An Alternative Way To Adjust Your Guitar Nut

December 4th, 2009 | Posted by admin

Most new guitars arrive from the factory with the nut just barely playable. Older guitars may have the nut filed or worn down so much that fret buzz cannot be eliminated by neck or string height adjustment. If you have a new guitar, or you are replacing the nut with a new one, here is an alternative method to file and adjust the nut material to make your guitar play like the professionals guitars play.

Before adjusting anything, make sure your guitar is strung up correctly and that your neck is straight and not bowed or warped. If your neck is bowed you first need to adjust the truss rod. If your neck is warped it will require a more extensive repair. For the lowest possible action or to avoid fret buzz all across your finger board it may be necessary to have your frets leveled and crowned first.

You will need a set of nut files (available from Stewart MacDonald), and a good set of feeler gauges as well. Different grades of sandpaper are very useful too.

Fret each string individually, starting with the High E, between the second and third fret, use your feeler gauge to check the amount of space between the bottom of the string and the first fret. You should have approximately .005″ of space between each one, with the string barely touching the second fret. If this measurement is close or dead on then move on to the next string right up to the Low E string. You may want to record the gap on a scrap piece of paper as you move across the fret board, to see the nut slot’s height in relation to the fret board as you do so.  Read more...

Read Users' Comments (0)

7 Tips for Effective Musical Practice

November 16th, 2009 | Posted by admin

The quality of your practice is much more important than the quantity. The old saying “practice makes perfect” is only true if the practice itself is perfect. Here are 7 tips to help make your practice more effective and efficient.

Practice motions slowly

The muscular memory of our bodies allows us to physically carry out patterns of motion with little or no conscious involvement. Examples of muscular memory include walking, riding a bicycle, typing, and of course playing a musical instrument.

In order to develop this memory, the muscles require training in the form of repeated conscious guidance from the mind. First the mind must learn the pattern. Then the mind must “teach” the pattern to the muscles.

The mind initially must control all the motions of the muscles. The more controlled and precise the motions, the more quickly the muscles will develop muscle memory.

Slow practice also allows the mind to teach “antagonistic muscles” to relax. Antagonistic muscles are those that move in opposite directions. By relaxing antagonistic muscles you can reduce tension and facilitate faster and easier performance and avoid potential injury.

Practice in small cells

A “practice cell” is simply a finite series of motions. Musical cells can correspond to anything from a few notes to an entire work. When practicing, it is important to practice small cells of just a few notes. Practicing small cells limits the amount of information the muscles have to learn at one time. It also facilitates the mind’s focus and concentration.

Link the end of one cell to the beginning of the next

To help the muscles develop a sense of continuum throughout the piece of music, the last motion in a cell should be the first motion of the following cell.  Read more...

Read Users' Comments (0)

3 Steps to Playing Comfortably for a Crowd

November 15th, 2009 | Posted by admin

Most people are not comfortable performing in front people. When I say of performing, such as an instrument, or singing, or acting, I mean more than just knowing how to do well at your chosen craft, I mean doing it well and in front of people. It’s the “in front of people” part that gets us every time. How many of us sing like a bird in the shower but then when people are watching we can’t carry a note. Here are three steps to start you on the road to comfort (never complete) when called on to shine.

1. Don’t neglect to practice. Whether you sing or play an instrument practice is the key to being relaxed. The more familiar you are with what you are performing, the less anxiety you will have about messing up.

2. Don’t back up. Piano teaches pass this on all the time. If you mess up in the middle, or any place in your piece, don’t back up and repeat the offending passage. Keep going. Chances are your audience didn’t even notice.

3. Try not to be critical of your technical skill. Focus more on your overall performance. How does it sound as a whole? If you’re a pianist and you worry during your piece about your fingering then you’re ignoring the song and how it sounds. Worry about technicalities when you practice. Which should be often.  Read more...

