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I was searching around the net this morning searching for some popular chord progressions.  Below are the ones I found.  Let me know if you have any more to add to the list.

I-II-iii-iv “Longer” Dan Fogelberg
I-vi-ii-V “Please Mr. Postman”
I-ii-V-I
I-ii7-V-I
I-IVmaj7-V7-I
I-vi-ii-V-i
I-iii-vi-ii-V7-I
I-iii-vi-ii-V-I “Alices Restaurant” Arlo Guthrie

Minor Progressions
i–V–i–iv–i  “Black Magic Woman” Santana
i–bVI–iv–bVII–i  “Mr. Jones” Counting Crows
i-IV “Oye Como VA” Tito Puente
ii-V-I “Autumn Leaves” standard

DECEPTIVE CADENCE PROGRESSIONS:
I-iv-vi-V-iv
I-ii-V-vi
I-vi-iii-V-vib

DIMINISHED CHORD PROGRESSIONS:
I-IV-IVdim7-I
I-ii-viidim-I
I-I#dim-ii-V-I

INVERTED CHORD PROGRESSIONS:
1.C C/E F G C
2.C G/B F/A G C
3.C G/B Am F G G/B C
4.C G E/G# Am G/B C

SECONDARY DOMINANT CHORD PROGRESSIONS:
I-VI-ii-V-I
I-III-VI-ii-V-I
I-IV-II-V-I
I-II-V-I

MODAL MIXTURES PROGRESSIONS:
1.I-IV-iv-I
2.C C/E Fm G C
3.I-IIIb-IV-V-I
4.I-IV-iiidim-V-I

I was surfing along this afternoon and came upon this article over at The Boston Globe.  He describes the vi-IV-I-V as the Sensative Female Chord progression…lol.  He’s absolutely on the money!  I won’t rewrite his article here so head on over there and check it out.  I like it in Am where it goes like Am F C G.  That’s the progression in Joan Osborne’s “One of Us”.  You know…”What if God was one of us…”

I’ve decided to take Electric Chili in a little different direction or maybe I should say little different focus. My intent at first was to provide information about guitars, gear, and learning how to play. I think I might have bit off a little more than I was willing to chew. The world of guitars is huge and who could possibly handle it all without a full time staff of writers. There’s just no way one guy can really pull off what I had in mind. Well, how do you really know unless you try right?

So here’s the background…after a little work on putting guitar effects pedals up in the store (and ebay), I starting doing a little research about what I was selling as well as doing some reviews. In my research I found several communities of guitar players that enjoy creating their own effects pedals. I never knew this interest even existed. As an working electrical engineer I find this to be absolutely fascinating and want to jump in with both feet! So that’s where I’m going! I want to develop some of my own pedals as well as offer platforms and parts for developing guitar pedals. That’s my new focus. I admit that I’m somewhat ADD in my interests and move around quite a bit so we’ll have to see what happens.

My first project is to develop an effects development box that incorporates a breadboard inside so that tinkering with different circuits is extremely simple. From there I would like to see what can be done with PICs in the way of modifying guitar audio signals. I’m having a good time just thinking about the possibilities!

Being an engineer, I can’t help but enjoy digging into the origins of things we take for granted today.  I like to pay a little homage to the inventors who came before us.  With that being said, let’s take a look at magnetic pickups.  It seems that magnetic pickups were first invented for the purpose of improving record players.  The pickups would “pick up” the variations of the needle as it tracked the record.  This needle would move within a magnet field and generate a current.   It wasn’t until 1932 that a patent for a magnetic pickup appears in the patent record for an “Electrical Device Musical Instruments”.  The inventors name was Armond F. Knoblaugh.  It appears that although he is credited with the patent, he was working for Baldwin.  This is pretty typical in the engineering world.  The inventor is credited but the patent actually belongs to the company they work for.

He kept it general enough so that it applies to all musical instruments but the illustrations in his patent primarily show the the strings of a piano plate which makes sense for a Baldwin engineer.

Let’s hear a little from Armond about his invention…

My invention relates to the class of instruments in which the mechanical vibrations of strings or like members are transformed into electrical vibrations, which are amplified and 5 converted into sound by a loud speaker or the like. In a co-pending application, Serial No. 581,416, filed December 16, 1931, I have described a series of individual magnets which give excellent results. In the present 10 invention, I have made magnets, each in connection with a plurality of strings, that taper in substantially the same ratio as the lengths of the strings.

