Advertlets- the better choice for guitar advertisements?

Well..chanced upon Advertlets.com from Galvin's (www.galvin.worshipsingapore.com) site.

Was quite intrigued to find out what it actually was, and its advert "Blog advertising has finally arrived in Singapore" caught my attention at first glance.

Upon re-directing to the home page, I realized that Advertlets is actually strikingly similar to Kontera's pay-per-ad advertising system, which i do use on my other blogs. However, what really impressed me was that it is an Asian-targeted one, and it had already made payouts to its Malaysian bloggers who joined, and was now expanding its Malaysian reach to Singapore. (I've been waiting eagerly for someone to launch a Singapore version, and I'm glad Advertlets has done it!)

Ok, here goes the workings of Advertlets... It's almost similar to how Google Adsense works;- You insert code to allow Advertlets to display targeted ads to your theme topic on your blog, and relevant ads are displayed, which bring in revenue for you when visitors click on them.So for a try, i decided to try Advertlets and experiment if it can bring in better focussed ads relating to guitars on Guitar Werks. Advertlets also does allow user-defined polls to be placed on your blogs, so that you can better keep track of the profiles of users to your site, thus bringing in more targeted ads that generate more revenue.

So far, it looks really promising. I do hope that Advertlets will help take Guitar Werks one notch higher in terms of providing relevant and quality ads to my visitors, not just any other irrelevant ad that so often surfaces with other platforms. So here goes Advertlets.com...check it out!

Beginner Guitar For Toddlers?

Ever imagined a 2 year toddler playing a guitar to the tune of the the 'ABC' song? I just had that stray thought shoot past my mind. I'm sure its quite difficult to fathom that picture, but to see if that could be true, i did a search on Youtube and saw a video of this little kid who could strum a song on the guitar perfectly in rhythm!So, its a reality!



Also,from the Google search results I discovered a company named iPlayMusic.com that actually sells beginner guitar videos that are tailored for a fun and interactive family learning experience for parents as well as their little ones. Check it out at the iPlayMusic website here..

Well, thats it for a long time away from posting on this blog due to military service. And happy Deepavali to all my friends as you enjoy the public holiday!

Playing guitar...Is it difficult?

I'm not going to kid you; playing guitar is extremely difficult at best and almost downright impossible at worst. I am not just talking about picking up the guitar and playing a few songs I am talking about real practicing for the environment that you will eventually be playing in which is, of course, in an ensemble with other musicians who we hope will always be better than you.

In this world with all kinds of styles of music and bands, finding someone to teach you what you really dream of playing is kind of tough. The problem is finding a teacher who’ll give you a good guitar lesson that doesn’t include all the stuff that really doesn’t matter when it comes down to just playing a song.

What's interesting is you can use the note intervals of whatever mode you're playing and use each note as a starting point for the next mode in sequence. The students who work hard on this area of their playing always do better than those who don’t. Your playing will open up to a diverse range of styles.

As such,I've divided learning the guitar well from past experience into three main parts:
Learning,Practicing and Tuning.

Learning

I have found that learning to play guitar is like many other activities. The main considerations in choosing guitar gifts are experience level, style of music preferred, and what gear and learning material they already own. A person can get along fine these days by learning a few chords and knowing how to read tab, right.The traditional way of learning guitar is by taking private lessons from a guitar teacher.

The array of choices is staggering, ranging from free online guitar lessons, to high-end distance learning guitar instruction leading to a certificate from Berklee College of Music,. The best and easiest path to becoming a competent guitar player is by learning some chords and then applying them to learning the rhythm parts of songs. Chord Diagrams are the single most powerful tool for learning and improving your guitar playing.

Practice

There are many principles involved in an effective practice session and I think some of these are a motivation founded on a love and passion for the music you can produce on the guitar, an acceptance of the fact that you must practice on that technical level you have reached, a working knowledge of muscle tensions and how to minimize them when you play and how to work on reducing them when you don't play. Is there a best way to practice on your guitar? If you decide on an electric guitar, then you'll want to purchase a practice amp too.

The most basic requisite is that you want to learn this art and with this desire you will find ways to practice improvisation in all your guitar playing. For example, take a two bar passage in a classical guitar piece that you like and practice it until you master it and then memorize it. The remedy for this is of course to practice reading the sheet music without looking at the fretboard.

Tuning

By cleaning your strings you not only increase their tuning life but they will retain their crisp, bell-like tone for longer. Worn strings are by far the most common cause of a bad tone and contribute to a lot of tuning problems. I have always used pitch pipes, and great though automatic tuners are, you cannot beat the training given by tuning the guitar with just a pipe and your ears.

