Then, there are also the famous companies, and there are many to take a look at. Of course you should be the one determining which brand and model is best for your next purchase, but we understand that you might need some guidance. We will list some of the major brands to look for; this will include all major brands, and all types of guitars.

• Gibson
• Epiphone
• Squier
• Fender
• Ibanez
• Jackson
• Seagull
• Ovation
• Martin
• Taylor
• Guild
• Larrivee
• Washburn
• Breedlove
• Gretsch
• Alveraz
• B.C Rich
• Briane Moore
• Carvin
• Danalectro
• ESP
• Fernandes
• G&L
• Godin
• Hamer
• Heritage
• Parker
• Schecter
• Steinberger

Of course, this list may seem quite long, but heading to a store and checking what guitars they have in these brands might give you some guidance. However, it is important to play as many guitars as you can or that are in your budget. That way you get to play everything that may be the best for you.

There is a lot of information on Guitar Noise regarding this topic. An entire section on how to buy equipment has more than a months worth of articles. You should definitely browse through those articles if you are not sure about what to buy.

What are some brands I should look for? was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

The second choice, if you have the extra money to spend, is to start off with a mid-range ($400 to $500 or so) guitar. This way you won’t have to spend more money for a nicer guitar later on. The drawback to this choice is that you are going to have to buy all those little things mentioned above.

You’ll have to choose between electric and acoustic guitars. I’ll explain some of the differences here and leave the final decision up to you.

Electric

Electrics have a lower action – action is the space between the fret board and strings – meaning that you don’t have to press the strings down as hard. For this fact, electrics also enable you to learn songs at a faster rate, giving you a taste of success faster than an acoustic might allow you to. Although they may not be as strict a tool as an acoustic when it comes to learning they allow you to taste success earlier. They also have more frets, meaning you can solo easier. They also require an amplifier, which will raise the cost around $50 to start off cheaply.

Acoustic

Acoustics allow you to play without the use of an amplifier, meaning you can play anywhere. However, acoustics have a higher action and so you have to press down harder on the strings. Acoustics usually have larger bodies, though not all the time. Some may feel engulfed by the size of their guitars.

Classical

A classical guitar is essentially an acoustic, but it has a wider neck, smaller body, and nylon strings. Due to the nylon strings, classical’s are easier to fret notes with but their larger necks can still be a hindering to some. Those with larger hands might prefer classical because of the greater fret spacing and neck width.

If you are starting off or just looking to buy your next guitar, you should always find a way to play it. Internet services can be slow and a hassle to deal with sometimes. So the store is the first and best thing. When you play the guitars of your choice, ask yourself these questions.

• Can I reach all the frets?
• Is the body too large for me?
• Is the body too small for me?
• Overall is it comfortable for me?
• Can I easily press down on the strings?
• Can I reach my hand around the neck?

And other questions like these.

There is a lot of information on Guitar Noise regarding this topic. An entire section on how to buy equipment has more than a months worth of articles. You should definitely browse through those articles if you are not sure about what to buy.

What kind of guitar should I buy (acoustic, electric, classical)? was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Today I will try to help those interested in expanding their songs more poetically by taking a trip back to high school (Oh no!). Throughout the rest of this article I will be going over poetic terminology and relating how it can be incorporated into songwriting. Let us start off with the big daddy of poetic concepts.

(Note: I will use the word “viewer” inside of this article to denote “reader/listener.” This edit was done so that I wouldn’t have to keep retyping “reader/listener.”)

Three types of songs (not really poetry related, but requiring explanation)

The three major types of lyrics are

• Communicable
• Narrative
• Ideal

Communicable is communicating a topic the author chooses with a third person. Narrative is a story and contains the basic concepts of a story: characters, plots, conflict, conclusion, etc, including other concepts or even editing some out. Ideal songs are songs that communicate with the viewer about a certain topic chosen by the author. Ideal songs are different from Communicable songs because they talk to the viewer, not to a third person.

Figurative language

This is sort of like the poet’s tool to create a special effect or feeling. Some of these tools include the metaphor, simile, personification, onomatopoeia, idioms, and other things that will be covered in the duration of this article. One thing that you probably will not find in the textbooks is something I call “root words.”

