In gen­eral gui­tarists learn their chords in a rather un-systematic way.

There might be a teacher or a gui­tar play­ing friend show­ing you some stan­dard voic­ings. Then there’s the odd chord gleaned from a chord book or tran­scrip­tion. Some chords you find while exper­i­ment­ing and noodling on the instrument.

You get the picture.

So even though you might know quite a few chords, the ques­tion is: how well do you know your chords? Do you know them inside out so you can uti­lize them in a chord melody style?

If your answer is no, don’t worry, I’ve got good news for you.

It ain’t that dif­fi­cult to get started on the road towards a per­sonal chord melody sys­tem.

Let me show you how.

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TC Electronic M30

Reverb is one of the most impor­tant effects. From small, inti­mate set­tings to huge, cav­ernous spaces — used cor­rectly, it adds dimen­sion, atmos­phere and shim­mer to your tracks.

One of the most rep­utable reverb man­u­fac­tur­ers is TC Electronic. Until Nov. 19^th you can get their new M30 reverb plu­gin absolutely free. All you need to do is fill out a short form on their site and you can down­load the VST plu­gin.

Powered by AlgoFlex™ – a new high def­i­n­i­tion TC tech­nol­ogy that enables hard­ware qual­ity and pre­dictabil­ity to be ported to native soft­ware — this unit has a great sound, yet is sim­ple and easy to use.

Curious how it sounds?

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You need to develop many essen­tial skills to move for­ward as a musician.

Skills like:

• good tech­nique on your instrument
• a great rhyth­mic feel
• knowl­edge of styl­is­tic interpretation
• impro­vis­ing
• read­ing music, chord charts, tab
• the know-how to arrange music
• an under­stand­ing of (basic) record­ing technology
• “work­ing” your equip­ment (synth, fx, pedals)
• pro­mot­ing your music
• peo­ple skills (band mem­bers, man­agers, at venues)

But your most prized pos­ses­sion as a musi­cian is:

Your ears!
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I’m not 100% sure but I think the first time I heard Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor was in the late 70’s or early 80’s watch­ing TV com­mer­cials. Back then it was espe­cially pop­u­lar to use clas­si­cal music as back­drop for TV ads, at least here in Austria.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons for a cof­fee brand, some local Bank (ab)used Mozart for their life insur­ance pack­age  — what the Adagio was sup­posed to ped­dle, I don’t remember.

I do remem­ber though, that this haunt­ing piece some­how grabbed me and I couldn’t get it out of my head and would con­stantly whis­tle and hum the melody any­time I had seen the TV spot.

After the ad got can­celed, I for­got about the piece, until... Read the rest of this entry

Image by Network Osaka via Flickr

Q: What’s the mean­ing of life?
A: 42!

I don’t know if 42 really is the mean­ing of life.

What I do know is that you can kill some seri­ous time check­ing out 42 new VST plug-ins.

What kind of plug-ins?

• VST synths from Minimoog clones to FM and gran­u­lar synthesis
• A multi-band com­pres­sor for that extra oomph
• How about a Tape Dynamics Simulator to fat­ten your mix with some saturation?
• Fancy a Twin Engine reverb unit with enhancer and fil­ter­ing for extra character?

Best of all, what if those 42 plug-ins were free and wouldn’t cost you a cent?
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Image by *per­si­flage via Flickr

I’m excited to get started with the 1^st install­ment of the monthly chal­lenge. As I said in the main post explain­ing the con­cept, for me this will be the prover­bial kick in the $%§$ to make sure I fol­low through and hope­fully you will get some ideas out of this as well.

Here are my top­ics for the month of November:

Goal #1 — General Musicianship

You need to have good ears for truly express­ing your musi­cal poten­tial. What a sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion.

Thanks to my classes in col­lege and my own con­tin­ued prac­tic­ing, my ear train­ing skills are pretty good already. But some­times I still second-guess myself and don’t trust my aural per­cep­tion. Read the rest of this entry

You do have a prac­tice plan, right?

It’s one of the most impor­tant tools for any musician.

But what do you put on your prac­tice plan?

List all the impor­tant basics, all the cool play­ing tech­niques, all the styles you’d like to get into, all the tunes to mas­ter — put every­thing on your plan and you end up with a gar­gan­tuan prac­tice sched­ule that’s totally imprac­ti­cal and even counterproductive.

Why?

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