Some things on guitar can be learned in minutes, some in days, and others in weeks, but tuning will sometimes take even longer, because you have to train your ears. In order to keep the string in place during tuning (winding) put a ½” 90 degree bend at the end of the string with a pair of pliers.

Don't waste money on guitar teachers!

Do you spend $80 to $100 on a guitar teacher each month? That's a whole lot of money for two hours of lessons. 1/3 of the lessons are getting tuned and warming-up. You're basically paying for 1 hour and 20 minutes (or less) of guitar instruction because who knows how many students your teacher had during the hours before you. You spend time talking about other things outside of guitar playing too.

This leaves time for what? Learning one song or technique for $100 per month?

A great guitar teacher can be good for a Rock guitarist as a beginner or someone who plays in the other styles like Jazz and Classical. But in my opinion, if you can learn how to tune, change your strings, learn your chords and scales on your own, there's no need for a private instructor at any stage.

Instead of having one over-paid private guitar teacher, why not have several guitar teachers for less? For $20 or more you could invest that money into guitar lessons DVDs created by some of the most skilled guitarists today like Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, and Michael Angelo Batio. Not to mention older videos by top pros like Joe Pass and Frank Gambale. Also, you can get instructional DVDs about theory, chords, soloing, scales, and about playing in any style or using any technique you want to learn.

You could go online (recommended for better selection) or to your local music store and put that $100 per month into 4 or 5 guitar lesson videos with all sorts of teachers, jam-packed with several lessons. I assure you that the teachers in DVDs are far better than your guitar teacher. No offense to him, but you're overpaying that guy. Unless your lessons with your teacher are lifechanging, consider investing in videos instead.

What else is there?

Not only are there DVDs featuring some of the best guitarists ever, there are plenty of method books with audio created by top names like Hal Leonard and even Berklee College of Music. Funny thing is most guitar teachers hand you one of these method books and teach you from it. If you've already learned the basics, good technique, and how to read tablature or notation, I recommend you buy good guitar books and learn it yourself. The methods explain everything brilliantly. And don't forget about all the digital method e-books and online programs.

You also have the option of joining up with a guitar lessons membership site where you can learn from a variety of great teachers. Combing instruction DVDs, method books and audio, and using a membership site where you can often interact with teachers, you'd have 100s of lessons per month benefiting from tons of different guitar teachers, and you'd be paying the same as for 1 hour and 20 minutes of lousy private lessons.

Anything else?

Oh yeah. There are free guitar lesson videos on YouTube and free-to-use forums where you can talk to guitarists who are way better than you about any question you might have. There are tons of free guitar lesson sites, guitar teacher blogs, and anything else you can think of.

Lonng time away from this blog

It's been suppppppppppppppper long since i've last updated guitarwerks..I apologize for that because i had to serve my compulsory military service in July and am only back for a break now, and was held up with lots of web projects in the months of april and may..

Well..It seems that even though the blog has not been updated, it has been seeing consistent traffic! In fact, guitar-werks gets an average of 60 unique visitors daily, and a small handful of repeat visitors..I really wanna thank those who've supported this blog!


So do look forward to more guitar articles to come..

Guitar Hero-A cool guitar game

Was just surfing around on the Net, and i came across this quite cool guitar game called "Guitar Hero 2". From what i read, it is both available for PS2 and Xbox 360s, and the gameplay represents a cross between "Dance Dance Revolution"(Hey Mr Wonderful...Aye Ayee Aye,I'm Your Little Butterfly Remember?) and O2 Jam..

I did further research and found out that someone actually wrote a review about it. So here goes(courtesy of Pauline Go):

"Guitar Hero is a great music video game. The game is developed by Harmonix Music Systems, and it is published by RedOctane. The primary controller is designed to simulate the playing of electric guitar. Guitar hero was first released in North America on November 8, 2005. Then it was released in Europe on April 7, 2006.

The player must press the corresponding button according to the scrolling notes of a song. The player can also use the “Dualshock System” by pressing X, L1, L2, R1, and R2. The player will earn points for every note hit. Chords have twice the value of single notes. When the player hit ten consecutive notes, chords will count as one note. The player can temporarily double the score by using the Star Power. Using the Star Power effectively, the player can multiply his points up to eight times.

Player score are shown at the end of the song. The player can also view his longest note streak and accuracy percentage. Guitar Song is quite a complex game. The average song can usually have about 400 – 600 notes. The difficult song can contain up to 1000 – 2000 notes.

