Stuck on Guitar

"We" are members of a small guitar forum.

Our guitar forum is different. If you want to belong to a creative centre, to meet, interact and maybe even collaborate with other string pluckers. it's just the place.

Zingingstrings is a forum project that we have started as a kind of drop-in centre. It is packed with ideas,help,guidance,feedback and fun for guitarists (and other string players) of any level.

Whether you want help with the basics of playing, songwriting, recording, to show off your skills and receive feedback on your work; or just to interact and exchange ideas with other musicians, you can find it at Zingingstrings.

Everything is free, you only have to register. Once you are registered and we know who you are, you will also receive access to our free audio/video chat facility. This is fast becoming a valuable resource to our musicians. Many sessions of instruction take place in here, projects are born ideas exchanged and alot of fun is had by all that use it!....even if you just want to chat with others or be entertained by some of our more experienced players.

The "WHY?" is just because we are a group of people that love to make music and have fun!

True there are many guitar forums on the net, some good ones too, but above all else we believe ours is the most "interactive".

I've had personal experience of seeing questions unanswered on forums, recordings posted for critique but ignored. No help to anyone, certainly no fun or encouragement to be found there.

As I said before, the guitar is a folk instrument. For years people learnt to play by copying others, word of mouth, being shown. That's what our forum allows. We are not selling a product to teach you, we don't want you to "buy the book" to obtain our "secret".

I'll tell you the "secret" here and now for free:

A basic guitar is a wooden box with 6 strings (and I don't need any smarta$$ to tell me there are some with 12 or 9 or 7). The strings can be struck in an almost infinite combination using many techniques to make music. In order to learn how to do that you need to practice, practice again and again and again and again till you get it right. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS!!!

But....and it's a big BUT...it really helps enormously if you have somewhere at your fingertips where you can login ask a question and it's answered, or explained, or at very least you are pointed in the right direction to find a good answer.

That's also where our videochat facility comes into it's own. You can enter it and actually be "shown" how to do something or discuss something. Videochat can accomodate up to 12 members in one room, although for teaching purposes anything above 5 or 6 people just seems to become an online party!

If you're too shy to enter videochat that's fine, just join in with the normal posts on the forum typing. We don't force our members to videochat!

...and if you're too shy to even register at the forum, we even have an area where non-members can ask questions, but to be honest that really doesn't use the full potential that our community has to offer.

Why is the forum not public, why do I have to register to read anything?

Simple, our members conversations, work in progress, songwriting and music is not there for public entertainment or anything else. Neither would yours be if you join. (oh and it keeps out the dreaded spammers too! so if you're one of them don't even bother).

However, you can hear some of our members individual work and forum collaborations on Zingingstrings Radio. And although it is obvious that we have members playing at many different levels, it may suprise you to know that there are a few on the playlist that really haven't been playing for very long at all!

What if I register, but then don't want to take part?

Well, that would mean you probably won't get too much benefit from being a member. But by taking part we really just mean introduce yourself, then take a few moments to add a comment to something you've read that helps you, or comment on someones music if you enjoyed it. Basically just show us you are there and getting something from being a member, no more than that.

Otherwise you're probably better off just following our lenses here.

But should you register then not want to use your membership that's no biggie either. We are not trying to build an enormous list of names so that we can boast of 60 squillion members. Unused memberships will be periodically deleted from our database. Should you then wish to re-join, a new registration would be necessary.

Keep an eye on this lens, it will be updated further. And contain links to new lenses created by us.