Brenda Lee Took Rockabilly to Amazing Heights of Success

Every year at Christmas time, we're reminded of what a phenomenal performer Brenda Lee has been over the years! Lee, who was born in 1944 broke into the music business with her first professional appearances when she was just 12 years old in 1956. she was only 14 when she recorded the rockin' rockabilly Christmas classic, "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" and the song has become a must-have standard to lovers of Christmas music. It's just one of the many accomplishments in Lee's career.
Lee's voice was amazingly mature for such a young girl and she could use it like no one else had ever heard anyone sing before. It didn't take Lee's career long to kick into overdrive after her initial recordings and she began to take the musical world by storm. She signed her first record contract with Decca Records in that same year, 1956 and her first Decca record was "Jambalaya"/"Bigelow 6-200."
She hit the charts for the first time in early 1957 with the song ""One Step At a Time" which reached #43 in the Billboard charts and #15 on the country charts. Brenda Lee had hit the scene and was on her way! But it was her next single, "Dynamite," that gave Lee the nickname Little Miss Dynamite, a moniker that fit her extremely well!
In December of 1957, she appeared on The Grand Ol' Opry for the first time and it happened to be the same night that a young rockabilly singer named Elvis Presley made one of his very rare Opry appearances. There's a great picture of the two of them standing together back stage and the picture reminds you of what a young girl Lee really was at the time.
After the legendary Owen Bradley became her producer (a relationship that lasted well into the mid 70s), Lee had her first top ten smash hit with "Sweet Nothings" which was followed quickly by her first #1 chart topper, "I'm Sorry." Both of these hits came in 1960. "I'm Sorry" also became Lee's first gold record. Little Miss Dynamite had certainly arrived!
Like many other rockabilly and early rock and roll stars, Brenda embarked on an international tour and quickly became an international sensation too. In 1961 she recorded several songs in German, Italian, and French and saw these songs sky rocket up the charts in those countries. And she wasn't even 20 years old yet!
In 1965 she embarked on her first tour of Japan to more resounding success. She also recorded songs in Japanese and the Japanese market ate it up.
Lee has 29 gold records to her name, including "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" which has sold seven million copies worldwide and "I'm Sorry" which has sold an astonishing 15 million copies! She has achieved more double-sided hits than any other woman in pop music and has charted in more categories (including pop, country, R&B, easy listening, etc.) than any other woman in music history. She's #9 on the list of most consecutive top-10 hits and #21 on the list of most charting singles of all time. She's been nominated for four Grammy awards (though she's never won) and is nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1997 she became the youngest person ever inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Learning To Play Guitar - Your Quick Guide For The Electric Guitars

Playing the electric guitar is a lot different from playing an acoustic one. Ideally, you should already know how to play acoustic guitars before you move to electric guitars because most of the time, you only use an electric guitar if you want to learn how to play the lead part.
This will be difficult if you do not have any idea what a fret is or how to read notes. In any case, learning to play guitar, even the electric ones, should not be as hard as you think. All it takes are patience and determination.
This guitar was first used in jazz music in the 1930s and was first called the Rickenbacker, named after the last name of the man who made it. These guitars work by converting the string vibrations into an electric current. This current is then converted into a sound by an amplifier. There is no electric type of guitar that can play without an amplifier.
Some of these guitars have seven strings. Some even have 12 strings. Depending on your level of expertise, you can choose between these models. Most lead guitarists use the ordinary guitar with six strings. However, heavy music genres use a 12-stringed guitar.
As mentioned earlier, this guitar depends on an amplifier. This means you should buy not only the guitar but also the amps. Below is a list of what you need to complete your guitar accessories.
Amplifier - this has to be about 10-15 watts. This amplifier with this kind of power is only used for practicing but not for performing.
Guitar strap - the electric guitar is heavy and you can't play it while standing without a strap. Buy a sturdy guitar strap and do not be lured by the designs. Buy something useful, not beautiful.
A cable wire - use this to connect the guitar to your amplifier.
Guitar pick - the electric guitar is not as easily played as its acoustic counterpart. Your fingers will hurt if you do not use picks.
One of the electric guitar lessons we recommend to you is tuning. Learning to play guitar is quite difficult if you do not know how to tune your own instrument. Tuning this guitar takes more skill than tuning an acoustic one because of the amplifier's role in the sound.
The amplifier can distort your hearing sensibilities so the best step is to use a tuner. An electronic tuner does not cost more than 20 bucks. It is difficult for beginners to find their own pitch and an electronic tuner is a necessity when learning how to play guitar, especially electric guitars.
Lastly, you need to play songs that you like. It is very sad to play songs that do not interest you. In fact, you are more likely to learn faster and become more motivated if you are trying to play songs that you love. If the chords are very difficult, find some songs that have no more than six chords.
Work your way up to the more difficult ones slowly and we guarantee you, you will be singing your way towards your guitar career. Check out our amazing Electric Guitar Lessons. Feel the excitement of learning new skill and playing your first song.

