Guitar Today

Happy Halloween From Guitar Today! Halloween is pretty much my favorite day of the year. When else can you dress like your favorite death metal band and walk around without getting funny looks from people? Everything about Halloween is a treat for the eyes. Another great thing about Halloween is the creepy music it inspires. It’s the time of year when metal , swing and rockabilly bands prevail over the others as they have the most suitable tunes for everyone to play.

This halloween, take the Halloween party by storm by learning to play a couple Halloween classics. We’re going to link you up to either the tabs or the chords of these fit to fit halloween themed tunes.

Monster Mash - The epitome of halloween songs.

Werewolves of london - Zevon Warren - Awwooooo

Feed my frankenstien - Alice Cooper

Bark at the moon - Ozzy Osbourne

I’m your boogyman - White Zombie

I’d love to hear about some of your favorite halloween songs to play for your friends at parties.

October has been a productive month. We got through all the major chords and even squeezed in some basic theory. I hope to see everyone back on Monday to get November rolling in full swing right away. Until then, carve those pumpkins, dress up in the scariest thing you can find (try raiding your grandmother’s closet) and watch out for spooks. Have fun trick or treating!

The hit song by Canadian singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen has been covered and recovered over and over by many different artists. It is said to have taken him over a year to write and went through about 80 verses before settling on the ones we heard in the 1984 release of the song.

 In the section of the first verse that is as follows “the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift..” the guitar chords actually move as the lyrics describe. The fourth refers to F, the fifth to G, the minor fall (Am) and the major lift (F). The minor falland the major lift simply refers to the pitch of the melody ‘falling’ to a minor chord, and then ‘lifting’ to a major chord (F). With the fourth and the fifth Cohen is referring to the fourth and fifth of a C major scale.

The general format for scales is as follows:

 I Tonic
II Super tonic
III Mediant
IV sub- dominant
V dominant
VI submediant
VII sub tonic or leading tone

and this goes for any scale. So in the C scale, The subdominant fourth is F and the dominant fifth is G.

Learn to play Hallelujah with chords and tablature.

Well the reviews for Guitar Hero world tour are out and the unanimous decision seems to be that it is somewhat lacking in comparison to its’ copycat Rock Band. Guitar Hero is a multi platform game that plays a lot like Simon with more graphics and guitar shaped controllers. If you had to read that previous sentence you may have been living under a rock on mars with your eyes shut and your fingers stuck into your ears for the last few months. Welcome back to Earth. Not a gamer myself, but the subject matter of this game suits the subject matter of this blog.

The latest version of the game includes drums and vocals, much like the previous version of Rock Band, a somewhat late to the party game that is similar in popularity and gameplay style.

In Kokatu’s Frankenreview of the game, he ponders if Activision has managed to beat Guitar Hero at their own game with Rock Band. It is cleverly called a Frankenreview because it mixes the combined reviews from IGN, BoomTown, TeamXBox and others who all seem to be equally dissapointed with the overblown release of Guitar Hero World Tour.

Honestly, I never got the big hoo-ha with any of these games. I’ve played guitar almost (or possibly over) 10 years and I can barely manage to play this game in co-operative mode or even as a lowly bassist (my apologies to Matt Freeman, Les Claypool and Roger Waters for the term lowly, I hold each of you in higher regard than most of my friends).

Although I do find it intriguing that one company(Activision) was smart enough to see more potential in a a good concept and take it (from Red Octane) furtheronly to have their improvements mimicked by the original.