Root words are the primordial base of a given word. Let us take the two most repeated words in all of musical lyrics today: Pain and Love. In the English language there have been thousands of words created to replace these root words. These are synonyms, different words with similar meanings. This brings up the point of why it’s always an extremely helpful asset to have a dictionary and a thesaurus nearby.

Example:

“I walk through these mountains”

Compare this to:

“…as I wander these snow crested tops”

You can immediately notice the figurative language in this second line. It is compiled with almost all the elements in this article, leaving out only a few.

Imagery

This is language that appeals to the five senses: Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. Imagery, for starters, expands those root words to be more specific. When we make our songs more poetic or artistic we wish to make them more detailed. Let’s take this line for example:

“I swerve, I sway, I speed to whirring sound an inch above the ground; I’m the sailor and the sail, I’m the driver and the wheel, I’m the one and only single engine human automobile.”

Imagery alters the scene to create a basic picture, even expanding on some. Imagery is what could be described as what occurs in our minds when we hear that specific word(s) in a certain context. In the above example, it gives a pretty straightforward image to the viewer. Imagery works to create a scene, which is highly important in narrative stories and also can be used to increase the detail of an object or a certain noun (person, place, thing or idea). Don’t exclude it from communicable or ideal songs either! It has great use in those as well.

Exaggeration

This is the obvious stretching of the truth, i.e., “Small as a peanut” or “Rich as a sultan.” The use of exaggeration in songwriting generally relates how something has become “more” or “less” of itself. Back in the forums, one of my good friends and Co-moderator, Reef, posted one of his songs. He and David Hodge ended up having discussions about the line

“Redness turns crimson”

The point came up first that the line was blank and never really expressed much to the viewer. We asked Reef what this truly meant to him and his response was that Red to him was rage, anger, blood, and many other destructive words. The only problem with this line was that it was unclear to the audience. “How does the audience know what your connotation of red means?” I asked him, and within the same post I said that he should have some imagery to exemplify what his emotional meaning of red is to a broader spectrum of people. So I suggested the line

“The red axe turns crimson”

Many people have seen axes in films and/or may take it as a weapon with red applied to it, red referring to blood. Although it would be better to have words like sword or knife fill the crack more permanently, axe works fine. Reef liked the idea and has since kept it.

Going back to exaggeration and my example, the newly refined line explains the view much more. Crimson is a slightly darker color than red and also a much fancier word. This all leads us, along with more imagery at our disposal, to make this line mean, “my rage/blood/anger/hate becomes worse/stronger/greater/bolder.”

Idioms

No, these are not the guys who bug you at work. It’s actually a little different. Idioms are common phrases or the common connotations that people have for words. Idioms cannot be understood by their literal or textbook meanings. A classic example of an idiom is the phrase “way to go” which generally means “good job.”

Allusions

Try not to confuse allusions with illusions. Allusions are words or lines that give reference to something historical or well known. Many of Shakespeare’s plays make references to gods that were commonly known back in his time. Even the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet includes an allusion to the god Venus and the well known Cupid.

“…Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, one nick-name for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim…”

Allusions can also be well known pieces of information, such as the law of gravity. Most of you know what that is; that’s why it can be “well known.” This can be effective in musical lyrics to easily express commonly known ideals to create some more imagery relating to your topic or introduce a new element to your topic. Allusions are different from idioms, which are the common thought of what something is. Allusions are the commonly known denotation while idioms are the commonly known connotation.

Free Verse

These are poems or lyrics that are not written to a regular rhyme scheme, meter, or form. Free verse allows the writer to gain a much greater outlook on his work without having to work in the confines of rhyming. Although this can be done within the confines of rhyming, it’s usually easier to express imagery and thought without having to work within a border. That way, you let your words flow without much resistance and express your topic not only faster, but with greater detail. For example:

“Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

No form is present, except for the repetition of “Let the” at the beginning of each line. Instead, it allowed the writer to express his perception of rain with as much figurative language as possible, or as he pleased.

