For more of this kind of blather, visit www.videoguitarlessons.com

Time seems to be going faster. Everyone agrees. How does this impact musicians like us?

I maintain that part of the problem is the switch from analog to digital timekeeping. Why?

When I was young, clocks had hands that moved very slowly. Time was measured in five, ten,fifteen, or thirty minute increments. It was “quarter after three” or “half past nine.” So moments literally lasted five, ten, even fifteen minutes. The chunks of time we dealt with passed slowly and were content-rich.

Then we switched to digital time. Suddenly everyone told time in minutes. 3:42. 8:21. Or even down to the second — 5:15:54. The moment became smaller, it went by faster, and it held less content.

So now fifteen separate fast moments now pass in the time that used to be one moment — the space between “quarter after” and “half past.”

Music changed too. Somewhere in the classical era, music went from dances and songs into symphonies and concertos — which greatly slow down time. The basic unit of time in those pieces is “the movement,” which can last for many minutes, up to half an hour…some of them seem to last days!

Popular music of my youth shortened radio friendly songs to 3 minutes. This was the idiomatic “moment” of the music I started growing up on. A “moment” (song) lasted three minutes…till Bob Dylan recorded “Like a Rolling Stone” at six plus minutes and the Doors’ “Light My Fire” clocked in closer to ten minutes! Wow!
Now the moment was longer. Time went slower. A lot happened in those songs/moments, both musically and lyrically.

Jam bands like The Grateful Dead, the String Cheese Incident, and Phish completely broke the time paradigm in their live shows, playing songs which morphed into sets, jams within jams, repeats and returns — musical moments which could last for hours. Time slowed down so much it stopped during those moments.

Time was also elastic. Listen to the Stones original “Honky Tonk Women” for the pace change in what was supposed to be a consistent beat…

Enter Protools, drum machines, and digital time applied to music. Now the “moment” is chopped into beats, half-beats, micro-beats. Drummers are not allowed to speed up and slow down. The guide/click track is all. Perhaps that’s why much of techno and modern rock seems so sterile and unnatural — it doesn’t breathe like a human being.

Is this a guitar lesson? Yes! Visit me at www.videoguitarlessons.com !

Rick

For more of this kind of talk, visit the Articles page at www.videoguitarlessons.com !

Acoustic guitar fans who really love the wood and steel are fond of debating what is the Holy Grail of guitars? For most, the pre-WW2 Martin D-28 is the guitar of their dreams. But having played those and comparing them to the small-shop masterpieces being turned out today, I propose that two luthiers are making guitars that will stand the test of time and be the Stradivarii of the next century.

One is well-known: James Olson of Sunset Hills, Minnesota. Olsons are now in the hands of artists like Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Sting, David Wilcox, Phil Keaggy, and many others. Jim is a sweetheart of a guy who hit the jackpot when, after years honing his craft, he came upon a design for a cedar-top small-jumbo with a sharp cutaway which, in the hands of Phil Keaggy, blew the doors off everything then available in the acoustic world. One of Jim’s signature design elements is a rock-solid five-ply laminated neck which almost never needs adjustment or relief,. Combined with excellent Baggs pickups, they may be the best-sounding, best-playing acoustic guitars ever made. Jim hs a great website at Olsonguitars.com.

The second is less famous: Kirk Sand of Laguna Beach, California. Kirk came via a different route. Born in the midwest, he traine as a clasical guitarist and loved the sound and feel of nylon strings. After an apprenticeship at Fender, Kirk started out on his own to build an electrified nylon string guitar which would meet the needs of modern non-classical nylon performers - especially his idol, Chet Atkins. Chet liked the guitar so much he submitted it to Gibson when they asked him to design his own electric nyoln signature model. But by now Kirk’s electric nylons were in the hands of players like Jose Feliciano, Earl Klugh, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Reed. Kirk took the techniques of the master Spanish builders and began to apply them to building steel string acoustics out of Brazilian Rosewood and Engleman spruce. The results are absolutely astonishing - simpy the best acoustic guitar on the planet, in my not-so-humble opinion. Check out his website at Sandguitars.com.

By the way, the prices on these are high, and the waiting lists are long. But not as high or long as waiting for that 1939 D-28!

There are other superstar luthiers out there like Kevin Ryan, Rick Turner, Jeff Traugott, and many many others, but after playing everyone’s work, Olson and Sand stand out in my mind (and ear) as the finest.

That’s your free guitar lesson for today. Check out more free guitar lessons at www.videoguitarlessons.com.

Rick

WHY ONLINE GUITAR LESSONS ROCK!

Over at VideoGuitarLessons.com, we offer a revolution in guitar instruction – guitar lessons online, at home, convenient, inexpensive, fun – and effective. People ask us all the time, “Should I take guitar lessons online or in-person?” I’m a teacher/founder of the site, so let me explain.

Which costs less – Internet Guitar Lessons or In-Person Guitar Lessons?

Online guitar lessons are far less expensive than in-studio guitar lessons with a teacher. Most teachers charge $25-$50 for a half hour lessons. For $24.95 you can have a whole month of unlimited internet guitar lessons at www.VideoGuitarLessons.com! You might take ten, twenty, or fifty guitar lessons here for the price of one guitar lesson with a teacher. Plus, with internet guitar lessons, you spend no gas money commuting to your guitar teacher. And besides, VGL offers a lot of guitar tools that are free with your membership.

