FIRST ROCK BAND MADE EASY / 1

You or your kids always dreamed of playing in your own band but don't know where to start?
You don't care about stardom, You just want plain simple answers to simple questions.

My 12 year old daughter wanted to start a rock band, she knew nothing about it but did know a little about music. Her friends however, had never played any instrument before. This lens is for those of you just want to have fun,whose kids want to have fun, playing music.

Sometimes you feel you'd look stupid asking, you're wrong
Anyone can learn to play and you don't need, or want, to make it your job.

Please watch the slideshow, it's the centerpiece of this lens.

Let's get started! : most of the time,The first band you start is a Power Trio : a bass guitar player, a guitar player and a drummer. I'll stick to that

This group of people in a band is called the line up, and whatever gear they will use, is called the backline. Because most of it stands behind the band on stage.

You'll have to pick an instrument. What the drums do is easy to understand, but
why are there different guitars isn't that obvious.

For a rock band, the guitars involved are the four string bass guitar, that is made to play the low pitched notes and the six string guitar made to play the higher notes.

Before you do anything else, you will need a little musical vocabulary
Music is a language with an alphabet, words, phrases and musicians need a common language. The basics are easy to learn and where ever they come from
musicians can communicate and play together.

Here we go for the alphabet.
When you make a musical sound, it has a natural tone,
There are seven families of tones named : ABCDEF or G.

Notes are the names given to tones.
Like a real family, you find several members within a family.
Some members make a low note and others higher notes

Let's take an example with C notes . Within the C family we can add numbers to the names. We'd have a low C0 note, C1 that would be higher, C2 higher again, then C3, C4, C5 C6...etc.

The same goes for all the other families of tones.

How can you tell which of the C notes you're playing? Is it a C1, C2 or 5?
To solve that problem, all names have been set according to the pitch of C3.
C3 also called middle C and located at the center of the grand piano keyboard
On modern electronic synths, that have less keys, C3 is also the center key.

Let's do that again:C1 is lower than C2 -C2 is lower than C3, C4 is higher than C3 etc...

So far we know that a note is part of one of seven families( ABCDEFG)
it can have different hights, high or low ( that's called pitch)
and it's named with C3 as the refrence pitch.

Last but not least. How can you tell C notes from D,G or B notes?
The easy way to do this is to use keyboard white keys.

The white keys are always organised according to the same repeating pattern.
CDEFGAB ( See the picture ),
That order rather than ABCDEFG because a lot of things happen around C notes in music, and if you look carefully, C notes are located before the first set of black keys
( much easier to memorise than the position of A notes)

Now you know this, You will be able to understand how to tune your instruments.
Both guitars need to be tuned, meaning that their strings need to be tightened so they play exact notes,

EADGBE for the six string guitar and EADG for the four string bass.

That's enough for today, in part 2 we'll tune the instruments.

You should listen to as much music a possible, all kinds of music,

Remember this is for an absolute novice, so if you want to move faster, or dig deeper right now, take a look at the links.

Watch the slideshow, if you haven't already, that's what it's all about.
Thanks for reading up to here.