Guitar lessons in Miami with Dyce Kimura.  Hey there, folks! I want to talk to you today about some of the amazing ways that technology has changed the way I teach guitar in 2016. I just want to go ahead and start showing you some things that I’ve seen. So let’s say you go to play a song — and right now I’m just sharing my screen with you as I record. Let’s say we go into YouTube and I want to go learn to play a song; for instance, I want to play Just Got Paid by ZZ Top and I’m going to go ahead and watch it. Alright, so this lick… I do teach this song in my classes. But let’s say I want to learn this song; I can also look it up and learn who else is playing this song. I’m noticing that Joe Bonamassa does it. I’m just searching it on YouTube. And let’s let it render. So let’s just hold that in queue.

Now, traditionally with guitar lessons in Miami, if I wanted to learn that I would put the name of the song “just got paid guitar tab” and I’ll put that into Google and something like this will come up from ultimate guitar and this is nice and it’s free. Most of the things I’m going to show you today are free. So here’s the tab; it says from 5 to 7. I’m not going to teach how to read tabs today; I might teach that in a future video, but for right know I’m observing how to use the technology. So I pulled up in the ultimateguitar.com and this really doesn’t give me the groove or the cadence; I’m listening to the song to get a groove and then I could read that tab. For a long time since 2002 to 2014 and a half, I would say, that’s all you had. Lately, we’ve had this new cloud-based technology called Songsterr and this is really cool. Now this is really similar; I’m going to go to songster with two “r” and I’m going to put in “just got paid” and the Joe Bonamassa comes up and the ZZ Top and some other version comes up.  I would use this a lot in guitar lessons in Miami.  Let’s just go with this Joe Bonamassa and here we go. Let it render — it takes a minute. This is great, this is clown based software. It’s better than guitar Pro — and I’ve been using guitar Pro since it ever came out around 2004 and I’ve been very loyal to them. The cool thing about guitar Pro is that you could play the actual tab where you had to buy the software or you could either do the download or they could ship it to your house and to then you could have the back up with the key and they would give you your software key and the password and everything, but if you wipe your computer clean it may not always work again. I had a few instances where I had to buy it again from them over the years, but what I like about songsterr is you just log in and you can play. I am going to hit this blue button. That’s really cool. Listen, I grew up playing guitar is in the 80s and we just did not have this stuff — forget about it. Watch this. I would use this a lot in guitar lessons in Miami.  Okay, let’s say I want to learn this rift and I’m going up here into this section where at the top of the screen I hit the grey bar and it’s going to allow me to tweak all the levels of all the instruments. So overdriven guitar JBGIT, that’s Joe Bonamassa; see here I could put him at 100%. Here’s his vocals, I don’t need a lot of that. I could put a lot of base. 87% drums, I could put that as 100%. There are a few other effects that are in here, but I’m going to go with that. I’ll X out of it and then I play it. That’s the new mix that I just put in. Let’s say I don’t want the other instrument so I’m just going to put just the guitar line. Here we go. Let’s say that’s a little too fast.

Now, this is free if you use it as is without even adjusting the volume or soloing out anything, but if I paid 12 or 13 bucks — whatever it is, it will let me tweak it and if you pay it will let you solo things out, mute things out, change the volume. I would use this a lot in guitar lessons in Miami.  It will also let you go here and print, which I won’t do but you can choose how many bars you want to print and how many pages etc… It can also let you email people — let’s see where this little button goes. Never mind that’s just full screen. So let’s just stay in full screen for now. So this… You can hit the space bar and that’s going to stop the track. Let’s say I go into here and I change the speed; I go to 75%. That’s cool. Let’s say I’m here and I want to loop that and I click this snake looking thing and I loop it. I would use this a lot in guitar lessons in Miami.  Let’s say every time I loop it I want to start a new account, I hit this 3 number. You hear it? It can be pretty annoying if all you’re doing is looping it, but I use this to teach people all the time. I teach people how to loop things, slow them down, and isolate the guitar tracks. This works for guitar solos and it works for everything. Let’s see if I can find a more intricate song. For instance, let’s go with something famous like stairway to heaven. Notice all of these options populate here and all these different people did stairway to heaven or songs of similar to stairway to heaven so that comes up. When you’re learning to play guitar I suggest you learn with songs that are really famous that everybody knows. I notice there is like a contrarian attitude in some people where they really don’t want to do the super mainstream thing because they feel like they’re selling out; they would rather do the rare, obscure indie rock thing, which is totally cool I totally support that it’s just that as a guitar teacher you’re going to find the most free media that is accurate online from really famous stuff. I would use this a lot in guitar lessons in Miami.  And the reason why is simply because there are — for instance, this is a Led Zeppelin song; there are led zeppelin enthusiasts that really take a lot of painstaking time in making the tab absolutely immaculately perfect and you may not find that level of attention to detail to just anything or anyone.

