mr. Cosby has pointed out, of creating an identity that is sparate from the previous generation. This has gone on, no doubt, since before Rome and, rather than being a highly original identity, it is a tenuous one, blown about by fashion and dictated by, as Fritz points out, men in suits.

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Memes are like a virus. Memes are beliefs that get passed along from person to person, growing and evolving until they have a life of their own. Memes have a purpose; to mess people up and to keep folks down.

Our culture is full of memes that keep people in their place like; ‘It is better to give than receive,’ and ‘money is the root of all evil.’  Our memes about religion emphasize that we should be self sacrificing (so we can go to war and be willing to die) and that a rich man can’t get into heaven (so people will be satisfied with their lot in life.)

One of the really popular artistic memes is that an artist isn’t famous until after they’re dead. This popular meme has inspired a story where an artist fakes his his own death to artificially drive up the value of his work and, lord knows, maybe someone somewhere has even done this.

In reality, if you examine the lives of many of the great composers, you will find that many were actually quite successful in their own lifetime. Beethoven, for example, was generally acknowledged as the greatest living composer of his day and the city if Vienna, at one point, paid him to live there and knock out a symphony or two whenever he could manage.

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Art can be a vital form of communication. Often, in the past, the truth about society and culture has been couched allegorically in book, opera, picture or musical work.

The artists (writers, musicians, painters) in Europe kept alive the idea of revolution and educated people in general that the monarchy were not gods nor even chosen by gods, else the French Revolution would never have happened because all the people would have still been fearful that they were opposing ‘God’s Will.’

This is why artists and intellectuals are among the first to be supressed in a totalitarian government. The art of the culture is then usurped by rubbish that is no more than propaganda, such as the ‘art’ of the Nazis.

Tap into your creative genius 

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Certainly not all forms of communication are good. Some forms of communication can be quite harmful; lies, malicious gossip, propaganda and memes.

” ‘A meme,’ said the Doctor, ‘is a unit of cultural transmission. A term coined by Richard Dawkins. It’s a…concept that proagates itself within a culture by a process of imitation. Like a tune, or how you tie shoelaces, marriage, language or wearing a hat. The idea gets passed on from person to person, spreading, transmitting and, in a sense, evolving‘ Jonathan Morris, The Tomorrow Windows.

Our culture is full of such memes and they mostly serve the purpose of keeping people in their place. They teach things like it is a virtue to be ‘poor but honest,’ and ‘your reward is in heaven.’

The are many memes that apply to artists and either keep them down or discourage people from exercising their artistic expression. One of the most popular memes of this type is the ’starving artist,’ closely allied with the meme that artists don’t need compensation for their work because they just love doing what they’re doing.

Be the superstar you were meant to be. 

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Our language is full of words that have little or no specific definition but, there is at the same time, an assumtion on the part of many that there is a universal understanding of the word.

Take the word god, for example. If you polled an entire congregation on the meaning of the word god, you might get as many different definitions of the word god as there were people in the church. Many might agree that god was a creator but, beyond this, the specifics might really vary.

For instance, some may actually hold the view that god, if you could see him (?)/ her, would be sitting somewhere ‘up in the sky,’ or ‘heaven,’ watching over everything. Some may take the view that god is an omnipresent energy existing everywhere in the universe.

Certainly the term god has been used, in the past, to mean a supreme being but are there many gods or just one? It’s interesting that ‘main stream’ religion has never issued an official and specific profile of god and just where he/she might live. Despite this, and the fact this this is almost universally true of the world’s religions, religion is what we chiefly fight, argue and kill each other over; something that most people can’t begin to give specific definitions of.

The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu called ‘god’ The Tao and said whatever was knowable about it, that wasn’t it for sure.

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In contrast to the previous view, where you allow people with low emotional tones ‘drag you down,’ you can manage your own emotional tone and stay positive.

You might not be able to bring a person in a very low emotional tone up very much, in fact you would have to work at this and bring them up by degree, otherwise you’ll have an insurrection on your hands.

You can, however, elevate someone who is already in a reasonable emotional tone. This advice is given in the ‘Science of Getting Rich,’ that you should add value to everyone you interact with in this way.

This is not like lip service where you pay them a false compliment but you actually find something good about them or that you really like and comment on it.

“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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If a person is in a low emotional tone, say apathy on upwards through various stages of anger, communication is just not a possibility. A person in a low emotional tone will only want to talk about how they are being victimized and will only be interested in fixing blame onto others.

Pretty much everyone has experienced someone like this and, perhaps, has one or more such individuals in the family. At family get togethers the conversation gets ‘commondered’ to spending inordinate amounts of time running whichever person or group into the ground that these individuals feel are to ‘blame’ for their current circumstances.

Actual conversation is pointless since nothing about this is rational and the concept of communication is simply a tit for tat sort of battle for dominance of opinion.

If you are not aware and are not the keeper of your own emotional tone, you can actually get drawn down into a lower emotional tone yourself. Then you can become like a carrier, infecting others with this low emotional tone but individuals who manage their own emotional tones will tend to keep you out of their circle and so you are sort of blindly barring your own way to ‘higher circles.’

