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Learn to Play Guitar This New Year via Guitar Confidence’s Online Classes

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As we enter Dec, we always look out for offers, discounts, deals on gifts, and other things we buy for ourselves and our friends and family. And the best time to find these offers is during the holiday season.

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As we enter Dec when deals and offers are in full swing, Guitar Confidence is offering you another great deal. Here is your Black Friday opportunity to present yourself or your loved ones with online guitar classes. We offer mobile and personal one-on-one guitar classes, but because of the current COVID-19 pandemic, we are providing online guitar classes that you can learn from the comfort of your home.

So, if you are wondering what to give that special person in your life, why not gift him or her online guitar lessons this Christmas. Moreover, if you yourself love music then why not gift yourself this Black Friday Special offer!

You can buy our annual Black Friday Package at a 60% discount and get a package worth $275 for just $110.

Our Black Friday package includes:

  • Six 30 minutes’ private online guitar lessons
  • Gift envelop with 6 gift certificates
  • Two free Guitar, Ukulele, Banjo, or mandolin method books valued at $50 retail

So, you can save on online guitar learning lessons by purchasing Guitar Confidence’s Black Friday package. If you are interested in learning guitar, then this is the best time to start your classes as you automatically become eligible for our “Black Friday Guitar Lessons Special” offer! All you must do is visit our website.

Our master trainer Mr. Rex has over 40 years of experience as a musician, music instructor, arranger, and performing artist. He has been a guitarist in San Francisco Bay Area and New York City recording and performing with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr., Paul Simon, Michael Jackson, Wild Cherry, The Drifters, Tammy Wynette, Jackson Brown, The Pointer Sisters, Tower of Power and many others. His formal education was at Berklee College of Music, Boston MA where he majored in music arranging & composition. Mr. Bell studied classical guitar at New England Conservatory, Boston MA. He has studied under musical greats, e.g., Ron Parker, Harry Lahee, George Barnes, Warren Nunes, Don Haas, and Judy Davis.

How Good is your Guitar Knowledge? Test it with Rex from Guitar Confidence

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Think you know a lot about guitar facts? This blog list some of the interesting ‘Did You Know’ facts about guitar.

Guitar

  1. Guitar’s association with the healthy brain: Did you know, playing guitar or listening to music keeps the brain healthy: Music is great medicine for the brain and reverses the aging of the brain. Research conducted has found listening to music improves cognitive function. “If you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.” – Charles J. Limb, M.D., Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist.
  2. The first guitar: The first musical instrument to bear the name Guitar appeared in the 13th century, it has its origins in the Latin word Cithara. It was not until the 1200s that an instrument began to use the name. Guitarra Moresca, the Moorish Guitar and Guitarra Latina the Latin Guitar. The Spanish Vialo do Mano was perhaps the modern guitar’s closest ancestor, however. Appearing in the 15th century, it usually had 6 strings, and a familiar body shape, resembling a modern acoustic.
  3. Did Leo Fender know how to play guitar?: Leo Fender who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company and the inventor of Fender guitars was a saxophonist and never learned how to play guitar. In addition to that, he in fact was an accountant before losing his job in the Great Depression. After losing his job, he decided to turn his hobby of tinkering with electronics, radios, amplifiers, and the like, into a business, “Fender Radio and Record Shop”, which eventually led to what is now known as the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.
  4. Fender factory makes around 90,000 strings per day: This is over 20,000 miles a year, enough to circle the world. The company also makes around 950 guitar necks a day.
  5. World’s most expensive guitar: ‘Reach out to Asia’ Fender Stratocaster is the world’s most expensive guitar priced at $2.7million: The world’s most expensive guitar was auctioned in Doha in 2005. The guitar was signed by 19 performers – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus, and Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams. “Reach Out To Asia”, what this project came to be known as was an idea to raise funds to help the victims of the 2004 Tsunami Disaster. The music world came together to help aid the massive disaster that affected millions.

