Guitar Lessons - Which to Choose?

With all the excitement generated by thinking about signing up for guitar lessons it is easy to become bedazzled with the array of guitar lessons advertised online and in the real world. You might feel that you just want to sign up for your guitar lessons, go to sleep and wake up being able to play the guitar. Well, it is not quite as easy as that. Having to decide which guitar lessons suit your needs best takes a little contemplation. Take a good look at what is available to you in the realm of guitar lessons.

First, there is one-on-one lessons. You have a guitar player sitting in front of you trying to find some way to help you become a guitar player. This guitar teacher will charge you by the hour or the term, and give you some material to learn, and maybe some sharing of personal experience mixed with an effort to pass on some of the wisdom he has gained over his years playing music. This guitar teacher is engaged in teaching to put money in his pocket. He wants to teach the largest number of students that he can handle with the least trouble.

This kind of guitar teacher used to be the only kind you could get, but now that guitar lessons can be packaged and transmitted over the internet, things are different. With online lessons you have some guy who knows something about the guitar who wants to get rich by marketing guitar lessons. He has a few thousand bucks at his disposal so he can put together some guitar lessons on video, back it up with some printed tabs and sheet music and sell it on the internet. Your online guitar lesson guy can afford to charge you much less than your local guitar teacher because he is not constrained by the number of students he can fit into his schedule - he can get thousands of people with guitar websites or blogs to sell his lessons for him.

Not only can you get a high quality set of guitar lesson videos but you will get some kind of feedback system where you can ask questions or make suggestions to your teacher and get a reply back by email or video. On top of that when you are browsing online guitar lesson packages, you will be seeing guitar teachers picked from anywhere in the world for their enthusiasm and ability, not for their location.

Okay, now that I have inadvertently given away my prejudice towards online guitar lessons, let us talk about specialization. You can get acoustic guitar lessons which will lean more towards acoustic guitar stuff like strumming patterns, open tunings and muting. Electric guitar lessons teach all that stuff too but with different emphasis plus lessons on note bending, sliding and fret board tapping.

After looking at the variety of guitar lesson choices available to the novice guitarist I hope that I have not left you more confused than ever. My final suggestion is when in doubt about which is the best guitar lesson package just jump in and go for whichever appeals to you and remember that you get a money back guarantee.

Ricky Sharples has been playing guitar his whole life, and is presently engaged in building a blog called Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free. Ricky's blog features free tools, lessons and resources for guitarists of all ages and stages. Ricky updates the blog regularly so if you are interested in learning to play guitar there will be an enormous variety of tip, tools and tutorials for you.

Extremely Simple Way to Play What You Feel on the Piano - Even if You've Never Played Before!

How would you like to be able to play what you feel on the piano within 1-hour? Impossible? Not at all. It's all about chords. But not just any chord structure.

The chord structure I'm talking about will have you playing the piano with both hands right away. And it won't take hours or days to do it. I'm talking about something called the open position chord, and with it, you'll be able to really create your own music!

The trick to all this is how the chord is made. You see, most piano teachers begin their students with triads. And while there is nothing wrong with learning triads, they're a little antiquated.

The open position chord is a modern sounding seventh chord that is used today in pop, jazz, new age, and other contemporary piano styling. The seventh chord is a term that is used to describe how the chord is constructed. It's really easy. The chord is made up of the root note, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. If we were playing a C Major 7 chord, it would be spelled c-e-g-b.

Now, by itself, the seventh chord is a very good and often used chord structure. But, if we "open it up" by breaking the chord up into both hands, we get a very spacious and beautiful sounding chord... hence the name open position. Here's how it's constructed. The left hand gets the root note, the fifth, and the seventh. The right hand plays the third, the seventh and the third again. Spelled out, this would be: Left hand... c-g-b. Right hand... e-b-e.

This 6-note chord sounds unbelievably full and rich. And the best thing about it? Once you get this chord down in your hands, you can learn how to play it very easily in all 12 keys!

