Cyberfolk Spring 2000

Lessons On-Line

As more folks are getting on the internet, and as creation of sophisticated web sites becomes easier, more musicians are sharing their knowledge and their music on the Web.

This edition of Cyberfolk reviews two sites which are aimed at beginning and intermediate level guitar and banjo players. These sites are worth visiting because of their excellent use of both graphics and audio. Students of the guitar or banjo will find that these on-line lessons can be a great supplement to their own lessons, classes and self study.

If you're learning guitar, check out Dan Smith's Guitar Page at http://www.dreamscape.com/esmith/dansm/. This site has everything from how to form basic chords to music theory to reviews of various makes of strings. If you're a beginner, start with Acoustic Guitar Basics at http://www.dreamscape.com/esmith/dansm/acoustic/info.htm. Here you'll find basic information about the parts of the guitar, how to tune it, how to warm up before playing, and the "Beginner's Guide to Chords", which includes audio clips of each chord. Especially helpful is the "Strumming Patterns" page. Here you will find diagrams of ten different strumming patterns with RealAudio sound clips for each one.

For more advanced musicians, there are many pages of music theory. One caution, however - some of the information may not be strictly accurate. Another great feature of this site was the extensive tablature archive. Unfortunately, Warner Bros./Chappel Music threatened a lawsuit and that portion of the site had to be disabled. Read about it at http://www.dreamscape.com/esmith/dansm/acoustic/songs.htm.

Beginning banjo players will want to check out http://www.ezbanjo.com. This is a new site that is adding content rapidly. It has a great tutorial for beginning clawhammer style banjo which makes good use of graphics and audio. Photos clearly illustrate how to hold the instrument and the proper hand position for the basic strum. The tuning page includes audio for each string in G tuning. The best section if this site is the tablature page. It includes tablature and audio for several standard banjo tunes, and many of them have three arrangements, at increasing levels of difficulty. A new addition to this site is the ability to search for and buy banjo recordings from www.cdnow.com.

If you have any favorite sites or topics you'd like to see mentioned in Cyberfolk, please let us know. Write to me care of Common Times, or email me at chrismac@wwa.com.

And visit the Cyberfolk Home Page at http://www.wwa.com/~chrismac/cyberfolk, where you can click on the links in this article and browse through the Cyberfolk archives.

See you in Cyberspace.

By Chris McIntosh