Music and Song Books

Sheet Music and Guitar Books – Song Book Styles Three Music Theory Books For Guitarist

Rock and pop sheet music will range from simple guitar and vocals to full instrumental scores, and from popular single songs to complete albums. You might also see artist compilations, complete works and volumes focusing on specific time periods of artists, or compilations of a genre or era. If you’re looking for a certain piece to play along to, there’s a good chance it will be in one of the many books available.

Difficulty is an important factor when choosing sheet music. Although individual songs on sheet music tend to be pretty good interpretations of the original version, books can vary according to the audience they are aimed at. Beginners books make up a large proportion and are designed to be used as a learning tool, teaching your chosen instrument by playing songs you love rather than some of the songs that have been used for many years by music teachers but fail to inspire today. Some care does need to be taken though. Sometimes the songs are not meant to be played along with the recorded versions, but are to play solo or sing along to. Take the guitar, for example, songs in certain keys are generally much easier to play than the keys in which they were originally recorded, so songs written in these harder keys could be transposed to make learning simpler. Similarly, songs whose sheet music is in the same key as the recordings might use easier versions of some tricky or difficult chords, so the song can be played along with the recording, but might sound slightly different.

Also traditional music notation is not always used. For example guitar music typically has its own notation, using one of several variations. They are explained next.

Very common is the chord diagram style, which use a small picture representing the six strings of the guitar (vertical) and several frets (horizontal), with black dots showing how to place the fingers. With this notation you can just follow the diagrams without needing to know about notes or chords or even keys.

Second is tablature, usually called tab. This uses six continuous lines (four for bass guitar) just like typical sheet music, but instead of notes there are numbers to show the fret onto which the string should be pressed. The tab method lets you play both tunes and chords without the need to to be able to read music. The downside with tab and chord diagrams is that the music can only be played on the instrument it is written for.

With the third method, individual chords are named and written above the normal music whenever the chord changes. This has the advantage of allowing the chords to be played on any instrument, but it does create the requirement for the player to understand what each chord means. This chord method does not have the scope of describing intricate sections in full detail though.

Picking up music for popular songs is a great way to learn an instrument, and as you become more proficient on your instrument you can learn songs just as they were originally recorded. Understanding songs using sheet music can be a much faster way of learnig than trying to pick things up by ear.

Callum Asterman has written this information about sheet music to highlight some points to be aware of before you go out to buy. There are also similar considerations to be made when buying part songs and other music. Callum writes information for all musicians.

Sooner or later any serious guitarist comes to realize that a solid theoretical background is the only way forward. Your ear can only take you so far, that’s when your musical theory can kick in and remove any musical obstacles in your way to fully expressing yourself.

Seems pretty straight forward… just go to the music shop and pick up a theory book and away we go; away we go alright… pick up the wrong book and you’ll end up more confused than you ever were before.

Musical fact of life # 1: Not all theory books are created equal.

I remember when I started my first job, it was at a music store teaching music; I had a bit of a reputation as a player in the local area playing in dance bands etc., and since I had already sold quite a bit of musical equipment for the music store based on my track record they thought I would be the obvious choice; if
the store had a potential guitar or amp customer they would leave a message with my mum, then after school I would go down to the store and demonstrate the gear.

Everything started out fine, I stumbled and fumbled my way through the guitar lessons, I’m not sure who learnt the most me or my students I know I learnt heaps everyday mostly about how not to teach.

Anyway, very early in the piece the store manager informed me that if I was going to continue teaching for the store I would need to be “qualified”; I didn’t know exactly what that entailed but it did sound scary

As it turned out what he meant was I needed to be formally qualified… just being able to play the guitar was not good enough if I was going to teach guitar for them.

The good news was they were going to pay for my lessons so that was neat… there was even more good news I could go to the theory lessons instead of having to work at the shop.

So I began my theory lessons and very soon became frustrated, confused and perplexed… things I knew worked on the bandstand the night before didn’t match up with the theory lesson the next day.

The more confused I became the more determined I was about finding the “truth”; so I started studying with other teachers to augment my “paid” lessons from the music store… boy, did that make matters worst; it seemed as if each theory teacher had their own slant on things many basic concepts did not match up.

Long story short… after a lot of playing, thinking and research I discovered….

Musical fact of life # 2: there are different types of theory… in fact there are three distinct types of theory: classical, jazz and rock/blues!