How Hard Can It Be?

Learning to play a new instrument can be an exciting and scary thought. This article poses that question on one of the most popular instruments in the world, the guitar.
The answer to that question often is - really hard! We naturally assume something is easy to learn, because the people we admire that already know how to do it make it look so easy. so it must be. Well sometimes it is. Learning the acoustic guitar is actually pretty easy. Mastering the acoustic guitar on the other hand is a never ending process. This is good news for us.
Two things are really at the heart of playing the acoustic guitar. The right hand, the left hand and their respective position, movement and articulation. A good musical performance is the result of good coordination between the two, no matter how difficult or technically challenging the piece is. Advanced players are able to play intricate pieces and really fast licks all over the fret board due to the fact that the coordination between the right and left hand is now muscle memory, and therefore second nature. The player no longer needs to pay attention to the right hand movement because practice and experience made him completely able to trust the motion of both hands. As a beginner guitarist you may not be able to play super fast arpeggios and licks at this stage, but you can learn how to strum properly in a short period of time. That is really the foundation of playing acoustic guitar, no matter what level.
Once you have learned how to multitask using both hands and are pretty confident with it, that's pretty much it. All that's left is to take it to the next level, and as we've mentioned, the great thing about the guitar is that there's always another level to reach and another challenge you can set yourself.
Learning chords is obviously the first thing to do, and it makes sense, as it can take awhile to get around those weird shapes and sharp strings. But rather than dwell too much on chords, why not combine that knowledge with some strumming patterns? that way you can already start making music and being creative. Remember, you only need to know 3 or 4 chords to play hundreds of famous songs or to start composing your own material. Strumming patterns are actually pretty simple and by by learning them you'll be able to open up a world of opportunity and possibilities...using only a few chords and nothing else.

Marlon Tarditi is a writer, player and teacher from London who regularly writes online articles and lessons for tuition websites

Electro-Acoustic Guitars

Electro-acoustic guitars work acoustically in exactly the same way as a standard acoustic guitar, meaning the main factors in their individual sound will be the size, shape and material of the body and neck. They are constructed with the same basic materials that all models use: wood, steel and very occasionally composite materials. It depends on the manufacturer and brand, but the same basic shape and production methods are used to put these finely crafted pieces together. Electro-acoustic guitars are the ideal choice for gigging musicians who want the sound of an acoustic guitar but need it to be amplified. Body shapes can be much like standard acoustic guitars, such as the box-like dreadnought, or jumbo, whilst other models such as the famous Yamaha APX or Ibanez AEG series use a smaller, thinner body, giving a feel a little more like an electric guitar. One of the leading guitarists of our time, Glen Campbell, was heavily involved with the Ovation guitar company, one of the originators of electro-acoustic guitars. Ovations models were slightly different from most others in that the back of the guitar was bowl shaped, apparently to help scoop the sound of the instrument forwards. These instruments were a huge success and Ovation are still a major brand in today's market.
The Main Advangtage of an electro-acoustic guitar is the adaptability in its preamp and the pickup which feeds it. These pickups take a few major forms.
The earliest models used a magnetic pick up in the soundhole or at the neck joint of an acoustic guitar. These pickups were essentially very similar to an electric guitars pickup. This lead to feedback problems and diminished sound quality because the complex overtones produced could not be adequately handled by such a simple device. Revised magnetic pickups are still available in single coil and humbucking forms. These more modern alternatives suffer less with feedback issues and are still the choice of many players including David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame.
The most common pickup in low and mid price guitars however tends to be the piezo pickup. This is a form of what is known as transducer. This has been a popular way to amplify an acoustic since the technology's inception as it has one major advantage. A transducer works through vibrations in the top, meaning no feedback problems which are so prevalent when putting a mic in front of a standard acoustic. To this end, they are often fitted under the bridge saddle, where the vibration is at its strongest. This also hides the pickup effectively and allows for easy placement of a jack socket. Other transducers can fit underneath the soundboard, allowing for more changeable placement. This gives a greater choice in picking the various inherent tonal characteristics of the guitar to emphasise or play down as wanted.
It is also becoming popular to use a system comprising two or three separate pickups, either of differing types or in different areas of the guitars body to emphasise different tonal aspects. This has become more popular still as players like Preston Reed, Eric Roche and Andy Mckee have further popularised using the acoustic guitar percussively as part of a piece of music by tapping the guitar in various places. A transducer allows a pickup to be placed in or near the area to be hit. Picking the sound up clearly and consistently.
Of course with a system of more than one pickup, the pre amp fitted to the guitar will become even more important and will often give you the luxury of a full onboard EQ as well as a volume control or controls for the pickup/s in the guitar. EQ controls on an acoustic are designed primarily to stomp out feedback and give the player more control over their tone. For this reason, on a mid range guitar you will often find a "parametric" equalizer, meaning you can find a troublesome frequency and reduce it. This means you can find whereabouts the feedback is coming from and eliminate that particular frequency. This also means you can boost a particular frequency which may be helping your sound to cut through on stage.
Many Pre amps nowadays feature inbuilt tuners, allowing for silent onstage tuning under any light. These normally feature a small display and all the same features you would expect from a floor based tuner without the need to take an extra unit on stage.
A further positive is the straight connection into the console, which eliminates the need for a noise free studio or expensive microphone in which to pick up the signals clearly. This makes it an ideal solution for a home recording hobbyist through to a serious stage musician, and also makes getting a great sound much simpler for those who may not be too knowledgeable when it some to which mic etc will fit the bill best.
In order to make the electro-acoustic a usable tool for home practice there are a range of amps available specifically for the purpose, many featuring microphone inputs alongside those for guitars. This provides an all in one solution for singer/guitarists playing small gigs and practicing or may work as the guitarists monitor while the main sound is carried through the P.A speakers to the crowd.