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. Visit http://www.quiescencemusic.com now and get a FREE piano lesson!

Making Djembe Drums From a British Columbia Rainforest

For the last 35 years, my partner & I have played world hand drums, djembes, congas, bongos, ashikos, tabla & temple blocks. Mostly, we have played for the fun of it and the mystery of how the powerful sound affects us the drummers, as well as those who hear it. We played in an all hand percussion band for a few years and found it wonderfully challenging and very very satisfying.

In all those years, the thought of actually making our own djembe drums never even once occurred to us, even though it was a struggle back then to buy a decent hand carved djembe anywhere but Africa. We even traveled to Sierra Leone, West Africa in our quest and spent a couple of years teaching high school there. At that time, 1980, it was frowned upon for white people to play or touch the drums and it was riot provoking for a woman of any colour to do so. We managed to come back to Canada with two drums; one, a 14 inch sengui, from the Sierra Leone National Dance Troupe, the other a small tourist grade djembe. We never did get that one to sound like a drum at all, but the one from the dance troupe is still in our collection and is a great little drum. Our next drum purchases came from a music store in Mexico, a pair of gorgeous congas.

For maybe 10 years we were happy enough with these and with our ability to pound along with our favourite world music and reggae songs on the stereo. Then in about 94, we saw an ad for a 7 day African Drum workshop with the late great Babatunde Olatunji. We signed up, pronto, and ended up learning about a whole world we had no idea existed for drummers: Drum Language. I have written another article about this on our djembe drum website, so I won't go into that adventure in drumming here. However, it was at THAT workshop that we met another fabulous Trinidadian 'Trini' lead drummer named 'Sanga'. 'Sanga o the Valley' was his official full name on his business card. We had 3 little kids by now(Drumming isn't all we do!) and had been planning a trip to the Tobago (Trinidad & Tobago) for the coming winter. Meeting Sanga and he being from T & T was a huge coincidence/sign for us that our trip was meant to go ahead. Sanga gave us the contact info for his close buddy in Tobago who was a superb drummer, a great guy and a drum carver. We couldn't get out trip together fast enough. Sanga said that we should not even take our own drums with us, because his buddy would have drums for us there. SWEET!

Well were ever NOT dissappointed. We met up with Sangas buddy within a week of arriving and we really connected immediately. Wayne Guerra and his wife Carol and 2 sons same age as ours were such a great bunch of people. We got to play with Wayne & Carols drum band called Culture Stop and Wayne made each of us a drum in just a few days so we could really get into it. Holy Smoking Drumskins! Could those guys play. The way they played their drum music, so tight, all choreographed with signals and drum pattern communiques all built in differently to each song. We quantum leaped on that trip in terms of our drum skills & knowledge and we were even able to tape our drum sessions and actually write down the rhythms that we learned from Wayne.

The most extraordinary thing we learned though was how to carve, skin & tune djembe, djun djun & and ashiko drums. Wayne did it all with hand chisels and gouges, going at a log of mango wood like a mad man at first and then gradually, gradually shaping and smoothing the drum body until it was just the right thickness a feel. We sat for days, in the tropical heat, eating grapefruits from Wayne and Carols' backyard and watching him work. He was just a few years younger than we were, but yikes! What a powerful intense effort he was capable of, even thought the heat made us a pair of zombies all day until the sun went down. They were all that way when it came to their drum performances as well; some claiming to experience bleeding out various places from the strain of it. We were humbled and impressed. Their sound was incredible.

We got to watch as Wayne measured and made the welded steel rings that would stretch our freshly soaked goatskin over our new drum bodies. It was hypnotic really, the whole scene. One inch wide strips of scrap fabrics were torn from some bodys' old something, and then these long thin strips were then wound round and round the metal rings to soften and snug the connection between the rings and the rope that would pull the skin tight. Very pleasant work. It's kind of cool the way the pattern on the fabric looks when it is cut and then wrapped up against its' own edges.

