Mokless Girgis Music

By Heidi MacLean

So you play guitar and you want to get creative? Are you sick of practicing scales to where you lose sense that your fingers are even attached to those hands of yours? Do you want to actually come up with songs that no one else ever wrote, songs that you wrote?

Coming up with new licks, new melody lines, and new song ideas is not too difficult. While some guitarists have little problem devoting themselves to perfect their rendition of Crazy Train or Villa Lobos’ second prelude and yet cannot come up with an original song idea to save their fingers, others can churn out new ideas just by putting their finger tips down on the fret board . The same may yet dread having to beat out something as trite as Spanish Romance for the umpteenth time just to get that key change right.

As someone who strongly associates with the latter, I am here to give out the basics on how I come up with a new song idea just about each time I start strumming away.

1. Chords. Play around with what chords you know. Switch them around. Play them in different voicings and just switch between that Bb Maj7 to that Am7. Learn new chord types. Do you know all of your major and minor inversions? Good. Now learn the major seven and minor seven inversions. Don’t neglect those delicious diminished, diminished sevenths, augmented, augmented sevenths, and the like. The more chords you know, the more colors you have for your palette.

For those who get easily discouraged by simply churning out songs written by others, this will help you gain greater competency with chords and will help train your ears and hands to find ear-pleasing harmonies by switching chords. Sometimes, you go to that one major sixth to that diminished seventh and it sounds so right. Then you try to find the next chord that sounds perfect after that diminished. You will probably find a melody being spelled out on the higher strings, meaning the E and B open strings especially. With various voicings, you can develop chord melodies that sound great.

2. Scales. Learn new scales. Learn the chief formations. Learn the notes. Scales aren’t just good for solos. Scales can be an effective way to generate new licks as well as full-fledged melodies. Of course, the primary scales you will want to know all along the neck are your Ionian and Aeolian scales which, simply put, are your major and natural minor scales. You’ll went to know the harmonic and melodic minors, the Dorian and Phrygian modes, blues scale, and such. As you simply play around with the scale formations, you’ll probably find yourself developing little leads. Don’t trash them. Keep them in mind, make note of them.

A site that has an extensive amount of information on mainline and exotic scales is http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse which I have found innumerably useful. Not only will you be learning scales, you will, hopefully anyways, be having fun doing it and find that scales are easier to learn and are easier to utilize in playing in general.

3. Play around with single notes. Sometimes you are playing around with simple single notes on the fret board without thinking in terms of scales, though hopefully you will know if you are playing in a major or minor key and which key at that. However, as someone who is also a keyboard player, I find it much easier to come up with melodic lines on guitar than on any other instrument I play. Playing with single notes serves as a great opportunity to train your ear and hands to create coherent leads. It also allows room to work on slides, slurs, and string bending. But as mentioned previously, single notes can be a reservoir to generate beautiful melodies.

If you don’t know how to play a keyboard instrument to match up a harmony with that melody, you can try to work chord voicings to carry both the melody and harmony, thus creating a chord melody. If full chords become too much trouble, you can simply play two notes at a time, one being the melody and the other to be the bass line or harmony. Listen how different harmony notes change the mood of the melody. The results of this process can be quite rewarding.

4. Hum and play. For some reason, the voice seems to have a better comprehension of melody than our fingers and intellect do. Perhaps this is why I have often been told to hum and play. Play what you hum. Hum what you play. Through this process, melodies should come much easier for those who struggle with the above method. Melodies developed through this process should also sound fresher than when just fishing for notes. Your voice will get worked on a bit, especially when challenging your vocal range, but in this way there will be presented a prospect of unity with the voice and the instrument which can be of a valuable asset for the guitar especially.

5. Improvise over chords. Some computer programs, like Band In The Box, allow the user to create a chord progression for the program to play for them. They can then solo over the accompaniment. There are also MP3s and MIDI files across the internet that are just harmony. If you know the chord progression or even just the key, or if you know how to find the key, you can also improvise your own melodies and licks. Even with songs you have that have the lead and the works, you can still improvise a lead if you know the song’s key at least. If your ear has not been trained to fish for notes until you find the note that the song resolves to, there are ways to accustom your ear to do this at whim. However, the point is that this is a good way to practice improvisation as well as come up with song ideas aside from training your ear.