Guitar lessons in Miami Advise

So here is stairway to heaven. Everything is on. If it’s off you’ll see it lit up in green but it’s not. I can hit the cursor key to scroll quickly. And it can do some pretty intricate stuff here. Let’s do the lead by J Paige, that’s obviously Jimmy Paige, and then you scroll down to that part of the section. Here we go. Now you may say you can’t hear it clear enough, so what if I just solo that. That’s the lead. I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  Now let’s say you want that and you want some context so I’ll give you some drums, some base and we’ll throw in a little bit of rhythm guitar and we’ll just turn the volume down. See how that works? Let’s say you’re just struggling with the first couple lines and we’re just going to slow it down for you. You can also speed it up if you want to get crazy, but most people don’t want to do that.

Anyway, let’s say you we’re going to loop it; you’re going to do it, you’re going to hold down the shift key and then you hit the cursor button and that lets you add bars to your loop. Now it comes back in kind of abrupt on the loop, so if you want to add that 3 kind of thing. Here we go. Now if I want to slow it down from here; let’s say I came all the way up to 50. I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  Now, if I do 50% it grazed out because it takes a second to render and this is actually a pretty big song with a lot of files so it might take a long time to render. I’ve seen it take like a full minute before, so I don’t know if I have the patience to wait for that; as a matter of fact, I don’t have the patient so let me just try like 75%. 75% was already go; didn’t have to take anytime. So the advantage is this system of learning is so much better than just getting the book and tab because it forces you to play with the song, you can slow it down and you can isolate it as slow as you want to make it so that you can play with the song and once you learn all the notes and all the cadence and the rhythms you can very slowly and incrementally speed this up. I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  I will go to about 84%. That was good. And then from there I can go to like 97% and eventually get to full speed. And then you just get in territory; I just did 3 bars, may be you could work on 4 bars then you slow it down and then 5 bars and then slow it down and speed it up — you just gained one bar at a time. So that alone is a huge change in the way guitar is being played and taught and learned, but that’s just the beginning. I am a full-time guitar teacher giving guitar lessons in Miami so I am always teaching this stuff.

Another aspect that I’ll do is — let’s go to stairway to heaven. So here is the song. By the way I just want to show you something, how to download songs and grab them as MP3s. You can go to this URL, youtube-mp3.org, and you just grab the URL right there and I’m going to plunk it right into this thing and I’m going to right click it and paste it in and I’m going to convert video and click download and look down. I am in Chrome right now on a Mac. I think it will take a second because it’s like a 8 minutes song but it looks like it’s moving along nicely. While that’s downloading, here’s another thing I do, so I’ll go to YouTube and I’ll type stairway to heaven guitar solo cover. Let’s say you’re a student and trying to learn the guitar solo stairway to heaven. I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  And I’ll pull up the guitar solo cover. So there is so much stuff like this on YouTube. Notice I’m finding something with a great sound with a good camera angle and it looks like this particular guy has another tutorial link available that we’re not going to link out to at the moment. I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  By the way, while I’m talking to you I’m checking my download; it’s coming on nicely I’ll show you what to do with that in a second. So that was the guitar solo cover. Now let’s get out of this Hillary Clinton thing and let’s look here, Led Zeppelin stairway to have fun guitar solo lesson. So now we have the cover and now we’re going to have a lesson. If your learning guitar — I’m a guitar teacher, I mean, people sit down in my office and I’ll have to learn a solo and teach it to them within 60 Minutes and so I use all these tools. I’ve got songsterr going, I’ve isolated things, I’ve got this actual song downloading and I usually email it to them, I’ll watch a cover of it doesn’t seamlessly and then this will be a tutorial with this render. So now I have the actual song which is downloading here and then we have the tab which is interactive and playback for us, isolated, slow down and looped, so that’s like killer, right? I encounter this a lot with guitar lessons in Miami.  On top of that we’re going to have the video of the cover version done with a close up angle. Then we can have another video of somebody explaining everything to us like right here. I don’t know if this is the best guy for this particular one just something I grabbed for the sake of this tutorial video so don’t necessarily go to these specific people and think that this is what I’m personally endorsing. They may not be that good, they may be great — I do really know. As a full time guitar teacher offering guitar lessons in Miami, I end up explaining this a lot.

