It’s a new and exciting way to deliver our library of music instruction DVDs to you (including the accompanying music/TAB booklet) quickly, safely and inexpensively using an amazing new media system called the MOD Machine.

Music Lessons On Demand allows you to get your lessons anytime you want them, 24/7, delivering high-quality video directly to your computer. All you need is a high-speed connection and you’ll be on your way.

We’ll be constantly adding lessons to the Catalog, so check back often to see what’s new. If you’ve already downloaded the Music Lessons On Demand application, no need to get it again. Simply launch it from your computer and browse for downloadable titles that interest you, or find lessons by category (instrument, style or instructor) using our handy search tool.

Music Lessons On Demand offers many advantages over books, DVDs, online courses and even classroom training:

Instant delivery.

Unlike DVDs or books, courses you order through Music Lessons On Demand are delivered instantly. No waiting for deliveries. No shipping and handling charges. Never out of stock. No lost or damaged shipments. With a DSL line or cable modem, you can start watching within a few minutes of ordering – even nights, weekends or holidays!

Convenience.

Unlike DVDs or web-based video, the courses you purchase from the Music Lessons On Demand download right to your hard drive so you can access them anywhere, anytime, in just a few clicks, whether you are connected to the internet or not. Never again fumble with remote controls, DVD players and TV inputs, or hassle with searching for a DVD, that might have become dirty, scratched, warped or lost.

Cross-platform.

MOD Machine runs on Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard, and Snow Leopard, and Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Learn anytime.

Ever wanted your favorite musicians to come over to your house and teach you how to play in his or her style? Music Lessons On Demand is the next best thing. Music Lessons On Demand is the next best thing. Take a lesson after breakfast or in the middle of the night. Jump to any tune or part of the course with one click. Put your virtual instructor on pause anytime and take time to experiment with a technique and practice a particularly tasty lick. You have total control over the learning experience.

Completely secure.

The MOD Machine offers security in purchasing that no browser or phone call can match. Your credit card information is transmitted only once, highly encrypted, to Authorize.net, one of the most respected and secure payment processors.

Eco-friendly.

No MOD Machine product or packaging will ever end up in a landfill. Save time and money, improve your playing, and save the planet while you’re at it. Music Lessons are the next best thing to a music teacher.

 Share now!

A musical motif or motive is a recurring set of notes or a series of intervals played in succession. I’m sure you’ve heard repetition in a melody in fact, almost all compositions are made up of repeating motifs.

If you can repeat yourself musically, this will allow one to capture the essence of an improvised solo and rivet a listener to your ideas. Everyone no matter how sophisticated they are at listening to music will be able to follow your ideas if you repeat them.

I once heard the phrase somewhere; “Well I don’t know much about music but I know what I like when I hear it”. Well that’s not entirely true. I think what they are saying is that “They like what they know when they hear it”.

By establishing a musical motif and repeating it, the listener gets to “know” your idea then, when it’s repeated several times the idea becomes familiar to a listener.

Sometimes ideas are repeated exactly however, more often notes occur higher or lower than the original melodic idea. This is not to be mistaken for transposing which I think of as a change of key. It’s rare to find any melody that doesn’t have a healthy amount of repetition.

What I’m talking about here is a process called motif development using repetition, pitch shifting. and extension.

If you want your solos to sound like a melody then I would suggest using use lots of repetition. It’s kind of weird that most musicians don’t use repetition for they may think that it sounds too repetitious or boring. When you first introduce an idea to a listener it’s new. Then a listener waits to hear how the idea spins out. You can really grab someone by the ears if you connect with them by repetition. For the musician playing a solo, this gives them a sense of control.

In order for the musician to have control over soloing you need to remember what was just played. So assuming that the musician is into melodic development then you need to develop “melodic memory”. Here are some ways to help you develop melodic memory.

Try this idea next time you pick up your instrument.

Record yourself playing some chords keep it simple say a II V7 vamp in one key.

1. Play about 4 or 5 notes or intervals or a riff as some call it.(nothing esoteric or fancy)
2. After a short rest repeat it exactly with the same notes and rhythm including what beat it begins on.
3. Play the idea a third time only this time add an extension to the original idea say anywhere between 2 and five additional notes
4. Use your extension as a spring board to another idea. The extension should sound like an outgrowth of the original idea.
5. Now repeat the extension idea and the original idea is gone and so on.

Your ideas should be short at first. You can make them as long as you like but keep in mind that the longer they are the harder it will be to remember what you just played. You can utilize rests in between ideas and those ideas can be of various lengths. Make sure you use enough space in between your ideas or you’ll end up cranking away and you’ll freak out. So take your time and digest what your playing and use space.

