Learn Guitar Blog

Learn to Play Air Guitar

May 31, 2006 on 3:28 pm | In Aki Kinerva, learn to play air guitar, pentatonic and blues scales | No Comments

All of us have probably tried to learn to play air guitar at least once. Now, some computer scientists in Finland have come up with a device that turns this rock fantasy into real music – an air guitar that really plays.

Learn to Play Air Guitar like a Superstar

The virtual guitar is the invention of Aki Kinerva and other computer scientists from the Helsinki University of Technology. All you need is a pair of gloves and a camera. Then you take a rock star pose, like you were holding a real guitar and just rock away.

The camera will be tracking your hand movement along the imaginary fret board, as well as the strumming of the other hand. Then the computer will receive the information and turn the gestures into licks and riffs. While you will probably not share the stage with Eric Clapton, the system gives any of us a chance to feel like a rock superstar.

Ever since rock music was born, teenagers, as well as many adults all over the world have been playing air guitar while listening to their favorite rock bands on the stereo. Now, these computer scientists in Finland have turned this habit into real music with an air guitar that really makes some sounds.

How Does It Work?

To make things even better, the technology is almost entirely invisible. The gloves that you have to wear are just a pair of normal orange gardening gloves. As you are playing (or in my case, learn to play air guitar), a web camera that is programmed to detect only the orange color will watch your gloves and track their movement.
In real time, software designed to recognize gestures will translate your hand movement into sounds. When you will be moving your hand down the fret board, the sound will go higher, as if you were playing a real guitar. It really feels and sounds as if you were actually playing.

What Can You Actually Play?

Sure, you won’t be able to do all you can do on a real guitar. You won’t be able to play songs like “Stairway to Heaven” on an air guitar. However, if it worked just like a real one, you would probably have to spend months to learn to play air guitar. With an air guitar, you get to feel like a rock guitarist within a few seconds. The things you can do are limited though.

If you want to learn to play air guitar with Kinerva’s technology, there are two models you can choose from: chord and solo mode. If you choose the chord mode, you will only be able to play four different chords. This is indeed limiting, but it’s enough for playing the opening chords of songs like “Smoke on the Water” and other rock classics. With the solo mode, it will be as if you were running up and down a pentatonic scale, which is the standard key of rock guitar solos.

The best thing is that you can’t actually play it badly. No matter how you’re moving your hands and mixing chords and solo notes, it will sound like you’re playing something.

The whole system works on an ordinary desktop computer. The inventors are now working on a Windows version and air guitar may someday become as common as Game cubes or X-boxes. Who knows, maybe it will even inspire some people to sit down and learn to play a real guitar.

Learn Lead Guitar

May 25, 2006 on 3:13 pm | In learn lead guitar, pentatonic and blues scales, the blues scale | No Comments

Many newbies are fascinated by the way lead guitarists are blazing through a solo and keep wondering how they can do that. They just can’t understand how these people figure out which notes can would sound right before playing them. The following article is aimed to show some perspective on how to learn lead guitar and begin to make up your own guitar solos.

The Blues Scale

What many beginner guitarists who want to learn lead guitar do not know that improvising doesn’t mean just playing random notes and hoping they will sound great together. Before you can learn lead guitar, you should know that professional guitar players usually draw their solos from a scale, which they are using as a template for improvisation. The blues scale, despite the name, is actually a scale used very often in all guitar solo styles.

How to Use It?

Try practicing this scale forwards and backwards, while using alternate picking and make sure you play each note evenly and cleanly. After you got this right, try to play each note two times before you get to the next one. Make up different ways to play the blues scale to challenge your playing skills.
Play the blues scale so that the root begins on the letter name of the scale you are trying to play. For example, if you want to play a C blues scale, you’ve got to find the note C on the fretboard and start the scale from that note.

Improvising

Once you’ve become familiar with the blues scale, you might want to take up some theory lessons and learn more on the different positions of pentatonic and blues scales. However, you can get to play a lot of great stuff just by using the single position explained above, so start practicing on making up your own solos before you memorize tons of scale positions.

Once you’ve managed to learn lead guitar basics, you can start improvising. The concept is fairly simple: all you have to do is string together some licks from the blues scale that sound good together. However, when you try to do it, you’ll realize it’s actually more difficult than it sounds. You might want to get some soloing lessons for beginner guitarists that want to learn lead guitar. Accesrock.com provides some good lessons.

After you did some practicing, you should visit the Home for all Guitar Lovers website that shows several guitar licks. You can try to memorize some of these and use them in your own solos. Don’t get frustrated if you play rather badly at first; if you like what you’re doing, it will get better over time.