6. Play around melodies of songs you like. Perhaps there are songs that you enjoy playing. You enjoy the melody or whatever and know how to play the song or can read the notes off of tablature or sheet music. Play those songs and gradually veer off from the actual melody into a melody that sounds similar but is yet original. I have done this on not only guitar but piano as well where I recently came up with a full fledged song and chord progression by playing the first two or three notes of the song and then venturing into a melody entirely my own that still captured the mood of the original piece. Many great composers have created their own opuses by being directly inspired by a predecessor. Music is about creating possibilities by arranging and rearranging basic elements as it is in visual art. This is not plagiarism in that it is more like creating a rather unrelated idea from a phrase, a quote, or a thematic element in a literary work or television show. Being inspired by another’s work and producing tangible results of that inspiration would be far more a compliment to the artist than anything else and is how art trends develop through decades and centuries. Art is unique and yet is interconnected. Don’t forget that. You could be someone’s inspiration in years to come, after all.

7. Be passionate and have fun. Enjoy what you are doing. Often I hear that if you do what you love, the rest will follow whether the rest means money, success, acclaim, whatever. Life is too short to waste it on selling dreams to be so security seeking that you lose the richness of experimentation and exploration. But whatever it is you are doing with your instrument, it should be meaningful to you. Doing what you want to do versus what you have to do yields better results more quickly, often. So while music requires discipline and hard work, don’t be afraid to once in a while step away from the instrument for a day or two when you feel locked in a senseless routine. Always keep your creative juices flowing, but above all, love it and have fun with it.

Mokless Girgis

It is our heartfelt desire that your moment on our place is enjoyable and that you are left inspired and empowered. We too receive you to fall us a cable to let us recognize about your experience with us.

Mokless has been called to go his talents globally. His talents include playing the keyboards, piano, and the lute. Writing, recording, and performing around the world, he is often referred to as the Golden Voice and the Voice of the Nile Valley.

Mokless Girgis‘ performances have been sponsored by many powerful organizations around the World. Mokless has performed for several world leaders that include ambassadors of many countries, including Egypt, Israel and the Philippines.

 

Mokless Girgis

8350 Wilshire Blvd Ste 200

Beverly Hills, California, 90211

http://arabicaudiomagazine.info

mokless@moklessgirgis.com

Author: Peter Edvinsson

It is really exciting to play guitar! You can experiment with chords in a completely different way than on the piano. The construction of the guitar and the tuning of the strings allow you to find these easy sounding chords!

You will first learn a very easy form of tablature with only numbers. Tablature staffs written the ordinary way can easily be displayed in a distorted way in articles like this one.

To show how to read the tab notation I give you this note to play on your guitar:

3/2

The first number tells you to play the third fret. The number after the slash indicates which string to play. This means that you are to play the third fret on the second string. That will be the note D on an commonly tuned guitar.

Open chords are used in many types of guitar tunes. First you have to know what an open chord is. It usually refers to the most common chords played in the first position with some open strings, that is, strings that are not pressed down.

You will start with an ordinary C-chord. It looks like this:

C: 3/5 2/4 0/3 1/2 0/1

Now you are going to try the nice sounding but easy Fmaj7 chord by changing two fingers. Here it is:

Fmaj7: 3/4 2/3 1/2 0/1

these two chords can be played together as an intro to your new song for example.