The heat really got turned up for the next stage, which is to weave the rope through the rings at the top pair and down at the smaller single ring at the bottom of the drum body bulge. These top and bottom rings are then brought closer together by the woven/knotted rope that is made tighter and tighter with each knot. Wayne spent one whole afternoon of his life teaching us that knot. Over and over. And over. It was hard for us to get it, despite having it shown to us dozens of times. We blamed it on the heat. We all laughed for hours. When we finally got it, we were astonished at the genius and simplicity of the whole process. Wayne made a little sing song out of it for us to remember. Under, over, round & under. It went something like that.

It is the tightening of the skin that is the really strenuous part of drum making and tuning. MAN do you ever have to haul on the last 6 knots to get that skin tight enough. Being a woman exempted me from having to do this part. I didn't object at being treated differently than the guys for once. My partner, being a guy was not so fortunate and really busted a few parts of himself getting the hand of just how hard you have to pull, bracing your 2 feet just so on the drum body and then pulling the rope with a piece of hard stick to hold it with. Correct breathing must be practiced so as not to rip the drum skin. (Or your stomach lining!) The new drum is massaged and played just a little bit in between knot pulls to get the skin tighter & tighter. Finally, our drums were ready to play and we went nuts like a pair of colts released into clover. All this drum making was great, but we had come along way to play.

And play we did until it was time to pack our family back to BC Canada again. We were there 2 months in all, and that was about all the heat we could take. Beach or no beach, it is really really REALLY hot down at the equator. We made plans to have Wayne And Carol come to stay with us at our place. Maybe do a tour of shows and drum workshops around southern BC. Our new drums came on the long plane rides home, 3 flights, 20 hours. CHOKE!

It would be another year before Waynes' drum making lessons would call to us from part of psyche; giving us a strong urge to carve and skin more drums. We carved our collection of Djembe Drums from the heartwood of Douglas Fir trees from right here on our Vancouver Island acreage of rain forest. One of our hundred year old Douglas Fir trees died that year. It was 4 feet across at the base, plenty of heartwood inside for a couple of huge drums. We didn't have a djun djun set in our collection and this tree looked like it could definitely have a pair of djun djuns in it. We dreamed of a djun djun so mammoth it would need a special cart to get it to gigs. On the day we first stood in our yard contemplating it as our drum tree, a great big old Pileated Woodpecker landed on the dead top and called out loudly all that day. The woodpecker is the special wild creature that is a totem for drummers all over the world. maybe you have never thought of it before, but the woodpecker is a drummer. They often beat out patterns to us and each other on trees rooves and even our metal wind vane. We knew we would do it then. And we did.
That tree provided enough wood for thirty three djembes and two giant sized djun djuns that required two elk skins to make heads for them. Goats don't come that big.

My partner made the first three by hand, but then had to change the methods up a little bit to include power tools when his carpal tunnel of the wrist issue got ugly. After that, we used chainsaws, chisel bladed grinders, reciprocating saws and even power sanders in the end. The drums he made were gorgeous to look at, all of them, but just about half of them never did produce that certain popping sound of a great djembe. We never did figure out what had gone wrong with those, or what was so right about the excellent ones. Certainly, we learned from every drum, mostly that it is what is in your hearts' thoughts that determines the spirit and sound of each drum. It was amazing to hear the different personalities of each new Djembe as it was carved, smoothed, skinned and tuned. We had always felt the spirit of our drums as we played them, but this was remarkable. They seemed to come into this world like our children had, with their parental resemblance, dwarfed by their very own individual personalities and natures.

It was certainly interesting to make African Djembes & Djun Djun drums from the wood of Canadian rain forest trees, using the skills we learned on the Caribbean island of Tobago. The BC Douglas Fir tree makes an excellent sounding drum. The djembes we made from it had very strong, powerful voices and easily produced the loud, lively popping notes just like Waynes' mango wood and mahogany drums. We were proud and floored, really, that we could actually go ahead and make djembe drums with our own hands. Our white skin and North American spoiled childhood had not left us entirely 'drum useless' after all. It just took being shown how much sweat had to be shed and then pushed into making the tremendous physical, mental and spiritual effort required.