The first reference that I could find where the pickup was used for something that resembled a guitar was in 1934.  Check out that photo to the left.  Not a real “looker” but you get the idea.  It has the basic shape of a guitar that we’re familiar with and even has six strings.  This was patented by G. D. Beauchamp who was the cofounder of Electro Stinged Instrument Corporation. 

G. D. Beauchamp was also one of the founders of Rickenbacker Guitars.  He later went on to develop a patent for electric guitars in 1937.  If you do a little patent searching you’ll see that that is the time when patents for different types of electric guitars began.  That’s how it works in the patent world.  If someone can find a little different way of doing something they can get a patent of the own.  For example, if I think the pickup works better at the neck than at the bridge, I can apply for a new patent.  If I come up with a design that offers flexibility on what pickup I use, a new patent is born.

So now that the whole Magnetic Pickup is out of the bag, so to speak, patents start to come hot and heavy.  Gibson joins the party in 1939, Radio Corp  and Gibson again in 1941, and Radio Corp again in 1944.  If you wondering who the heck is Radio Corp, just think radio and Marconi.  They designed and manufactured radio equipment and ultimately were bought out by GE.

In the 1944 Radio Corp patent you can see that even improving something is enough to get you a new patent. 

In this application I disclose an improved method and means for obtaining a greater range of timbre in an electronic musical instrument, using mechanical vibrators such as strings, reeds, rods, plates, bars, membranes, etc.

This patent shows how the inclusion of capacitors and inductors can affect the response of the pickups.  The artwork shows the locations of these passive elements but in typical Patent form, doesn’t show you the values or the frequency plots that show you exactly how it improves it.  But anyway, I digress. 

So, there you go.  Magnetic Pickups go back quite a ways in our history.  We haven’t talked about the difference between the single coil and the humbucker but will certainly get to that in another post.

Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician, among the most famous of Delta blues musicians. His landmark recordings from 1936–1937 display a remarkable combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faust myth.

Johnson’s songs, vocal phrasing and guitar style have influenced a broad range of musicians; Eric Clapton has called Johnson “the most important blues singer that ever lived”. Johnson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an “Early Influence” in their first induction ceremony in 1986. He was ranked fifth in Rolling Stone’s list of 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Article Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Johnson_(musician)

No, this isn’t the story of Blues music on America’s highest mountain, this is the story of influential blues musician McKinley Morganfield, a virtuoso of slide guitar.

Slide guitar is also known a bottleneck guitar because bottlenecks were the first materials used to produce the effect. Normally a guitar player varies the pitch of notes by pressing a string down against a fret. Slide guitar players place a slide across the strings and move it along without lifting, creating continuous changes in pitch, sometimes in addition to using their free fingers to fret the guitar, sometimes not. The chords available are limited, so many musicians, including Mr Morganfield, use open tuning, a technique where the guitar strings are tuned to a particular chord (often D-G-d-g-b-d) which then changes key as the slide moves up and down the neck of the guitar. The origin of the technique is not clear. There is an Indian instrument, the Vichitra Veena which is played with a slide, as are many African one stringed instruments, though these don’t share the challenges of slide guitar where strings which are playing the ‘wrong’ notes have to be muted.

Robert Johnson was one of the early influential guitarists to use the slide technique, but slide guitar couldn’t be contained and burst from the acoustic world to electric guitar with the early blues musicians, and particularly with McKinley Morganfield who really brought the sound to electric guitar. “I Cant Be Satisfied” and “I Feel Like Going Home” were recorded in Chicago in 1948 and became hits for Mr Morganfield, bringing him a long way from his birth in Mississippi and early days as a field hand. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard the name, it may be because you know the nickname better, McKinley Morganfield was better known as Muddy Waters.

Born in 1913 and raised by his Grandmother in Clarksdale Mississippi,  McKinley Morganfield enjoyed playing in mud, hence the nickname Muddy.  He added the ‘Waters’ himself later. Aged 13 he learned to play harmonica, but four years later, after hearing Robert Johnson he took up the guitar and by age 17 he was playing at various local events, his style a mixture of Johnson’s slide guitar playing and Son House’s tone. He married for the first time in 1932 but his wife left three years later when his first child was born, but not to her.  In 1941 collectors came from the Library of Congress, looking for Robert Johnson in the hope of recording his music.  Johnson was dead, but Muddy Waters was willing and able to demonstrate. He was recorded in 1941 and 1942 and then left the South for good in 1943 to move to Chicago.