You can play them like this:

C / / / Fmaj7 / / / C / / / Fmaj7 / / /

We will now take a look at a chord you will find by sliding the Fmaj7 chord up two frets. You will get the chord G6:

G6: 5/4 4/3 3/2 0/1

We can now play the following chord progression:

C / / / Fmaj7 / / / G6 / / / Fmaj7 / / / C

You will now test a chord progression starting with the common open A-minor chord that can be used together with the previous progression. Here is the A-minor chord:

Am: 0/5 2/4 2/3 1/2 0/1

By sliding this chord up two frets you will get a nice sounding chord that can be called Bm7add11:

Bm7add11: 0/5 4/4 4/3 3/2 0/1

The last chord in this progression is an open A-minor 7th chord in the fifth position:

Am7: 0/5 5/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

The guitar chord progression with the previous chord shapes will look as follows:

Am / / / Bm7add11 / / / Am7 / / / Bm7add11 / / /

We will now play a little chord progression with the previous Am7 chord. We will need two more chords to complete this progression. Here is the open Am6 shape:

Am6: 0/5 4/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

We will now alter the fret on the fourth string again and we will get the Fmaj7/A chord.

Fmaj7/A: 0/5 3/4 5/3 5/2 0/1

Here you have a guitar chord progression with the last chords we learned:

Am7 / / / Am6 / / / Fmaj7/A / / / Am6 / / /

Let’s take a look at the open E-major chord:

0/6 2/5 2/4 1/3 0/2 0/1

By sliding this chord up three frets you will get the following interesting guitar chord:

0/6 5/5 5/4 4/3 0/2 0/1

It is a form of the E-minor 7th chord.

If you continue to slide this chord up you will get an A-major add 9 chord:

Aadd9: 0/6 7/5 7/4 6/3 0/2 0/1

If you move the chord up two more frets you will get a B sounding chord that can be called Bsus/E:

0/6 9/5 9/4 8/3 0/2 0/1

These three chords can replace the more common E, A and B chords in a progression.

Starting with the open E-major chord you will now learn a flamenco guitar sounding progression

First, the E-major chord:

0/6 2/5 2/4 1/3 0/2 0/1

Now, slide this chord up one fret and you will find the three open strings sounding the same but blended with a F-major chord on the strings that are pressed down. An interesting morish sounding chord. Here it is written with tabs:

0/6 3/5 3/4 2/3 0/2 0/1

The next chord to use in this flamenco progression is the E-minor 7 chord you will get by sliding the chord two frets further up the fretboard:

0/6 5/6 5/5 4/3 0/2 0/1

You can do many things with the basic open guitar chords by sliding them to other frets and slightly change them.

Author: Kevin Sinclair

There are many musical instruments to choose from, depending on budget and personal preference. There are also various ways to learn. The traditional way is to learn your instrument on a one to one basis with a teacher. You could also learn from a book, a CD or DVD, or online. The problem with learning from a book is that you cannot hear how the notes are supposed to sound and compare yours to them. This is especially true if you want to learn to sing. Reading about how to sing and actually hearing the notes are totally different.

Learning online, even though you might not have considered it before, has some great benefits. First of all, online learning provides a complete audio visual experience. You can see how to position your fingers on your instrument and also hear the exact note you should be aiming for. Online learning can be either free or very cheap, unlike a tutor, and you can begin your lesson whenever is convenient for you, rather than make an appointment with a tutor and have to travel to his or her house or studio.

If you are a slow learner, you can repeat the online lesson. A personal tutor normally charges an hourly rate. Some people simply cannot afford to attend lessons or travel back and forth to them, especially after paying the cost of a guitar, piano or other costly instrument. Without online lessons, they might not be able to learn at all.

Learning to play a musical instrument online might not be right for you, however. For one thing, when you have a tutor and make a mistake, your tutor will correct you. The tutor will be watching your fingering and the way you handle your instrument. He or she will also be listening to your music and you will get feedback. The online learning process is one way. If you are making a mistake, nobody is going to tell you and you might learn bad playing habits which are difficult to get rid of later.

If you decide to learn an instrument online, there are a few things you ought to know before starting. First of all, there are literally hundreds of online courses so it will be confusing to find the right one. The prices range from nothing to the price of a private tutor, but pricing is not the only consideration. The quality of the online lessons is as important as the cost, if not more so, so you should check several out before committing yourself.

A good course will include audio, video and perhaps animations too. Some also include email consultation or software to help you with your learning.

A sensible thing to do is to check out forums for your preferred instrument. For example, if you wish to learn the guitar, you can read reviews in guitar forums. Somebody might have learned online and rave about a particular course. It is handy to see what other people thought of the course you are considering and find out whether it sounds suitable for you.