I am Rex, a guitarist and a guitar instructor with more than 40 years of experience as a musician. I have been a studio guitarist in San Francisco Bay Area and New York City recording and performing with artists such as Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr., Paul Simon, Michael Jackson, and many others.

If you are a beginner or if you have some knowledge about playing guitar and want to continue learning then contact me, I can help you learn guitar at your home or online. I have been doing online guitar lessons for some time now, since the start of COVID to be precise. Also, you get a free online trial session as well.

 

Skills an Advanced Guitarist Should Have in the Bag

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Do you know what the difference between you and an advanced guitarist is? Learning the craft of playing the guitar is different from no other. You need to consistently keep working on your skills as ‘creativity knows no bounds.’ Here are a few that you can start with and upscale along the way.

Using chord extensions

Chord extensions are a brilliant method to upgrade your regular chord progressions beyond your usual Maj/Min chords. You can experiment and substitute a few of your standard chord choices with some extended chords to explore more voice-leading possibilities and make your playing experience more interesting.

By mastering how to spice things up using chord extensions, you can surely take the level of your playing a notch up.

Using pedals to play with the tone

The sound of an electric guitar, as it is, is incredible, but when you see a top guitarist performing, there’s a lot more to it instead of just using their fingers to create such remarkable music.

An advanced guitarists would have a ton of distinctive tones in their head that they produce using the pedalboard. They will take assistance from several guitar pedals to modify their tone and add aspects they can’t just with guitar and amp alone. Numerous pedals of various shapes and sizes can help you do a plethora of things, from overdrives and distortions to delays, reverbs, choruses, pitch shifters, and more.

Using the Legato

Legato is a technique where you use your fretting hand to play multiple notes without picking each one. It is commonly associated with playing more notes within a beat than the stated timing. You might be familiar with this as hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides. However, maximizing the use of Legato requires a tremendous amount of practice and strength. So, you should be ready to put in the work for this one.

Percussive guitar and alternate tunings

There are certain skills, the possession of which can be invaluable to acoustic guitarists for achieving the maximum rhythmic and melodic freedom. Mastering alternate tunings require significant effort, coordination, and knowledge. But, the ability to tune your open strings to a chord can help you unlock the acoustic guitar’s full potential.

Two hand tapping

This is probably one of the ‘coolest’ techniques to learn on the instrument for all kinds of guitarists. Here, you need to use both your picking and fretting hands, either independently or in conjunction with one another, to hammer on or tap the fretboard in order to sound notes. Learning how to do this right will open up new opportunities for your solo compositions and significantly improve finger speed and coordination.

Hybrid picking

This is a technique where you do the usual picking with a pick with one or more of your fingers alternately or simultaneously. It will allow you to play sounds that would typically require fingerstyle playing. Developing the hybrid picking skill will unlock a unique approach to playing the guitar and the sounds you can produce.

Irrespective of which one of these skills appeals to you, mastering any would greatly amplify the quality of your music and improve all other aspects of guitar playing. These are just a few, and it never hurts to have some additional talents in the bag when you’re performing.

The Rise of Electric Guitar

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Adolph Rikenbekerom and George Beauchamp, in 1931, built the first electric guitar. Since then, the electric guitar has taken the music industry by storm. Musicians can play blues, rock, pop music, or jazz using an electric guitar. The electric guitar must be plugged into an electric amplifier for sound to be heard as the guitar sound is produced by the amplifier and not the guitar itself. Most of the electric guitars have a solid body, use steel strings with no sound holes. The strings used in the electric guitar are thinner than the acoustic guitar.

Electric Guitar

Guitar players regularly looked for ways to boost the sound of guitars in the early days. This journey for guitars producing louder noise intensified during the 1920s when big music bands and music recording companies were all interested in inventing loud guitars.