It was Muddy Waters who brought blues, and specifically electric blues to England in the late fifties to influence an entire generation, though he himself was surprised that the music, which had arisen in black America, was losing it’s appeal within the black community who were turning to soul music. At the same time young white teenagers were becoming huge fans. The Rolling Stones named themselves for one of Water’s songs, Eric Clapton grew up loving the sound, and  Led Zeppelins ‘Whole Lotta Love’ is based on a Muddy Waters song ‘You Need Love’.  It may be his influence which spread the use of slide guitar to the rock and roll world where it has developed still further. The Rolling Stones and ZZ Top have all used the technique as have Pink Floyd and even George Harrison, who experimented with it during his time as a Beatle and on later solo songs like ‘My Sweet Lord’. Martin Scorsese the film director is a confirmed fan and has used Muddy Waters songs in many of his films, such as Casino and Goodfellas.

Muddy Waters continued to work throughout his life. His last performance was with Eric Clapton’s band in Florida in 1982. He died a few months later. He is ranked #17 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, but his true influence can’t possibly be measured.

About the Author

Learn to Play guitar Blues Guitar Lessons

As was mentioned in our article on “the History of the Guitar,” guitars have been around for centuries. The original guitars were Acoustic guitars, which changed in shape over several hundred years. Since you’ve already been given a timeline of the evolution of the guitar, in this article we’ll go into greater depth discussing the Acoustic guitar itself.

History

The Acoustic guitar is essentially a descendent of the Classical guitar, which, in its current form, has been around for over 100 years. The main difference between the Classical and Acoustic guitars are that one is strung with nylon strings, while the other is strung with steel strings. Since the Acoustic guitar is strung with steel strings, it has a louder, brighter sound which is appealing to folk and blues players.

Another difference between the Acoustic and Classical guitars is that the Acoustic guitar has a bigger body size, stronger structure, and a narrower neck than does the Classical guitar. The structure of the Acoustic guitar is stronger so that it can withstand the immense tension placed on it by the heavier steel strings.

Acoustic-Electric guitars haven’t been in existence for nearly the amount of time that their Acoustic counterparts have. These guitars, which have the ability to be both plugged into an amp and played unplugged, have been around for roughly 70 years.

All about the Acoustic guitar

The bodies of cheap Acoustic guitars are typically made from laminated tonewood. More expensive Acoustics are made from higher cuts of solid spruce top wood On an Acoustic guitar, the material which the body is made from really matters, so those looking for a rich sound will want to choose a guitar with a body made from nicer wood such as spruce top wood.

The neck of the Acoustic guitar is usually made from maple, mahogany, or rosewood. However, some guitar necks are comprised of different woods. Yet again, the quality of wood does matter. Generally speaking, Acoustic guitars with necks made of a high quality maple or mahogany and bodies made with solid spruce top are quality guitars with great tone. These guitars usually cost $250 on up.

The vibration of the strings is amplified by the soundhole of the guitar. This is where all sound that you hear comes from.

If you look inside the soundhole of the Acoustic guitar, you’ll see the construction of the body. There are braces and linings, all essential to keeping the guitar intact and playable. X-bracing, a strong, durable bracing, is typically used on Acoustic guitars because it is heavy and strong enough to withstand the pressure of steel strings.

On the body of the guitar, you’ll find the bridge. This is where one end of the strings goes. The strings are inserted into the little holes and the bridge pegs hold them there.

On the neck of the Acoustic guitar is the fretboard. Most fretboards on the Acoustic guitar are made of rosewood or ebony. More expensive Acoustic guitars have fretboards made of higher quality woods.

The headstock of the Acoustic guitar features six tuning pegs (three on each side of the headstock) and six tuners (three on each side of the headstock). Good Acoustic guitars will have die-cast Grover tuners which usually stay in tune longer than other brands of tuners.

Like their Electric counterparts, Acoustic guitars are tuned in the standard E A D G B E tuning. Most Acoustic guitars have six strings, while some have twelve. If you are curious as to the difference between the two, check out our article on “Twelve string vs. Six string”.

The Acoustic guitar still remains a very popular instrument. It is used in virtually every style of music-rock, pop, country, blues, you name it. Acoustic guitars are wonderful instruments for both beginners and professionals.