Electric Slide Songs

As the years and many gatherings have passed by, many electric slide songs were used and discovered as well. However, there were classic electric slide songs which were famous before and are still famous now. This article will give you some idea of which songs to use to accompany your electric dance performance or for any other purposes related to the electric slide.
The first among the electric slide songs (and probably the most popular) is Electric Boogie which was sang by Marcia Griffith and written by Bunny Wailer on 1982. This song was produced under Griffith's album called Carousel. When the official music video was released in 1990, it featured several basic electric dance steps which is probably the reason why people began using it to accompany their electric dances as well. Since then, this song became a very popular party music during weddings and any other social gatherings.
Candy is the electric dance song famous in the UK. It was sung by Cameo and was recorded and released in 1986 and 1987, respectively. Since Candy was released, it immediately topped the R&B charts in the UK and was included in the US Hot 100 songs for 1987. Written by 2 song writers, Larry Blackmon and Tomi Jenkins, the song "Candy" is a clash between 2 genres, RnB and Funk. It's a fun electric song due to its happy beat, relaxing rhythm and series of counting that matching the counts involved in electric dance as well.
Another popular song is KC and The Sunshine Band's "That's the way (I like it)". Although not often used to accompany electric dance (because it could be used for any other dance steps as well), the song provides a good rhythm for your electric slide steps. This was written by Harry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch and was released in 1975. Perhaps you've already heard this song - it's so famous it's being sang by different world artists during concerts and performances. This song was also included in the US billboard Hot 100 the same year it was launched and is one of those songs that have stayed number one more than once. Counting is very important when you think of electric slide songs, make sure your song matches the counting and beating of your electric dance steps.

