Mokless Girgis Blog

By Hyden Sanford

So, you want to learn how to play electric guitar? If you succeed, this will certainly be one of the most rewarding endeavors you can engage in and will stay with you for the rest of your life. Here I am going to give three key points that will give you the greatest chance of success. I am assuming you want to develop your skill to be a guitarist rather than learn a few chords and leave it at that.

Some of the most important points you need to learn how to play electric guitar are:

1. You will need regular practice. My advice is that the minimum practice time you will need to commit to your electric guitar is maybe 20 minutes, 5 days a week. This would be a minimum, and within reason it is safe to say the more the better, but if you devote this much time to the instrument you can expect a steady improvement of your skills. If this sounds like something you don’t want to do, then learning an instrument is probably not for you.

2. It is very valuable to get a teacher. This is not as essential as the practice time mentioned above, but it is probably the next most important thing. Some people can learn some good skills without a teacher, but if you really want to learn the instrument, then it is better to play it safe and get a weekly lesson for either half an hour a week or an hour a week if you want to fast track the process. When finding a teacher you should make sure that the teacher is both competent, but as well as that, teaches a style you are interested in. For example, if you mainly want to learn how to play electric guitar, then you are probably more interested in blues or other popular/rock oriented styles and a teacher that was primarily a classical guitar teacher would be a mistake. This may result in you loosing interest in the instrument due to not observing progress toward where you want to go with your guitar.

3. Invest in one of the leading online guitar courses. In addition to regular practice and finding a good teacher that suits you desires for the instrument. It is useful to engross yourself in online lessons that supplement the material your teacher is showing you. You will learn additional skills through an online guitar course and can use “study” time to fast track your perspective of where your practice will end up going by looking at a range of lessons early in the piece. Similarly to selecting a teacher, it is important to get one of the courses that is tailored to your current level of ability and where you want to go with the instrument. These courses often come with a variety of extras including backing tracks to start to jam with as well as written, audio and video lessons.

Mokless Girgis has written, sung, and produced many albums in French and Arabic. He is now excited to be writing and singing in English. The manner of his music is definitely unusual, combining the sounds of modern pop and soft Mediterranean sounds. His music is really inspirational. He was afforded the chance to musically and personally seem in several forums, including local and global wireless.

Mokless Girgis has made several video appearances, on such programs as the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN), Radio Monte Carlo, and Middle East Television (MET. It is estimated that his video appearances hit over 20 million folk per week, around the reality in much than 180 countries.

Mokless Girgis

8350 Wilshire Blvd Ste 200

Beverly Hills, California, 90211

http://arabicaudiomagazine.com/

mokless@moklessgirgis.com

Author: Peter Edvinsson

What can you do to make it easy for yourself to practice on your guitar? In order to continue to learn to play guitar and not give up you have to create an atmosphere of joy and fun around this activity. Let’s see what you can do to make it as easy as possible to play guitar.

As a you boy I had a lot of interests at the same time. Reading, sporting, playing piano, playing chess, a lot of more things and, of course, playing guitar.

I developed a habit to always have my guitar laying on my bed. Always as I walked into my room my guitar was laying there waiting for me. It was very easy to sit down on my bed starting to play because of two facts:

1. I could see the guitar as I walked into my room which immediately reminded me of how fun it is to play.

2. The guitar was easily accessible. The only thing I had to do in order to play the guitar was to grab it and start playing.

This made it possible for me to play a lot on my guitar in spite of all other activities. All other things I did was interwoven with my guitar playing and my musical experiences connected with it.

This way of working with my guitar was not a conscious plan to maintain energy and motivation to practice. It just happened to be that way. These moments with my guitar became a part of my personal development.

When I sat there playing guitar I also had time to digest life as it proceeded. It way a form of meditation because as I played on my guitar I allowed my mind at times to wander and I remember that some important decisions in life were made as I sat there playing.

Enough talk about myself! What can you learn from my experiences?

Let’s apply my experiences to the art of learning to play guitar and see if we can find principles that are applicable to all guitar players.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions:

1. See to it that you have your guitar as accessible as you dare to. It will be a reminder for you that playing guitar is fun. I have sometimes reminded my guitar students to pull out the guitar from the hard case or gigbag as soon as they come home from the lesson and start to play something connected with their homework. Otherwise there is an imminent risk that they will not open the case until the next lesson is at hand.

This is how humans often react. If it is a little effort involved in starting to do something we want to do there is a risk that we will procrastinate the activity until it is too late.