About the Author

My name is manish shah. Am an avid blogger & social media representative. I am retailer by Profession & my blog is ask manish shah.I keep updating my blogs regularly. Do visit me for Keyword elite.One of the best tools to try out for automation of all your web site promotion techniques is Keyword elite

The ability to play a spontaneous, improvised guitar solo is a truly impressive skill. Whilst anyone can pick up a guitar and play a song using three chords, playing a guitar solo, on the other hand, requires a lot of hard work and practice. I have therefore decided to write a short article on guitar playing to share with you 4 tips which have certainly improved my guitar soloing and improvisation skills over the years.

Tip #1 – Learn More Licks
In order to play a good guitar solo you need to have a good vocabulary of guitar licks. Most beginners don’t realize that only 30% of what good guitar players play during an improvised guitar solo is improvised – the other 70% are actually licks which they have pre-learnt and internalized. Too often, we run into the problem of playing the same licks over and over again when we solo – which is boring! Having a good number of licks stored in memory will make you a more versatile guitarist. Guitar licks can be learnt from a variety of books, websites or by listening to your favorite guitarist and figuring out their licks. The resources are there, so there’s no excuse not to learn your guitar licks!

Tip #2 – Practise Smart, Not Hard
A lot of guitarists either practice too little or practice too much. Whilst being lazy and only picking up the guitar twice a week is obviously not going to get you very far, playing your guitar for up to 8 hours a day can be bad for you. I have a friend who developed carpal tunnel syndrome because of playing the guitar too much. Having a sensible practicing schedule, and sticking to it, is the key to success. In my opinion, it’s better to learn a little everyday then to cram everything in one day. For example, why not promise yourself that you will learn one new guitar lick a day? Seems like nothing, but that’s seven guitar licks in a week, and 365 guitar licks in a year!

Tip #3 – Practise over Backing Tracks
OK, so you’ve learnt your licks. The only way you are going to learn how to apply these learnt licks in a guitar solo is to play them over a backing track and practise joining the licks together. There are numerous free backing tracks available over the internet which you could use to practise soloing over. Backing tracks for the 12 bar blues are the most readily available, which is great because the blues is the best place to start when learning to guitar solo. Alternatively, if you want more exotic chord changes, it may be a good idea to buy some professionally-made backing tracks or even create your own backing tracks. Software such as Band-In-A-Box allows you to input a chord progression of your choice and it literally creates a backing track for you.

Tip #4 – Be Self-Critical
The only you are going to improve, especially when it comes to guitar soloing, is to be critical to yourself. Unfortunately, when we are playing the guitar, how we think we sound is often quite different from how we actually sound. Recording yourself play and then listen back, is a great way of self-evaluation. Often times, you might even be shocked at how bad your playing sounds but don’t despair – continual practice using the tips outlined above will polish things out. It may even be beneficial to get a friend or bandmate to listen to your playing and get them to critique on you. You might find that you’re not very good at taking criticism – but it’s the best way for you to grow as a guitar player.

About the Author

Lex Robben is a guitar enthusiast who is on a path of musical enlightenment. For more FREE guitar tips, licks and lessons, visit The Shadow Guitarist Blog.

It’s funny, being a songwriter myself, I always find that writing songs can sometimes be a chore. But why does it feel this way? Isn’t this supposed to be my passion? Isn’t this supposed to be something that I never get bored of?

… well, not exactly. Everything gets boring once in a while, even the things that you’re most passionate about. So every so often I like to take the lazy man’s route to doing things. And surprisingly, I often produce some very good results!

So listen up. If you newbie at songwriting, or even if you have been at it for a while — I’m going to a couple of simple tricks that will help you start the writing process within minutes.

Here we go…

1) Review a particular situation in your day. It could be at work, during your travels, or at home. It could be with your workmates, your family or your friends. Just any situation that affected you in either a positive or negative way.

An example of this would be “when you’re at work, your boss just keeps hounding you. But, the only thing that keeps you going throughout the day is that you know that somebody in the office has a crush on you”

(the above is a very dry example… but try to work with me here!)

2) Write down as many words as you can think of that relate to your situation.

Let’s follow the example from earlier on:

anger, pain, sad, happy, excitement, nervousness, anxious, misery, impatience, relaxation, goofy, sophisticated, annoying, frustrating, antagonising, fancy, sexy, cool, pretty, smile, etc, etc… you get the point

3) Write down random short sentences about your situation including the words that you mentioned him step 2. So let’s continue in our little experiment…

” the way he talked to me really angers me” ” if only he knew the pain I suffered inside” ” when I see her pretty eyes light up it makes me smile” ” I have to act cool and sophisticated — don’t want to get frustrated” ” he doesn’t know what makes my day go by” ” don’t want to be in this misery for much longer”

Etc, etc. at this point it’s important to note that you don’t have to use all the words that you mentioned earlier in step two. As you can see I’ve even started to make up my own lines *without* any of the words too! Sometimes, I’m rhyming the words without even realizing. And this is exactly where the magic starts to happen…

You can easily turn this idea into a full-fledged song. Use rhymezone.com to help you find words that rhyme… and also other related words as well.