Repetition

Originally, if you saw the old archived forum when it was still up and noticed the majority of posts, you would have noticed from my reviews that I detested repetition in songs. But after awhile I finally changed my mind when I came across a book that acted much like this article. The book was a glossary of poetic terminology and one of the words was “repetition.”

Repetition is the use of any element of language — a sound, word, phrase, or sentence — more than once. I detested repetition in works because it commonly lead people into circles, explaining already explained themes and topics and discussing already discussed imagery and thoughts. Commonly repeating the chorus was yet another of these circles.

All these boiled down to one thing: they became annoying in the song and detracted from its quality. However, when used properly, repetition can become incredibly useful. Since these works are to be performed as well, repetition can build concepts. Using one kind of repetition, you can repeat your topic in other words near the end of a song without the viewer realizing it.

Here’s an example of a form of repetition in a famous poem by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven.”

“Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary
Over many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
‘It is some visitor’ I muttered ‘tapping at my chamber door’”

Alliteration

This is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginnings of several words of a line of poetry or a sentence. Literally, it’s a succession of similar sounds. This can extend throughout the song.

“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;”

From my experience, alliterations work well for stressing ideas or concepts in the chorus, or anywhere, including just the simple line of a stanza. Stressing the consonant of the word gives greater importance to the meaning of the word.

Personification

Personification gives an animal, object or concept human or animal qualities. In narrative songs, personification helps add another character. When it comes to communicable and ideal songs, personification can loosen up the rigid feeling that something may have: a lion, for example, can personify a highly controversial topic.

Personifications can sometimes be seen as metaphors with lifelike qualities over direct comparisons. That is, instead of directly comparing a controversial topic to a lion, I make that controversial topic a lion. This gives the controversial topic lifelike qualities. The personification does not always have to be human.

Here’s another example:

“Summer grass aches and whispers.
It wants something; It calls and sings; It pours out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; The rain answers; The rain is slowly coming;
The rain wets the face of the grass.”

Onomatopoeia

This is the use of words that sound like the noise they describe. Again, this is a very good tool for enhancing the mood or feeling to a song. For example:

“Susie’s galoshes
Make splishes and sploshes
And slooshes and sloshes
As Susie steps slowly
Along in the slush”

Onomatopoeia can improve a visually oriented song by making the person “hear” for himself or herself instead of just seeing.

Metonymy

This is Greek for “name change,” and denotes a closely related word for something. For example, a crown is a metonym for a king, and a cane, a metonym for old age. Also, books are metonyms for knowledge. Metonyms work to give you a more abstract stance, while still stating your concrete thought.

So if I said, “Your knowledge is supreme,” I could use metonyms to enhance that to, “Your expansive collection of books is awe-inspiring.”

That’s a very free verse line, but it does make the point. The large collection of books can relate that the man holds great knowledge without being too direct.

Oxymoron

Oxymorons are interesting things. When placed properly, they can provoke the audience. For example, saying, “I’m happily sad” instantly makes the audience consider the line. It’s best to use oxymorons to stretch between the points of a controversial or two-sided topic. Normally oxymorons are impossible by fact, but not necessarily self-contradictory. An example of this is “darkness visible.”

Paradox

As opposed to an oxymoron, a paradox contains contradictory ideas. Ordinarily a paradox involves full ideas, not just individual words, such as the debate between evolution and creationism. (I’m standing neutral here for the sake of example and with respect to readers.) The two viewpoints here are contradictory and have very different precepts. Another example of a paradox is “the ascending rain.”

Simile

This is a comparison between two unlike things using the words like or as as conjunctions.

“It was as if the shadows were lifted off their walls”

Notice the “as if.” This is what makes a simile a simile. Similes are used to make the person visualize the object that is being related to.

“He was like a cheetah”

It allows the viewer to notice the exact meaning other than the many meanings that metaphors have. (This will be explained in the next topic.)

Metaphor

A metaphor is a direct comparison between two unlike things. It does not use like or as. Metaphors are useful for drawing an image that may be more direct to the viewer than a simile but less concrete.

“Your eyes are the sun that shone upon the youthful land.”

The above metaphors are the sun to symbolize the eyes (of one of the lovers), and the “youthful land” (the other lover). Metaphors enable you to project more intense pictures to the audience. One problem of improperly used metaphors is that some people won’t be able to understand your comparison.

