www.TheGuitarWorkShop.com

Taking guitar music lessons can cost a lot of money and making sure you are getting your money’s worth is necessary. Learning a new instrument like guitar or taking vocal lessons will benefit you or your child but here are some tips on how to ensure you are getting the most out of your lessons.

Do make sure you are choosing a reputable school or instructor. It’s true with the saying, “You get what you pay for.” If you find individuals advertising their musical expertise teaching their lessons from their home studio, it’s ideal to ask for references. As a business, they should be able to lead you to clients who can give you their experience taking lessons with them. It’s a safe move especially if you have never heard of them before.

Going through the yellow pages or searching online will give you a head start on what lessons or schools have been running for awhile now. They usually have specialized programs and have been in business practically forever. When you talk to them over the phone, they are knowledgeable and helpful. Music schools that have a long standing can usually be costly and their lessons run year long.

Choosing a private class which is usually just the music instructor and the student can be a great choice since the instructor will be giving you all their attention. Most private classes can range to an hour or less than an hour. Depending on what choice of instrument you want to learn, these types of lessons can be cost effective.

There are many group band options and guitar music lessons that are available at music schools. If you’ve always wanted to be in a rock band, here’s your chance. There are places where you can learn the electric guitar and even drums in a group setting. Canvas around and check out the band settings and price. Music schools know the appeal of wanting to be in a band so the prices can vary depending on location.

For children who are interested in taking music lessons, there are private classes and group settings depending on their ages. Start with something small with music lessons each week to see if your child is eager to pursue it. For pre-schoolers, there are now pre-school music groups where they learn songs accompanied with a keyboard. At the end of the music program, there is usually a recital for the children to perform what they have learned which is exciting for them and the parents.

Getting the most out of your guitar music lessons isn’t hard. You just have to do your research on the music schools providing the lessons. Always take a guitar music lesson on the type of music that you are interested in and don’t let anyone talk you out of it. If the cost of the lesson is pricey, there are some music schools that offer discounts or scholarships. Ask them if there is a discount if you sign up for a year. As well, checking through the yellow pages for coupons and searching online in your local city for guitar lessons is also an option. Good luck and have fun with whatever music lessons you decide to go with.

If you are a guitar player or band member or make a living with anything that can be broken on an airplane or flight on any airline this article is for you. I invented a case that is 100% used and intended for protecting anything if you use airline travel. Although if you travel or ship anything on UPS, FedX or other shipping companies please listen up this article will save you money and grief if you are traveling with something that you don’t want destroyed while traveling.

First I’ll give me some of my background. I have been a videographer for 23 years and am also a guitar player. I was traveling with a group of well know acoustic guitar players and was in Las Vegas at a the (NATPE) trade show. This is a trade show where companies buy and sell television programs. I was promoting a show concept on learning to play guitar and had these guys playing in my booth. The name of the show is “The Guitar TV Workshop“ which is now an online lesson website were you can by DVD guitar lessons or take lessons on line. There are hundreds of hours of lessons on learning to play guitar on Acoustic Blues to Hawaiian Slack Key, or Ki ho ‘alu. The web site is
http://www.TheGuitarWorkShop.com The Artist or Instructors playing in my booth were
John Cephas, Martin Simpson, Woody Mann, and Orville Johnson all award winning players.

When I arrived in Las Vegas and went to get my bags, camera equipment, and guitars everything looked fine. I went to the hotel checked in and we hit the town. When I returned to my room I thought I would play a bit of guitar. That’s when I found the problem. I grabbed my National Steel guitar and when I started to play it just went thunk. The bridge got pushed in from something heavy being put on top of the case or a baggage handler inside crawling over it. The cone got pushed in as well and when I called the airline they said I only had 4 hour to file a claim. Or I got your screwed.

That evening we all went to dinner and we all talked about the problems of traveling with our guitars and me my photographic and video equipment. All the instructors were using the same type of travel guitar cases. They were heavy cases around 28 lbs. each and very expensive over $750 and up. The thing is that they all said that these were the best out there. When I asked them have they ever had their guitars broken in them they all said yes. That’s when I decided that something had to be done. I wanted to design a case that could protect your instrument or camera gear and be affordable.

After 3 years of research and trial and error I designed the Clam Guitar Flight Case, and started http://www.CaseXtreme.com . I knew that one of the major problems with every other case out in the world was that they were too heavy. The old story “the heavier they are the harder they fall” made total sense to me, I knew that to invent a case that would work needed to be light in weight and have adequate shock resistances built into the design.

