Understanding Musical Notes on the Guitar

Hello Folks,

Since you asked me about How to play the Guitar - this is a start. Below is a figure of the neck of a guitar. There are six strings. To play a note on a guitar, you use one hand to press your finger just above "the fret" and string of that note and hold a guitar pick with the other hand and "pling" that string. Now to play chords that make up a group of notes, you place a few fingers spread out across multiple strings and strum the set.

Well, this is just to get you started. After understanding note placement on a guitar, it makes it easier to go along. Do you see a pattern of the alphabet on each string? Note that the B and C notes and the E and F notes do not skip a fret. All the other notes have one fret between each other. This accounts for sharp and flats. One fret down the neck is a sharp (a higher pitched note) and one above is a flat. For example, F sharp is the same as a G flat and would be the 2nd fret on either the 1st or 6th string..

Now, if you strum a guitar with your right hand from that fat E string through each string to the lighter E string, without touching any of the frets with your left hand-- you are playing what we call "open" strings - and the notes played are E A D G B E.

I like to remember the open notes by a simple (or silly) phrase. I use something silly like "Eat At Daves Green Banana Enterprise" - E A D G B E. Now once you know what note the open strings are... you can work you way all the way down the neck of the guitar, just by knowing the alphabet and that every note skips a fret except for the B-C and the E-F notes... Look and see !

Do you think that playing the guitar takes a long time? Well, practice is involved. I once was impressed by a Guitar book author that said that too many people want to get to heaven without dying first. In other words you gotta practice hitting these notes cleanly so that when you press just above the fret and you play the note clean and learn and practice putting them together to make beautiful music. Then there are hammer on's, slides, and bends that are really fun and sound cool.

Now here is something... There is an easy way to read guitar music for playing your favorite song. It is called tabulature that can make things easier.. for just fun playing... The more classical way would lay out the notes on sheet music. But tabulature is a faster way to get to the matter of just playing a song as it is more intuitive.

Tabulature lays out a song in an intuitive way that is easy to understand. You can look at tabulature and immediately know how the finger placement on the frets should go for that song. I will explain about that in a future post.. or you can look it up on the net. There are many web sites that you can get "tabs" from for you favorite song and explain it further.

For now, understand how the notes are played out on the neck of a guitar. If you get a beginnng book on the guitar, it will explain further and show how the classical notes look and delve into more of a formal musical theory and go through some of the songs you can play...

But do you know something? If you want to play a song, there may be people who explain that song on You tube. It is a lot of fun. All you gotta do is go to You tube and do a search on that song with Guitar - and you may find it explained. Here's an example, from Bobby Cristy teaching ... Pink Floyd- "wish you were here" . This one may be a little tough for beginners but you can get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lM3Oxnijgo

There's lot's of good stuff like that on you tube for guitar pickers!

Well, stay tuned. If interested in more, scroll down.

happy pickin'

Spider

http://stockstowatch.blogspot.com/

How to Build a PC...

Hello Folks,

Today, I will explain how to build a PC. I am not going into all the details, you can get that anywhere if you look. Rather, I will shoot the breeze to give you something better - a high level concept for you take it to the next step if you care to. Or sometimes knowledge is power even if you don't actualy build one. I have built many , many PCs back in my day - as I used to have a business in this industry.

Well, here goes...

I assume you are sitting at a desktop PC right now. So take a look at what it is about. A keyboard a monitor, a mouse , a display monitor and the case that contains all of the thingy's that actually drive the computer. These thingy's inside that box is what I will now discuss.

That box contains your power supply and the circuitry that makes up your PC.

In order to build a PC , you need a "motherboard". This board fits inside your PC case and connects to the case with plastic pins. That motherboard contains the control circuitry that holds the Central Processing Unit (CPU) that is "the brain, and also the control circuitry - and the memory of the PC.

So here is the concept. After you install that motherboard with the CPU and the memory... the motherboard itself has slots on it that allow you to interface many of the peripherals. For example, you can plug in a high end graphics video board into one slot and a sound board in another. These are examples.

You would also have to install the hard drive and a CD/ DVD drive, a floppy drive and install operating software. I always intalled Windows, but there are other operating systems like Linux. However, for most practical applications-- Windows works.

Well, that is the high level concept of how to build a PC. But here is something. PCs have come down in price a lot. If you don't have a real desire or interest, it's just as cost effective to just go buy one. But if you do have a real interest, you may still be able to save some money and have some fun to building one. And there are sites that you can order parts and kits fairly reasonable, if you want to.
I wanted to share this with you to let you know that sometimes a little information can sometimes spur an interest and then lead to another thing of benefit or fun or satisfaction. When you build your own PC , you are more of a master of your own domain.

Hey - after you master such an endeavor, you may be qualified to work at the Geek Squad or somewhere interesting.

Well folks -- if you enjoy this site, you may enjoy my other blog on stocks and the market as well -- if that interests you.

http://stockstowatch.blogspot.com/

Well, stay tuned. tomorrow I may post about something else - you never know.

If you would like to learn how to do something else like cut your own hair, scroll down or click on my archive links to the right.

Peace!

Spider

If interested in more, scroll down.

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This site is JUST for FUN .
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Hello Folks - Welcome to Spirit Wind.

Hello Folks. This is my new blog. I have another one called "StocksToWatch". That one is for fun too, but it's all about the market and stocks. This one is for fun on anything that I may want to post about. Here is a link to my other site.

http://stockstowatch.blogspot.com/

But here is something. If I post on this site there may be some important things that you should know about, so stay tuned.

Today, I will wrap up a post on my cat and some issues she developed along the way. I started this site to show a cat lady named Missy Zane who was helping me with my family Cat, Carmella. Seems Carmella developed a condition known as redirected aggression. It has taken a lot of patience, but Carmella is now doing OK. We have not had an episode in a few weeks, but we tread careful. If you ever have a loved cat that develops this, I can say that isolating the cat in a separate room with their favorite cat bed and toys and food is a good thing for awhile and slowly introduce yourself again. Use treats and slow movements. In Carmella's case we think we pinpointed her latest round with a run in with a ground hog or another cat in the back yard.

Here is something very important that is so far working for us. My cat is very sensitive to walking quickly around her. If there is a loud noise it makes her nervous too and can set off an episode. I suggest to walk with a blanky around your legs and feet -- and if an epsisode happens use it as shield to direct your cat into another room or in the garage to let her calm down. Try not to crowd the cat either. Throw a treat to distract her. Thank you to Missy Zane for helping us with some of these tips. She is on justanswer.com. If you ever have a cat question, ask her.

Well here is a picture of Carmella, so far so good... She likes to sit on my lap. When you first walk into a room where she is -you don't run up to her - you talk slowly and even get down on the floor and slowly introduce yourself and let her come over to you if she wants...



Well, stay tuned. tomorrow I will post about something else.


Peace!

Spider

If interested in more, scroll down.

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This site is JUST for FUN .
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