Reading Guitar Music

It is never too late or too early to learn how to read guitar music. Many guitarist start off by teaching themselves guitar music after studying a piece of music on the radio or on a CD. This is a great starting point and will allow you to understand different notes and cords and the 12th fret.

Basic Elements

On a guitar, the tab staff has 6 horizontal lines. Each one of these horizontal lines represents a string on the instrument. The line on the bottom of the staff is the lowest “E” string on the guitar. The next line up from the bottom line represents the “A” string and so on. These are the basic elements when you learn how to read guitar music.

Chords

When your guitar tab displays numbers stacked vertically in a series, this is an indication to play these notes at the same time. When the guitar tab displays numbers in a series gradually on an incline, this is indicating these notes should be played one at a time. These are the first things you should know when you learn how to read guitar music.

Rhythmic notation

Rhythmic notation is how the songs rhythm should be heard when played. When you first learn how to read guitar music you should try songs you can access on a CD or radio so you can hear the rhythm before you commence learning the chords. Hearing the rhythm will make learning much easier.

A Major chord

An A major chord is the first chord you will learn to play and the first chord you will see when you learn how to read guitar music. An A major chord contains only 3 different notes. No more then 3 notes are used in an A major chord and these can generally be repeated more then once.

Discipline

The key when you learn how to read guitar music is discipline. Learning good techniques and having an excellent teacher will ensure you get the most out of your lessons. Once you have learned the basics of guitar music, you will find it easier to progress onto advanced guitar music.

Writing guitar music

When you learn how to read guitar music it is important to watch how the music is written. Take notice of the use of the chords in different sections of the music and take note of how easy the chords flow. When you become more advanced and start to write your own guitar music, these techniques will help you.

Noki Nocs Savory House: Yummiest Halo-Halo in Town

They have the creamiest and yummiest (at least for me) halo-halo in town.

This place served authentic Filipino dishes. Really love their kare-kare also.


Down side is that it is a tight place and can only accommodate 30 or less people at a time...

El Nido: Indeed a PARADISE!

Last Holy Week, we were able to visit El Nido with the family (Ramilo side).

Was able to enjoy the place, despite being frustrated and worried about my camera being soaked with sea water.

We stayed at a camp where we paid 250/night (cheap place really) with aircon rooms, kitchen and private bath, 

First day we had the tour, rented the boat for 5,000.00 and we toured on 4 islands that day, Small Lagoon, Big Lagoon,  Secret Lagoon and the 7 Commandos. 

Will definitely go back to this place with my first born!

The next day, we went traveled almost an hour to reach this so virgin beach called Nacpan! The place was so relaxing to stay! You'll enjoy the nice view of the virgin beach, plus the friendly smiling faces of all the tourists, locals and international!

Long white beach, blue crystal clear waters. Photos as proof below!

My daughter with her Nanny. 

Long white beach/shore of Nacpan Beach

Crystal Clear Sea Water!

See the blue waters at the background! So heavenly!

Little Moirah and Nanny Nene, enjoying the water splashes!

The famban!

The Quality of Healthy Aging

From the day we are all born, we age everyday. As a young person, we don’t think about the later years in our life. We live in a very fast pace world today and it causes a lot of stress in our lives and as time goes on, the stress will affect us increasingly.

Everyone young and old, we all need to take care of our bodies and minds. By taking care of ourselves, it keeps us thinking, moving and helps prevent major illnesses such and cancer and many other diseases. We all have to work at keeping ourselves healthy and there is no better time than right now. The younger you start taking care of yourself the better it is; by starting early your catching things before they have time to progress.

So right now, start of by eating healthy. Keep an eye on that diet and make sure your not overeating, but eat enough to get vitamins you need to have. A good multivitamin is a good way to start adding supplements to what you don’t get in your food. 

Food doesn’t always have the amount of vitamins anymore like they use to, and that starts at the farmer’s level. Don’t blame the farmer for this because they are just doing their jobs the same way we all go to ours everyday. The farmer has to add fertilizer, chemicals and even water to their crops to make them grow bigger, faster and for beauty too. Adding all these chemicals eat up all the natural vitamins that you need. Water has chemicals in it too; one reason why your water needs to be tested at least once a year especially if you have well water. Once the food is grown and ready to be shipped it is polished, coated to keep it nice and fresh looking during shipment, which is why this will take away some of the vitamins as well. Try to eat as much, homegrown food as you can and not processed foods. Fresh homegrown food is the best, since you get natural vitamins.  You can find some good products like underberg at smallflower.

