Saturday, January 25, 2014

Know the chords - substitute chord? passing chord?

Getting bored of repeating Major and minor chords? Let's try to substitute the chords and add some colour and flavour by arrange in passing chord!!

Before you start, make sure:

  • you have some basic understanding about interval. For turorial about interval please visit here.
  • grab a guitar and play the chord, I want you to remember the "sound, texture and colour" of the chord instead of the dull theory

* I only show 1 chord for your example (but not showing all of the different position) so you can capture the colour and sound of the chord, so please do feel free to check othe material such as chord dictionary to find various combination and position of chords.

** The chords I listed here are mostly suitable for strumming, if you are more likely to play them in a plucking way, I will made another article discussing about the pattern and tips for plucking, which will comes more complicate because of walking melody. Anyway, you just have to get the idea of the structure of chord progression.

Are you ready?

只会弹奏大调和小调和弦?来看看替换和弦和经过和弦吧!!用得好的话它能为单调的编曲加上色彩还能够减轻手指的负担哦!!这篇文章要告诉你,其实我们平时弹流行曲遇到的好像很复杂的和弦,其实都是经过加工的大调和小调和弦而已哦!!

开始之前,确保你对“音程度数”有些微的了解(想温习的童鞋们请到这里);并随手抱着一把吉他,即刻试弹来感受被替换后的和弦的色彩!!


Friday, January 10, 2014

张智霖 - 相爱无梦

张智霖 - 相爱无梦 key: D > E capo 2, play as C key
Guitar: Stonebridge GS40CM
String: Gibson Masterbuilt Premium Light (012~053) 



很好听的一首《相爱无梦》,送给想爱却爱不到的苦情郎(娘) 们。

verse的部分,那些滑音勾音捶音的pattern,因为是低音弦,捶音的时候因为和上一个音太过接近,所以声音很难出的来,勾音因为弦粗也勾得手疼,滑音杂音又很大声,大家就自己斟酌着去放吧。






張智霖

相愛無夢

Tvb劇集'西關大少'主題曲
作詞:藍奕邦
作曲:林健華

跟你抱著 未等於愛上
不再抱著 未等於不想
你我在這分鐘
說過無緣再見
下秒鐘再湊巧碰上

即使一起 貌合卻又神離
分隔兩地 日夜掛著愁眉
再各自結新歡
卻暗地拿你去比較現有的
始終偏袒你

有心愛你卻愛不到
抱緊了你卻又未想終老
再等到與對方失散以後
就會知 原來誰最好
愛不到至會更想愛
抱緊了你我又無心裝載
我跟你也破不到
男與女之間 愛情的定數

一個過活 恨抱著情人
一對過活 又掛念誰人
到了話要分開
你我尚有惻隱
又再探聽對方新聞

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Interval & Chord Progression

Must work harder recently editing all my tutorial and materials, so I can start to arrange my own syllabus in guitar tutoring, wish me good luck !!

最近想编我自己的吉他教案,得加把劲把脑海里的资料整理出来,大家为我打气吧!

Introduction


I believe you've got some idea about INTERVAL on my last tutorial (see here), now you know how to construct some fancy pattern boombastic chord using the formula provided once you set the root
note. In this tutorial, we will talk about the relationship between interval and  chord progression.

This session is trying to help you to understand the colour and feeling of a chord when it appears in certain timing of a song. This idea also helps you to train your relative pitch!! (Discussion about Perfect Pitch and Relative Pitch see here, but don't click yet, I haven't compose that, hahaha)

相信看完之前那一篇的朋友对音程度数已经有一些概念了。现在我们已经可以在定出根音后用音程度数的概念来编出和弦了,今天我们就来讨论音程度数和和弦进行之间的关系。希望这篇文章能帮助大家了解和弦在歌曲中出现时他所带有的色彩和感觉。使用音程度数的概念来扒曲子能训练你的相对音感哦!


What is Chord Progression?

Explain in the most simple way word and method, chord progression is the route that chord appear in a song. 