Guitar Hero
has over forty seven songs. Thirty of these songs are from the covers of the originals. The player can choose to be eight playable characters in Guitar hero. Six of them can be played from the beginning of the game. The rest of the characters must be unlocked as secret characters. Each characters have their own unique personalities and playing style."

Bloggerwave--A 3rd Way to finance your Guitar

I recently signed up with Bloggerwave,

Another very useful blog company that pays people to blog about product reviews etc.

Bascially, it works pretty much based on Opportunities, meaning offers to allow a blogger to write about that can fetch anywhere between $5-$50 per post depending on the advertiser.

Here's my review of Bloggerwave:

1. Could potentially be the next big thing in 'pay to blog' services
2. It has lots of bugs still (it is still in beta testing)
3. Very simple, and creative interface.
4. It has got very few opportunities at the moment for bloggers, as it is a new company.

However, Bloggerwave is willing to pay between $5-50per blog post, provided it has been approved and that it remains in your blog for 30days. After 30 days, it will pay you the money into your Paypal account.

On the whole, i see lots of growth potential with it. We just need to give Bloggerwave some time before it rapidly gains a huge following, and i believe it will be comparable to Pay-Per-Post. The best thing about Bloggerwave is that its criteria for acceptance is not as stringent as Pay-Per-Post, as it only requires that your blog to be about 3weeks old to qualify.

New classifieds to sell,buy, trade your guitar and stuff!

I've just set up a classifieds section for any guitarist or person looking to sell or buy their stuff.. This is just an added convenience for all blog readers, so hopefully you can find your sales leads here!


Guitar-Werks Classifieds



Filed Under: [Resources]

Just how rejected this young generation feels?

The face of Rejection




Ho Seung-Hui, shot dead 32 people before killing himself in Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech Shootings

Excerpt from the video message that Cho sent to NBC

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today ... Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

"You just loved to crucify me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terror in my heart, ripping my soul."

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund ... your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough ... to fulfil your hedonistic needs."

"When the time came, I did it. I had to."

Eerie,evil,Rejected..

Just how warped has this young generation been influenced to do extremely wicked things, in this case psychotic Korean Ho Seung-Hui going around shooting and killing 33 people at Virginia Tech.(including 4 professors)?

In the manifesto that he mailed to NBC shortly before he started walking around killing his victims, Ho let out an angry tirade of profanities against the rich and numerous unspecified enemies. One such message that he made:


'You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.'


What could be the reason that motivated him to do so?

Rejection.

A moving incident was told by Dr James Dobson about his friend Alice's daughter, who was only 3 years old when it happened:

"Alice's daughter always loved to hang out at their local playground in the evenings, and Alice would always bring her daughter to play there daily. Alice daughter, being very young, loved to befriend and follow a group of 5 year old children who also often played at the playground. Being still a very young toddler,she toddled after this group of 5 yr olds wherever they went. However, these 5yrs didn't really appreciate the company of Alice's daughter, and pretty soon, they found her a nusciance. So,they would always leave her out of their catching games around the playground, and Alice's daughter was always left alone.

Then one day, she came running up to Alice, and said "momma, i want a lollipop..and a lollipop now!". Alice, assuming that her daughter was hungry, brought out one stick from the house. However, her daughter said "momma!not one, but three lollipops!". By now, Alice knew that her daughter wanted to give the extra lollipops to her 'friends'.. So, rushing in to bring out a whole basket of lollipops, she gave it to her daughter. As Alice stood watching the whole scene, what happened next made her swallow her throat.

Her daughter ran up to that group of friends at the playground, and said to them "Here are your lollipops, they're all for you". The three 5 yr olds stared at Alice's daughter for awhile, and with a wide grin on their faces, snatched all the lollipops and ran away in different directions, with a mocking laughter from their mouths as they ran off."

This just demostrates to us how the youths of today try to yearn for acceptance from their family, and friends, but they are replied and challenged with remarks such as:


"You dumbass!Why can't you do well in school like your brother??"

and

"Hey bitch, you want to be our friend?Prove us by the number of times you have slept in bed with those guys!".

Even to the point of letting others abuse their bodies. Even to the point of being motivated by deep rejection and depression to kill others with a Glock and Walter semi-automatic pistol.
This generation of youths are always constantly feeling they can't leave up to their parents and friends expectations. What would have happened if the father said to his son :"Mr Wonderful, I've seen your school grades, but I still love you son because you're wonderfully made!"


Ho was described by teachers as a 'loner' and 'withdrawn' student who even one lecturer said he did not know "we had a Korean person who was in the English department and was male until I met him in class.".