Metaphors are also useful for making songs more interpretive. Similes can keep a song too concrete, but metaphors make the reader think abstractly. Making the reader think is something all great literature does. This includes philosophical and religious books, fairy tales, novels, mysteries, and others.

Try to make your metaphors limited and clear, like all other things in creating poetic music.

Symbol

A symbol is something that stands for something else. Metaphors and similes are comparative, but symbols are replacements. Metaphors are used for comparisons in direct relationships, but symbols are replacements of words. In the following example, the rock is a symbol.

“This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;
This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky;
This is my rock,
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.”

Mood

Mood is the feeling created in the reader by a poem or story. Figurative language and poetic concepts work together to create mood. Mood can be seen as the emotion the person feels when reading or listening to a song, or even a poem. Mood is useful for illuminating the feeling of the surroundings. In contrast, imagery simply explains with words, especially adjectives and adverbs, what is around you but with more details they all implant a ‘mood’ of the surrounding environment.

Tone

Tone is the attitude the writer takes toward the audience, subject, or a character. The voice, or speaker, is that character or perspective that is taken on by a writer or poem. This is often a voice not identified by name, although names can be applied.

“There’s this that I like about hockey, my lad;
It’s a clattering, battering sport.
As a popular pastime it isn’t half bad.”

Stanza

A stanza is any group of words, like a verse, chorus, bridge, etc. For arranging purposes, most stanzas are written as if they were paragraphs, explaining ideas in a group of words.

“Because I could not stop for death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The carriage held by just ourselves-
And immortality.”

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds. End rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds that come at the ends of lines in poetry. Internal rhyme occurs within a line when two words have similar sounds.

Rhyming can make songs flow along easier. However, don’t get caught up in rhyming. Those who do fail to express their ideas and focus more intently on the rhyming. Rhyming isn’t bad, but it shouldn’t be paid too much attention to.

“I think that many owls say Who-o;
At least the owls that I know do-o.
But somewhere when some owls do not-t
Perhaps they cry Which-h, Why-, or What-t.”

Rhyme Scheme

This is a repeated regular pattern of rhymes usually found at the end of lines in a poem or song.

“Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care.”

Rhyme schemes are designed to match the meter as well. Songs that have rhyme schemes normally have the same scheme throughout the song. But, a scheme can transfer and change in a song among different stanzas.

Rhythm

The musical quality created by a pattern of beats. The beats are made of a series of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm is a brother to meter, although rhythm can add a lot more to the song. For example:

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light!”

Meter

Meter is Greek for “measure.” Meter has a chart of certain levels, which won’t be covered here, in which the words can move. As to rhyming, meter is the measurement of syllables inside the lines. Specifically, it’s the stressing and unstressing of syllables inside the line. It’s closely related to rhyming in terms of measurement.

Clarification

This isn’t a poetic concept, although it can be seen throughout poetic works. It’s not documented or noted. I left this last since I felt poetic lyrics badly needed clarification to open the doors of the song to the viewer more widely. This way the viewer can be more interpretive and also be able to see your own concept. Sometimes writers will move their songs off more onto one side than another, which is still good.

The greatest point to look over when making your songs clearer to the viewer is that you have to be more specific. This means using a varied vocabulary, choosing between similes and metaphors, eliminating highly repeated words or lines, removing unnecessary conjunctions, and so forth.

Clarification can be seen as the tidying of the song’s final look. It also enhances the effect that the words have. If you are more specific and don’t have a lot of “mumbo-jumbo” in your work, then you will have more control over where the song is going. Steering the song where you want is always desired, but musicians leave this to their audience, whether lyrics are sung or read.

Accessibility to a song is always what makes it greater. If you can’t gain access to something, it’s generally useless other than to its creator(s). Songs are commonly played to audiences of people, and if those people can’t understand your song and have good access to it, there is a lost cause. Poems were often sung or spoken to others in the ages ago, giving them high reason to edit their works to be legible.

There is a great deal of people who play and write as a hobby, and I have nothing at all against this, but to those who perform, this is what you should have in your mind when you edit your works.