Many courses also offer a money-back guarantee after 30 or 60 days, which is reassuring. This means that the course creators are very confident that you will be able to learn your instrument and they have faith in their online lessons. A course with a guarantee is preferable to one without.

You can choose from beginner or advanced lessons. Did you learn to play your instrument in school many years ago and are looking for a refresher course, or are you totally new to the world of music? This can affect which online course would suit you best.

Some people can learn with a tutor and find it hard to discipline themselves to learn online when there is not another person physically present. It depends on your individual learning style. Other people would feel more comfortable and relaxed learning from the comfort of their own house. It depends what would work for you. Perhaps you tried using a private tutor and it did not work out.

Author: David Taylor

At some point, all guitarists need to learn how to change the strings on their guitar. Sometimes you’ll be forced to change one when a string snaps. But usually, you’ll simply want to change them, as strings lose their brightness and wear out.

The amount of time you leave between change strings varies depending on several factors. If you play your guitar regularly, then you might like to change your strings once a week or once a month.

Most Professional guitarists tend to change their strings before each gig. But in the end, it all comes down to a matter of personal preference. Something to bear in mind if you’re using your guitar for a gig, is that your strings need a few hours of play to break in properly. During this time, your strings will go out of tune as they stretch so you’ll have to retune.

Anyway, here’s what you do:

 

Remove the old strings by detuning the machine heads until the tension becomes loose enough to allow you to pull each string away from the headstock.

Another quick way to remove the old strings is to snip them using a pair of wire cutters. Be very careful if you do it this way, and make sure they are loose, since the bare ends of the strings can be sharp and easily flap around. Bare guitar strings are amongst the many things you DO NOT want to catch in your eye.

How you go about installing your new strings will usually depend on the type of guitar you have, as many guitars have slightly different methods. However, the strings are usually held in place at one end by fixtures behind or on the bridge, and at the other by turning the machine head on the headstock.

Here’s a small insider tip guitarists have been using for years to get more life from your steel strings once you’ve removed them: Boil them.

Dropping a set of strings into a pan of boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes will remove a lot of the grimy build up and bring a new life back to what would otherwise be lifeless strings.

It won’t last for very long, and you can’t get away with doing it too many times, but it can be an effective temporary measure.

I wouldn’t suggest you rely on this technique too much, strings aren’t too expensive - and using new strings saves you a lot of hassle.

Regardless of what kind of guitar you have, your strings need to be stretched after you’ve put them on. When you first tune your guitar, put your hand under each string around the pickup area, pull the string a few centimeters away from the fretboard, then release it. If the pitch has dropped, retune and repeat the process. Keep doing this until all the strings stay in tune.

On most electric guitars the strings are either secured at the bridge end by an independent tailpiece (like most Gibson guitars), or passed through the body of the instrument from the back into an all-in-one bridge unit (like most fender style guitars).

At one end of every steel string, you will find a tiny disc of metal around which one end of the string is wrapped. This is called the ball end.

Take the opposite end of the string and thread it through the fixture at the bridge.

Pull the string through until the ball end stops you from pulling the string any further.

Most electric and steel-string guitars use a similar system for securing strings at the machine head. The capstan to which the string is attached stands out vertically from the headstock. Strings can be passed through a hole in the side of the capstan.

The end is then passed around and under, trapping it in place when the machine head is tightened. Some capstans have vertical slots instead of holes. To use these, cut the string to length, and insert into the tip of the capstan. Then bend the string to one side and wind it around.

This leaves the string endings neat and tidy.

 

Here’s what you do next: Slowly turn the machine head for each string, increasing the tension until the string becomes suitably tight.

Author: Craig Bassett

Learning blues guitar can be frustrating if you don’t know what guitar scales to use. Because of that, in this blues guitar lesson we’ll take a look at another really common scale used in blues soloing. Once you master this guitar scale, you’ll have another great weapon in your lead guitar arsenal! So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at it now…

**Blues Guitar Scale #2: The Major Pentatonic Scale**

This is one of my favorite sounding guitar scales! To my ears, it has a very bright, open and happy sound to it. Some of my students comment that its sound reminds them of country guitar. (But let’s not hold that against it! You can also use it to great effect in blues guitar solos).

