Choosing A Budget Guitar

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It’s an all-too-common scenario: a young musician sets his heart on becoming the next George Harrison, only to have his spirit dampened by the steep price tags on today’s gear. But there’s a whole gamut of budget guitars out there—it’s just that stores make it a point to put their “signature” pieces on the front.

In most cases, you do get what you pay for. There’s an obvious difference between a $3,000 guitar and a $200 one. But if you’re just learning your first notes, the former would be overkill. Your decision should be based not on what’s available, but on what you need.

Most experts agree that knowing your style is essential. Believe it or not, different guitars favor different musical styles. Sure, you can make a “jack of all trades” out of any guitar, but the best musicians always choose their style and build their equipment around it.

For example, the Ibanez GRG170DX, which was recently named Best Budget Electric Guitar by BestCovery, is really more suited for shredders—two octaves, easy tuning, great range—than anything else. So it serves its purpose well, but it won’t be your first choice if you’re going for, say, soft rock or acoustic ballads.

Many people shy away from buying “specialty” guitars, those that do just one or two things really well and do just a decent job on others. Often, they think it limits their creative options. But most experts disagree. If you haven’t nailed down a style yet, start with a beginner’s guitar and stick to it until you’ve honed your own sound. Other than that, you’d be wasting your money on a pricey electric guitar you’re not sure what to do with.

The Squier Affinity Series Telecaster Special Butterscotch Blonde came in second on the BestCovery survey. Like the Ibanez, it’s a specialty guitar, lending itself particularly well to old-school R&B and country music. While not on par with the Telecaster, it’s got excellent sound for its price.

The same rule applies to buying budget guitars as any other piece of equipment: try before you buy. Many people buy online in a rush, thinking they don’t have a lot to lose since “it’s just a budget guitar.” But no matter how safe online buying is, there’s something to be said about feeling an instrument in your hands and plucking the strings with your own fingers. If there’s a better deal online, go to a local store and try out the instrument before ordering.

Garageband: The Music App for Non-Musicians

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To write good music, you have to play good music. At least, that was the prevailing idea for decades, before a slew of music authoring apps came into the market. Nowadays, one can play composer without ever having plucked a guitar string or sat in front of a piano.

Garageband, Apple’s popular music writing program, has recently been made available for the iPad. And while the work of amateurs will probably still sound very much so, it allows them to crank out decent clips of more than acceptable quality for presentations, school assignments, and personal projects.

The app, which has retained most of the features from its original Mac version (part of the iLife package), uses virtual instruments but will accept input from real ones. This probably accounts for its appeal both to professionals and amateurs. It also functions as a multi-purpose synthesizer, incorporating an entire library of guitar, keyboard, and percussion media with a mixing board and recording studio.

Virtual instruments can be played through changing interfaces, so there’s no need to plug in a separate device. If you want to put in a keyboard track, for example, just pull up the option and a digital keyboard appears, essentially transforming your iPad into your instrument of choice.

That last technology isn’t exactly groundbreaking, of course—it was preceded for at least a decade by touch-sensitive drum machines, on-screen pianos, and virtual guitars. But several things put it a notch above its predecessors. Besides superior sound quality and a user-friendly interface, it also offers a wide range of creative options, appealing even to the most inexperienced without pandering, losing depth, or coming across as too elementary.

In fact, what it does is serve two different markets simultaneously, according to musician Robby Grossman. The first is that of beginners or casual musicians, who just want to make something decent without much fuss—the program’s built-in correctors keep the output in key and maintain a standard rhythm. The second is serious musicians who, although they might find the program limiting, can use it as a sketchpad of sorts. Garageband works very well for rough demos, or for jotting down ideas in seconds.

Not surprisingly, reactions to Garageband are mixed. There are the highbrows who think it’s making art too accessible, and the let-it-be ones who appreciate its user-friendliness. Garageband music probably won’t be ruling the airwaves soon, but at the very least it nurtures the interest of people who eventually will.

Play Piano Tonight Review

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Check the Play Piano Tonight Website www.playpianotonight.com

Play Piano Tonight is one of many computer based courses that combines the use of an eBook with other multimedia presentations in a lesson format.  The course has been designed and presented by musician and music teacher Ron Worthy who also has several different piano related websites for students of the piano to visit.  The eBook that you download after purchase is central to the lessons for this course and as with many of these courses the examples, video and audio clips are imbedded in the eBook and are relatively easy to use.

Play Piano Tonight is targeted at a novice or beginner level skills on the piano and this is where the course falls a bit short.  The title suggests that these lessons are for beginner pianists however if you are a beginner at the piano you may find that the course is not quite what you expected and that the lessons are quite hard and are targeted at people with a few more piano skills.

The Play Piano Tonight course is available online and once you have purchased the course and logged into the website you are presented with a membership area that contains all the sheet music and exercises embedded on this page of the website.  This format of presenting the course is very user unfriendly as there are much better ways of presenting information on webpage’s especially when the user has paid for access to the content.  After going through the lessons and using the video and audio functions another disappointment was the quality of the video and audio supplied with the course especially from Worthy who mumbles a lot through important parts of the video lessons.

