Some popular keys and common chord progressions

In contemporary music there are some keys that are very popular and commonly used. I will talk about some of those keys and their chord progressions and how they can be used in song writing.

Some of the very popular keys in modern music would be G, C, D, A, Am and Em. If you study the contemporary music you would see that majority of the songs actually belong to either of the above mentioned keys. Lets talk about the regular chords that we have in these keys

For G there is only one sharp which is F# and the chords are

G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em and F#dim
Em is the related minor key of G so Em has the same chords as G major

In the key of C we have no sharp and the chords are

C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am and Bdim
Where Am is the related minor key

In D we have two sharps F# and C# and the chords are
D, Em, F#m, G, A, Bm, C#dim
With Bm as the related minor key

In A we have F#,  C# and G# and the chords are
A, Bm, C#m, D, E, F#m, G#dim
And F#m is the related minor key

Now if you want to write a song say for example in the key of C then you can use the listed chords since they will all sound good with C. You can also switch between the key of C and the key of A minor since they are related. This will give you more dimensions in song writing and also will help you when it comes to improvising.

Whats the most important thing about playing guitar

Playing guitar includes lots and lots of different skills and techniques.. It includes speed, maintaining the groove, playing in rhythm, maintain a good dynamics, understanding the musical theory and be a good composer and improviser. But what is the most important out of all? Well if you ask me I would say it is maintaining the groove/tempo and playing in rhythm. You can be the fastest guitar player or great improviser but if you can't maintain the groove it will never sound that pro and your audience will never be able to feel your music to the extent you want them to. So your first priority would be to get the groove going and this is something that you should practice from day one.

You should always practice with the metronome. Playing with metronome can be quite boring at times. You can try the drums presets. There are many computer software out there where you can choose the type of beat and control the tempo. You can also practice playing along with different songs.

One advice that I always give to my students is to learn maintaining the groove by tapping the foot while playing a certain tune. It can be a little tricky at first specially while playing some difficult tunes. But soon you will get used to it. And your playing will be a lot tighter than before. You can also try bobbing your head instead of tapping your foot or you can try them both together.

You need to work on all the other skills but this should get the highest priority. This one skill makes the biggest difference between an amateur guitar player and a professional one.

How to be a successful music teacher

Teaching guitar can be a great way of improving one's own playing but apart from that financially it can be a very rewarding job. I can say from my own experience that once you can setup the business and get it going, you can make more than many of the blue-collar jobs out there.Getting it started and building a good loyal client base is the hardest part. I will share few things that I did over the years that helped me big time in setting up my business and hope it will help you too.

1. When you start a music school, you are not just a musician or music teacher, you are also a businessman, so be professional:
Most musicians completely forget the fact that they are also businessmen the moment they start a music school. If you cannot think like a businessman, no matter how good you are as a musician or music teacher, it is highly likely that you will make less money than what you could. You have to get that professionalism and businessmanship along with being a good music teacher. You can do courses on how to manage a small business, read books on entrepreneurship, talk with other people who are successfully managing small businesses and learn from them. The moment you understand the business aspect of guitar school and learn how to manage it properly, you will start to experience the difference.

2. Branding is important, You need to focus what is different in your school:
This is the key to long run success. There has to be something different about your music school. Either there has to be something unique about the pricing or something different about the lessons you provide. Whatever it is, you have to figure it out and more importantly you have to spread that information, use it as the special feature of your school when you do your marketing. Using a logo for the guitar school, a unique tshirt for the teachers etc are some other important factors in establishing your schools brand.

3. Let your students feel that they are getting more than what they are paying for:
This is another important thing in becoming a successful music teacher. If your students feel that they are paying more for each lesson then you know you are going to lose them. It has to be the other way round. They need to feel that they are  paying less than what they are supposed to. Now how can you make them feel that? One obvious way is to lower the lesson fees but from my experience I know that it doesn't work that well. You need to charge the regular fee or perhaps a little more but you gotta offer them some added benefits. Small little things like offering a monthly exclusive jam with your band or just you, building an online database of teaching materials and giving them access to it, giving them picks/music books etc are some examples. None of these are very expensive but these added benefits will make your students feel that they are getting the value of their money and as a businessman this is what you want your customers to feel.

