0 Finding the Best Piano Lessons by Ear on DVDs

For some people, the thought of piano lessons conjures up childhood memories of going to weekly lessons and endless hours of boredom practicing the basics. For other people who are considering enrolling their own children in piano lessons, the logistics of taking kids to lessons and the expense involved may seem overwhelming. Adults who have always wished they could play the piano might feel silly signing up with an instructor who mainly teaches children.

Thankfully, as times have changed, so have the ways in which piano lessons are taught. In addition to traditional piano lessons, there are online piano lessons and even piano lessons by ear on DVDs. For many people, learning to play piano by ear is an incredibly enriching and rewarding experience. Not only can they play piano for their own enjoyment, but they can also learn the chord progressions necessary to tackle jazz piano, gospel piano, and even contemporary music.

There are many advantages to buying a piano course on DVDs, the most obvious of which is that you can literally save thousands of dollars on piano lessons. Moreover, you don't have to carve out the time to go to an instructor every week, or deal with the logistical hassles of taking kids too and from piano lessons. With DVDs, you can take the lessons at your own pace and at whatever time is most convenient for you.

If you're considering buying a piano course on DVD, it's important to select the right one. You should, for example, choose a course that will provide you with a year's worth of piano lessons. Similarly, one of the factors you should consider is how accessible the lessons are to the novice. Music theory, for instance, should be explained in terms that are easy for both children and adults to understand. Terms that should be covered include the circle of 5ths, scale degrees, chord construction, chord families, chord inversions, chord alteration, harmonic direction, and ear-theory principles.

Of course, playing the piano is more than music theory. The DVD set you choose should feature an instructor who has years of experience both teaching and playing the piano. Because the process of learning to read music can be an obstacle to those who would otherwise enjoy learning to play the piano, the lessons you choose should teach you how to play by ear by using hundreds of chording techniques.

If you select the right DVD set, and practice for a half hour each day, by the end of three months you should be able to play chord progressions, master the major scales, and understand how most songs are arranged. You should also be able to play in a variety of musical styles, such as contemporary gospel, jazz, blues, country, pop, and ballads.

Learning to play the piano doesn't have to be a difficult process; indeed, it can be filled with enthusiasm and excitement. You just have to find the right piano lessons by ear on DVDs and let the music flow!

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0 The Mystique Of Acoustic Guitar Solos

The acoustic guitar still holds a fascination for music lovers even after all these decades of our ears being bombarded by electric guitar music. Electric guitarists love playing with the sounds they get from different tone settings, effects, the use of the different pickups and feedback. The acoustic guitar has only the tone given to it by the wood it is made from and the skill and inspiration of the guitar player. So let us take a look at some acoustic guitar solos and the guitars and guitarists who made them.

If you do not know the name Erik Mongrain, you will find some examples of his guitar playing on video sites on the internet. I came across a very nice solo called Air Tap. He was given an acoustic guitar when he was fourteen, and learnt to play it by ear. While he learnt and experimented with the guitar he discovered the technique of sitting the guitar in his lap and tapping, the strings and body to produce music. If you go looking for him on the web you will find pdf files of his music and tutorials on his techniques.

Paco de Lucia introduced the world to a new brand of flamenco in the 1970's and paved the way for a new generation of flamenco guitarists who were inspired by his passion for oriental scales and jazz influences. Entre Dos Aguas was an improvisation begun during a recording session because the LP Paco and his accompanying musicians were working on was short on material. The resulting rumba was a worldwide hit and established Paco as a force to be reckoned with well outside the boundaries of Spanish folk music. Paco sponsors his own line of flamenco guitars.

Back in the 1990's MTV decided to coax guitar hero Eric Clapton into playing some songs without the adornments provided by an electric guitar and amp. The resulting album won Grammy awards, gave Clapton's career a shot in the arm and reinvented the song Layla as an acoustic showpiece. The solo on Layla is far removed from the original theme conceived by Duane Allman which made the song a rock anthem.

In the late 1960's Mason Williams surprised himself by writing and performing an acoustic guitar solo which became a hit and remained popular for the decades since. The tune was called Classical Gas, and is striking for its simplicity and popular appeal. Classical Gas was born in an era when instrumentals such as The Lonely Surfer, A Walk In The Black Forest and Love Is Blue were standout hits for musicians who were otherwise unknown. But only Classical Gas retains the ability to make people sit up and listen.