Closing Remarks

These explanations listed above should give you the bare essentials of writing poetic works. These are, in no way, the only way you can use them for songwriting purposes. Also, not all poetic terms were explained. Most of those that weren’t aren’t necessary.

If you wish to read more, follow a link to this Glossary of Poetic Terms. This is a full list of poetic terminology (from which some of my explanations partially came). Experiment with them and see what your lyrics can achieve. Sometimes adjusting poetic devices can lead to a higher flair in songs, almost as if the song’s style were your own.

I strongly suggest to anyone to play around with anything you wish. If you feel that more improvements should be made to fit your own tastes, then by all means do so. Music is a gift to the audience and to yourself!

Rock on and Happy writing!

An English Lesson was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

This was originally going to be an observation of emotion in music, but evolved into explaining my favorite aspect of playing, and my main reason for playing. I can remember why I chose the guitar as my instrument to master (or at least try to master!). When I was in the 6th grade, my mom told me I had to do an extra-curricular activity. I chose music. I decided to play the clarinet but by the end of the year I just didn’t feel like it was the instrument for me. The next year I was watching a classical song being performed on a local TV channel, and one main point popped into my head: (Remember, I was only in the 7th grade.) Playing classical instruments meant that you didn’t write music. Only the composer did that.

But why didn’t I choose the bass, or maybe the drums? In my view, with drum playing, you just banged a couple of things and made a rhythmic movement. As for bass, you were only playing a lot of low notes (Sorry, Dan!) Guitar was the only thing in the nuclear band (guitar, bass, and drums) that soared through and made its impression on your mind. When I heard Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing, I experienced what emotion in music really was. As the years progressed, I formed one of many philosophies: that music is made with emotion, played with emotion, and appreciated with emotion.

The Basics

So how do I explain exactly what emotion is in music? For the most part, we tend to think that a majority of emotional music is played with emotion. But instead, it is made with emotion. Intensity plays a major role in playing with emotion. Webster’s dictionary defines intensity as an “extreme degree of strength, force, energy, or feeling.” To make a scientific point, this means to vary the volume from quiet to loud. But this is not just a matter of turning up the volume knob on your amp. Intensity is how hard you pluck the strings, how much effort you put into bending the strings and also how much effort you put into all the other techniques.

Also, timing and speed play major roles in creating emotions through music. Tempo often dictates the differences among a plethora of feelings. A slow song in a minor key can induce gloomy, romantic, or other emotions while a fast song in a major key can induce upbeat, energizing and other motivating emotions.

But apart from all the features of music that almost anyone can relate to, there is another feature to deal with: individual interpretation. Emotion is incredibly interpretive. People grow up differently, live in different cultures, and have different events happen to them in their lives. While we all, thanks to globalization, have more shared or common experiences with people from all over the world than ever before, we still also have to be reminded that individual experiences will always be the strongest triggers for interpretation of emotion.

For example, let’s say a Japanese man and an American man are listening to the same song. Even though they might agree that the melody is melancholy, that a particular minor chord is “sad” or “dark” or one of many other descriptive words, each has a highly personal sense of what is sad to them as individuals. Our societies interact with each other, and in our own society, we communicate with the particular group we’re in. This leads us to the point that we share and feel the same things in some situations, even though we still have a personal rather than a universal interpretation.

Now, I might have just confused the hell out of you, but let me clarify with some distinct examples. Let us look at the song Every Breath You Take by Sting. Let us say me, the metal head, my friend, the acoustic folk guitarist type, and you were listening to our opinions and feelings about the song. I express my feeling that the song is “gleeful” and it contains the melody of some major progression. Most of my sad songs are in minor. And my friend finds it quite depressing, saying, “It seems like a man is trying to express his pains of loss.” You’ve just witnessed that my interpretation was based upon the harmony of the song and his was based upon what it may sound like in real life.