At the end of the 1940s, Leo Fender, a radio repairman, introduced a mass-produced Spanish-style solid-body electric guitar. This guitar model was replicated by Gibson, which Les Paul himself endorsed in 1952.

The popularity of the electric guitar rose during the 1950s and 1960s when it became the most important musical instrument in pop music. The electric guitar was a musical instrument that was capable of producing varieties of sounds and styles. It was instrumental in advancing pop music, rock music, electric blues, rock and roll, and different other categories of music.

In the 21st century, electric guitar features in almost all types of music played around the globe and are loved by all.

If you feel that you would love to learn this wonderful instrument, give GuitarConfidence.com a call. Our instructor Rex has now been doing online guitar lessons during this COVID pandemic. Get a Free Trial Class today!!

Guitar Confidence offers easy-paced guitar training especially for online students

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Guitar Confidence conducted a research to understand what guitar learning enthusiasts would like from an online guitar class. Based on the analysis, Guitar Confidence has designed online courses which cover all the aspects of guitar training, giving students the confidence to master guitar in the real world.

Guitar

Crafts like how to hold the guitar, how to operate the knobs on the head, what part and which finger should be hitting the string, among others, are included in the newly designed classes, especially for online students. Guitar Confidence’s trainer Rex through online courses, provides students all the necessary instruction, demonstration, and exercises for the very basics of operating a guitar so that they can master them quickly and move on to taking their guitar learning skills to the next level.

Figuring out how to play the guitar, especially with no musical background, is a bit of a journey. Rex will always encourage you to start this musical journey with tiny little steps. Most beginners who have tried to learn how this musical instrument with Rex has found that a slow and easy-paced approach was the best for them at the beginning of their guitar learning career. There is no falling behind when you practice with Rex, you may or may not race through, but if you need to drill on the basics, if you need more explanation on the very fundamentals, then Rex will always be there to provide you with all the help which you might need when you learn how to play guitar.

Rex’s online guitar teaching system is great for beginners and accomplished guitar players. He uses different sets of online methodologies for teaching both beginners and accomplished players. And the best part about Rex is that these online classes are private and one-to-one. So whether you want to play for pleasure or like to learn guitar, Rex will help you with your dream and provide you with one-to-one online lessons.

So, if you are a beginner or know about playing guitar and want to continue learning, then contact Guitar Confidence, and Rex can help you learn guitar at your home. Rex has been providing guitar lessons for many years. Guitar Confidence covers over 30 cities in the East Bay and South Bay areas; including Benicia, Berkeley, Clayton, Concord, Crocket, Danville, Dublin, Fairfield, Hercules, Lafayette, Livermore, Martinez, Moraga, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Vallejo, & Walnut Creek, CA.

Use Music to Keep Yourself in the Best Mood in this Pandemic

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Listening to some of your favorite Music can instantly rejuvenate you, but did you know that Music has health benefits? Music is everywhere; we listen to a romantic song when we are in love, play inspirational Music to increases the motivational level of athletes before a match and even play sad Music when we are not ok to go with the mood. And in this COVID-19 situation, Music can become a great healer.

Pandemic

Music is great medicine for the brain and reverses the aging of the brain. Research conducted has found listening to Music improves cognitive function. “If you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.” – Charles J. Limb, M.D., Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist

Music can free yourself from stress, in this pandemic environment, grabbing your guitar or any other musical instrument can help relieve stress. According to a study at Loma Linda University School of Medicine and Applied Biosystems and Mind-Body Wellness Center, stress can be reduced on a genomic level by playing a musical instrument. Rocking out reverses your body’s response system to pressure. Playing guitar is a form of relaxation as it acts as a form of natural medicine. Playing guitar improves your focus. All your energy and focus are concentrated on only the instrument and the music it produces, relieving you from your everyday pressure. So, if you are looking to escape from your day to day pressures, you should learn guitar today.