The major pentatonic scale is a five note guitar scale that has this formula…

1 2 3 5 6

This formula tells us what we need to do to the major scale in order to construct this scale. As an example, we’ll work out the notes of C major pentatonic scale…

Step 1:

Write down the notes that the C major scale uses. Here are the notes we get by doing this…

C D E F G A B

Step 2:

Remove the fourth and seventh notes from the C major scale. We do this because the formula of the major pentatonic scale doesn’t contain a 4 or a 7. This gives us the following notes…

C D E G A

These are the notes of the C major pentatonic scale. Pretty easy huh?

You now know the theory behind the major pentatonic scale, so what’s the next step? Putting it into practice! I believe that learning theory without actually playing it on your guitar is an absolute waste of time. We all know guitarists who know a LOT of theory, but their playing still sucks! Because I don’t want this to happen to you, here are a few suggestions to help
you apply this scale to your guitar…

- Map the notes of the C major pentatonic scale onto a fretboard diagram.

- Make up some fingering for it on your guitar. There are no real rules. As long as you stick to the notes C D E G and A, you are playing the C major pentatonic scale.

- Make up some licks that use the C major pentatonic scale.

- Practice soloing over some blues backing tracks using the scale.

- Work out the licks and solos of your favorite guitar players.

Author: Richard Dornell

A piano, short for Pianoforte is probably one of the finest musical instruments ever created by man. The sound of a pianoforte can create a wonderful melody that can stir hidden emotions, make us feel elated or sad and transport us into a private world of dreams and fantasy. A musical instrument that traces its history back to the earliest stringed instruments, the pianoforte has been a symbol of grace and refinement for centuries in the western world.

The predecessors of this grand instrument were at best crude attempts to make a stringed keyboard instrument. But the piano as we know it today was created by Bartolomeo Cristofori de Francisco of Padua, Italy in around 1700 and only three of the original Cristofori pianos from 1720s exist today. The development of the pianoforte benefited the most from centuries of improvisations and development on the Harpsichord, an instrument on which Cristofori himself was an expert.

Playing a pianoforte can be an exhilarating experience and across centuries people have had the desire to own the best pianos built. There have been an equal number of companies and individuals that have crafted the best pianos to relay the most soothing sounds possible. Some of the best known pianos are built by Steinway, Baldwin and Chickering among others.

Two factors have contributed greatly to the evolution of this instrument to its present form. One was the demand for a more powerful sound by composers and pianists and the other was the Industrial revolution that gave manufacturers the high quality raw materials like steel to cater to that demand. Today pianos come in two types: the grand and the upright. Technological development has given us a third kind – the digital pianos.

Author: Ali Rae

“Someday I would like to learn to play the piano.” I have heard this many times, but somehow time and money seem to get in the way. Now we have a solution to both of those problems. Technology has made it possible for people to realize their dreams. First, digital music has made the inexpensive keyboards of today sound as good as their expensive counterparts of only a few years ago. You can buy a nice keyboard for under $100. Second, the internet has made it possible for the lessons to be delivered to many people simultaneously rather than just one at a time by a teacher in a private studio. The piano lessons can be downloaded for you to use any time it is convenient for you. The delivery of lessons on the internet has made the cost miniscule compared to going to a studio for lessons.

Rocket Piano is undoubtedly the best choice for most people wanting to learn to play the piano without breaking the bank. Even if you did spend more money on lessons, you would be hard-pressed to find a better quality product. The lessons were developed by Ashleigh Southam, a professional musician and jazz artist. Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced students will benefit from these lessons. They are presented in multimedia. Numerous video and audio clips are contained throughout the lessons that demonstrate exactly what a song should sound and look like. Rocket piano lessons will teach you any style of music you want to learn to play: jazz, rock, pop, gospel, blues, or classical.