I've experienced the malady of rejection myself before(but thank God I've found salvation in Jesus's mercy and accepting love), and I found out that what stems from within the heart, will ultimately show forth on the outside. If you breed a seed of rejection just because of one incident where you parents called you a 'Failure', and do not remove it, it will continue to grow, and grow , and it will begin to sink you into the depths of depression, and as it grows more, you begin to think of ways to end your life, and as it grows, you feel like the world owes you everything, and finally when that seed of rejection is fully grown.. WHAM! it brings forth death.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ"
Rom 6:23

This generation of youths need fathers who will tell and shower them with "I love you, my son!". This generation of youths need the right friends who will tell them "I accept you unconditionally for who you are, no matter how bad a failure you may be". This generation of youths needs upright mentors who will teach and instruct them "Broad is the gate to destruction and hellfire, but narrow is the way to eternal life"

But most importantly, this generation needs Jesus!

Who shall Jesus send to take His Good News to this lost generation?

Lord, send me..

Signed out,
John

How to re-string your guitar?

Changing your guitar strings might make you feel a litte uncomfortable if you have never done it before, but it's really quite simple and should become a regular part of your guitar care routine. Before you do anything, first take time to make some personal observations such as:

1. Which way do you have to turn the tuning keys to tighten or loosen the strings?

2. How are the strings aligned from the nut to the bridge?

3. Which is the heaviest string?

Taking mental notes will probably save you some frustration and make the job much easier.

Below you will find some helpful steps to follow for changing your strings. Once you've changed your guitar strings a couple of times your confidence should begin to grow and you won't need to refer to these steps any longer. I like to remove all of the guitar strings in order to give my guitar a thorough cleaning, but you can remove and replace them one at a time if you prefer.

Guitar Care and Maintenance Tools:

- Needle-nose Plyers (to cut string ends)
- String Winder
- Soft Cotton Cloth
- Guitar Cleaning Polish (do not use furniture polish, oils, or wax)

REMOVING THE STRINGS

Acoustic Steel String Guitar-

1. Using the string winder , begin slowly loosening the string(s) until completely slack.

2. With the needle-nose plyers, carefully grab the string from the capstan (the part it winds around) and pull through the hole until it is free.

3. Taking the string winder again, use the cut-out at the end of it to grab the pin at the bridge. Gently pull the pin until it comes out of the hole.

4. Continue this process until all the strings are removed.

5. Clean guitar surface thoroughly.

Classic Nylon String Guitar-

Follow steps one and two above. When you come to step three, take your needle-nose plyers and carefully loosen the figure eight knot at the bridge. Pull the string free.

Electric Guitar-

Follow the same procedure as described for an acoustic steel string guitar. However, if you have an electric guitar with a movable bridge you may want to take it to your local music store and have them show you how to do it safely. If the bridge is moved from it's correct position you will not be able to tune your guitar after restringing it.

RE-STRINGING YOUR GUITAR

Acoustic Steel String Guitar-

1. Bend the ball end of the string slightly and place it inside the hole below the bridge. Some steel string guitars do not have pins. When this is the case, just pull the string throught the hole.

2. Line up the string with any grooves in the pin. Insert the pin into the hole, making sure it is secure.

3. Take the other end and insert into the hole on the capstan.

4. Pull the string through leaving a fair amount of slack between the capstan and the bridge.

5. Bend the string at the point it comes through the capstan to keep it secure.

6. Watching out for your eyes, begin turning the key with your left hand. Once you get it started it may be easier to use the string winder. (For safety reasons, you might want to cut off any excess string. I usually wait until after they're all on to do this).

7. As you are winding, apply some tension to the string with your right hand to help keep it taught. Make sure you are winding in the right direction! On the bass strings you will be winding counter-clockwise (away from you). On the treble strings you will go the opposite direction.

8. Continue to wind each string until all the slack is taken up. Do not worry about tuning yet.

9. Cut off all excess string length.

Classic Nylon String Guitar-

1. Put the string through the top of the hole found just below the bridge.

2. Pull about 3 inches through.

3. Bringing the string up over the tie block, pass it underneath itself at the original point of entry.

4. Come down over the tie block again and wrap the end of the string around itself in a figure eight type pattern.

5. Insert the other end of the string down through the hole on the capstan.

6. Wrap the string around the back and then underneath itself in order to secure it in place.

7. As described above, begin turning the key with your left hand while maintaining some tension with the other until all the slack is taken up. With a classical guitar you will wind clockwise on the bass strings and the treble strings.

8. Keep the string as straight as possible as it continues from the capstan through the nut and down onto the neck.

9. You should not have any excess string length, but if you do, cut it off.

Electric Guitar-

Follow the same procedure as described for the acoustic steel string guitar.