Nonitage

Do you know why more people want to learn guitar than piano? Because it’s easier! And because students get to play something that actually sounds like music many times faster than their piano playing counterparts.

But did you also know that a guitar player can show you how to play piano better than most piano instructors? It’s true! Here’s why. Guitar players use chords and chord charts to create with. Piano players (for the most part) use note reading and memorization.

It’s really easy for most beginning guitarists to quickly create music. In fact, you can learn 3 chords on the guitar in less than 15 minutes and start to play many, many tunes. Can piano players do that? Yes they can! But sadly, most don’t.

You see, many people are intimidated by the piano. Not because of the instrument itself but because of the snobby stigma surrounding it.

The piano is held in such high esteem that people are actually afraid to go near it. Not the guitar. It’s the everyman’s instrument. Folk players, rock guitarists, and even Uncle Joe himself can pick up this instrument and soon strum out a tune.

A beginning piano player can also learn a few chords and just as easily create music as well as the guitarist. Now, the piano isn’t often taught like this because teachers can make a lot more money by stringing students along for years and years. With a chord-based approach, you can rapidly advance and learn how to play in most any style and it won’t take you years either. How long will it take for you to learn a chord-based approach? Anywhere from 1-month to 1-year depending on how fast or slow you learn.

Here’s the point. If you want to spend years learning how to play other peoples music, than note reading and memorization are for you. If you want to get creative and actually make music, look for teachers who embrace a chord-based approach to piano playing.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Parents always want their child to excel in life and studies have shown that letting the child learn to play an instrument helps in their development. The two most common instruments that parents let children learn are the piano and the guitar.

Learning how to play the guitar in years past and now isn’t that different. The first thing needed is to obtain one; if there is already an instrument available then learning can begin. If one needs to purchase one, then going to the music store with somebody who is familiar with guitars will really helping the selection

The most important thing to know before playing any musical instrument was learning how to read the notes, but today this is not considered to be enough. The person needs to listen as he is playing to know whether or not he is producing the correct notes.

In the past, an instructor had to be found before lessons could begin; but now a person can simply start by learning from friends and then practicing. After some time, the assistance of a professional can help advance your knowledge of playing the guitar.

There are also books that teach a person how to play the guitar. By reading and studying the latest techniques of the popular musicians, one will be able to learn a trick or two when playing.

The internet can also help improve one’s skill with the guitar. There are many websites available that give tips from a beginner’s stage to the more advanced lessons.

Instructional videos are also available. Some were produced by rock stars and each of these individuals have or use a different technique.

The best technique that can be used to check your progress is by playing the guitar at the same time as the same song is playing in the background. That way, if you are playing “off key”, adjustments can be made until it is perfected.

Technology and the publication of books have really helped change the way people can learn how to play the guitar. With the many options available, anyone who has the desire can start at any age and at any time. But learning the basics first before moving on to other things is essential.

Guitar playing should be fun. It is not just about learning how to play the instrument but enjoying it as well. Not everyone is born to do play it well. So if after some time, it’s really not working for you, then giving it up for another musical instrument might be the answer.

Bill McRea is the publisher of Guitar Warehouse the best place to Buy Guitar and learn Guitar Playing Techniques. Visit our site for over 60 Free Guitar Lessons and Information about playing Guitar.

Discover the phenomenonal complexity of music and reflect on the way it can positively influence your life with this sound collection of riveting quotes…

1. “Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.”
   – Joseph Addison

2. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
   –Maya Angelou

3. “Music is either good or bad, and it’s got to be learned. You got to have balance.”
   – Louis Armstrong

4. “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
   – Berthold Auerbach

5. “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”
   –Johann Sebastian Bach

6. “Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.”
   – Ludwig van Beethoven

7. “Music - The one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”
   – Ludwig van Beethoven

8. “Music can change the world. “
   – Ludwig Van Beethoven

9. “Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”
   – Leonard Bernstein

10. “Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live. “
    – James Brown

11. “Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
    – Thomas Carlyle

12. “All music comes from God.”
    – Johnny Cash

13. “If you learn music, you’ll learn most all there is to know. “
    – Edgar Cayce

14. “Music is nothing separate from me. It is me… You’d have to remove the music surgically. “
    – Ray Charles

15. “Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is. “
    – Miles Davis

16. “There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
    – George Eliot

17. “You are the music while the music lasts.”
    –T. S. Eliot

18. “We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it. “
    – Jerry Garcia

19. “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”
    – Kahlil Gibran

20. “When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have.”
    – Edgar Watson Howe

21. “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossile to be silent.”
    – Victor Hugo

22. “The history of a people is found in its songs.”
    – George Jellinek

23. “Music is the vernacular of the human soul.”
    – Geoffrey Latham

24. “It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.”
    – Walter J. Lippmann

25. “Just as certain selections of music will nourish your physical body and your emotional layer, so other musical works will bring greater health to your mind.”
    – Hal A. Lingerman

26. “Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.”
    – Giuseppe Mazzini

27. “Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.”
    – Henry Miller

28. “I started making music because I could.”
    – Alanis Morissette

29. “Music helps you find the truths you must bring into the rest of your life. “
    – Alanis Morissette

30. “Music is spiritual. The music business is not. “
    – Van Morrison

31. “Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.”
    – Theodore Mungers

32. “Without music life would be a mistake.”
    – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

33. “In music the passions enjoy themselves.”
    – Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

34. “Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.”
    – Charlie Parker

35. “Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside. “
    – Elvis Presley

36. “It’s the music that kept us all intact, kept us from going crazy. “
    – Lou Reed

37. “The music business was not safe, but it was FUN. It was like falling in love with a woman you know is bad for you, but you love every minute with her, anyway.”
    – Lionel Richie

38. “Music should never be harmless.”
    – Robbie Robertson

39. “Give me a laundry list and I’ll set it to music.”
    – Gioacchino Antonio Rossini

40. “All music is important if it comes from the heart. “
    – Carlos Santana

41. “Music is the key to the female heart.”
    – Johann G. Seume

42. “The best music… is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with. “
    – Bruce Springsteen

43. “All I try to do is write music that feels meaningful to me, that has commitment and passion behind it.”
    – Bruce Springsteen

44. “In music one must think with the heart and feel with the brain.”
    –George Szell

45. “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
    – Henry David Thoreau

46. “For heights and depths no words can reach, music is the soul’s own speech.”
    –Unknown

47. “Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside of us.”
    –Unknown

48. “I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn’t just a fad. This is a positive thing.”
    – Eddie Vedder

49. “Music at its essence is what gives us memories. “
    – Stevie Wonder

50. “There’s a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don’t know what it is. But I’ve got it.”
    – Ron Wood

Resource Box - © Danielle Hollister (2004) is the Publisher of BellaOnline Quotations Zine - A free newsletter for quote lovers featuring more than 10,000 quotations in dozens of categories like - love, friendship, children, inspiration, success, wisdom, family, life, and many more. Read it online at - http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art8364.asp