Thanks again Wayne Guerra, drum master, for your patience, humour and love while you taught a pair of unlikely people like us to drum and then how to make a drum. The ability to make a drum, skin a drum and tune a drum has changed the level at which we play the drum. I don't know why, it just gave us such a deep connection and comprehension of who the drum is and who we are in the drum world.

So djembe drummers; don't be afraid to try making a drum. I promise you, carving & skinning your own drum will make you a better drummer. These days, there are lots of books and videos on how to make a djembe as well as workshops all over the world. Highly recommended to make at least one drum in your drummers life. You will open up a whole new valley of drum in yourself and you will not regret it.
Diane Lennox

We carved our collection of Djembe Drums from the heartwood of Douglas Fir trees right here on our Vancouver Island rainforest. For our methods of construction, we ended up needing power tools to get the bulk of material out of the center of the djembe drum body, and then did the rest of the carving by hand. This is a test of strength and I highly recommend it to all the younger dudes out there wanting to prove their manhood through feats of strength and power. We made a variety of hand drums and about half of them turned out really hot, the other half so so. Certainly, we learned from every drum, mostly that it is what is in your hearts thoughts that determines the spirit and sound of each drum. It was amazing to hear the different personalities of each new Djembe as it was skinned and tuned. We had always felt the spirit of our drums as we played them, but this was remarkable the way they seemed to be born like our children, with the stamp of us, the parents, dwarfed by the in-born nature of the beings we had birthed.

There are several great videos of people playing Djembe Drums from all over the world, including a two year boy. To view the other videos, just click the Menu button of the video player and the list of Djembe Drumming videos will slide out.

Djembe Drum Shop On-line featuring djembe and other world percussion instruments from Africa, Caribbean, Latin America, Cuba, India, the middle east and around the world. Djembes, Ashiko, Djun Djun, sengui, congas, bongos, doumbak and tablas. Huge selection of hand drums, marimbas, xlophones, shakers, cowbells and temple blocks. Free How to make a djembe, play a djembe and tune a djembe articles, videos and tutorials.http://djembedrums.artbeat.name

Piano Improvisation Techniques: Creating The Arpeggio

Ah… the arpeggio. A miracle of cascading notes that produces a beautiful sound on the piano. To most it's a mystery how it's created. But to those who understand chords, it's just a matter of practicing until the pattern is mastered.

Now, the arpeggio can be used either in the right or left hand (or both together) but it's usually the left-hand that takes up this amazing technique. Let's look at how one might use an extended arpeggio pattern to create an improvisation.

The first thing you need to know about most left-hand arpeggios is that they usually start below the middle of the keyboard. Most pianists begin their run below middle C and there's a good reason for this - bass notes!

Those thunderous resonant bass sounds that reverberate in the body are hit and the piano comes alive!

Now, you have to be careful here because if you hit too many bass notes together the effect can end up sounding "muddy." That is, you won't be able to differentiate the notes and you'll end up having sonic sludge. But, if you spread out the first few notes this won't happen. That's why the open position chord is perfect to begin your left-hand arpeggio. For example, let's say you want to play a C Major 9 arpeggio.

Of course, you'll begin with the C note (which is also the root note.) Now, we could play the third (e) but if we do, chances are we'll end up with that "muddy" effect. No, A better way is to play the fifth followed by either the octave or the seventh tone.

What I like to do is play a pattern that looks like this: 1-5-8-9-3 - which means I'm playing these notes: c-g-c-d-e. This pattern produces a beautiful "new age" sound and is used frequently in New Age piano playing.

For example, look at the lesson "Coming Home." Here we play an extended arpeggio in the left hand and use over 2 octaves of the keyboard. It's quite an exercise and is a good one to get your left hand moving!

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. Visit http://www.quiescencemusic.com now and get a FREE piano lesson!