Ode to Joy: A Joyous Celebration on May 7th

It's difficult to imagine that the first performance of a glorious masterpiece like Beethoven's 9th Symphony should have disappointed its composer, and caused such little excitement among European music lovers. Beethoven's disenchantment was perhaps understandable, for he was frustrated by his deafness. In a poignant letter to his two brothers, written some years earlier, he explained the reasons for the bitterness which had turned him into a social recluse. He'd lost 'a sense which in me should be more perfectly developed than in other people, a sense in which at one time I possessed in the greatest perfection.' In a postscript he added that his one wish was that Providence would grant him 'but one day of pure joy.' He'd always longed for happiness, and as a young man had been much moved by Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy, a poem which he determined eventually to set to music. So it was that he decided to include the poem as a choral climax to his final symphonic work.
The work had its premier in Vienna theatre on the 7th May 1824. The hall was packed, and a nervous Beethoven sat in the wings of the stage unable to hear a note that was being played, but desperately anxious to get the orchestra, soloists and chorus to follow the beat he set. When the performance ended he had his back to the audience, and was totally unaware of their ecstatic applause. Caroline Unger, the contralto soloist, walked across to the maestro, tugged his sleeve and turned him round so that he could appreciate, and acknowledge, their rapturous reception. The applause was soon halted by the police, who felt that such adulation should be reserved for the Viennese royal family, and not bestowed on a mere musician Those brief moments of pleasure quickly turned to rage when the composer discovered that he'd only earned a miserable 420 florins from the performance. He couldn't enjoy the celebratory dinner which followed, partly because he was unable to hear a word that was being said, and went home in a frustrated frenzy, falling asleep on his bed fully clothed. His misery deepened even further two weeks later when the symphony received a second performance and played to a half empty audience and made a loss.
Since then, the work has gained in popularity and influence. It's inspired a long list of eminent composers, including Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler. Since the end of the Second World War it's also touched the soul of the Japanese people, who now play it during their New Year Celebrations. It's also said to have determined the size of Compact Discs, which were originally going to be 10cm in diameter, but were finally set at 12cms to allow for a complete recording of the 9th, which lasts for roughly seventy minutes. And in 1970 the European mandarins decided to adopt the symphony's final movement as the EU's national anthem. This was not done with the intention of replacing the national anthems of the member states, but to celebrate the values they all shared and the unity that they hoped to find despite their diversity. This was highly appropriate, since a literal translation of Schiller's ode is: 'Europe is united now, and united may it stay. One in diversity, may it contribute to world peace.' Unfortunately the sixteen member states couldn't agree to accept any form of shared symbolism, so the proposal was rejected. This poses the question: If the member states can't agree of a shared piece of music, what are the chances that they will ever agree on a mutually acceptable fiscal plan or foreign policy?

Ukulele Tips: Learn Ukulele To Play Songs by Ear

Ukulele is an instrument that can be played by anyone easily. Since it is not as heavy as guitar, it can be brought and played anywhere. Any guitar song including the classical pieces can be played with ukulele with exactly the same chords. But you need to press different strings. The pitch distances are shorter than the guitar which makes it easier to press the notes and soloing.
There are four different types of ukuleles namely soprano, concert, tenor and baritone based on their materials, shapes, size and pitch. They are usually made of wood. The most preferred wood type is mahogany and koa tree. The ones made up of koa trees have clear sounds while the ones from mahogany are softer. In addition to wooden ones, there are also ukuleles made up from plastic and metals. The standard order of tuning in ukuleles are G, C, E, and A which is called C-tuning order.
Ukulele has three main parts; top, fretboard and the body. In the top section, there are strings rest in the grooves of the nut which then attach themselves in the tuners on the headstock. By tightening or loosening the strings, the sound can be refined or thickened.
Keyboard is the place where the notes are pressed. There are 48 notes on a 4 string, 12 pitch ukulele. Together with the empty strings there are 52 notes on a string. The signs on fretboard are the reference points for finding the targeted pitch with ease. The body is the part of the ukulele where we hit the strings to get the sound. The strings are fixed by attaching to the bridge.
The ukulele music does not only consist of notes and chords. Rhythm is also needed which is created by hitting repeatedly on the strings on a regular basis. There are several rhythm patterns in ukulele such as single - hitting downwards, double - one downwards one upwards - and single and double rhythm - one measure single, one measure double rhythms.
It is not necessary to know the notes for playing the ukulele. But if you can able to play any instruments by looking the notes sheet, then you can easily learn to play the ukulele. To be able to play it, you need to know how to read the tabs or play the chords. The tabs are simply the notes of the ukulele which does not require the knowledge of the notes. Because it tells you where to pres exactly in terms of string and the pitch.
When you buy a new ukulele, it will be out of tune short after playing because of the new strings. You can shorten this period by stretching the strings, by simply pulling the each string upwards a number of times while holding the upper bridge in your hand. Re-tuning each time will provide the tuning period to last more each time. This whole process make take around a week until the normal tuning is settled.
You can literally play all the songs that can be played with the guitar with ukulele. In most cases people who play guitar continue their music with ukulele because of the difficulties of carrying a guitar when compared to the easiness of carrying an ukulele.
Although the sound quality varies to the brand, you can still get much better sounds by changing the strings with better quality ones. As long as the strings are nylon and elastic, the ukulele instruments can be played easily even though the cheap ones.