These are not your mother’s piano lessons. For most people, the point of learning to play is enjoyment, relaxation and to have fun! Ashleigh understands that. Yes, to become highly skilled a person would need to spend many hours practicing speed drills, arpeggios, and scales; I know, because I did. However, to play for pleasure you don’t need hours of practice each day.

Being classically trained is something I will never regret, but I never was able to just sit down and play for fun. Unless I had memorized the piece, I needed the sheet music to play. There is nothing wrong with that, except that you don’t always have it handy. The most memorable and happy times when people gather around the piano to sing or just listen are often spontaneous. I longed to learn to play by ear; Rocket Piano made that possible. It is possible for you as well. Join Ashleigh and me in learning to play the piano!

Author: Jake1

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play guitar, here’s good news…

Many people have taught themselves guitar, and you can too! The truth is that the guitar is one of the easiest instruments to learn to play… but, of course, you will need to practice.

To teach yourself how to play guitar, you will need to search online for the information you need. One of the most important information you need is to find a chart of guitar chords. You can find guitar chords free online, or in any old thrift shop guitar book.

You’re next step is to figure out how to play guitar chords. As a beginner, you don’t need to know a lot of different chords to learn how to play guitar. Here’s a free online guitar lesson you can do right now…

Free Online Guitar Lesson - How to Play The G Chord:

Step 1 - Look at your left hand and, ignoring your thumb, number your other fingers 1, 2, 3, and 4, starting with your index finger and ending with your pinkie.

Step 2 - In looking at a chord chart, you will see that your index finger (number 1) should be placed on the second fret on the fifth string.

Step 3 - Next, your middle finger (number 2) is to be placed on the third fret of the sixth string.

Step 4 - The ring finger (number 3) is to be placed on the third fret of the first string. Note: The first string is the highest pitched.

Step 5 - Lastly, when all your fingers are correctly in place, strum the strings.

As a beginner learning how to play guitar, you may notice that when you first learn to play guitar chords, that some of the strings sound dead. This is caused by several things, most commonly because you may not be pressing hard enough.

Futhermore, for proper chord playing, be sure that your fingers are placed squarely on each string and avoid touching the middle three strings with your fingers (they should be left open). If you are touching the middle strings, you will deaden their sound. Also, be sure that you are pressing the strings between the little fret bars, and not right on top of them.

With continued practice, you’ll soon be fingering the G chord like a professional guitarist!

Once you’ve mastered the G chord, you’ll be ready to learn more guitar chords. You will find that there are hundreds of guitar chords that you can learn to play. But as a beginner, you only need to learn a few chords to play your first song. The G, C, D, and E minor chords are some of the most useful chords to know when learning how to play guitar.

Author: Kevin Sindair

Music is the language of the soul, according to the old saying. It can speak to you and evoke certain feelings and emotions. Nearly everybody likes music of one type or another and many others want to learn to play an instrument, such as the guitar.

Playing the guitar is a great way to express your feelings and sentiments. It is also a way of expressing your artistic skill and entertaining yourself and others. That is why millions of people want to learn to play the guitar or improve their playing ability.

When someone plays the guitar, other people assume they have either had professional lessons or taught themselves. Whichever way you go about learning, it is important to use the right techniques to play the guitar properly rather than develop any bad habits which might be hard to get rid of later on.

One great way of learning to play the guitar is to use some simple guitar songs. This makes it easier to understand the tablatures and gets you more used to playing. If you can “sight read” a particular song, it will be easier to learn how to play the guitar. This all depends on your musical experience.

Some experts think guitarists can sing along with songs and then learn it on the guitar as they go. An interest in the type of music you want to play is also a great help because you will be more enthusiastic about it all.

Using easy guitar songs in order to learn how to play the guitar helps the beginner to learn the rhythm and pace of the song. If you listen to the song first or, better still, pick something you already know, you will have a good idea of how it is supposed to sound. With this knowledge, you can practice getting the note pattern and tempo right.

If you use simple guitar songs to teach yourself to play, you will help to tune your ear for music. When you know how to listen well, you will be able to know if you are playing the right note or if you have made a mistake. You will also know if your notes are slightly off key and if your guitar needs to be tuned up.