These are very broad categories they are all important and the complete musician needs to be aware of their similarities and differences.

They world is full of traditional classical theory books so I won’t discuss them here. Modern theory as applied to improvisation and the music of our time is what I’m about… it’s great to know what happened 400 years ago but it’s unlikely to help you secure that rock gig next Friday night,

Here’s my top three modern theory books for guitarists

Title: Modern Method For Guitar – By William Leavitt (Berklee Press)

Available from: Berklee.com

Overview: if you want to get in on the ground floor and study guitar and theory as applied to the guitar fretboard, this is the place to start!

Available in three volumes; the first sixty pages of volume one covers the basics of reading music in the first position of the guitar.

Part two of Berklee volume one introduces the five standard fingering patterns for reading music over the fretboard.

Title: Jazz Studies – by Bruce Clarke (ed clinch v.i.s.e text)

Available from: BillyHydemusic.com.au

Overview:A fantastic book that takes off were the Berklee book volume one finishes; the Jazz Studies book is ideal to use in conjunction with Berklee Volume two.

Fantastic explanations of how modes, cycle 5 and cycle 7 concepts work Jazz studies is a great introduction into the world of improvisation, if you have studied traditional theory this book will “blow the lid off” how you look at theory. Step by step instruction, very easy to understand. Highly recommended.

Title: “See It – Hear It / Hear It – Play It” – by Dick Grove

Available from: DickGrove.com

Overview:A complete course with DVD/text instruction from the man himself Dick Grove, you could easily pay $100,000 in college instruction and never get this type of tuition.

Everyone learns differently the DVD’s bring the written text to life helping to maintain the student’s motivation and enthusiasm. Any one of these individual courses or combination of all three theory texts will clear the way for you to express yourself on the guitar.

Learn How to Scream Sing Easily With Out Much Strain

You know that you have heard it, the scream sing. It is a technique that is widely used in rock music, but it is also emerging in the world of Broadway, R&B, Pop, and Techno. It seams easy enough, don’t the artists just scream as part of the song? The truth is that learning how to scream sing properly is very complicated.

Why you ask? Well the truth is that your voice is very precious. It is easily hurt, and screaming is one of the first ways that you can do that. When you try to scream sing incorrectly your vocal chords savagely slam together. This can not only simply result in a far from pleasant sound, but it can also cause the creation of vocal polyps. Those polyps can later result in vocal nodules that need to be removed by a somewhat invasive surgery. Additionally, if you do develop vocal nodules you may find that there are quite simply notes in your vocal range that disappear.

However, that does not mean that scream singing is completely out of the question. There are many professional rockers careers that have been centered around the fact that they have mastered the scream sing. The best indicator that you have as to how you are doing is by your body’s signals. Generally, if you ever feel pain while you are trying to sing you are doing something wrong. Those pain impulses are important to pay attention to so that you can avoid doing that same thing in the future.

Basically, instead of simply screaming you want to think about creating that scream sing on a particular note or tone. Generally, if you take that to a higher pitch in your voice it is easy for you to create the desired sound. Moreover, you are going to want to ensure that you have lots of breath support when you try to do this. Ensuring that your tone is fully supported with a big strong breath is one of the best ways to ensure that you vocal chords will not undergo too much strain.

As you actually try learning, how to scream sing you need to take a big strong breath in with your diaphragm. Then you are going to want to place that scream up in your registry and almost think of it as singing without allowing any vibrato to enter your voice. Additionally, you will want to use a more horizontal mouth placement so that your overall sound has a less refined quality to it. For example, rather than trying to make a very proper “aww” sound you may want to create an “ahhh” sound. This will give your sound a more shrill quality as well which can help it to sound more screechy.

Lastly, you need to take care that you are not over practicing your scream sing. Even when you are doing it correctly, it is taxing to your voice so do not continually repeat the effect. Instead, use it sparingly so that when learning how to scream sing you have enough gusto to do it with. In fact, you may even find using an online singing resource like http://www.thesingorama.info helpful in creating the perfect sound so do not be afraid to reach out for that support.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.comYou’ll learn about hit song templates, easy chords simple scales, red hot rhythms, and successful practice strategies in text, audio and video.

Now that you have taken the time to read this post, why not take the time and read my many other posts, am sure you will find what you need.

admin | December 13, 2010 11:20 am

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