Wonderful Christmas links

Ceramic Nativity made by my wife (photo copyright 2021)

 

We've spent some time watching and listening to some wonderful Christmas programs, most of them while wrapping presents.  We'll share them here and keep adding to this list as we find more.

Concerts:

2021 Salvation Army UK and Ireland territories Christmas Concert with the international staff band, scripture readings, carols, and stories.

https://youtu.be/PvdiUSsqAMM

50th Annual Christmas in Chicago Concert from Moody Church

(Full orchestra)

https://youtu.be/leGLFLzCjXo

Hillsong Christmas Carol spectacular

https://youtu.be/yut-LrgilUg

Sing! An Irish Christmas

Also available other places where TBN is available (Roku, etc.)

https://watch.tbn.org/videos/sing-an-irish-christmas

"The Chosen" Christmas Special (streamed live Dec. 13, 2021)

https://youtu.be/T5ftnTK9-3w

Also available at https://thechosen.tv/watch (and on the free chosen.tv app) which are all part of the #1 crowd funded, Free, multi-season show about the Bible.

Chris Tomlin : Emmanuel Christmas Songs of Worship : Klove on demand (requires free sign-in):

https://ondemand.klove.com/live/mainstage/chris_tomlin_emmanuel_full

A friend shared this: Fellowship for performing arts : A Christmas Celebration (theater, song, scripture)

https://fpatheatre.com/ and https://fpatheatre.com/christmas/

Christmas Eve Services:

Christmas Eve is Friday, Dec. 24, 2021 - the times below are Eastern Time Zone

Liquid Church Christmas Eve : 3pm and 5pm live on website and elsewhere, on demand too.

http://www.liquidchurch.com/christmas-eve

(note: we've heard that 5pm is cancelled so maybe the 7pm will be live online?)

North Shore Fellowship: 4pm Live and Online

YouTube Live - https://youtu.be/l-WQOwY88mM 

https://www.facebook.com/northshorenj.org

Hillside Lutheran Brethren Church - 5pm

https://www.facebook.com/hillsidelbc

 Harrison Presbyterian Church -EPC

Christmas Eve Candlelight Services - 5:30 and 7:30 pm

https://www.facebook.com/harrisonpres/

TBN Christmas Eve Specials

https://www.tbn.org/blog/christmas-eve-specials

 4:30, 6, 7, 8 PM (watch on the website or other popular outlets like Android, iOS, Roku, etc.)

Many of their programs are available later on demand.

... more to come...

Guitar resources

I realized today that I have a bunch of ukulele resources listed on a previous post, it's time that I made a similar post about guitar resources (especially since I started playing guitar in 2008 and the Uke in 2010).

Guitar Lessons:

• Someone today (2012-01-03) suggested Justin's Guitar Lessons. They are free and there are more than 500 videos available! If you like them, consider making a financial contribution or buying something in his store.
• Christian Guitar has some free lessons
  

How to play certain chords, use a capo and such:

• Barre Chords, Minor and m7 Chords on the Guitar
• Links I posted about using the Capo
• Some info I was taught bout Guitars, anchors, capos, chord shapes, and hammer-on
  

Just I have with the Uke Resources page, I'll be adding more information here as time goes on!

Barre Chords, Minor and m7 Chords on the Guitar

I've been learning new things on the guitar this summer and thought I'd post about them.

Barre Chords, sometimes called Bar Chords, allow you to move the same Chord "shape" up the guitar to another fret and form a new chord.

Keep in mind that each Fret is a half step. So, good examples are that the E chord, moved up 1 fret (you need to bar the 1st fret then to do the equivalent of moving up the Nut, the place where the strings go over the top part of the guitar neck) forms the F chord! (Because in half steps, the scale is A, A#, B, C, C#,D, D#, E, F, F#,G, G#, ...)
If you move it up 2 frets from the Nut, it would be the F# chord.

Also, the A chord, moved up 2 frets becomes the B chord!

The guitarforbeginners website shows what I'm explaining with a little animation.

Minor Chords
I also learned how to easily form Minor Chords from the E and A chords.
When the highest string (the highest frequency, the one closest to the floor) being held down is moved down one fret towards the Nut, a half step (to the minor 3rd), the chord becomes a Minor chord.

So, if you take the A chord and move your finger on the B string one fret lower (toward the Nut) you'll have an A minor chord.

For the E chord, you move your finger on the G string (actually playing a G#) down a half step (1 fret) which in this case is the nut (or an "open" string) to get Em (E minor)!

Am7 and Em7:
To get these minor chords to be minor 7th chords, just remove the 2nd finger (counting from the side of the neck furthest from the floor) so an open string is played.

So, to change the Am to Am7, lift your finger on the G string.
To change the Em to Em7, lift your finger on the D string (you'll only have one finger left, it will be on the A string 2nd fret (playing a B)

The same is true for the A7 and E7 chords.

If you look at some chord diagrams, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Guitar with a Capo

Did you know that Capo is short for Capodastra?
Neither did I until I started reading up on the Capo to figure out what some of my friends (who are guitar teachers) were trying to teach me about Capos.

Here are some websites that teach about Capos on guitars. Some of them have tables that you can print. You'll find that they each have a different way of expressing the table of the use of Capos. The basic idea though is back to the "Capo Triangle" that one of my friend/instructors told me about, it has 3 "sides" which are: The Key of the Chord, The chord shape (and where the Capo is), and the root note of the chord.

http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/capo.html
http://www.cyberfret.com/misc-wisdom/capo/page5.php
http://www.cyberfret.com/misc-wisdom/capo/transposition-chart.htm
http://www.5min.com/Video/Learn-To-Play-Guitar-Using-A-Capo-Part-1-31245935
http://topguitartraining.com/index.php?key=how_to_use_a_guitar_capo.php
http://guitarwebapp.com/pdf/capopos.pdf

And for those who want to go beyond, there's chord transposition with some music theory here:
http://www.abclearnguitar.com/transpose.html

Guitars, anchors, capos, chord shapes, and hammer-on

How's that for some off-the-wall terminology?!?
And I thought the IT industry had a bunch of jargon to learn!

Well, I learned a bunch from my friends Steve a few weeks ago and then from another friend, Joey, the past 2 weekends:

Anchors: I had learned from a Guitar lesson DVD that when playing chords, it's good to "anchor" a finger in one spot so it's easier to switch chords. I was learning the song "Homegrown Tomatoes" (a Guy Clark song) and was having difficulty switching chords quickly (it only uses 3: the I, IV, and V7 chords - more on that in another post, but suffice it to say in the key of G they are G, C, and D7 - see the chord chart here http://mugglinw.ipower.com/chordmaps/part2.htm). I happened to see Steve and explained to him about needing an "anchor" and he showed me (with no guitar) how I would play the G chord differently so I can switch between G and C easily. I was surprised that I was able to pickup what he meant without having a guitar with me, but you can bet I went home and tried it quick! It's great!

Capos and Chord Shapes:
So, then the past 2 weekends, Joey saw me playing on the porch. He came by and asked if he could jam with me. Of course I responded with a resounding "yes!" (He's a guitar teacher!). He played some wonderful things while I played my simple 3 chord "Homegrown Tomatoes."

I asked him what he was doing and he showed me how he had the capo on the 7th fret. He asked me how I could then figure out where "G" was on the "A" string (one second closest to the sky). Once I found the "G" note, I just had to think of a chord shape (the shape of a chord) that I play without a capo that uses that note as the "root". I mentioned the "C" Chord uses that string in that fret and he told me that if I play the same "chord shape" (same shape as the "C" chord) up on those frets (as though the capo is now the "nut," the piece at the top of the guitar neck where the stings end before the tuning pegs) I would actually be playing a "G". COOL! It sounded like a Ukulele!

Well, he taught me some more about the "Capo Triangle:" The three points of the triangle are the "chord shape", "root" and the "chord." I've got some "homework" that he gave me to do on this, so I'll blog more on this another time.

Hammer-on:
Joey also showed me how he was playing a "hammer-on" to make it sound great. I learned before (from a book) that you do a hammer-on by strumming a string and then quickly placing your finger on the fret where it's supposed to be. It takes a lot of practice (for me at least) to get the timing right. Well, what Joey was doing using a hammer-on was: first, you play the base note, then you play the 2nd string with a hammer-on, then the third string. It sounds great. Time to practice!

