bass guitar
Guitar Effects – Distortion
A Distortion pedal functions by … well, by “distorting” the original sound wave. Some characteristics of a sound wave are a certain shape, a certain amplitude, and a certain frequency. A distortion pedal will distort some or all of these characteristics by electronic manipulation to achieve the desired distorted tone.
Typically distorted sound is “dirtier” than the original “clean” sound. If you’re playing “edgy music” … rock, hard rock, grunge, metal, things like that … you’re probably seeking a distorted sound.
While current distortion pedals manipulate the tone through solid-state electronics (most often — some pedals use tubes, but these are most effective in “overdrive” pedals), musicians in the pre-pedal world often used damaged equipment — amplifiers with bad or missing tubes, speakers cut with slits or tears, etc — to achieve a distorted sound!
A distortion pedal and a “fuzz” box are basically the same thing — both distort the original clean signal. The difference between the two is the degree and character of the distortion.
You probably do not need both a fuzz and a distortion pedal. But … depending on the style of music you’re seeking — you’ll find that one works better for you than the other. The only way to determine which is best for you is to take some time at your local music store and try several pedals.
Distorted guitar offers a thicker and heavier “base” — a single guitar can provide a solid backing for a tune. Distortion also leads to greater sustain and can feedback in a pleasing manner. Distortion is most commonly used for solo guitar … but is also effective when using power chords. However, fully voiced chords quite often lose their punch when distorted. Distortion can also be effective for bass guitar … although you will generally use a pedal specifically designed for a bass.
Joey Robichaux
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How to Learn Bass Guitar Online
If you have an interest in learning to play bass guitar, you will find it to be a very rewarding instrument to play. The bass Guitar player is an important member of the band. The quality of the group’s playing depends largely on how well the bass player keeps in time. Not only are the demands heavy but the rewards are great. It only takes a short time to get up and running as a bass guitarist and once you have learnt a few basic bass lines and worked out whether you are a plectrum player or a plucker, you will be able to start improvising your own bass licks.
There are two ways to Learn bass online. One is to take advantage of the many free bass lessons on the web. These online bass guitar lessons will help you to understand how the place of the bass guitar in a band, music theory, reading sheet music and tabs as well as giving you basic rhythms to play. Some of the bass lessons you find will have some kind of interactive component where you can play along with riffs or a backing track.
Of course, many of the bass guitar lesson sites are offering paid courses, but there are also some good free lessons. If you do a search for “online bass guitar lessons” (without the quotes will give you more results) you will be able to compare the various paid lesson courses for bass guitarists, and you will get a chance to compare them with the free courses. If you decide to learn to play bass guitar for free you will probably need to find yourself some free bass guitar tabs on the internet. There are many places that offer bass tabs for popular songs. Another option for the bass guitar student on a budget is YouTube. If you go looking for online bass lessons on video you will probably find about a thousand clips, all offering something of value to the beginner.
As a bass player you must learn to play in time. A newbie guitar player can spend years playing guitar with the tempo and timing all over the place because he does not have to play with other musicians. The bass guitarist’s job is to play in a band so the sooner you get any little rhythmic or timing peccadillos ironed out, the better. For this you will need a metronome. Type “free metronome” into a search engine, find one you like and bookmark it if it is online, although there are metronomes you can download for free. The same goes for a tuner. There are quite good bass guitar tuners online. You will also be able to find free backing tracks for guitar online. Playing along to these is a great way to get the feel of playing in a band. You can tell the program what chords to play and the time signature, and you can play along to the looped track online or download it in mp3 format. For more inspiration find video clips and mp3′s by leading bass guitar players like Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Waylon Tisdale, John Pattitucci, Mike Mason or Miroslav Vitous.
Ricky Sharples
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Musical Toys – 5 Musical Video Games Kids Want, Like, NOW!
1) Rock Band – This is the game most kids want. Made by Harmonix, this musical Video game lets everyone choose an instrument and rock out against the game. There are 3 different version fo Rock Band: the original “Rock Band”, the latest version (as of 2009) “Rock Band 2″, and even one for the Boomer in your life “The Beatles: Rock Band”. All of the instrument controllers will play on each of the three versions, so no need to buy them all separately. There are even specially designed replica guitars and bass guitars for “The Beatles” version. And it’s not just rockin’ out on stage either. You can go inside the studio, record albums, take a world tour, even learn how to play the drums in real life. This game has it all and the set list of songs is staggering. Plus, you can download even more songs from online. Look for software only or get the software and all of the instruments together for a real value.
2) Guitar Hero – The yin to Rock Band’s Yang, guitar Hero is the one that started the entire instrument Video game craze. Known for constantly pumping out new versions, nine(!) at last count, make sure you know exactly which one your child has in mind. There’s Guitar Hero 1 and 2, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 and the band versions for Metallica, Van Halen, and Aerosmith. There’s also a version called Smash Hits which includes some of the more popular songs from the non-band versions. WARNING: ROCK BAND AND GUITAR HERO INSTRUMENTS DO NOT MIX! You need to buy separate instruments for the different games. There are also Track Packs you can buy which add songs to the set lists of Guitar Hero and are themed by type of music, i.e. Metal. Classic Rock, Country, etc.