My example was very average and simplified — but you can use an example that’s a little more dramatic. You should really get wild with your ideas! Really, just let loose.

4) Listen to a ‘backing track’ (an instrumental of a song) that you have NO CLUE about. While it’s playing, make up a melody. Doesn’t have to be perfect, just create a melody on the fly. You don’t have to sing any lyrics either. Just ‘humm’ or ‘laaa’ a tune out until you’re hearts content.

Why do this? This is an exercise that will subconsciously preparing you to create melodies for you’re own chord sequences in the next step.

5) Create a SIMPLE chord progression on the guitar or keyboard. When I say simple, I mean *simple*. Maybe TWO chords for the verse and TWO chords for the chorus. Now create a melody on top of that chord progression. Record the song on tape. There you have it.

NOTE: if you don’t play an instrument, then hook up with someone who does. After all, you pretty much have half the song now

Still think it’s difficult conceiving an idea? Want to know more? I have *plenty more* that I want to share with you…

About the Author

My name is manish shah. Am an avid blogger & social media representative. I am retailer by Profession & my blog is ask manish shah.I keep updating my blogs regularly. Do visit me for Keyword elite.One of the best tools to try out for automation of all your web site promotion techniques is Keyword elite

The Electric guitar hasn’t been around nearly as long as the Acoustic and Classical guitars. In fact, the Electric guitar was created just 70 years ago (the 1930s) by Adolph Rickenbacker. Since that time, the Electric guitar has greatly evolved to the where it is today. In this article, we’ll go over the history of the Electric guitar.

The History

Guitars, or similar instruments, have been around for thousands of years. The Electric guitar was first manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker. Original Electric guitars used tungsten pickups. Pickups basically convert the vibration of the strings into electrical current, which is then fed into the amplifier to produce the sound.

The very earliest Electric guitars featured smaller soundholes in the body. These guitars are known as semi-hollow body Electric guitars and still are somewhat popular today, mainly due to the fact that they are flexible guitars.

However, with the use of pickups, it was possible to create guitars without soundholes (like the Acoustic and Classical guitars have) that still had the ability to be heard, if plugged into amplifiers. These guitars are called solid body Electric guitars.

The Electric guitar’s popularity began to increase during the Big Band era of the ’30s and 40s. Due to the loudness of the brass sections in jazz orchestras, it was necessary to have guitars that could be heard above the sections. Electric guitars, with the ability to be plugged into amplifiers, filled this void.

The Electric guitar that is most prevalent today is the solid body Electric guitar. The solid body guitar was created by musician and inventor Les Paul in 1941. It is a guitar made of solid wood with no soundholes. The original solid body guitar created by Paul was very plain-it was a simple rectangular block of wood connected to a neck with six steel strings. Les Paul’s original solid body guitar shape has, of course, changed from the original rectangular shape to the more rounded shape Les Paul guitars have today.

During the 1950s, Gibson introduced Les Paul’s invention to the world. The Gibson Les Paul, as it was and still is called, quickly became a very popular Electric guitar. It has remained the most popular guitar for 50 years.

Around the same period of time, another inventor named Leo Fender came up with a solid body Electric guitar of his own. In the late 1940s, Fender introduced the Fender Broadcaster Electric guitar. The Broadcaster, which was renamed the Stratocaster, was officially introduced to the public in 1954. The Strat, as it is now known, was a very different guitar in comparison to the Les Paul. It had a different shape, different hardware and was significantly lighter. Fender’s Stratocaster Electric guitar is the second most popular guitar in the world, second to only the Les Paul.

Over the years, other companies, such as Ibanez, Jackson, Paul Reed Smith, ESP and Yamaha have all produced solid body Electric guitars of their own. However, most Electric guitars still feature the familiar shape of a Les Paul or Strat guitar.

About the Author

My name is manish shah. Am an avid blogger & social media representative. I am retailer by Profession & my blog is ask manish shah.I keep updating my blogs regularly. Do visit me for Keyword elite.One of the best tools to try out for automation of all your web site promotion techniques is Keyword elite