But how does this relate to the styles we play in, and the environment around us? Well, since I’m a metal head, my opinion was based upon the made with emotion concept. Since my friend is a folk guitarist, his was based on the played with emotion concept. Now, suppose we somehow agree that the song is “dark,” and then we compare it to Stevie Wonder’s cover of it. His version, if you haven’t heard it, is almost a total opposite in terms of style and interpretation. It’s an awful lot like Stevie’s Sir Duke — a fast tempo and a lot of horns. There would be no doubt that, when we compared these two versions, we’d definitely say Stevie’s version is a “happy” one. But is it the same song? What are the differences between the two? Well, among other things, the singer’s voice, the tempo, and the different instruments have affected the song’s shape dramatically.

Perception is the reason for interpretation. Perception is what renders or “bends” things differently in our eyes, ears, mouth, nose, skin, and every other sensory organ I didn’t include. Since we live in different places and have different things happen to us, perception is changed and edited subconsciously. We can take the sense of touch as an example. If you and I touched a rug, we would both agree it was “fuzzy,” but I may have a different response than you. This is similar to perceiving music. We may agree on some things, like the overall shape of the song, while we differ on the details.

Almost all societies have languages that can affect its people emotionally and deeply. For music, this is all the more true. What one may call a romantic love song with an odd ending, another can call a sad tale. We must rely on the fact that people have different views on things, and those views are vast and infinite.

Music Appreciation (with Emotion)

For this next concept I will mention an event that happened recently. I was at a Christmas party back in January. (Don’t you love how people plan!). I was quite bored from the lack of things to do except eat. I pulled out my guitar, started playing, and it led to striking up a conversation with a choir teacher. I mentioned my new article, “Playing with Emotion” to him. One of the interesting things he said, which I’ll quote exactly, was, “Well, it’s more like actually taking emotion out of music rather than infusing it with it. It seems to me that the only two things that don’t have emotion are the drained-out pop music and the completely atonal music.” And I highly agree with him.

But how do I listen and appreciate music with the element of emotion? Shouldn’t we already be feeling it? Shouldn’t the artist already have infused some portion of emotion into the song so that automatically it will pop out before we hear it? First, we should clear out all preconceived ideas. You may have heard people say that music, dance, or other non-verbal form of expression is the “universal language.” If we boil down this idea, we get interpretation. So, all in all, interpretation is the universal language. This leads to the taking of emotion my choir friend talked about.

Now, as I already said, each person sees the details differently. So, when we listen to a song, we must start nitpicking specific portions of melodies, lyrics (meanings and tone), the guitar’s tone, the way everything is arranged, and all the other stuff that doesn’t need to be mentioned. If we just listened to music normally, we would retrieve the “overall” look to it. But as musicians, we must look deeper for our inspiration. The reason we appreciate with emotion is for our enhancement and for an extra muse.

I have suggested many times to people looking for inspiration to sit down and concentrate on songs you wish to emulate. If you focus strongly enough, your mind will start retrieving small bits and pieces that you personally enjoy, and next time you begin to write a piece, this subconscious element will start weaseling its way into your style. As for me, I will tend to play whatever I’m listening to at that time, or what I’ve listened to for long periods. I’ll play this way for most of the rest of that period, or until I find something else that I get into.

Our experiences form our perception. Our perception creates our interpretation. Our interpretation affects our writing and playing. Our playing and writing affect the emotion in the song, and the process begins again for the next listener.

We will continue talking about the emotions in lyrics and singing, but not until another time! If you have any questions, please contact me directly at jeder@earthlink.net.

Rock on, everyone!

Playing With Emotion was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I was asked to review this because Dan felt that he was too old to “get it”. For the record, Dan got involved because one of his readers asked for the bass tab to the song Deny which he still hasn’t been able to find.

After my first listen, I wasn’t sure that I could write a good review, and Dan suggested that if I couldn’t write this review 51% positive, then I shouldn’t write it at all. I quite enjoyed the band; I feel that they do have their pro’s as well as their con’s like any other band. I will list them throughout the rest of this review.