If you enjoy your exercise with some music, then you would be pleased to know that workout and Music make a very good team. According to research at Brunel University, it has been found that listening to music while workout increases the endurance of the body by up to 15%.

Both, listening and playing Music has great benefits. Music can reduce stress, blood pressure; and improve the quality of sleep, people’s mood, and, most importantly, mental health.

If you want to learn to play guitar apart from listening to it to stay doubly fit, then visit guitarconfidence.com for more information on our online guitar classes.

Which is Your Favourite Guitar?

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Since musicians started playing guitar, it has under a series of transformations. Today there are different types of guitars available in the market for a guitar player to purchase. Each of these different types of guitars has its specific sound.

Guitar

Electric Guitar

George Beauchamp and Adolph Rikenbekerom, in 1931, created the first electric guitar. Since then, it has taken the music instrument industry like a storm. Play rock, blues, jazz, or pop music using an electric guitar. Most guitarists will remember the first time they plugged in and played an electric guitar, which gives a breath-taking experience. This guitar has to be plugged into an electric amplifier for any noticeable sound to be heard as the sound is produced by the amplifier and not the guitar itself. Most of the electric guitars have a solid body, no sound holes, and use steel-strings. The strings used in the electric guitar are markedly thinner than the acoustic guitar, as the amplifier produces the sound. These guitars can be heavy, so wearing a shoulder strap is recommended. The size, number, and shape of the pickups may differ for each electric guitar, but they all fulfill the same result of being used for heavy metal, blues, rock, and jazz music.

Acoustic Guitar

Acoustic guitars produce the sound themselves. You don’t need an amplifier or any other device to play this type of guitar. Acoustic guitars are also called Dreadnaught guitar, folk guitar, flat-top guitar, or steel-string guitar (because of the kind of strings being used). The sound that this type of guitar produces is bright, brassy, deep, and forceful, which gives sheer pleasure to everyone’s ear. The guitar’s body is made of wood, and the sound is produced from the strings’ vibration while the hollow wooden body acts as an echo chamber. These guitars are available in two variants, one is the steel-string, and the other is classical. The steel-strings guitars produce a metallic sound that is a constituent of several trendy music styles, while the classical guitars have a wide neck and utilize nylon strings. But know that steel-string guitar will be louder than the classical guitar whether steel-string or classical, playing acoustic guitars will strengthen your fingers as you press down on the strings to make chord shapes. So, it is one of the best guitars to start your guitar learning process. Music style acoustic guitar supports are folk, country, ragtime, blues, and pop.

Bass Guitars

Bass guitars have wide-scale-length and thick strings, which produces a variety of notes that match the guitar’s lowest four strings. Both acoustic bass and electric bass guitars are available in the market. The difference in a bass guitar is that the majority has four strings compared to acoustic and electric guitars with six strings.

7 and 8 String Guitars

Seven and eight-string guitars have one and two strings more than the usual six. The seven-string guitar is used to extend the bass range, and it can also be used to extend the treble range of the six-string guitar. Some types of seven-string guitars are specific to cultures, such as guitarists from Russia and Brazil. Eight-string guitars are less common than six and seven-string guitars, but they are used by a few classical, jazz, and metal guitarists. However, eight strings guitars are typical for lap steel and pedal steel guitars. The eight-string guitar allows a broader range, or non-standard tunings, or both.

12 String Guitar

12 string guitar is a variation of the usual six-string guitar type. It has the normal six strings and another set of thinner strings. They are arranged in 6 courses in a set of 2 strings which are placed very close to one another. So, the strings form a pair and are played similar to a six-string guitar. The main effect of the 12 string is that it is louder than the six-string guitar.

I am Rex Bell, and my personal favorite is an acoustic guitar, which I always recommend to both my beginner and advanced guitar learning students.

If you would like to know more guitars and how to play them, visit my website guitarconfidence.com. You can also sign up for my free online trial class.