Once you feel good about starting your ideas on the same beat then you can change each repetition and experiment with moving the idea around on different beats within the measure.

Don’t just read this article print it out and do it. It’s meant for you to experiment and develop your skills as an improviser.

Take any Fake Book chart and see if you can spot repeating motifs. I’ll bet you will find lots of them because that’s what makes a composition unified is the use of repeating patterns within a tune.

After you feel comfortable with the concepts I talked about, try pitch shifting your own ideas and remember pitch shifting is keeping the same interval pattern within the key you happen to be playing in.

Good Luck and keep practicing. Musical motifs are a great way to have fun and learn about improvisation.

Musical motifs are  a really fun way to get better at improvising .

 Share now!

Guitar chords and their construction

Guitar chords as well as piano chords can be easily figured out by using this handy chart that shows the scale step numbers measured from the Root. For example if I’m in the key of C Major then all the component part of a chord are measured from the C Major Scale. Here is a handy chord chart to help determine the chord tones within the five families of chords. The five families of chords are: Major, minor, dominant, Augmented, diminished.

All of the notes do not have to be included in the chords the most important chord tones are the 3 and 7 (in whatever family). Note: the 9th is the 2nd step of a scale, the 11th is the 4th step of a scale and the 13th is the 6th step of a scale. If you are playing the chord extensions you can add just the one extension you need for each family. Remember this is good for piano chords as well as guitar chords.

 Share now!

The recording industry association’s media war!

Ever notice that there is a constant struggle between the recording industry association and the people who help keep them alive ( aka paying customers). The movie and recording industry association are the only businesses that seem to attack their customer base with lawsuits and are trying to block people’s use of media. How do you see it?

Copying music etc. is nothing new. For decades people with recorders made music available to everyone. If some one liked a particular tune they heard they can very easily record it and pass it along to their friends. Back in the day who’s to stop someone from recording a movie by setting up two VCRs and dubbing it. And now with new digital technology one can spread the media even easier and to a broader group of people over the internet.

Sharing is part of human nature. I can remember when I read a good book I would loan it to a friend or family member. The other day I had a great pizza at a restaurant now who’s going to stop me from recommending this pizza to someone. If we hear a good song we may want to share it with friends who you think will enjoy it. Millions of people do it every day and the recoding industry association hates it.

The recording industry has taken ridiculous steps to combat the sharing of media. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with companies protecting themselves from theft but I think they took their fight too far. We basically have no freedom over the products we purchase. Check out what the recording industry’s done for you.
The recording industry sued thousands of regular people for downloading music.
They even sued a single mother for downloading a bunch of music.
They claim they lost millions in sales but never mention anything about how much they loose when people buy used Cd’s or buy discs from garage sales it’s impossible to really come up with a number how can they justify this.
Youtube is now muting background music which is copyrighted.
So what this boils down to is that the recoding industry owns the content, you don’t regardless if you paid your hard earned money for the music or video. You could be sued for up to ten times what the stuff is worth. If you want to copy a tune you purchased tough S**t. You;’re breaking the law.

The recording industry is complaining about how much they are losing through file sharing but the blame isn’t exclusively on file sharing. How much are they losing when someone sells a CD at a garage sale or flea market. I know for myself a friend saw one of my CD’s at a garage sale and I made nothing on that sale but I got my name out there to someone who may not have heard of my band. It’s impossible to place blame on just the down loaders alone. Yet the recording industry is deliberately suing and judgments are passed with no real proof of the claims against people who are being dragged into court.
Only in America are there harsher penalties for illegally downloading music than robbing a bank.
Unfortunately this is the way it is right now. The recording industry is waging a war against you. What’s your take on it?

 Share now!

Dennis Playing Chord Melody Guitar

1. Find a tune that you are familiar with and pick out the melody on the first two strings of your guitar (horizontally). This may not always happen especially if the key of the tune is forcing you to play too high or too low on the neck.
2. Transposing the melody to another guitar friendly key will help this situation. The drawback to this is if your playing with other musicians who know the tune in the original key there may be some musical conflict going on there.
3. Add the bass notes on the 6th, 5th or 4th strings to the melody especially on the down beats like 1 and 3 then later on you can add more but for now keep it simple.
4. Fill in the middle voices on the inside set of strings depending on the chords of the song. Remember you don’t have to have a chord for every note of the melody but make sure you are defining the melody so the audience knows what tune you’re playing.
5. After you have the chords and melody down then try to add small in between notes to the melody by adding one or two notes here and there while maintaining the chords.
6. Then try to play the chords and perhaps some different voicings of the same chords (this might be a stretch for some folks). What you are doing is finding the same type of chords but with a different fingering and placement. For example: playing a G7 chord with the root on the 6^th string then playing a G7 chord with the root on the 4^th string. This changes the sound and may give you ideas about changing the melody to something else to create a variation.
7. Play the tune over again and make some kind of ending. Make sure that the ending sound like an ending it should sound obvious.