We already know to set the root to find the interval, today, we are going to start by setting the root first too, but some idea is different:
  • the root of finding a chord will be the "bass note" of that chord (of course we start with the lowest tone), 
  • the root of understanding chord progression will be the playing key, or I just simply call it the Root Chord here, ex: in C key, the root will be C Major chord; in E key, the root will be E Major chord.
ok we still start with the most basic one, we start with C key. Normally in a song they won't be all Major chord, it will mix in some minor too, but do you know all these minor chords stands in a specific position in the interval too?

Let's see this graph (see figure 1), I put in the most common chord to be use in recent pop songs.

什么是和弦进行?用最简单的方式来讲,就是和弦进行的方式,简单明了易懂吧?

我们已经知道要开始使用音程度数时得知道你的根音在哪里,今天我们也得先定好我们的根音,但有些概念时和建构和弦时不一样的:
  • 建构和弦时的根音指的是找出和弦中最低的音。
  • 找出和弦进行时所谓的根音指的是曲调中的第一个和弦,或者说是根和弦(注:这只是为方便大家了解提出的一个概念,并不是专业术语),如C调的根就是C大调和弦;E调的根就是E大调和弦。
一样先从最基本C调开始:通常一首歌曲不会全都是大调和弦,间中也会混入小调和弦,你们知道这些小调和弦在和弦进行中也是占有特定位置的吗?见figure 1,这些是流行歌曲常会用到的一些和弦。

figure 1

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Interval & Chord

Introduction

As the foundation of the foundation of music (my own opinion), interval is a very important concept that applied in Scale, Chord and Chord progession. Thanks to the explanation of Mr Ben Powell, I get to have a clearer understand to this music theory, I'm here sharing this with you guys.

(我自己一个人自己认为),作为基础中的基础,音程度数是在音阶、和弦以及和弦进行中很重要的一个概念。之前遇到了在英国巴斯镇的一位高人指点让我一下子贯通了这个苦恼我很多年的概念,现在分享给大家。


Ben Powell, A very talented fingerstyle player and tutor based in Bath, UK, link to his website.

Interval 

What is interval? Basically speaking, it's the distance between music note and note, and each distance had been granted a name.

A most important idea to understand the concept of interval is to understand it with the NUMBERS above it, not the note itself

Today, we are all starting with the root note"C". As in C Major key, we all know the note are as following (see figure 1):

今天我们就来简单的解释一下音程度数,还有音程度数在建构和弦上的应用。

什么是音程度数叻?简单来讲,就是音符与音符之间的距离的名称。要了解音程度数的概念,我们得用数字来了解,而不是音符的唱名,所以接下你会看到很多数字,这也是为了方便,当你有了“数字”的概念以后,你就能把音程度数的概念应用到每一个曲调中,而不会被单一曲调限制。


把根音定在最常用的“C"音符开始。见figure 1,我们可以看到在C大调音阶中出现的音阶。

figure 1

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Broken Stonebridge

acknowledgement: I want to sent my grateful to Ben Powell, David Mead, Jonny Kinkade and every acoustic folks that gave me advices, concern and all the support they gave to help me sort this case out, MANY THANKS!!!

I've bought a Stonebridge GS40CM for my christmas last year, but when i receive it, the headstock is broken!!! I've sent it to repair and it was perfectly fixed, here's some photo about this fantastic instrument.

How it is broken, you can see that even the truss rod is snapped out from the neck, omgodness my poor little stonebridge how did the courier treated you...
i guess this is how they handle my parcel. (according to the seller, the courier is Ctilink, and they don't seems like giving any compensation until now, so brace yourself if you need their service.......)
 

And it is well repaired, here's a photo with my Washburn Dreadnought


Friday, December 28, 2012

Unboxing - KOTAOR OSHIO 10th Anniversary BEST

Just receive my <KOTARO OSHIO 10th Anniversary BEST> album, here's a little unboxing info.

I've bought from a Korean seller, so it came with the original Japanese album, with a paper of Korean translation, neither do these I could understand :( the saddest thing... anyway, here's the unboxing review.

Album front


Friday, December 7, 2012

Harp & Guitar

Randomly saw somebody said that she want to learn harp, but the instrument and the course cost a bomb.

So I heard you like harp?


And you like guitar....

Why not both?


And what if I told you, you don't really need a harp to sound harp?