How do I learn guitar faster? With internet guitar lessons or in-person guitar lessons?

Our students report they learn far faster with our guitar lessons online. For one thing, they can take a lot more lessons! For another, they can choose the guitar lesson that is right at their level. And they can choose the guitar style that interests them to learn – not the one their guitar teacher happens to teach. More motivation = faster guitar learning!

I have more than one guitarist in the family. Will internet guitar lessons help me?

Online guitar lessons are the perfect solution for multiple guitarists in the family. If Dad wants blues guitar lessons while Sis wants rock guitar lessons and Junior wants to learn blues guitar, one ALL ACCESS PASS from VideoGuitarLessons.com will cover all three! Now the savings of online guitar lessons vs in-person guitar lessons REALLY starts to mount up!

Which is more convenient? Internet Guitar Lessons or In-Person Guitar Lessons?

This is a no-brainer. With online guitar lessons, you study at home, at work, or at school, wherever is convenient for you. You study WHEN you want to – you are not tied to some guitar teacher’s schedule or “when he has openings.” And with guitar lessons online, you never have to cancel a guitar lesson when something comes up — you simply take your guitar lesson when it is most convenient for you.

I get scared at in-person guitar lessons. Will online guitar lessons help this?

Absolutely! We have all felt our hands turn to stone when a guitar teacher looks at us and commands us to perform what we have practiced this week. With internet guitar lessons, that performance anxiety is not an issue. You are your own judge and you decide when you have mastered a guitar lesson – then you move on to the online guitar lesson that interests you next.

Which is more effective? Internet Guitar Lessons or In-Person Guitar Lessons?

Sometimes in-person guitar lessons can be great – if you know exactly what guitar technique or guitar style you want to learn, and if your guitar teacher happens to teach it, and teach it well. But the typical half-hour in-person guitar lesson wastes a lot of time in tuning up, chit-chat, and apologizing for why you didn’t have time to practice more. Our online guitar lessons are brief (3-5 minute video clips), straight-to-the-point, and very specific – our guitar teachers are masters at teaching you exactly what guitar techniques you need to learn. And you can repeat the online guitar lessons again and again – not an option with in-studio guitar lessons.

Which is more fun? Internet Guitar Lessons or In-Person Guitar Lessons?

Another easy answer for our students! Online guitar lessons are no hassle, no anxiety, all fun! Nothing is more fun than playing guitar for your friends and impressing them with your guitar learning. And you learn more guitar faster at VideoGuitarLessons.com! We also offer online guitar tips, guitar tricks, guitar reviews, guitar tuners, metronomes, and much more!

We hope this answers the question once and for all. And get this – for the price of one in-person guitar lesson, you can try a whole month of online guitar lessons, and if you don’t like them, you can still go out and find a guitar teacher. So you really have nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain with Online Guitar Lessons at www.VideoGuitarLessons.com!

I am a born lefty. I write left-handed, throw a baseball left-handed, swing a tennis racket left-handed. But when I first started taking guitar lessons at age 8, I made a choice to go right-handed! Why?

If you are a beginning guitar student who chooses to go lefty, you are limiting yourself in a number of ways. You can buy or order a left-handed guitar, which is braced and set up so that the bass stgrings are on top when the guitar is held left-handed. This is fine for you but it means that whenever you try to play a friend’s guitar you won’t be able to do it. I worked with a guy recently who had this problem and it was annoying not to be able to trade axes with him. Paul McCartnety is probably the world’s best-known lefty who plays this way.

Then there’s the Jimi Hendrix model: you simply flip a conventional guitar over and play it with the bass strings on the bottom and the trebles on top. This allowed Jimi to do some cool things - like bend his high strings downward (with gravity on his side). This eliminates the problem of not being able to play other people’s instruments. But it creates special problems for guitar students too: you have to translate every chord diagram into reverse visualization, read tablature upside down, etc. Perhaps the biggest issue is the inability to sit across from a friend or guitar teacher, see what they’re doing, and copy it like a mirror image. By the way - for some great Jimi Hendrix lessons, check out the Greatest Licks of All Time at www.videoguitarlessons.com.

Or you can do what I did. Upon taking up the guitar, I figured each of my hands was about to learn a new, complex task which each had never tried before. So it might feel a little unnatural to start playing righty, but after a few days what difference did it really make? Picking and fingering are both tricky and both require coordination. Which is harder? You tell me.

So my adivce to newbie lefties is - go straight. Play like the righties and you’ll never be sorry. Who knows? You might end up developing some cool ambidexterity.

Rick Okie

Check Out These Free Online Guitar Lessons

Welcome to my new blog, a clearing house for all thoughts musical. We’ll be talking about guitars, gear, guitar music, guitar lessons and instructional materials, videos, favorite players, unsung heroes, etc. Post back - beg to differ, call me a liar, follow your heart and mine on this thing we all share.

Rick Okie

Check Out These Free Online Guitar Lessons

Hey Guitar Dogs,

Everyone should check out www.videoguitarlessons.com right away!

I’m a left-handed guy who learned to play guitar right-handed. Why? Stay tuned.