Some essential tips on uploading youtube guitar videos and making money from them

Making youtube videos is a good way to make some side income if you are a guitar player/musician. It was a really good source few years back but these days there are too many videos and too many youtubers. So it gets difficult to stand out and get a decent crowd even if your video is of great quality. There are lots of tricks and tips on how you can make your video stand out among all other videos and I will talk about that on a different article. But here I will only talk about the types of videos that you can make.

Your own composition:
If you write your own music then youtube can be a very good platform to get some audience for your music. Write music of different styles and genre, for different moods and upload them on youtube. Naming your song is the key part in getting good search engine response. Make sure to mention the sort of mood/emotion your music can create for example sad,happy, romantic tc and use that in the name of your song or atleast in the tag section.

Backing tracks:
Another useful thing that can get you a decent traffic would be backing tracks or jam along tracks. upload backing tracks in different keys of different genre. They seem to be really popular among musicians as they can practice improvisation over these tracks. Try uploading backing tracks on keys that are not very common. That way you will have higher chance of being in the top videos in the search list.

Cover songs:
Covering your favorite songs, solos etc is another good way of getting lots of hits. But you have to be careful with this because in most cases monetization will not be allowed if you play your part over the original track/song. If you want your videos to be monetized, you will need to make rendition of the songs instead of covering it as it is. It will be more like your version of that song/solo. That way you can monetize them and also can get lots of traffic.

5 ways you can make money playing guitar

Playing guitar is fun and its perhaps one of the best hobbies one can have. Apart from the joy of playing guitar, there are some other monetary incentives that can motivate one to become a better player. I have seen many great guitar players out there who are not making much money out of it, and I have also seen many average guitar players making a living from just playing guitar. So just being a good guitar player is not the key to financial success, rather there is more to it. You have to be disciplined. well organized and move forward with a goal if you want to make money from playing guitar. These are the five things through which you can make money

1. Guitar lesson: Well perhaps its the most obvious one but some of you probably don't know how much money can be earned through giving guitar lessons. You have to be disciplined and take it seriously. If you work hard, do the marketing properly then you can have tons of students. I will write another article on how to optimize the income from guitar lessons but just remember that it is the biggest source of income for most guitar players.

2. You tube monetization: Youtube is a beautiful platform for musicians. You can upload your own compositions, renditions of popular songs or tutorials of how to play different songs can be really a good way of getting lots of views and also make some money in the process.

3. Selling tabs and sheet music: You can create tablature or sheet music of popular songs or your songs if they are popular to some extent and sell them online. To make big bucks from this is quite unlikely but you should still do that. Always remember that you need to optimize your earning and so you should not miss out any opportunity.

4. Busking: It might sound unreal but I have seen guitar players making around 20-40 dollars an hour playing guitar on the street specially during weekends and holidays. You need to be careful about the location though. If you can pick a suitable location and if you are a good guitar player you can make some decent money and also get some good guitar practice while doing it. There is nothing to be ashamed of about busking and if you are confident about your guitar playing I'd suggest you give it a go and see how it works out for you.

5. Performance, composition and selling your record: And finally the most obvious one, you can sell your own music online or through any other platform, play in live gigs and get paid for it. This requires a certain degree of popularity and like I said, it is the ultimate form of making money in the music industry being a guitarist and that is the dream most guitar players have. But until you get to that stage why don't you try all the other opportunities that I just talked about and see how they work out for you? I have tried them all and some worked better than the others for me. See which one works best for you.

Is covering other's songs is a good way of learning?

I find this a very controversial topic. In one hand covering others songs is definitely a good thing since one can learn lots of new techniques and ideas. But that's just the good part and many teachers or music students will only look at the good things that come with covering others songs. But let's talk about the negative aspects of covering songs.

I personally think that covering others songs can kill or to some extent ruin ones creativity. Suppose you are a big fan of slash and you have covered all his songs, studied his compositional ideas. Trust me, consciously or subconsciously this will impact your creativity and your style of music. It will be highly influenced by slash, even if you are not consciously trying to copy him. There is only one Slash, so your music will always be titled as slash influenced and it will never get its unique identity.

