Archive for November 2011

Are you getting frustrated with your guitar practicing? Just can’t get over a hump without a certain technique or movement? Here are some suggestions to help you out.

First, let me tell you a situation that came up at a recent lesson. A student of mine is learning the F chord. Now, if you can play the F barre chord then you know it could be a real challenge at first. I walk into the lesson; the student tells me he got very frustrated working with the f chord this week. It sounded horrible; he said he couldn’t get it to sound good, etc. I asked him how often did he practice it this week. His response was that he had to put away the guitar on Thursday because he got so frustrated and skipped a day of practice on Friday. His lessons are on Saturdays. I asked how he was practicing the F chord. He said he was doing what I told him; Lead with second finger, strum once to move from a C chord to the F chord, etc.

Competition is a natural part of survival and life. We are involved in it to some degree whether we want to be or not. We see it in the animal kingdom, competition for mating and for food. But it occurs in humans too, but on different levels. Let’s take a social gathering, such as a party, for example. Many vie to be the best dressed, to have the best dish at the potluck, etc.

Music is an area that may have a lot of competition. It can be personal or it can be organized into events. The purpose of this article is to show the beneficial as well as the harmful aspects of musicians.

Could I be teaching guitar without a computer? I could but I don’t! The computer is part of most people lives today with Facebook, Google, Twitter, iTunes and more. It is big part of my teaching business. My uses for the computer include research, developing teacher materials, transcribing, marketing, sales, website, email, and recording. I research online what other teachers are teaching and how they teach it. I see the good and the bad. This helps me improve my teaching ability.

I’ve always been a big concert goer, now I just watch YouTube videos and blog about music. I used to go to about at least three concerts a month, but then I got older and now have more responsibility. When I do go to concerts I am the person who is there for the music and for the music only. I don’t go there to get into the crowds, to mosh pit or pick fights like a lot of other people do nowadays which I find really annoying. It seems like there always have to be people at every show that make it hard to enjoy. I came up with a list of five things that you or anybody else shouldn’t do at a concert.

Don’t slam crowd surfers into the ground or punch them for no reason. Yes, I agree crowd surfers are really annoying, but that doesn’t give anybody the right to hurt them. Sometimes people crowd surf to get out of the crowd so they can breathe again. I’ve seen way to many people do stuff like this for no apparent reason.