So if you play the acoustic guitar a little and would like to learn how to play solos, you can use the world wide web to
learn more about soloing techniques for acoustic guitar. One easy way to start is the clawhammer technique used in folk songs, or you could learn to improvise your own licks using the minor pentatonic or "blues" scale. If you are stuck for an idea on how to begin improvising or making up your own tunes, start with a nursery rhyme or some other popular melody, and begin adding notes to it and changing things around to produce something original.

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0 Electric Guitar Tabs Explained

Tablature as a means of writing music down has been with us for hundreds of years, but many people today look down on tabs as a third rate method of musical communication. In fact, tablature is not a dumbed down version of conventional musical notation, rather what we call sheet music grew from a need for more versatility in notation as music became more complex in medieval times. Electric Guitar Tabs have been a great help to the many people who have taken up the electric guitar and who wanted to get down to the business of playing as quickly as possible.

Conventional music notation has much more to communicate than tabs, but if you already know more or less how the song sounds, and are prepared to work at your own interpretation, then there is nothing wrong with using tablature.

Guitarists composing music using tabs and sharing the results of their work on the internet have brought a wide range of music within reach of amateur musicians who never learnt to read music. To some guitarists learning to read music is a waste of time that would be put to better use expressing their feelings through music. This attitude is at odds with the idea that the more theoretical knowledge you have, the greater the pool of resources at your disposal for expressing your ideas.

Tablature, on the other hand, allows the guitarist to get to know the basic piece of music in his own way, and use his musical intuition and flair for improvisation to produce a musical work which will be as much his own work as the original composer's. For that reason electric guitar tabs are a boon to the electric guitar player who does not want to just produce a copy of someone else's work.

You can find electric guitar tabs in music stores along with conventional written music, but the quickest and best place to look for electric guitar tabs is on the internet. Even though there's a legal dogfight going on about tab publishers infringing the rights of the original composer, many tabs are still available for free. However you need to exercise your discernment when making use of tablature produced by amateur guitarists. You might need to change things around a little if they don't sound right.

As for the electric guitar player who wants to broaden his musical knowledge, tablature also allows the guitarist to learn new chords, scales or modes very quickly.

Finally a reminder that using electric guitar tabs to learn new material is not a walk in the park - you need to supply some of the information which is otherwise written into sheet music. You need to have some idea of the note values and a basic understanding of time signatures and tempo. What that boils down to is that you can hear the music in your head, and you just want to know where to put your fingers on the fret board. That is what guitar tabs were originally made for.

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0 How To Watch Movies Online Fast & Easy

The revolution that the Internet has brought opened up an entire new method of watching movies from your chair at home. Nowadays, not only you have the possibility to rent your favorite movies but you have the ability to watch them in a streaming format right onto your personal computer. There are plenty of sites on the Internet that offer links to online movies while other sites allow visitors to rent them and watch them directly on that site.

The major advantage a streaming movie has to offer is that you don't have to download the movie so you don't have to worry about viruses and other malicious issues that might occur when downloading a file from the Internet. On the above mentioned sites that offer links to sites on which you can view movies, most of them allow the visitor to search by movie title or by type which is a great tool to find your favorite movie very fast. It is important not to forget that you have the possibility to view other things besides movies, like: television shows, sporting events and others as well.

The major downside a site like this has is that from time to time it can be very hard if not impossible to access it due to the overwhelming traffic. This issue will probably resolve in a few minutes so having patience is the wise thing to do. Quality sites are updated on a daily basis with the latest offers of online movies. If you are looking for a certain movie online it is advisable to search for the Divx format as it offers the best quality from all video formats. On the Internet, there are several sites that list only movies in Divx format so if you are looking for top quality image, these sites offer what you need

In order to view a movie or a television show in a Divx format you need to download either a Divx player or a web player. This download deserves the space it will occupy on your hard drive for the main reason because such a player is the fastest and easiest way to enjoy a movie online. Some sites that offer online movies allow memberships which allow users to elect to watch some of the movie selections directly from the site without having to wait for the site to mail them. One issue that might occur is that these sites don't always have the exact same selection that they offer for mailing but the list is still rich.

Watching movies online is probably the next best thing on the Internet and sites that provide the latest links to online movies and television shows will surely become a huge hit very soon. If you find this method interesting it is advisable to search for those sites that offer lots of links and also they update the site regularly so that you can find for example, the latest episode from your favorite television show.

All things considered, by visiting a site like this you will enjoy watching your favorite movie or television show from your chair right at home without having to worry about viruses, spam and other things like this. It is quick, easy, safe and it will probably become very popular among movie enthusiasts.

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