How Intelligent People Get Motivated to Make Money on the Internet

After you have interacted with the affairs of an online business for awhile, you might start to feel like the process is not as exciting as it used to be. The business will become stagnant and there will be little to no emotion involved with the regulation of its everyday tasks. When this type of complacency eventually sets in, you need to take immediate steps to become re-motivated so that you can make money on the Internet.

In many cases, intelligent people get motivated by using effective techniques that energizes their passion for regulating web sites and blogs. This passion can be reignited only if smart and effective steps are taken that will enhance and improve the way that a blog site is functioning.

Many people wonder how they can possibly get that passion and desire for blogging back again so that they can still increase their income from a successful blog site and maintain a great reputation. There are quite a few ways to reignite that motivation for an online business, but must be done soon so that you will still have the motivation to deal with your blog site on the Internet. This particular article lists a ways that will help you, as a blog owner, to get back the desire to blog.

Remember that it is usually by the small and minor aspects of life that a person can gain a great amount of success and popularity. As a blog owner, you should relish and be grateful for every bit of success that you obtain, no matter how small or how big that piece of success really is. The acquisition of a few more clients is a great accomplishment and you should feel good about any small thing that happens to your blog site.

Part of the problem for blog owners is that they do not set higher goals for themselves and their blog sites. After a couple of years, their blog site will become popular and their first primary objectives will have been achieved. In order to keep your desire to blog at a high level, you must also reset some new objectives that are much higher and that will push you to be better and even bigger than ever before.

Most online business owners set initial objectives that they work hard at and accomplish, but then they plateau afterwards and quickly lose their interest in blogging. The most effective blog owners keep creating new objectives to achieve and try to push themselves to the highest potential that is possible. Setting new and higher goals is a great way for anyone to maintain a great desire to blog.

Another way that intelligent people motivate themselves to make money with the Internet is by recognizing and targeting the stimuli of your highest emotions. You need to look at what specific tasks spark your emotions, and then plan on doing those tasks on a regular basis. Doing those things will constantly motivate you to regulate your blog business site and make money on the Internet.

Court is an expert on how to make money on the internet and also provides internet marketing tips.

Everyone Wants To Have An Online Business

This is what makes the vultures come out of the woodwork. They feed on your desire to have an internet income. They create product after product that promises to make you rich. They write ebook after ebook each one holding all the answers to your one big desire.

These products and ebooks are getting more expensive all the time. The best of the best, the really hyped products and ebooks are marketed by the very well known marketers and sell for prices well over the average persons price range. They claim you should be able to find the money for this huge price tag because it is the only product that will get you into the big money.

They have testimonial after testimonial from well known "gurus" who used their product successfully. The testimonials are rave reviews. "Wow, why hadn't I thought of that!" and "Best marketing idea yet." and "Anyone would be a fool not to get this product."

To these big named "gurus", a thousand dollar product means nothing to their budget. Not to mention the fact that these guys and gals all give their products to each other just to get the big named testimonials. They didn't even have to shell out the big bucks because their name is well known enough to sell the product.

So, I give you my new product because you have a big list or a well known name. You write a wonderful review about the product that you received free. Talk about how it is well worth the price tag that you didn't have to pay. Exclaim that it is wizardry in an ebook and how it will take over the internet marketing world. Mention that anyone who doesn't have this ebook will be left behind. Say that this new concept will revolutionize the internet and those who aren't willing to fork over the money this instant, might as well give up now.

Now people all over the world are scrambling to scrape together a thousand bucks somehow. They have to or they will lose out forever. This is their final last chance to make it online.

You know what? It's all BS. Have you ever bought anything from one of those self proclaimed gurus? The products usually come with an upgrade. The thousand bucks is for the stripped down version. For the real meat you have to commit to paying a huge monthly fee. Hundreds of dollars a month in many cases.

If you don't upgrade, you lose again. There is very little, if any, support available for the product if you don't take to upgrade. The average person is left a thousands dollars lighter in the wallet and nothing but frustration to show for it.