2. If you have set goals or have homework to do on your guitar I recommend that you also have these sheets or written down goals handy. No use to have goals if you are not reminded of them on a daily basis.

Author: Bill Kernodle

If you are new to the piano and want to get the most out of your experience, please read the following suggestions.

Find a Good Teacher

One of the most obvious, but often overlooked aspects of learning the piano, or any new instrument is to find a good teacher. You may not think you can afford it, or you think you can learn a lot on your own, but you will be very well served to start with a good teacher. It is true it does cost money, and it is true that you can learn a lot by yourself. However, you can learn so much more in such a short time from someone who has been where you are and knows how to take you where you want to go. One of the most crucial aspects of learning form the beginning the proper way is to not learn bad habits. Bad habits are very hard to break as they become so much a part of how you play. Do yourself a favor and learn the right way the first time.

Practice Regularly

This next suggestion may seem too obvious to even consider, but you need to practice regularly. So many people fail to follow through and they do not make the progress they want to because they do not put in the time. It is better to put in a very little every day or even several times a day than to try a cram it all in just before the next lesson. If you can go over what you are trying to learn a few times a day it is better than practicing for hours on end. Sometimes you get very tired when you practice for long periods of time and your fingers and your mind don’t work together very well. In between times you can run over what you are trying to learn in your head and get the most out of your time away form the instrument as well. Don’t overlook the mental aspect of learning, especially memorization.

Set Goals

You need to set goals for yourself also. The teacher may set them for you at first of course, but you always need to have a goal in mind. It does not have to be “learn this whole piece by Friday”, but it can be broken into several smaller sections a day or lines to memorize at a time for example. I find that by going over in my mind many times a day the part I am working on I am much better able to remember it when the time comes to try and play.

Work on Sight Reading

Always continue to work on sight reading skills, I know it may sound scary at first, but if you make it a habit to simply go through some little bit of unfamiliar material every day, this will lead you down the road toward a better skill level in sight reading.

Author: Kirk Downing

Playing Guitar - How Easy Is It?

There is more to playing guitar than just learning the basic chords and strumming along to your favorite tune. If you have the talent, determination, and ability, you can make playing guitar a very profitable career option. However, that path can accommodate just a few of the most dedicated souls. Therefore, for most of us, playing a guitar remains a great hobby, at best.

Regardless of whether you are thinking of playing guitar professionally or as a hobby, it is best to undergo the complete learning experience - not just about the different chords and grips. Let us take a look at a critical aspect of playing the guitar - tuning it.

Playing Guitar - The Importance of Tuning

A very important aspect of learning how to play the guitar is to know how to tune it. A guitar usually goes out of tune ever so often, owing to a number of external factors - the quality of the guitar, the weather, etc. An out of tune guitar will never produce the exact sound required.

Visualize this: Your friends have gathered at your home for the evening. They know you are learning the guitar, and want you to give a small demo of some of the stuff you have learned. You are eager to show off your knowledge and newly acquired skill to your friends. You pick up the guitar and sure enough, it is totally out of tune. You have no clue how to tune it. What do you tell your friends?

Did you know?

A variety of different tuning methods are used today. The most common by far is known as “Standard Tuning” (EADGBE)

Things to Know About Tuning Before You Start Playing Guitar

Playing guitar so you produce the right sound depends, to a large extent, on how well you tune your guitar. There are several different ways to accomplish this task. Universally, tuning the guitar involves using another source of sound at the same pitch as the reference pitch. The sound you reference your guitar to is usually the E note. The E note of your guitar should sound exactly the same as the in-tune reference sound source.

Initially, playing guitar can seem a much easier task than tuning it; the best option available would be to get a hold of a friend who plays the guitar to tune it for you. If this option is not viable, an even easier option for tuning is to use a reference source that produces a fixed sound for each note, and does not go out of tune. You could use a pitch pipe or, even better, an electronic tuner or a synthesizer/piano, both of which are sources that produce fixed sounds for each note that do not go out of tune.

Author: Brian Murphy

Guitar Synthesizers have been around for years. I remember seeing a picture of Pete Townsend of The Who back in the early/mid-seventies with an ARP.

Since then it has come a long way and still needs tweaking but it is usable.

The technology is there. Use it. If you do not, you are missing a lot.

Checkout Pat Metheny and others.