If you apply the above technique to a number of tunes, you’ll find your playing will become very strong. Your arrangements will become more interesting. Then if you find a gig at a restaurant you’ll have the option to play solo guitar and take another job. Leave me some comments..

 Share now!

Musicians get calls to play unpaid gigs all the time  for parties, benefit gigs or fundraisers, jazz gigs or rock gigs and even venues that are having like 5 bands playing and you get to play a 30 minute set. They say you can pass out cards and get comped drinks and maybe sell merchandise in the corner of the venue.

So what do you do? Do you take the unpaid gigs? I know for me if I take an unpaid gig and its a benefit I make sure that everyone is donating their time equally. The musicians are often asked to play for free for EXPOSURE but I think that’s BS.

I’ve seen many times the musicians are asked to play for free but the sound guys are getting paid and the food vendors or catering are getting paid so everyone except the musicians are getting paid. What’s Up With That?

There are 2 kinds of Exposure General and Specific.
This is an excerpt from an article by David Hahn at MusicianWages.com

Definition of general exposure:
There will be a room full of people, and there will be you. You will play your music. It will travel through the air between you and the people, and the people will hear this music. In this way you will expose yourself to these people, and it’s conceivable that they will care one way or another.

Definition of specific exposure:

There will be a room full of people that love the kind of music you play. They will resemble your target audience in every way possible. You will play your music and they will listen to your music. It’s very likely that many of them will want to know more about you, sign up for your email list and maybe buy an album.

I think musicians would die from exposure. After all most musicians have spent countless hours practicing and purchase expensive equipment and perhaps spent many thousands of dollars on a music school degree to play for nothing.

Leave comments here.. let me know what you think or should do about this and if you wanna read the entire article by David Hahn click on the link above to read on.

 Share now!

 Share now!

 Share now!

 Share now!

Children Enjoying Music Lessons

developed brains then those who have never learned music. There a countless articles and discussions on the topic of children’s music lessons and the development of the brain.
As early as the 19th century, the visionary Dr. Maria Montessori included music and arts into her worldwide school curriculum to greatly enhance and accelerate learning.
The brain develops at a rapid rate between birth and three and is an essential window for the development of neurons. Therefore, encouraging musical exploration is an easy way to promote intellectual development.
It is important to note that while studies show positive influences in other academic areas, music and the Fine Arts are an academic discipline that are, as the other academics, an independent way of learning and knowing.
Dr. Patricia Powers states, “It is not unusual to see program cuts in the area of music and arts when economic issues surface. It is indeed unfortunate to lose support in this area especially since music and the art programs contribute to society in many positive ways.” What some school boards do not know is that cutting music might cause test scores to fall due to the positive effect on everything from academics to citizenship and ironically personal hygiene
According to the Florida Music Educators Association, “Music and the Fine Arts have been a significant portion of every culture’s educational system for more than 3,000 years. The human brain has been shown to be “hard-wired” for music; there is a biological basis for music being an important part of human experience. Music and the Arts surround daily life in our present day culture. Most present day artists, architects, and musicians acquired their interests during public school music classes… Education without the Fine Arts is fundamentally impoverished and subsequently leads to an impoverished society.
The incorporation of music lessons from preschool to post secondary education is common in most nations because involvement in music is considered a fundamental component of human culture and behavior.
Music Lessons and performance provide the following developmental skills in children. Adults have noticed significant changes in mental acuity .when learning how to play an instrument.

1. The ability to read a map, put puzzles together, form mental images, transform and/or visualize things in space that unfold over time, and recognize relationships between objects. This skill is often associated with science and math.
2. The symbols used in music notation can help with math especially in the area of equations.
3. Learning Music helps people with their thinking skills and organization of ideas into logical structures.
4. Learning an instrument optimizes the brain neuron development.
5. Playing music helps develop motor coordination and eye – hand coordination also know as psycho-motor coordination.
6. Playing in a band or orchestra helps people with communication skills.
7. Playing in a band promotes cooperation, social harmony and teaches people discipline while working toward a common goal.
8. Music augments memory. The repetition of playing a tune in a predictable structure makes memorization easier.
9. Improves critical reading and writing.
10. Raises test scores. and teaches people how to manage stress during exams.
11. Boosts creative thinking.
12. Improvisation helps people think on their feet.
13. Helps children channel unexpressed and/or negative emotions in a positive way.

 Share now!