Worship Guitar Class Blog

Christian Guitar Lessons Blog

Musical Notes

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Musical notes in the Western World are the same on any instrument. Here’s a 5 minute video showing you the notes on the piano, solfege, & guitar. You will learn what a movable ‘Do’ is and why the notes have different names in different countries. Solfege is the term for ‘Do Re Mi,’ etc.

The video starts with a piano, then shifts to applying what you learned to the guitar. You should be able to figure out any note on the guitar. To master the notes, it’s easier to learn a few at a time. I like Frederick Noad’s ‘Solo Guitar Playing.’

He was one of my teachers and I learned classical guitar from this book. It’s available in most music stores and I’ll put it on my site too. If you want to learn the notes, I would expect it to take about a year and you’ll be able to read music up and down the neck of the guitar.

[S3VIDEO file=’jw/notesSm_Prog001.flv’]

Jehoshaphat's Trial

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Several things struck me this year in reading 2 Chronicles 20 and how Jehoshaphat responded to the news that a ‘vast army’ was coming to attack them. Scripture says that he was ‘alarmed,’ How would you feel if you knew a massive army was coming to destroy your city?

My first response would definitely be like Jehoshaphat’s! But look what he did. He not only sought God’s help, but proclaimed a fast for the whole city. They didn’t have radios or TV’s then. News spread fast, probably through the synagogues and word of mouth. It says that people came to seek help from the Lord from ‘every town’ in Judah. Whole families came.

They knew they were powerless with such a massive attack coming. They humbled their hearts and God ended up fighting the battle for them. (The armies destroyed each other and the Israelites never even fought. The singers went out at the head of the army, singing praises.)

I was in a women’s Bible Study called Community Bible Study (CBS) when the first Gulf War broke out. It was a group of around 80 woman from 30 churches. It was not a ‘quiet’ group. Even in the parking lot the ladies, myself included, loved to talk to each other.

It was usually hard for our teacher to get us quiet to even start the class. When the war broke out, our Bible Teacher told us we were going to start with 20 minutes of quiet prayer to seek God’s help for our soldiers.

I honestly thought the idea was great, but no way could these women be quiet for 20 minutes. How could they ever make that work? Well, the next week I was amazed that no one spoke and 100% of the ladies humbled their hearts.

We don’t usually respond with sackcloth and ashes like they did in the Old Testament. But God is looking inside our hearts. He still responds to a broken and contrite spirit. Those are the people he lifts up!

 

Welcome to the Worship Guitar Class Blog

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Welcome to the First Edition of the Worship Guitar Class Blog! This offers
an easy format for getting web pages up plus an opportunity for you to respond…
including to other guitar students. For those unfamiliar with a ‘Blog,’
after
each entry you can click the ‘comments’ button at the end of the article to
write
a response to either the article itself, or to one of the responses from others.

The first entry here is a song I recently wrote. First, I hope you enjoy the
song and second maybe you can help me pick a name for it. This new song is
one I’d like to include in Volume Four and
I just
couldn’t decide what to call it. First I was thinking ‘Lord use my
voice’ and then thought of ‘Instrument of Praise.’

Well, take a listen and let me know what you think.

[S3AUDIO file=’jw/mp3/voice.mp3′]

You can add you suggestions using the ‘comments’ below.

There’s info on the
other Worship Guitar Class volumes at my main site worshipguitarclass.com.
Guitar lessons for kids age 5 – 9 are here KidsGuitarLessons.com.
Info for playing the piano by ear with hynms, praise & worship choruses
and gospel music is here
Play piano by ear – worshipguitarclass.com/piano.html.

'How To Use A Capo' video

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Last year, when I polled the Worship Guitar Class Newsletter list, a number of people wanted to know how to use a capo. Here’s a brief 1 minute video with the basics, plus how to make a capo with common household objects.

In the next Volume of Worship Guitar Class I’ll be showing you how to make bar chords in different families up the fretboard. There isn’t space here to go into the details, but capos are great for playing with other guitarists. You can play the same chords but in different octaves. For example, when you’re playing an E chord another guitarist can play a D chord form with a capo on the 2nd fret. These are both E chords and sound great played at the same time.