A good multivitamin isn’t going to hurt anyone. It is known that people who take a multivitamin everyday is in better health than someone who doesn’t. Sometimes your doctor may want you to take extra vitamin, as we grow older because our bodies change and sometimes require more of something. In addition, as we grow older our eating habits change and we don’t eat as much or we want to lose weight and don’t eat the right foods.  Nevertheless, remember you can lose weight and still eat right.

As we grow older our bodies and mind change. All the stress we had growing up and continue through out our lives. Relieve that stress as much as possible because it can do a lot of harm to us. Stress is known to be a major factor for poor heart conditions, strokes, and it will lower our immune system, as we grow older. 

A regular exercise program is good for all ages and helps relieve stress at the early ages as well.  If only families took time out maybe as a family with their children and made it a part of their lives that would help relieve it during the younger years. 

A person who learns and enjoys exercising on a daily basis will keep during it, as they grow older as well.  

Exercising will help the older person to keep those bones more flexible so they don’t get stiff and weak. The heart gets benefit from exercising too. Exercise will cause the heart to produce naturally, by working it harder to keep it highly flavored. Exercising helps to keep our bodies toned up and helps us to lose weight, or at most keeping the weight maintained. 

Remember starting early can help later in years to make your life healthier and more contented.

Know How To Practice Guitar

If desire is the most important part of learning guitar(without it you wouldn’t have even started), then concentration is the most important part of practicing guitar.

I often say to people that 20 minutes of focused practice can beat, hands down, 2 hours of ‘normal’ practice, or just goofing about.

Many people are discouraged when they are told how much time they must put into practice. The truth is, you don’t have to practice all the time to be a good guitarist.

(I’m not saying you shouldn’t have time to goof off and play around. But if you want to improve quickly, you must keep playing guitar and practicing guitar separate.)

Let me tell you now…

It isn’t how much time you put into practice, it’s the quality of the practice that matters.

When I play guitar, I play to have fun, I play to perform for people, and I play for the fun of playing! That’s why I started learning guitar in the first place.

But when I practice guitar, I focus and concentrate on what I’m trying to achieve, and I work on the goals that I want to complete.

You see, if you completely focus on one thing you are more likely to do it well.

This may sound simple too to some. Some of you may be thinking “this is great, I only need to practice 20 minutes a day and ill improve more than I would if I practicing 2 hours a day”.

Well that’s not exactly true.

Its how focused your practice is that counts, not how long you practice. Can you really focus for 2 hours?

Let me give you this small example to illustrate my point.

Picture a red triangle inside a black box.

Close your eyes, and keep that image in your mind for 5 seconds without letting a single thing distract you – no other thought must enter your mind for that 5 seconds…

How well did you do? Be honest with yourself.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. Most people find this difficult at first. Its difficult to keep a focused mind like this.

I hope this example has shown you that it’s not that easy to keep focused attention & concentration for look periods of time.

But still, you must always remember that its quality and not quantity of practice that makes the difference between a great player and an average player.

This is a perfect time to tell you that you shouldn’t be spending hours and hours ‘practicing’, because you simply can’t focus for that amount of time.

If you are practicing for a solid 2 hours or more you are probably not helping your development as a guitarist that much.

A much better way of using this time is to practice in bursts.

A good idea would be to practice in bursts of 20 minutes or so. You can vary it depending on what you feel like doing, but try not to practice for long periods of time in one go. It’s not helping as much as you think it might be.

Also, it’s important to take breaks from what you’re practicing. You can do something else for awhile, go for a walk, watch TV, or maybe just play around and have fun with your guitar and loosen up a bit before you start focusing on practice again.

It is important for you to have a definition in your own mind of ‘practicing guitar’ and ‘playing guitar’.

This will keep you more focused and allow you to reach your goals as a guitarist much easier.

An exercise for you to try to help you further develop concentration is to sit silently and count slowly from one to ten in your mind.

If anything should interrupt your counting, whether it is a noise, a stray thought, or the awareness of your own breathing, you must start over from one.

Again, it’s unlikely you will be able to achieve this straight-away. It’s a hard thing to do. However how out and 'Zen' this exercise may seem, it will re-focus your mind on the task in hand, and it’ll help you learn faster if you can stay focused on what you’re practicing. And oh, choose light guitar picks. 

You should try this exercise whenever you start to feel like you’re loosing your focus.