Apart from the course content the only other extras that are included in the Play Piano Tonight course is a membership to the SheetMusicDigital.com website and access to the VanBasco Karaoke Player which is a free downloadable application.  The access to the sheet music website is quite a good extra as memberships are usually $20 so you save a bit of money and get access to a great music website.

Play Piano Tonight is not the best piano course on the market and one of the big problems with this course is that it is marketed at beginner piano players and clearly to get the best out of this course you need to have some background in music and have some experience playing the piano.  For beginners it is recommended that you give this course a miss and check out other piano courses that are specifically targeted at beginner piano players.

For more information check the website www.playpianotonight.com

Eddie Vedder Strums A Different String for Ukulele Songs

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His Fender Telecaster and Gibson SGs have joined him on many a world tour, but neither will be taking center stage in Eddie Vedder’s second solo album, slated for release on May 31. For the 16-track Ukulele Songs, the Pearl Jam frontman plucks the strings of a smaller instrument, one that first caught his eye some 14 years ago.

He was sitting on a couple of beer cases, he said in an interview with the Boston Globe, in a small variety store in Hawaii when he spotted a lonely ukulele sitting amid the clutter. He picked it up, began strumming, and had written half a song by the time his friend returned.

The relationship between man and instrument would only get stronger over the years. Vedder says the instrument has “always been there for [him],” and feels just as devoted to it. On some trips he would leave his guitars at home, he admitted, and just bring the small strummer along.

But the 46-year-old musician will be bringing his old guitars along when he takes Ukulele Songs to the road. The 16-city tour kicks off in Providence, Rhode Island on June 15th, and will include stops in Boston, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Portland, and Washington. The Boston show is already sold out.

Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning frontman of the Irish group the Frames, serves as Vedder’s opening act and joins him in a duet for “Sleepless Nights.” Hansard also had a hand in the making of the album, playing accompanying guitar in some of the tracks.

Folk rock singer Chan Marshall (better known by her stage name Cat Power) also joins the ensemble with “Tonight, You Belong To Me,” which she performs with Vedder. It’s her part of the “two-for-one” pact she made with Vedder, who did vocals on two tracks for her 2003 album.

Vedder says he resisted the urge to tap into the instrument’s chipper sound, choosing instead the themes of longing and confusion, which proved to be a challenge. A large part of the album features the ukulele in mournful, emotionally charged strains, showing listeners just how powerful a small instrument can be in the right hands.

Ukulele Songs will include 16 tracks, a combination of original songs and covers and a reworked track from Pearl Jam’s collection. The lead single, “Longing to Belong,” is an original. The album will be released along with a live solo DVD titled Water on the Road.

New Exhibit Pays Tribute To Jersey’s Music Scene

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Rock & roll fans have good reason to swing by Jersey this summer. From early May till mid-September, the Morris Museum in Morristown is hosting Jersey Rocks: A History of Rock and Roll in the Garden State, a tribute to the state’s musical history and the artists who have made a name in the industry.

The show is the brainchild of Ellen Snyder-Grenier, a museum curator and consultant. It traces the story of pop and rock music in New Jersey, from the 1940s to the 2000s. Materials were borrowed from over 50 fans, artists, and collectors from all over the state.

But although you’ll find the usual signed memorabilia and album covers, Jersey Rocks offers a lot more. The show boasts over 300 artifacts, including a drum head once used by Carteret rock band The Smithereens and a guitar signed by Jon Bon Jovi, who hails from Perth Amboy. There are the requisite magazine covers, including three (Time, Newsweek, and Crawdaddy) from October 1975 where Bruce Springsteen, who was born in Freehold Township, graced the covers in the same week.

Bon Jovi and Springsteen share the spotlight with The Four Seasons, Southside Johnny, The Shirelles, Gloria Gaynor, Deborah Harry, The Misfits, The Rascals, Queen Latifah, and The 1910 Fruit Gum Company, all of whom hail from different parts of the state.

Morris Museum executive director Linda Moore says it’s the first show of its kind: broad in scope, but just as focused on the New Jersey music scene and how it has contributed to rock-and-roll.

For instance, it puts as much emphasis on things and places as well as people: it takes you to New Brunswick amd Asbury Park, Hoboken and Wildwood, places close to every music lover’s heart. Guitar makers, including Ampeg, Guild, and the late Les Paul, are also celebrated.

The club scene, home to many big moments in local music, is also part of the story. It includes still-present and still-relevant joints like Maxwell’s and Stone Pony, and others where big names once walked—Bob Dylan and The Band first met in Tony Mart’s, and Springsteen had some of his early gigs at the Upstage Club.

New Jersey doesn’t hold claim to the invention of rock and roll—its musical evolution followed the rest of the country in the 50s and 60s—but it was central to the rise of rock music, thanks mostly to its location right between Philadelphia and New York. Its black population, which grew prominently after World War II, is also an important factor—it got white kids listening to African American music early on, and vice versa.

The show kicked off on May 5 and will run until September 14. Admission is $10 for regular visitors and $7 for students and seniors.