But first, a little philosophy…

Today’s state of music has been over controlled by the ever constant need for ratings and consumers. Magazines and some TV shows rarely care any more about their own opinions, even if the whole show or magazine is all about different views. They want something that will get them more customers, and that means producing something that will appeal to the majority. So they give them what they want. If a reviewer suggests that something is of bad quality, while the majority of people today think it is of good quality, then the reviewer will lose a large amount of business. This is why so many businessmen and businesswomen must agree with their audience, this goes for non-entertainment purposes too. Just look at Microsoft Windows. Many of the much more computer literate people tend to find Windows to be a bother, and I agree. In fact, I had one of my aunts try to convince me that Windows was a good program since Bill Gates is a genius businessman, but not a genius programmer. But since this site is not about business and more about spreading all the large aspects of music, I feel free to give you my honest opinion about this CD. This review may possibly not be to your liking, or perhaps quite the contrary.

The band Default is more alternative than their hard rock label. Many of their songs hang around the key of D and seem more like descending or ascending progressions. Every other song seems to start out with some simple feedback to get it all going, which I rather feel to be a nuisance since it adds to the lack of variety throughout the album. But the album has a good mixture of punkish songs and slow power ballads, as derived from the beats, not the melodies. The singer, Dallas Smith, who closely resembles the voice of Creed’s frontman, has that basic midranged voice. And if your not familiar with Creed’s frontman, I will give a description. It’s much more midranged, as I said, and is sung almost between the boundary of soothing/screaming yet it never embarks too much on either side. It all boils down to a coincidence since Nickelback’s singer produced the album and he sounds close to the two artists, Creed and Default.

The lyrics revolve, like most other bands today, around the love concepts with songs like By Your Side and One Late Night . Dallas also takes a very slight “gloomy” glance to all his songs such as in the song Deny. In a nutshell, Deny is about a girlfriend leaving the character, and the character becomes so upset he won’t let her back into his life.

Matched to most other bands in this genre, Default lacks variety and diversity but so did Creed on their first album My Own Prison. However, Creed did contain a good blend of songs going outside the box of the contemporary ideal’s of love and pain. The only songs on The Fallout that weren’t distorted was Live A Lie and One Late Night, while Creed and bands like Live are big participants in mellow acoustic ballads. But don’t let this cloud your vision of the band totally. Just because Default doesn’t have the element of being continually changing and flowing through the album, doesn’t mean they’re terrible. Compared to other artists in this genre, they have a much “lighter” balance to their sound.

I wouldn’t recommend buying this album however. It became bland to me after a while, since it doesn’t display a large enough picture to the listener. If you are into the genre, then I would check them out, but spending 15 dollars on an album that could mold quickly is a waste, at least to me. I like a little more variety in my music.

Rock on!

Default – The Fallout was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Palm muting also, aside from chunkiness, adds a nice percussive sound to metal, rock, and believe it or not, blues. Blues used palm muting and still does (yes it does work with a clean channel on your amp or on your acoustic.) They use palm muting to get a bassier sound. Let’s say we palm mute a classic
blues riff.

PM = palm mute (all that is underlined)

E|----------------------|
B|----------------------|
G|----------------------|
D|-2-2--4-4--2-2--4-4---|
A|-0-0--0-0--0-0--0-0---|
E|----------------------|
PM____________________

But off of blues, let’s get to the real important stuff, HEAVY METAL!

Strumming

Strumming is an important factor. In most palm muting you want to strum down because you’re usually strumming only the three notes in the power chord. Sometimes, on some songs that is, you can strum up and down but will get to that later, another reason not to strum up and down is that one, it can change the pitch; and two, it can become harder to strum with. As an example for down strumming let’s try Black Sabbath’s Paranoid.

(Hint: every time you hit your foot down strum two notes, you can go slow if you want to. On E5 (the seventh fret power chord for beginners) is strummed 16 times and D5 (the 5th fret power chord) is strummed 8 times. I’ll supply you with the beat)

     1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4    1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9--7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--12--7----9----|
D|-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9--7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--12--7----9----|
A|-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7-7--5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5--10--5----7----|
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
PM_________________________________________________

While in other cases such Rammsteins song “du hast” there is a small little rhythm with the E5 (the open fret power chord) with an up and down rhythm. I’ll also point out when to strum up and down.

