What is most important as you try to learn to play guitar? Technical guitar exercises or playing music? What areas should you focus on as you try to use your practicing time as effective as possible?

Could it be that both these areas are important and should go hand in hand?

You could practice in various ways and you could practice many various things as you try to learn playing guitar. You are probably already identifying yourself in a niche of guitar players. Even if you are not you will experience sooner or later that different approaches will lead you in different directions.

For example, if you only learn small parts (the coolest parts) of famous songs you will end up with knowing small parts of songs. Obvious, but that is very common among beginning guitar players. If you only practice this way you will of course miss the long term development as a guitarist.

You wanted to become one type of guitarist but ended up becoming another type of guitarist. Why does things like that happen?

Probably because we know that what we saw we will reap but do not realize that this applies to guitarists as well!

If you never practice skill exercises in your guitar playing you will not develop you skill very much. If you don’t want to become a proficient guitar player but only want to sing songs you can relax and develop your time to learning songs.

If you really know what you want it is much easier to determine what exercises you will need.

If you have a somewhat vague idea about what type of guitarist you want to become I would suggest that you balance you guitar practice by choosing both melodies and other musical exercises and also skill building guitar exercises.

If you only practice speed by learning scales, arpeggios, licks and other technique building exercises it is an imminent risk that you will sooner or later get fed up with practicing because of the lack of stimulating musical content.

It can actually be a great investment in your musical development to take some time off every now and then by going to a concert or listening to other music that will inspire you.

Yes, you are right, you will not practice your fingers, but music and playing guitar has to be a joyful experience for you if you are to inspire and lift others when you perform. You will gain so much by filling yourself with inspiring music that it will compensate for missed skill building exercises.

Music is the key in this discussion. It has to be the basis for all other guitar playing activities. Otherwise you will as before mentioned lose interest in the activity.

Sometimes I remember my first steps learning to play guitar and I remember that I did not think in terms of becoming a better guitarist than my friends or being the fastest guitarist in the world or a lot of other disturbing unmusical considerations. I was just enjoying the music I created.

I guess that keeping this feeling of why I wanted to learn to play guitar in the first place in vivid memory will help me not to be too carried away with only technical exercises.

Okay, what then is more important as you try to learn to play guitar? Technical guitar exercises or playing music?

As in so many other aspects of life balance is probably the key to reap optimal benefits from your guitar playing.
About the Author: Peter Edvinsson invites you to download your free guitar sheet music and read his guitar music blog at http://www.capotastomusic.com
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This is the second guitar lesson of the “Beginner Guitar Lesson”s. I’m gonna try to have 3 of them, and then specialize more on the basic topics covered in the lessons. Also, I want to start on Electric Guitar Lessons and Acoustic Guitar Lessons.

Are you interested in playing synthesizers? If you seriously want to play it properly, then you need to know how to read musical notes of synthesizers. Learning to play the instrument is not enough. You should know its each and every note. And to do that, you need a notation.

Synthesizers have a piano like keyboard. That is why its notation is of two different types. One is the bass cliff notation and the other one is a treble cliff notation. You have to clear up this cliff concept first, if you want to learn how to read musical notes of synthesizers.

The bass cliff notation is for the left hand and the treble cliff notation is for the right hand.

In a notation book you will get to see five straight lines. And in between two lines there is a space. Both are very important parts of notation. There are four spaces in a notation.

In bass cliff, the lines are named as g, b, d, f, a and the spaces are named as a, c, e, g. where as in the treble cliff, the lines are e, g, b, d, f and the spaces are f, a, c, e.

A very important part of how to read musical notes of synthesizers is to understand the notation properly. You need to identify the notes properly. In a notation, you will find some notes like, crochet, quaver, semi quaver, and demy semi quaver.

The note, which have a stem and a dot attached on the bottom or the top of the stem is called a crotchet. A crotchet is actually a complete beat. One crotchet means one whole beat. Now, if you break that one full beat into two half beats, then each of that half beat will be called a quaver. A quaver looks almost like the crotchet. But it just has a tail. You can even break those half beats into quarter beats. Then it will be called a semi quaver. Semi quavers have two tails. If you break this beat more, then you will find demy semi quaver, which has three tails.

Apart from these there are some other notes also. You have to know them all if you want to know how to read musical notes of synthesizers. If you see three adjoined crotchets, then you will know that it is called a triplet. A triplet is a compilation of three different notes, which has to be played in the time of one beat.

You will find a down facing bracket over two notes. This is called a tie. If there is a tie above two notes, then it means that you will not have to play the second note.

Some of the notations consist an s, which is divided by two lines. This is called sign back. It means you have to play till this sign and then you have to go back to the top again. At the end of a notation you can find a word called fine. It means end. And this sign says that the notation ends there.

At the left hand side of the top of the notation, you will see two digits written. These are called time signatures. It depicts the beat. Sometimes just beside the time signature, you will find a sharp or flat sign. This is called key signature. It is used to mention the scale.

This is the basic procedure of how to read musical notes of synthesizers. If you go through it, then you will not find any problem to read or understand the notation.

About the Author: Victor Epand is an expert consultant for guitars, drums, and synthesizers. You can find the best marketplace for guitars, drums, and synthesizers at these 3 sites: guitars, drums, drum sets, and synthesizers
Source: http://www.articlesbase.com