They don't tell you about this upgrade until after you pay for the product. They also don't tell you that in order to achieve the goals set out in the ebook or product you will have to spend more money on advertising or other software to make it work. They certainly don't tell you that they won't even help you unless you upgrade to the monthly billing package that will completely wipe out your grocery budget and then some.

The biggest problem hasn't even been revealed yet. This problem is the way these "Hot Shots" have brain washed you. They made you think that the only way you are going to get good, valuable information is if you pay the big price tags on their exclusive products. This is the saddest lie of them all.

When you run across a website that offers the true solution to your quest, you discount it as useless if the cost is low or the name isn't very well known. You automatically associate the low price tag with low quality. The gurus trained you to think that way. They had to in order to survive. In order for them to continue to circle around you like vultures, they have to keep you from leaving their circle of money grabbers by making you believe the only true answer is behind their super high "Buy Now" button.

Prices that are so high they have to break them down into monthly installments so you might even consider them. Then you have to decide, can we go without cable, a phone and gas for the car for the next 8 months so we can finally get ripped off big by the big named guys?

Let me tell you... There are plenty of lesser known people out there who are helping people just like you. They are doing it for far less of an investment and they are readily available to help you when you get stuck. They are flying under the radar because their products aren't high priced enough for the gurus to bother with. The gurus are not interested in truly helping anyone, buyers or sellers, unless the product or service will increase their fame and fortune. Good or bad, they don't care. Their main interest is helping each other make more money and gaining altitude in the marketing world. Getting their name so well known that you will buy anything from them, sight unseen just because their name is on it.

If you really want an online business that will make you money, it can easily be done without going into debt. You just have to look beyond the hype and settle down. Stop reading the words of the big named marketers and start working. There is no magic in the business world, online or off. Everyone has to do the same work to get the same results.

The problem most people have is they are trying to buy the "Great Answer" and never realize it was always there. The little guy in the corner had it. He was willing to tell you all about it but you didn't think he was important enough to talk to.

Margaret Albright has been helping normal people with normal budgets become successful webmasters for many years. If you want to get an online business off the ground with step by step instructions, free tools and unlimited email support... Take a look at the Ultimate Membership Site. (http://www.ultimatemembershipsite.com) Yes, REAL HELP is available for much less than you think!

Nevada Non Profit Corporations

Corporation incorporated for businesses engaged in charitable, religious, scientific or educational activities profiting for the betterment of the society is defined as non profit corporations.

No part of the income or profit is distributed among the officers or the directors, other than for legal business purpose or for any other promotional purpose of the corporation. The income is tax exempted by the state of Nevada and is used for non profitable goals of the organization.

The incorporation of the non profit corporation subjects to the complete tax exemptions rules. The corporation may have any number of directors, who need not be the resident citizens of the Nevada state; they have the provision to appoint a resident agent to handle the functioning of the non profit corporation. Transactions held outside the state too is subjected to complete tax deduction as the governing laws that are applicable to the non profit corporation is the state law of which it is incorporated.

Nevada non profit corporations primary purpose is to serve public interests for non-commercial purposes. These issues fall into a broad classification of religion, research, art, charity, education or even politics. They do have to generate revenues to for their operations which have primarily got from the public or private donors. These donations are tax exemptible by the state laws. It is mandatory for the non profit corporation to utilize their revenues, since all these expenses are to serve in the public interest.

The general perception of Nevada non profit corporation is a relatively small organization working for altruistic purposes. Local food banks, orphanages, disaster relief operation teams clinics are a few examples of these organizations. They usually have dedicated low paid managers and unpaid volunteers. Major universities and hospitals also can be non-profit organizations. In addition to these organizations there are also government funded non- profit organizations. If you are contributing to a Nevada non-profit corporation, think beyond the tax deduction and know where your money is going.

Nevada Corporations provides detailed information on Forming Nevada Corporations, Nevada Corporation Advantages, Nevada Corporation Commission, Nevada Corporation Law and more. Nevada Corporations is affiliated with How to Start an LLC in Nevada.