Read Users' Comments (0)

Musical Instrument Competition: 25 New Instruments Created

November 9th, 2009 | Posted by admin

There has something new happened for the music lovers. They’ll be now able to hear some more good music produced by 25 new innovative musical instruments that competed against each other at the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition.

The ‘Silent Drum’ invented by Jaime Oliver won the first prize. The winning drum has a flexible drum head which forms black shapes in front of a white background when pressed by fingers. The shapes are recorded by a video camera and sent to a laptop where Max/MSP software turns the shapes into sound in real time.

The Second prize was won by ‘GuitarBot’ devised by Eric Singer. The instrument not only performs guitar parts for Lemur (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), but can also perform complex solo compositions.

The third prize went to David Wessel, a Berkeley University professor and an electronic music veteran, who performed on the ‘Slabs’. Slabs is an interface for the Max/MSP audio program having touchpads sensitive to fingertip pressures.

There were many other innovative musical instruments. One of them made drum and bass sounds by running fabric through lasers. Yet another mounted a keyboard on a motorcycle engine while another contestant made an instrument inspired by solving a Sodoku puzzle using wooden blocks.

The contest for discovering the best ideas for innovative musical instruments was organized by Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology and Harmonix, the company that gave the popular video games ‘Guitar Hero’ and ‘Rock Band’. More than 60 musicians, inventors and hobbyists applied for the competition. 25 applicants were given an opportunity to show off musical instruments devised by them. The prizes included $5,000 for first place; $3,000 for second place; and $2,000 for third place. Apart from the three top prizes, a copy of Rock Band video game was awarded to the winners of fourth, fifth and sixth places.  Read more...

Read Users' Comments (0)

Finding Musical Instruments Shopping Places

October 26th, 2009 | Posted by admin




Many grade school and middle school’s offer music programs in their curriculum. In finding musical instruments shopping places, parents will automatically assume that any music store in town will have a variety of musical instruments that they can rent for the school year.

These methods of finding musical instruments have proven challenging to some parents because music stores offer musical instruments for students through rental plans that require monthly payments, that end up with the parent not owning the equipment they are paying for. In finding musical instruments shopping places, they prefer to look for stores that will let them buy the instrument outright.

The music stores are very helpful to parents in finding musical instruments shopping places that will allow them to purchase new and used musical instruments but the prices for some of these musical instruments is quite high and parents do not think they can afford them. The cleaning services offered by some of these musical instruments retail on an hourly basis, and the unknown costs lead parents away from buying a musical instrument for their child to use at school.

In finding musical instrument places, parents are afforded the opportunity to gain a slight cultural taste of complete collections of musical instruments that are from around the world. They get a history lesson on the development of the musical instruments and find out about famous musician that got to develop their talents on small instruments that are like the ones they are considering buying.

There are newsletters at many music stores that offer great places to go and help parents in finding musical instruments shopping places that they can afford. Some of these outlets sell musical instruments that are well below the asking price of the instruments they have found in music stores. These outlets might only offer the musical instrument, with no case or accessories to go with it.

In their efforts to locate musical instruments, parents use the Internet in finding musical instruments shopping places that have virtual storefronts, but offer exquisite prices and guarantees on the quality of musical instruments in their inventories. Some of these online retailers even offer catalogues that parents can order to see all of the instruments in their shops.

In finding musical instruments shopping places, parents can find those that focus on selling the exact instrument that they are interested in, and not be bothered by pictures and descriptions of instruments that their children will never try to play. This exclusivity provides the parents with the opportunity to focus on pricing and differences in the musical instruments offered for their child to use at school.

Some prices might differ only a few dollars, and the parents can identify these differences very quickly when the website features only one instrument. They can also take a quick glance at all of the cases, cleaners, and sheet music that is available with each musical instruments. The low inventories make finding musical instruments shopping places that sell only one type of instrument much more convenient for a bargain shopping parent of a promising band student.


Read Users' Comments (0)

Next Page