You can’t just plug your guitar’s output into a box and get great synth sounds. You need a 13-pin connection. This is achieved by using a specially designed hex pickup that attaches to your guitar (Roland, Axon) or use a guitar that has it built -in already. The guitar option also comes in two versions-Hex pickups or piezo. The hex pickup is the same as the external pickups. The piezo version has piezo transducers in the bridge. The piezo built -in version is better, more accurate. It will also gives you an acoustic sound via the piezo transducers. This is a great option to have because you can have an acoustic sound through an amp without bringing an extra guitar to the gig or rehearsal and you can combine this sound with the electric tones and synth sounds. This is huge sound on stage!

Coming from the pickup is a 13-pin din cable that plugs into a converter box. Again, Roland and Axon are the main companies with Axon being on the cutting edge for midi conversion

Depending on the box, you can get some with sounds, without sounds or USB connection for computer recording.

Once you have this setup, you would have to tweak the settings in the box to how you play. Each guitar player is different. Each guitar is different. One guitar player could use different techniques (finger picking, hard picking, very soft picking, tapping, etc). Sensitivity, tuning, feel/picking are some of the settings to look at.

Imagine recording a guitar track, then adding piano, bass, drums, strings, sax and more right from the guitar. Using a 13-pin guitar to access synth or samples sounds opens a whole world for expression, composing, recording, inspiration and more. It allows you to control software sounds in your computer that you already have but can’t use unless you play keyboard.

Author: Carlos Semilla

Here are some pointers to help you on your journey in learning to play the piano:

1. Take some lessons with a good classical teacher.

2. Use the Hanon exercises (especially the scales and arpeggios) to gain finger dexterity and to know the correct piano fingering of the scales and arpeggios. Always use a metronome when you’re doing these exercises to develop your sense of timing. If you don’t have a metronome try putting an accent on the “one” count of every sixteenth note (e.g. ONE,two,three,four; ONE,two,three,four… etc… ).

3. After learning the basics/rudiments of playing the instrument, find another teacher who can teach you how to play the chords (a good jazz piano improvisation teacher will do!) and how to improvise.

4. Master the five qualities of chords (major seventh, dominant seventh, minor seventh, half-diminished, and the diminished seventh) their inversions, arpeggios and scales.

5. Try to apply what you are learning to your favorite songs especially jazz standard songs even to some classical music pieces. You can use songbooks, fake books, real books and music sheets, which are readily available at your local music stores or online.

6. Listen to all types of music and try to transcribe phrases/passages/riffs/licks or songs that interests you. Listen to piano players - the way they play, improvise and learn from them. Try to read their biography to learn how they study, practice, who influenced them and their achievements. I believe these can help to make you a well-rounded piano player.

7. Play with other musicians or join a band in your school or in your neighborhood.

8. Try to sing the melody of the song you are playing (you might have a hidden talent in singing) or if you are improvising, sing (scat) what you are playing.

9. Buy some piano lesson books, magazines, piano lesson videos, piano lesson software or CD-ROM.

10. Practice, practice and practice!

Author: Edward Weiss

Many piano students spend much time learning how to play the piano. Years upon years of study time devoted to perfecting technique, tone, dynamics, etc.

All the while, many of these same students have never really played the piano. That is, they have spent their time practicing in preparation for the moment when they can “perform” for others.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if instead of learning how to play other peoples music, we could feel confident enough to create our own? Why is it so daunting a task for most of us? I think it’s because we’ve been taught that only a very few gifted individuals are capable of producing music from scratch - whatever the genre. Rock, jazz, classical etc.

Unfortunately, this belief is enough to stop most dead in their tracks and for those, whose spark of interest was lit in childhood, it soon turns cold and lifeless.

Now, playing the piano is entirely different than learning the piano. Here we are at home. Why? Because we are playing. So different an approach it is too! Children are allowed free-play and are even encouraged to do so. But as we grow up, we decide we must “make something worthy of performance.” What a tragic error in thinking! Yet one that pervades the music world.

The solution is to understand that we all have our own special music inside of us and each and every one of us has something wonderful to share with the world. This something comes through when we stop learning how to play the piano and begin to play it truly for the first time.

Author: Josh Scalf

If you do not know how to read musical notation, but lets say you want to learn how to jam the new Fall Out Boys song on your guitar. You will first need to learn how to read guitar tablature. Don’t worry though, because learning guitar tabs is very easy once you know all the basics.

