Rhythm guitar (1)

To master rhythm guitar, it’s not that easy. Many effort need to be made to get it accomplished. However, don’t expect that you can play better after you read this entry. I just share my experience and hopefully you would find it inspiring.

Rhythm guitar is essential to any songs. To weigh them, it’s more important than guitar solos. It’s such a technique that every guitarist should possess. In a song, 90% of the time you are playing rhythm guitar while there’s not more than 10% of the time you play solos.

I had been buying many many books of guitar method in musical stores before. Among them, rhythm guitar books are a majority. I dig into every books and try to get the answer, however, I still cannot get into the door of mastering rhythm guitar.

Later, I realize that ‘guitar playing’, a kind of performing arts, cannot be taught entirely through books. What I need was a guitar tutor! It’s an important part to learn from a good tutor. He would correct you any mistake when he noticed while you are playing in front of him.

OK, so what did my tutor teach me rhythm guitar? The clock in my mind! Yes, everyone has a clock in one’s mind. We need to learn to notice that, feel that. I later find out that the main cause to my poor sense in my mind’s clock is: I didn’t use mentronome when practice. It’s a must to turn on it, or drum machine if your multi-effect have one built-in already. Start with a slow beat, say 60 bpm (beat per minute). Move on to the next level, say 70 bpm when you play pretty comfortable and steady with that bpm. He told me that every great guitarist had come across this moment. So, be patient! Keep practicing!

Background music (3)

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This track, well, I'm trying to create the feel of horror atmosphere.

Imagine there's a huanted house somewhere is a tropical jungle, where it's so foggy that you cannot find your way out. And worse enough, you feel 'something' crawling on your feel. You later find out that they are un-identifiable bugs........ scary??

Hope it won't scare you.

Get listed on Google today

Hurray! Having been waiting for almost 3 weeks, I found my blog listed on Google today. I tried “Carl W.: Guitarist” or “makecoolmusic”, both work. However, I changed my title to “Carl’s Guitar Blog” for I think 99% of people won’t type “Carl W.: Guitarist” to search, right?

Anyway, it’s listed on Google, my blog is reachable by anyone from anywhere of the world. I am still waiting Yahoo, ODP….etc to get me listed soon!

If you surf on my blog by chance, by mistake, whatever. Please bookmark me! Please!

I’m sure that you won’t be able to find my blog next time. It doesn’t mean my blog disappeared. It’s the fact that there were so many many blogs / webs out there. If you are interested in making music, enjoying music, sharing music / guitar stuff, why not bookmark me and keep visit, say, once a week?

I need to search the web a lot. I search VST plug-ins, search DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for manual and comparison, search for forum to seek opinions from users of different DAW, search blog templates, HTML codes, feed burners, free mp3 online storage, sales of music online ……. Etc.

I can easily get lost from vast of them in internet. Therefore, I have a practice – bookmark them. I really fear that I won’t be able to find them next time, especially if they are a good web site. It’s a frustrating experience to spend too much time to search for a web / blog which I can reach with only a click in my bookmark! Get my point? Good!

Background music (2)

moody.mp3

It's a my 2nd testing track. Very ordinary lines. Just to check how smooth when playback in this blog. Let me know if you cannot listen to it. Thanks!

Background music (1)

Background music -...

This is my 1st testing track. I'm trying to create some sort of feel which is of exciting mood! However, one of my MSN friend feedback to me that this track is so similar to those background music of arcade games. How do you feel?

Guitar Method

In a city like Hong Kong, who can concentrate one’s work wholeheartedly? I mean, with so many temptation around us in our home and in our society. At home, we cannot keep our fingers in peace. We watch TV by keeping on pressing the remote control; we keep scrolling our mouse when go internet while blogging, MSN …..whatever. The same applies when we go outside: we keep use the “special pen” to “draw” on our mini game gadget “NDS”; keep tuning the right track of song in our IPOD with our finger; keep pointing on our PDA / Blackberry. What a world now we live in!

It’s not exaggerating to say that those fingers of such busy guys mentioned above, their loading are far more heavier than we guitarist did. Guitarists are with brains! So do they ? Right! To be more specific, we practice guitar with our brains used. We are not simply doing exercise. We are counting the beats, think of the chord progressions, think of the bassline, the tricks to be used, the sound of our effect. We simply put our physical action blend with our mind. It’s no easy task to achieve this. Despite this, guitarists are those who really really love guitar(s)!! They definitely won’t have only one guitar in their home. They have many!! When they have spare money, they would convince themselves to buy one more. Then next festival, convince themselves again ….. this cycle goes on and on and on ………

To illustrate we guitarists have brain is easy. We know when to stop, when to take a break!! Yeah, this is important! Since we all know one golden rule:

Practise one hour each day in a week is better than Practise seven hours a day in a week!!

My Gear for Home Recording

PC: AMD Sempron 2800+ with 1GB DDR RAM, WIN XP SP2
Guitar: YAMAHA APX500 (Acoustic electric)
Guitar: FENDER SQUIER TELECASTER (Electric)
Sequencer: CUBASE LE
Midi: LINE6 TONEPORT KB37
Effect: LINE6 POD XT; LINE6 GEARBOX

My PC hadn't been upgraded for quite a few years, don't bother to upgrade as long as it can run all I need to run.

I bought my YAMAHA guitar in August last year for celebrating my job changing. It cost me HKD2,700

I bought the TELECASTER in December 2006 for celebrating my completion of my professional exams. It cost me around HKD3,000

The Sequencer CUBASE come along with my previous guitar effect ZOOM 2.1u.

TONEPORT cost me HKD1,460 in TOM LEE last month.

To sum them up briefly, over HKD 10,000.00

It's minimal money as compare to professional Home Studio.

So this is my first entry

Hello to everybody who surfed to this blog by chance, by referral, or by search engine. Let’s introduce myself a little bit……

My name is Carl, 30+, accountant, have a lovely wife and 2 adorable daughters. I love them all and I love music. I play guitar, acoustic or electric either, with my computer. Haha, it’s true. How do I have time to team up with any band mates to jam along?

One day, I think to myself, “I have spent too much money on my hobby. Will they return me anything other than satisfaction ?” Er well, every buck I spent on them are sunk cost. No revenue generated. Just for my enjoyment and satisfaction when I played them. I’m not a wealthy guy. I cannot buy high-end instrument whenever I like, especially when I’m one of the important backbone to my family financially.

I want more from them! I want to make them productive! I don’t want all the money spent are sunk cost! I want them being part of my INVESTMENT!!!

To be honest, by that time, I had only 2 guitars. How can they return me anything in any means? I need find a way out! After surfing many Home Recording web sites, and learnt many skills on using CUBASE, I decided to buy a midi controller – TONEPORT KB37. This is the first thing which I bought with a strong intention in mind, “an investment in MUSIC PRODUCTION”. I bought that merely for MAKING COOL MUSIC!!

I do hope you enjoy your stay in my blog, enjoy the music I made(No content for now, but I hope I can make one at least weekly). Much appreciated if you can drop me a line for a little bit encouragement! I need that. For sure, you are very welcome to shed some light to me if you are an experienced music producer. Much much appreciated!!!!