D = Strum Down
U = Strum up

   1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4   1   2   3   4
   D D D D D DU D  D D D D D DUD DUDU
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------|2x
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
D|-7-5-2-2-2-22-2--7-5-2-2-2-222-2222------------------------------|
A|-7-5-2-2-2-22-2--7-5-2-2-2-222-2222------------------------------|
E|-5-3-0-0-0-00-0--5-3-0-0-0-000-0000------------------------------|
     PM__________      ______________

Other Uses

There are also some other uses for palm muting such as single notes. I will go over an excerpt from a rapcore song by Rage against the machine called “bombtrack”.

E|------------------------------------------------------------------|
B|------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----------------------------0------------------------------------|
D|---2-0---0---------2-0---0-2------2-0---0---------2-0---0---------|
A|-------2---2-----------2--------------2---2-0---------2---2-------|
E|-0-----------3-2-0--------------0-------------3-0-----------3-2-0-|
PM___________________________________________________________________

Another is a fade out technique. Simply strum and bring down the edge of your hand causing the sustain to “fade out”. Remember to bring and push down on the strings slowly. The slower you push the slower you’ll fade. This works great at the end of a song. You can always come up with your own uses or tricks for palm muting as well.

Palm Muting was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Reasons

There are many reasons to learn different genres. One is to learn the theory behind it and another is to simply learn the genre for musical knowledge. Hey, as the saying goes “knowledge is power”. But how do you learn different genres, and at the same there are for reasons I believe there are many ways to learn different genres.

These are the steps I use to learn about a new genre:

1. Listen to a bit of the music
2. Check a site or ask a friend to teach you about it
3. Learn how to play it
4. Learn the tricks and tips behind it
5. Learn a couple of songs

Many of these work and you can find out other things to do as well. When you learn different music and (maybe) when you travel around someone may ask you “hey can you play such and such” you can play it for him. But just in case you don’t you can write it down and search for it. You don’t have to like all the genres you listen to but at least respect them for what they can teach you. Whenever you learn a new genre don’t say, “I am learning such and such” but instead say “I am absorbing a new form of music.”

As an example, Let’s say you are a beginning guitarist and you hear about the blues. Now you can go out to a music store or some sites and so forth and you find, and I suggest this too, a “best of” type of CD. In this case let’s make it John Lee Hooker and maybe even Muddy Waters. Check a site like this one. Or, if it’s a much more unknown type of genre (that is, it’s unknown to you by its theory and how to play it), then ask some friends who listen and play it all the time. Study everything about the genre, the theory, the history, even the sub-genres (we’ll talk about those later). As for the tricks used behind blues that is a simple thing to answer. It uses some of the most common types of tricks such as bends and slides and the tips they use behind the tricks would be to use them more emotionally. Now going back to the CD’s we got at the music store lets say we decide to learn Boom Boom by John Lee Hooker and Hoochie Coochie Man by Muddy Waters.

What Made (that genre) What?

Well that’s a big question to ask. what genre made what genre. To give a starting point in history the Spanish invented what we consider the modern guitar and so came classical and flamenco. But if you’re asking about what made a lot of the genres we have today, I would have to say I would the blues is the foundation of a lot of the genres we know. Blues made many forms of music (not all but a lot). So if you ever had to learn a single genre I would go with blues as a good starting point. Blues contains a major amount of the tricks used by today’s guitarists as well as a good deal of theory. But my suggestion is to learn anything and everything you can.

Distinguishing, Variations, Communities

Most genres have branches in which many “sub-genres” are formed by combining different theories. In blues there are forms of “sub-genres”, in this case country blues or folk blues, acoustic blues, Chicago blues, Delta blues, Texas blues, etc. These are all blues but they have different flavors. Taj Mahal is more of a country/folk blues person while guys like

Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker (even though they experimented with different forms of blues) played a form of Delta blues. Jimi Hendrix too was a blues guy but he managed to combine blues with so many different other styles. In making his music, he influenced many others as well.

Tips And Tricks (and other genres to check out)

Look at all the old stuff, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and so forth. And whenever you’re jamming with other guitarists ask them what they listen to and check it out. Also check out who are their role models. To wrap up, the major thing is that in order to be a versatile guitarist you must be stretch you knowledge. Learn as many genres as you can. Then learn to incorporate them into your own style of playing.

The Importance of Knowing Different Genres was written by Ryan Spencer for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise