IanD

The poor guy on the drums is hidden away in darkness at the back

Sounds great Randy. Nice tone! Ian

Very cool Greg! 2nd video says unavailable :-( Ian

"Don't be so serious. Playing should be fun, that's why they call it playing". A guy I was chatting to in the pub. Ian

Hi everyone, I have been working through some training resources from 'Udemy'. There is a lot of rubbish on there, but I have found two courses that I think are excellent and very good value for money. One of them is on music theory. It starts at the beginning and builds very steadily through the theory in a very logical fashion. I'm only part way through, but really enjoying it and looking forward to getting to the more advanced stuff. I'm not qualified to know whether what the guy is saying is correct, but he seems to have very good credentials (college lecturer) and explains things very well. In case anyone is interested, the course is called 'Music Theory Comprehensive Complete! (Levels 1, 2 and 3)'. There is another with higher levels. Word of warning... a lot of these Udemy courses seem to have added subtitles, which have been created by an illiterate robot and not checked and edited. Very annoying and distracting but I've learned to ignore it. Just thought I'd share in case anyone is looking for a good on-line music theory resource. Ian

Hi everyone, I have been working through some training resources from 'Udemy'. There is a lot of rubbish on there, but I have found two courses that I think are excellent and very good value for money. One of them is a course on using Logic Pro X, a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software from Apple for recording, editing and mixing music. The software is immense, with lots of features you'll probably never use and the whole process of recording and mixing can be confusing and time consuming if you don't know what you're doing. The course I've been looking at is called 'Music + Audio Production in Logic Pro X - The Complete Guide'. There are 14.5 hours of video instruction, with each video lasting typically 3 to 12 minutes. I found it really helpful that the video shows the guy's screen as he actually talks you through various tasks in the software. I have learned so many useful tips and would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is using Logic Pro X. Ian

I use one called MetroTimer. Works very well for me. Haven't used any others. Ian

Seems it's a new V-shaped bracing system that provides greater sustain without compromising volume. Announced today. Ian

Sounds lovely Maria, and it's great to hear you playing guitar again. Welcome back! Ian

Beautiful! Ian

Wow @WATSON43, that's brilliant! Well done. I hope we hear much more from you on here. Ian

Here's a bonus one. Not sure it fits the theme, but I was playing around with 'Songbird' last night (mainly as vocal practice). This is a single, live take that I recorded on a little Zoom recorder then imported into Logic just to add a little reverb and compression and then lift the level. Regarding the guitar, I was talking in the chat room the other night; I'm fairly comfortable with fingerstyle now where I just set my right hand going on auto-pilot whilst playing simple chords. I have reached a psychological roadblock though about adding in melody notes (my coordination just falls apart). The instrumental middle on this (and the intro) would be much more interesting with some melody notes, hammer-ons etc. Going to make it a resolution to crack that this year! Ian

Here is my contribution for this month. I bought a Udemy course 'Audio + Music Production in Logic Pro X' in the Black Friday sale and have been slowly working through it. I have to say that it's brilliant, I'm having lot's of 'so that's what that function is for' and 'so that's how you do it' moments. I thoroughly recommend the course if you have Logic Pro X. Anyway, this month I decided to submit a multi-track effort to practice and apply some of what I've learned (before I forget it all). Ian

Hi everyone, Have you seen that Taylor are building up to a big launch day on 25th January with a short teaser video? https://www.taylorguitars.com/coming-soon?utm_source=email_tg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=new_products Ian

Ha ha, love it . Well done Mandy! Ian

Hi Odie, They are additional video and PDF resources that you can find here https://gx169.infusionsoft.com/app/storeFront/showCategoryPage?categoryId=19 You can get to that page by clicking 'Guitar Training Resources' at the top of the page and selecting 'videos'. They are really good and help you to build muscle memory for your major scales. Ian

This is my prettiest. It was my 50th birthday present from my wife (though she had little to do with choosing it ). My favourite, though, is the acoustic in my profile pic, it was my first 'proper' acoustic. It's a Martin DX1R. It's the cheapest dreadnought that Martin does I think and it doesn't even have real wood back and sides, but it sounds great and I play it almost every day.

Beautiful Mark! It's great to see so many people migrating across from the old forum, even if some of us have changed our names Ian (formerly isdavies)

That's a beauty Mike! Ian

Great to hear that you're slowly working your way back to 6 strings Maria, even if you have to stick at 4 for a while. I seem to have suddenly started to develop arthritis in my fingers in the last 6 months and am developing little nodules in some of the finger joints so I'm playing as much as I can right now, in case I can't one day. Let us know how you get on with that tenor guitar. I hadn't heard of them until I went on a weekend guitar course and there was a guy in his mid 80s there with one. Looked pretty cool. Ian