3) DJ Hero – This was the most recent edition to the “Hero” universe until Band Hero (more on that in a second) and is geared more for the hip-hop crowd. There are two versions: DJ Hero comes with the software and the turntable controller, while DJ Hero: Renegade Edition comes with the software (and different songs), the turntable controller with a stand, and a couple of actual CDs by Jay-Z and Eminem. The turntable controller will take a little getting used to and if you get DJ Hero you will most likely have to put it on a coffee table to play the game. Renegade edition not only solves this problem by including a stand, but also includes a case so you can bring your turntable over to a friend’s house for a hip-hop battle!
4) Band Hero – Guitar Hero’s blatant attempt to appeal to young girls by featuring Taylor Swift on the set list as well as in the commercials. Don’t worry – the Guitar Hero instrument controllers work with this game saving you the added expense. The song list is every 14 year old girl’s dream with acts you probably don’t listen to except when their blaring from her ipod or cell phone. You can buy the software only or get the instruments bundled in the package. This way you can get it for a girl if a boy already has Guitar Hero and vice versa.
5) Lego Rock Band – Boys? Check! Girls? Check! Parents? Check! Wait…what about little kids? Someone at some marketing meeting must have raised this cry last year and, thus, Lego Rock Band was born. It is a very family friendly version of Rock Band. The Rock Band instrument controllers will work with this game and it’s very similar to the style of play, but everything is Lego-fied. You can create your own little Lego den to chill in and perform within the game which is really fun. This is the perfect game to get your little kids involved in the musical Video game universe and looking forward to their future hand-me-down Rocks Bands and Guitar Heroes from the older siblings.
zach wyrick
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Guitar Hero World Tour Ringtones | Guitar Hero World Tour – Ringtones
Click Here & Sign Up to Download Guitar Hero world Tour Ringtones
Guitar Hero world Tour is one of the most popular games in the world right now. Guitar Hero World Tour (initially referred to as Guitar Hero IV) is a music video game developed by Neversoft and published by RedOctane and Activision. It is the fourth main entry in the Guitar Hero series. The game was launched in North America on October 26th for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 consoles. A version of the game has been rated by the ESRB for Microsoft Windows computers, though Activision has not officially confirmed this version.
Click Here & Sign Up to Download Guitar Hero Ringtones
While the game continues to feature the use of a guitar-shaped controller to simulate the playing of rock music, Guitar Hero World Tour is the first game in the Guitar Hero series to feature drum and microphone controllers for percussion and vocal parts. Gameplay is similar to the competing Rock Band series of games. The game allows users to create new songs through the “Music Studio” mode, allowing custom tracks to be created for drums, rhythm guitar, lead guitar and bass guitar (although vocal parts are omitted from this mode for technical and legal reasons). Players may upload and share their songs, as well as download others’ songs through a service known as GHTunes. To get Guitar Hero World Tour Ringtones for your phone, click on the link below and sign up now:
Click Here & Sign Up to Download Guitar Hero World Tour Ringtones
Jim McEwan
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Guitar Techniques – Developing Your Style
If you are a new guitarist who is curious about the guitar techniques you will be learning in the future or if you are looking to develop a little more style in Your guitar playing, this article will tell you about some commonly used guitar techniques. I am also going to describe how to play a flamenco guitar technique that I think you will enjoy playing around with. I am not attempting a complete list of the things you can do on the guitar because each guitar playing style has its own techniques but hopefully you will get some ideas of where to go next in developing Your technique.
Left hand guitar techniques can pretty much be moved from one musical genre to another. One exception I can think of is the technique of fretting bass notes by wrapping Your thumb around the guitar neck. This technique is not used in all genres even though you are welcome to try it out in whatever you are playing, but it is downright frowned upon in classical guitar playing.
One technique that is used in classical and rock guitar playing is the use of the right hand to damp the sound of the strings. You put the side of Your hand over all six strings and then pluck with your fingers or use up and down strokes with the pick. If you try it on your electric guitar you will instantly recognize the sound from numerous punk or metal tracks. A variation on this technique is to have your hand “floating” above the strings and bring it down to damp your notes just after you have played them.
Common to all kinds of plectrum guitar styles is the invention and use of strumming patterns. The “pattern” is varied by whether you use up or down strokes with your pick and in what order. A basic pattern is made by just alternating up and down strokes across all six strings in time with the music. Once you are comfortable with this technique you can vary it by using two up strokes together or two downstrokes followed by upstrokes, or you can just play the three bass or treble strings.
Whether or not you are exclusively a plectrum or finger-style guitar player you should at least experiment with the flamenco strumming technique known as rasqueado. With this style of strumming you are making use of each of your four fingers alternately to produce a completely different effect from plectrum strumming. To start you can rest the thumb on the sixth string and just strum the fourth, third, second and first strings. Begin by having all the fingers curled up, then drag each one across the strings in succession starting with the pinky. Play slowly at first and just use downstrokes.
Once you are used to playing down strokes using this flamenco technique, you can stop resting your thumb on the sixth string and follow your fingers down with it. So now you are playing five down strokes in succession. You can play a series of these rasqueado and join them up by performing an upstroke with the thumb. To summarize, you do downstrokes with the pinky, ring finger, middle finger, first finger and thumb. This gives you a long continuous strum. Then to begin another rasqueado, you bring your thumb up across the strings and start again with the pinky.
So now you have some details about some common guitar techniques plus some info on how to play flamenco style strumming. That should keep you busy for a while. Remember to search YouTube for any of the techniques I have mentioned so you can watch a guitarist performing these techniques.
Ricky Sharples