One day the light bulb hit me like a ton of bricks. I had just received a DVD player in the mail that I ordered. I order stuff all the time from a company out of state so I don’t have to pay state sales tax. For large ticket items this can save you a bunch of money. Anyway this equipment had Styrofoam pads on each corner in a cardboard box that had space around it so nothing is touching the equipment.

So now I had a very sturdy material and I found the toughest foam money can buy and I designed the Clam by CaseXtreme. http://www.CaseXtreme.com I designed the foam suspension system or foam C-Pads that go around your guitar case or gig bag and found the shock absorption system was born. Here is a link to a video on my site of me  throwing my guitar off my roof top in the Clam case onto the pavement. http://casextreme.com/newest_video.html

For Guitar Lessons on DVD’s and Online taught by Grammy Award Winning artist and instructors, teaching acoustic guitar, blues, fnger style, Hawaiian Slack key guitar (Click Here)

by Bruce Lamb
www.TheGuitarWorkshop.com

This is my introduction to the art of playing Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar music and how I got started playing this sweet style of guitar music.

Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar or Ki ho ‘alu in the Hawaiian language is a sweet easy going type of music. I have found it to be one of the easiest styles of guitar playing to learn and people love hearing it. This finger style guitar music has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds over the last several years. It may be because it brings peace and calming to people who listen to it in this troublesome time we are living in at the moment.

I got involved in this alternate guitar tuning music when I moved to Hawaii in my ninth grade summer in 1963. My  father who was in the military got transferred there and we packed up the family moved.  I guess this was probably the most influential part of my life at the young age of 15 and I had just bought a surf board with the proceeds from my paper route in San Diego. I was stoked out of my mind when my dad came home and told us we were moving to Hawaii. I have always been an adventurous type and saw this as an adventure of a lifetime.

I spent the summer there learning about the Hawaiian culture. My dad got a night job to make ends meet as a construction supervisor for a huge remodeling project going on at the International Market Place in down town Honolulu on the Island of Oahu. He got me a job there as well. This was a huge cultural center at the time. Thousand of tourist and locals would go there each evening to watch and hear the great Hawaiian luau shows.

I was 15 years old and working steps away from the stage of one of the premier Hawaiian shows of its time each and every night. The Hawaiian Ukulele, and Slack key guitar, and the beautiful falsetto, singing was captivating. And let’s face it I was 15 and this place had about 100 hula dancers performing every night.  I was soon a regular stage side fixture for each show. I knew every song and this music truly crept into my soul. I soon bought an old Stella guitar from a friend for 3 dollars and tried to learn to play this music.

Every night a group of us kids would gather on a corner under a mango tree and play music. Us “Haoles” or none Hawaiian and “locals” Hawaiians would share the love of our music. These sessions would always start off with the music of the day, “House of the Rising Sun” that kind of stuff, then the local boys would retune there guitars and leave us Haoles in the dust so to speak and begin their traditional music. That’s when I began to learn about the Slack-key thing.

Most of the Hawaiian slack key songs seem to have the same theme through out them.
The Hawaiians are a proud people and love their culture. They usually are singing about love, food, the land and ocean and the beautiful abundance of Hawaii. This music has power, depth, and passion. Although I don’t understand most of the lyrics in the songs I can quite often tear up just hearing this beautiful music because it brings me back to those beautiful islands, feeling that warm breeze, the smell of the ocean and flowers in the air and those beautiful dancers.

Ki ho ‘alu or Slack Key guitar is a Fingerstyle type of guitar music. The term slack key refers to English translation of the Hawaiian word to loosen the tuning keys on your guitar. Most of the hundreds of alternate tunings for guitar playing start with the guitar being tuned in C major tuning, or sometimes referred to standard tuning. The process begins with loosening or taking off the tension of the string by unwinding instead of tightening the string. This is a big lesson that was probably learned very quickly. Most people who start playing guitar tighten the strings to the point of them snapping.

This is the first part of my introduction to Ki ho ‘alu Slack Key guitar. I’ll be talking about some of the tunings and my hero players on the next post. I will also be posting videos of me actually tuning my guitar in several Slack Key tunings at our web site. www.TheGuitarWorkshop.com

Aloha and “a hui hou,”  (till we meet again)

Bruce Lamb