Internalizing the music, strum paterns&grooves, and Homegrown Tomatoes

Internalizing Music
Ok, so I've been learning recently from Jeff (and I've been told this before) that I need to internalize the music. I have to have it in my head and heart first so I can play it back internally and then start to play it.

I've been doing this with guitar since I started learning last year. Now, I have to do this with drums too.

You need to know the song pretty well and get to know your part in it. You need to know it well enough to play it back in your hear before you start playing. This helps you to start playing it correctly. It reminds me of the luge competitors or skiing competitors in the olympics; you see them rehearsing the course in their heads just before they go down the slope.

Strum Patterns and Drum Grooves

The basic idea is to get to know the intro and how the instrument you play sounds. For drums, it's listening to a key part in the intro, maybe the guitar, to find the pattern. For example, maybe the guitar is playing a strum pattern that matches the drum groove to a certain extent. The rest of the song has grooves to learn too, but usually if you learn the start, the rest will follow along.

From playing the guitar (acoustic electric), I know that a lot of strumming is moving your hand up and down corresponding to the beat: it could be the quarter notes or eighth notes or even sixteenth notes. But, while moving your hand up and down, you only touch the strings some of the movements. So, the strumming ends up having a unique "beat" for the song. Sometimes the drums follow this "beat" or groove.

Home Grown Tomatoes

So, this brings me to "Home Grown Tomatoes," a song by Guy Clark. One of the family friendly radio stations here (star991fm.com) has a morning show where they play this song around this time of the year and combine it with lots of humor. It's a fun little song. I just showed it to my dad on youtube yesterday and decided, "hey, why shouldn't I learn to play it." I looked it up and found that it only has 3 chords. Today I played it for my dad, family, and extended family who came here for Father's day. I'm hoping to learn it well enough to play at the Independence day picnic we're invited to this year. I need to work on internalizing it. (now I've come full circle)

Guitar, Music Theory, and a Capo

A good friend of mine was telling me about his piano lessons. He takes lessons with another good friend of mine: Steve Mugglin, one of many of my friends who are helping me to learn the guitar.

The piano learner went into what he was learning: the whole idea of music theory: notes and chords and their relation to each other. He showed me a circle of chords and how they are related and which ones go together. Then he told me about a website that Steve has called http://mugglinworks.com/chordmaps/index.htm - wow, I spent lots of time reading through that and got lost in a few places. I'll have to ask for directions to get back home again after reading it, but I know I learned a lot and want to get that all to sink in!

This past weekend, I saw Steve. I wanted to ask him about capos. I have one for my guitar that my wife gave me as a gift, but I don't know how to use it. He say to just put it on and play. He told me how it would just bring the guitar up a half-step for each fret. I should have realized that. So, I got home and tried it the next day. It's so great. The scales all work. The chords all work. Now, I just need to figure out how it effects the music I play if I'm playing with someone!

The more I learn, the more I realize there's more to learn. Isn't life great!

Internalizing the Music

I was talking with a friend the other day about worship music. He was helping me with learning how to play drums better. He mentioned that I needed to do a few things:
1. Get to know the music well enough to "play" it in my head - internalize it. I've done this with guitar, but not drums yet. I started working on it since last week and have already started to be able to do it with a song.
2. Listen to the intro, it will reveal the beat of the song. I've got to work on this a bit more.
3. There are basic foundational beats. They come from either straight rock or a syncopated beat. I need to learn them better to stay on tempo.

I'm still working on it!

Your Voice could use some exercise

I was talking to a friend the other day who sings at her church and uses her voice a lot in her teaching job. She mentioned about how her doctor had prescribed medicine because she had acid reflux and it helped, but not 100%. She was loosing her voice a lot. They did a scope and found polyps on her vocal chords. The doctor sent her to a speech therapist to get training to exercise her voice. They said this may solve it.

Now, I've heard people talk about this before, but for some reason this time it hit me. This might help me!

My voice sometimes sounds like gravel and gets rough. Maybe I need to get some training in how to exercise it so I can talk better at work, speak better on the PMlessonsLearned.com conference calls, sing better when I play the guitar, and sing better in church (not in the choir, just in the congregation). I used to sing in a choir once a year. We sang the Messiah for Christmas and had many practices, but haven't done that in years.

Checking out my voice has made my list of things to do - of course, that's a long list, but this will be somewhere near the top (along with a few hundred other things)