Stay in communication with your source of inspiration 

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In the diagram, imagine each circle is a person; each colour represents an independent path of communication with each person, every day we use these circles of communication to interact with other people. They are ALL unique based on type of relationship i.e. father, sibling peer, business colleague client prospect.

Understanding and awareness of the influential impact each circle can have on you both negative and positive enables us to balance the outcome of all the people we come into contact with throughout our lives.

When two of them connect, opinions of you are reviewed; they can be either positive of negative based on your interaction with each when you were connected to them.

There are common sayings like “it’s not what you know but who you know that matters” and “i wish I had met you years ago” and “I can pull a few strings for you” that assist the concept of this theory.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great german philosopher and writer once said that; “To create something, you must be something.”

It comes down to how you think of yourself. Do you think of yourself as an artist? I use the term artist always in the broadest sense, meaning that the word includes musicians, writers, painters and, really, anyone who takes pride in a job well done.
If you think of yourself as an artist, stop and reflect on how important artists might be to society and culture in general.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when many people think that art and culture in general is some sort of luxury. It’s something a society indulges in when things are prosperous and people have lots of free time to kill. Some people see it as a passtime of the rich to show off their status.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the first place, without artists, eveything, evey business, every product, every service would sink down to the same level of mediocrity and the economy would go right down the toilet.

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Alright, so rolling right along with the free guitar lessons for beginners, here are the 3 most used chords on guitar. These are the definitive blues chords. Now I know lots of folks will chime in and say they have blues chords they like a lot better but if you surveyed all the blues music ever written, I bet you these three chords would be in the top ten.

This is my opinion, anyway, since I’m not about to survey all the blues music ever written. You can certainly use these chords in the twelve bar blues formula I posted before.

Here they are. They belong to the ‘Key’ of E Major, by the way.

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The business of marketing books has gone the exact same way that the business of marketing music has previously gone with containerless product. Book readers are the booming business, replacing video games, which is falling on its rear.
Publishers have taken the exact same stance that record companies have already assumed, that is to get published, the publisher wants to see a ready made reader base. The author is expected to deal with the promotions of the book. This is the same as the record companies which want the same thing, basically; a group with a large fan base already built.
It’s sort of like getting a loan at the bank. If you don’t need the loan, they’ll probably give it to you but, if you do need the loan, then you can forget about it.
It’s interesting that the authors seem to be ahead of the musicians in embracing this new business model and using Social Media Marketing in a highly successful way to build up a buzz and reader base ahead of their book launch.
And why wouldn’t this work for musical artists as well? It certainly would because it’s the exact same principle involved.

Become the Superstar You Truly Are
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EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Technique and is a really simple energy modality for removing blocks or unwanted beliefs. The technique consists of tapping on your acupuncture energy meridians while stating the belief you wish to be rid of. There is usually a second round of positive statements to ‘tap in’ positive beliefs to replace the negative ones that have been removed. This is a video of a guided session to remove ‘writer’s block,’ or any sort of creative block by quieting down the ‘Inner Critic.’ 

Maximize your creative potential

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Feedback on the free guitar lessons has been quite positive and I thank you so much. There have been a number of requests for more posts on open string chords so we’ll start with guitar for beginners and move on from there.

Again, as you are learning guitar chords, you want to learn the name of the chord and associate that with the shape of the chord. By shape I mean how it looks in the chord box.

The other thing is it doesn’t do you much good to learn a chord here and a chord there; you get the best benefit by practicing going from one chord to another.

In any key that you play in there are three chords that tend to show up the most and so you will progress the quickest if you group these chords together and practice going from one to the other. These are sometimes called the Primary Chords but they are the chords that are built on the first, fourth and fifth notes of a scale.

For example, if you are in the key of C Major, your scale will start on C and run; CDEFGABC. Therefore the main chords for C major will be C, F  and G. And here they are;

C Major Chord

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Bar chords take a lot of finger strength, but the pay-off is worth it. It might be considered a more advanced guitar technique, and it’s true that in guitar for beginners, you should build up that finger strength by playing lots of open chord changes.

The best procedure, in any guitar lessons, for building up finger strength for chords is to play your chords along with a song. Often this can best be done with a CD. Many song books for guitars now come with CDs with the guitar part removed so you can play along karaoke style which is a lot more fun than just sitting there playing one chord and then another.

The other good thing about that is you should always practice your chord changes in rhythm. It does no good to just play a chord and then look up another and play it for awhile. The hardest part about chords is changing from one to the other. I will do some posts on easy chord changes for guitar that you can apply different rhythms to, so be looking for those later in these free guitar lessons.

But on to the bar chord shape; (don’t say I didn’t warn you that it’s a finger-buster) This is a movable major chord shape, meaning that you can move the first finger around (the bar) to any note on your sixth string and get the major chord that matches that note. Cool!  See my previous posts for the chart with the notes of the sixth string.

The technique is to press the first finger down across all the strings in the fret indicated, then place the 2nd 3rd and 4th fingers in the shape as shown. This is basically the shape for the EM open string chord with the bar added.

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