On the other hand if you minimize covering other songs and try to develop your own ideas, own skills, techniques that you need for your music then in the long run you will create a style of yours that many people will admire and perhaps try to incorporate in their playing. I think that's the ultimate goal of any musician. To be able to create something that's unique and that will live for a long time. So yes I stand against covering songs as a mean of learning guitar or any instrument as a matter of fact if you are willing to be a composer and performer. But if your goal is solely to be a performer then that's something that you must do.

How to improve your down picking

Fast and powerful down picking is essential if you want to become a mighty good riffer. Even for playing guitar solos, down picking is a very commonly used and useful technique. The best thing about down picking is that you get a nice uniform sound for every time you hit the strings with your pick unlike alternative picking. The dynamics of a down stroke and up stroke is so very different. So there are times when you would require only down strokes to get the desired sound. It is a skill that you should have in your arsenal.

Now how do you improve your down picking? There are two important things about down picking, speed and power. Specially if you want to use it for playing some powerful guitar riffs you must have both to make it sound good. Now here are some tips to improve your down picking

To improve power: You must remember that dynamics is very important and you want that skull crushing powerful sound when you are using down picking, specially when you play riffs. So always play powerfully when you practice. Its going to hurt a little at first. Your muscles will become slightly sore. If your wrist muscles tense up then take a break for few minutes and resume the practice. Play one part of a song that you like that uses down picking. You don't have to play the full song at the beginning. If you do that then within few months your wrist muscles will develop the power and you will be able to play the whole song. And slowly you will develop the power and control to play few songs using powerful downstrokes. Always remember, if you can play powerfully, you can also play with light delicate touch if its required. But if you don't practice this then your wrist muscles wont be able to deliver the sort of power that is required when you will need it.

To improve speed: The most important thing for improving speed is economizing the pick movement. You don't want to move your wrist too much, you don't want to move your pick too much cause that's just going to waste time and energy. You want the pick to stay very close to the strings and you want to play with minimum movement of the pick. To maintain good power while minimizing pick movement can be a challenge and that would require few months of good practice. You have to understand that its not going to happen in a day. It will require some time so you need to have the patience.

How to be a successful musician

 Before we get to that lets define success. I mean what is success without happiness? What's the point of being successful but unhappy? Doesn't really work that way right? So we are talking about being a kind of musician that will make one happy and give musical success at the same time.

Now we human beings require many things in life to be happy and successful. There is no one thing that can make us happy or successful, Its a combination of many things. Many young stars when they get into music, specially guitar, they really forget about everything else in life. I know that cause I was the same when I started and so were many of my friends. I used to practice long hours ignoring everything else that I was supposed to do. After a while my guitar playing skills really improved, but was I really happy? Well to some extent yes, but I could be happier if I worked differently.

The key to success and happiness would be maintaining all the priorities of life. As I said we need a combination of things in life to be happy, you need to maintain a priority list and go for all those things, not just one.

Imagine having crazy guitar playing skills but unhealthy and unfit at the same time. Or not having any friends, financial liberty, or social acceptance. Can you be happy with just your skills? Most likely NO. You might think that's all you need specially when you are young but trust me, in the long run you will regret.

So how can you be a mad guitar player or musician and be happy at the same time? The key is consistency. Instead of working too hard and long hours on practicing guitar you have to practice for a short time ( say two hours max) but you have to do it consistently. And two hours of good practice, not just fooling around. No matter what, whether you feel good or bad you have to do your 2 hours practice everyday, and have patience. Don't expect the good things to happen over night. Make a long term goal and slowly move towards it. This way you can also work to achieve other things in life that you have on your priority list.

Trust me, this works. The second thing you have to do on a regular basis would be 'marketing'. Spend about 30 mins of your time everyday on marketing your music on social networking sites, blogs, you tube and any other web based media where you can share your music. Don't expect people to discover you and become your follower just because of your musical talent. There are thousands of talents like you out there if not more. So why should they follow you? The only reason can be good presentation and good marketing. You need to spread your music and let them know you exist.

You do these two things consistently and let me know how it goes for you. The most important thing is to have patience and be consistent.