Guitar Tab Basics

A standard tablature staff would look something like this:

e————————————————-
B————————————————-
G————————————————-
D————————————————-
A————————————————-
E————————————————-

When you look at this, you have to visualize that each line and letter represent each string on a guitar. Starting from the bottom to the top they are:

E – the 6th string (thickest)
A – the 5th string
D – the 4th string
G – the 3rd string
B – the 2nd string
e – the 1st string (thinnest)

Now you will see that there are numbers written into the the staff. Each number represents what fret you push down and on what string. In the following tab example , each number is lined up on the A string (5th string) one after another which tells you that they should be played one after another. The 0 means that you pluck the A string open (without pushing on the string),1 – move to the 1st fret pluck, 2 – move to the 2nd fret, 3 – move to the 3rd fret.

E————————————————-
B————————————————-
G————————————————-
D————————————————-
A————————————————-
E—-0–1–2–3———————————–

Chords are represented with numbers written on top of each other.
Here is what a C Major chord would look like:

E————————————————
B—-1——————————————-
G————————————————
D—-2——————————————-
A—-3——————————————-
E—-0——————————————-

You will notice that the 1st string (e) , and the 3rd string (G) have no numbers, this means that you do not strum those strings. They are in a basically just muted and not played.

The biggest disadvantage to tablature is the the fact that you are not able to accurately define how long each not should be held for. The best way to figure this out is by listening to the actual song that you are trying to play. This is actually the best way to use tabs.

Find the tab to the song you want to learn
Play that song on a radio, or your computer, or whatever means you have
Break the song into sections, starting with whatever is easiest for you
Slowly begin to put each section together
Although tablature does not give you the exact timing, they do give you some idea by spacing the numbers out. An example would look like this:

E————————3————————-
B————————–3———————–
G————————————————–
D————–0———————0————-
A————2————————–2———-
E—-3————————————-3——-

You will also come across symbols that are use to represent certain actions.

h - hammer on —-2h3—-
p - pull off —-3p2—-
b - bend string up —-5b7—-
r - release bend —-5b7r5—-
/ - slide up —-5/7—-
- slide down —-75—-
v - vibrato (sometimes written as ~) —-3v—- or —-3~—-
x - muted, struck string —-000–xxx–000—
pm – palm mute

Author: Mike Hayes

The first instrument was probably nothing more than a bow in the hands of a prehistoric hunter. One day, some nameless innovator attached a hollow gourd to the shaft of a bow. By hugging the gourd to his chest and bending the shaft back and forth with one hand (to change the tension on the string), he produced resonant notes by plucking the string with his other hand. Primitive instruments of this type are still played in various parts of Africa.

A natural outgrowth of the single-string bow was the “bow-harp”, consisting of several strings attached to a single soundbox and strung so as to yeild different notes when plucked by the fingers.

This “one string, one note” principle was common to all instruments of the harp family known to early inhabitants of the lands around eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

They included the Nubian kissar, the Greek kithara and the lyre of the Greeks, Assyrians and other Near Eastern peoples. David, King of Israel and slayer of Goliath, was said to have been proficient on the lyre.

Although the Egyptian nefer (which had both soundbox and a neck) was in use well before the time of Christ, the first “neck” instrument about very much is known was Chinese. The tzi-tze, as it was called after the emperor who invented it in the fifth century B.C., was a small square box, punctured at the top, with four strings running the length of a thick bamboo cane. Historians believe that this instrument influenced the development of Western stringed instruments, particularly the Arab ud which eventually became the lute.

From the Greek word kithara came the names of both guitar and zither. In ancient Rome, the kithara was also called the fidula, which in time gave rise to the words vihela, once used in Spain for “guitar”, and violao, still used in Portugal. “viola” and “violin” stem from the same source, as does “fiddle”. The ud (in Arabic, Al ud) had a soundbox shaped like a melon or a giant pear sliced in half. When the Arabs and Moors invaded Spain in the eighth century, they took many examples of the instrument with them. Gradually “Al ud” spread from Spain, whose people called it the “laud”. to become the French liuth, the German laute and the English lute.

Centuries before this, after the fall of Rome, the music-loving Celts of Western Europe had added a fingerboard to the kithara, and called the resulting instrument the chrotta, which may simply have been their way of pronouncing the old name. In Provence, in South of France, the new instrument was called the crota. It was there, in all probability, that the guitar had its first beginnings, for Provence experienced a cultural flowering during the 11th and 12th centuries, in which music played a paramount role.

Troubadours who accompanied themselves on the crota as they sang songs of love and war were key figures in Provencial society. often of knightly rank, they were poets and lyricists who generally composed works as they sang.

To keep up with the ever-more sophisticated tastes of their noble audiences and so win fame and distinction over their rivals, some troubadours began to tinker with their instruments. by slow stages, the crota was refined to produce clearer notes of purer pitch and wider range, until it came to resemble in a general way, the modern guitar.