Guitar Confidence’s Master Trainer Rex Recommends Acoustic Guitar for Beginners

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To any new guitar player or a beginner, Rex recommends learning on an acoustic guitar. This is because if you can play on a steel-string acoustic guitar, you will play any guitar without facing any issues. This won’t be true for any other form of guitar. If you begin learning on an electric guitar, there is a fifty-fifty chance that you may or may not be able to play an acoustic guitar.

Acoustic Guitar

Most importantly, at the beginning of your guitar journey, your only aim should be to learn the essential guitar techniques you will be building on later, regardless of whether you’ll be playing the acoustic or electric guitar.

Acoustic guitars have their way of mesmerizing the crowd. The sound this guitar produces is bright, brassy, deep, and forceful, giving sheer pleasure to everyone’s ear. The guitar’s body is made of wood, and the sound is produced from the strings’ vibration while the hollow wooden body acts as an echo chamber. These guitars are available in two variants: the steel-string and the other is classical.

The steel-strings guitars produce a metallic sound that is a constituent of several trendy music styles, while the classical guitars have a wide neck and utilize nylon strings. Knowing that the steel-string guitar will be louder than the classical guitar, whether steel-string or classical, playing acoustic guitars will strengthen your fingers as you press down on the strings to make chord shapes. So, it is one of the best guitars to start your guitar learning process. Music style acoustic guitar supports are folk, country, ragtime, blues, and pop.

If you want to add guitar to your life by learning to play, then visit guitarconfidence.com or give us a call. Our master trainer Rex Bell, has been doing mobile guitar lessons for many years. We also offer online guitar classes.

Get your free online trial class today!

Tips for Buying the Best Guitar This Holiday

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Certainly, buying your first guitar involves considering several factors, including the kind of music you want to play. Our experts have compiled some facts to help you avoid making a hasty decision and purchasing the first guitar you come across. The information will also help evaluate the kind of guitar you want to buy within a specific budget. If you are keen for more info, check out our comprehensive guitar-buying guide below.

black friday guitar

Get the Right String Action

String action is the measurement of the space between the guitar strings and the surface of the fret. If the action is too high, it will be difficult to play the guitar. Besides, it may get very painful for a beginner’s fingers. When you are buying a new guitar this holiday, look for one with low action. Ideally, it should range between 1-2.7 millimeters for electric and acoustic guitars. For nylon-string classical guitars, the string action should be 3-3.6 millimeters. You can have the string action of your new guitar adjusted or set up professionally

Buy the Guitar, Not the Brand

The most experienced guitar players around the world recommend that one should not buy a guitar based on the brand name. Notably, some guitars are may be of very high quality but from an unknown brand.

On the other hand, a guitar may be from a known brand but with very low-quality material and accessories. That implies that one must be vigilant to check the quality of the guitar and not the brand. If you are not sure, you can ask for referrals from guitar teachers or seasoned musicians.

Budget for the Accessories

Once the actual guitar is purchased, one may forget about obtaining the extras needed due to anxiety and excitement. Some accessories that may be required to make playing guitar effective including an amp, guitar cases a stand, among others. When buying your guitar, you need to obtain some of few common accessories that are budget-friendly for beginners. You need to select picks of the right material and thickness that can help you strum or pluck without using your fingers all the time. When choosing straps, it would be best to check the length depending on the desired length or type of guitar that you have acquired.

Be Ready To Spend

You can spend all the money in the world on a guitar. Even so, your first guitar as a beginner does not have to cost that much. Typically, a good guitar for a beginner should range between $200 and $500. When buying a guitar this holiday, check to ensure that you get a discounted price that is between the recommended price ranges. Even so, avoid buying a cheap guitar that is probably costing less than $150. It is prudent to note that expensive guitars are more durable, have better tone, and are easier to play. Therefore, you could spend more than the range suggested here. The more you spend, the better your guitar will be.

Are you aware of the types of Guitar?

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“Sometimes the nicest thing to do with a guitar is just look at it.” Thom Yorke

Did you know there are different types of guitar available today, each one having their own unique sound!  Acoustic guitar and Electric guitar are the two most common guitars, but there are more including 12 string guitar, 7 and 8 string guitar, bass guitar, etc. Let’s take a look at some of the most common and main types of guitars.

Acoustic Guitar

Acoustic guitars produce the sound themselves, you don’t need an amplifier or any other device to play this type of guitar. Acoustic guitars are also called Dreadnaught guitar, folk guitar, flat-top guitar or steel string guitar (because of the kind of strings being used). The sound that this type of guitar produces is bright, brassy, deep and forceful which gives sheer pleasure to everyone’s ear. The guitar’s body is made of wood and the sound is produced from the vibration of the strings while the hollow wooden body acts like an echo chamber. These guitars are available in two variants, one is the steel-string and the other is classical. The steel-strings guitars produce a metallic sound that is a constituent of several trendy music styles while the classical guitars have a wide neck and utilize nylon strings. But know that steel-string guitar will be louder than the classical guitar. Whether steel-string or classical, playing acoustic guitars will strengthen your fingers as you press down on the strings to make chord shapes. So, it is one of the best guitars to start your guitar learning process. Music style acoustic guitar supports are folk, country, ragtime, blues, and pop.

Electric Guitar

It was 1931, when George Beauchamp and Adolph Rikenbekerom created the first electric guitar. Since then it has taken the music instrument industry like a storm. Play rock, blues, jazz or pop music using an electric guitar. Most guitarists will remember the first time they plugged in and played an electric guitar it, gives a breath-taking experience. This guitar has to be plugged into an electric amplifier for any noticeable sound to be heard as the sound is produced by the amplifier and not the guitar itself. Most of the electric guitars have a solid body; no sound holes, and uses steel-strings. The strings used in an electric guitar are markedly thinner than the acoustic guitar, as the sound is produced by the amplifier. These guitars can be heavy, so wearing a shoulder strap is recommended. The size, number, and shape of the pickups may differ for each electric guitar but they all fulfill the same result of being used for heavy metal, blues, rock, and jazz music.

7 and 8 String Guitars

Seven and eight-string guitars have one and two strings more than the usual six. The seven-string guitar is used to extend the bass range; it can also be used to extend the treble range of the six-string guitar. Some types of seven-string guitars are specific to cultures such as guitarists from Russia and Brazil. Eight-string guitars are less common than six and seven string guitars, but they are used by a few classical, jazz, and metal guitarists. However, eight strings guitars are typical for lap steel and pedal steel guitars. The eight-string guitar allows a wider range, or non-standard tunings, or both.

12 String Guitar

12 string guitar is a variation of the usual six-string guitar type. It has the normal six strings and another set of thinner strings. They are arranged in 6 courses in a set of 2 strings which are placed very close to one another. So, the strings form a pair and are played similar to a six-string guitar. The main effect of the 12 string is that it is louder than the six string guitar.

Bass Guitars

Bass guitars have wide scale-length and thick strings which produces a variety of notes that match the lowest four strings of the guitar. Both acoustic bass and electric bass guitars are available in the market. The difference when it comes to bass guitar is that majority has four strings as compared to acoustic and electric guitars which have six strings.

So, if you are looking to buy a guitar from San Ramon, then there are various shops around. Or you can contact us and Rex can help you learn guitar at your home and recommend the right guitar for you.

Learn to Play Guitar in the Privacy of Your Own Home

Our guitar instructors come to you to give you personal one-on-one lessons in the privacy of your own home. We cover Dublin, San Ramon, Pleasanton, Livermore and all cities in east and south bay

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Contact us for guitar lessons or more information at:

Guitar Confidence
4101 Dublin Blvd
Suite F, #537
Dublin, CA 94568

(925) 695-7060

guitarconfidence@gmail.com

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