Anyway, here is our download it’s completed. You see it right down here on the bottom left? From here, there are few things I can do; I can just email it to you, that’s in my Gmail and I watch that upload or I can put it in my iTunes. Let me just show you real quick. Here is my iTunes; I could just put it in a playlist like this — Led Zeppelin stairway to heaven with lyrics. That was the download I just did. Notice I have it ready, Led Zeppelin stairway to heaven official music video with lyrics, so I’m going to delete that. I just put that in there to show you how that works, but you don’t really have to.   As a full time guitar teacher offering guitar lessons in Miami, I end up explaining this a lot. reason I like downloading of YouTube is that I know exactly what I’m getting; I am not, like, bit torrenting something and hoping it’s the right. I know exactly what I’m getting before I download it. So like I said you can use this URL, www.youtube-mp3.org.

Moving on, so the songster is really great. This is cloud-based tech which I prefer; guitar Pro, like I said I’ve been using guitar Pro since it first came out over a decade ago and I’ve been very loyal to them, but songster came out with this technology and I think the ultimate/guitar.com has the same technology also where it plays it back to you and a couple of my students have found a few others as well. So the competition is fierce and to this is where our future is going for guitar playing; it’s getting very interactive, which is great. How about if I learn to play heart shaped box guitar tab, and notice this is in ultimateguitar.com tab and we’re here.   As a full time guitar teacher offering guitar lessons in Miami, I end up explaining this a lot.  Acutally, I’m going to backtrack, I don’t want something with tabs; let me get something with chords. Let’s do like Goff Brooks rodeo. Goff Brooks chords, and ultimate guitar comes up. So here we are, this is the rodeo chords. You may know the song. I’m 36 years old so this is maybe something not everyone knows this stuff, but it doesn’t matter if you know it or not. Let’s say you’re trying to learn a song with chords and you went into ultimate guitar, if you hit this transpose button — let’s say you learn to play it like the song. Let me just pull up the song, so we’re going to do rodeo Goff Brooks official video. Here’s the song and then I pull up the… So let me just play the song. Obviously, I’m playing to the song; the song sounds kind of weird like this particular video slowed it down, but I think with YouTube you can actually slow down a song. The speed isn’t normal –interesting.  The quality is at 480; I want at least 720. So let’s say you’re learning to play and singing and it’s too low for you or let’s say it’s a male vocal and you are a female and you want to sing it higher; well you just hit this button, transpose, and now I just click it’s a few times and I just moved it to the key of G or how about to the key of A minor? That’s really cool. As a full time guitar teacher offering guitar lessons in Miami, I end up explaining this a lot. It’s a very easy way of transposing music; you just click through this, this is ultimate-guitar.com. Also you’ll notice if you just hover over this blue it gives you the cord. With chords, you go into here and you can do variations and that is a rabbit trail right there, but these are all the different ways you can play a B chord for instance. Also check out this blog on how to find a guitar teacher in Miami here.

I like ultimate guitar, because it lets me print. I can just grab it and I could hit print here or what I like to do is copy it and put it in a Google doc and I create a Google doc and I just drop it in and print that sucker. And from Google doc, typically, if you’re a student I give it in bold. I move it up a few fonts and I do whatever I want to do and then I print. That’s a nice alternative/option. Some songs, I can’t find a chord on ultimate guitar and I have to go somewhere else; I have to go like E chords. E chords sucks, because they don’t let you… what is this stupid ad doing? They won’t let me move it. This isn’t usually there obviously they really want you to buy this thing and they stuck it right there. I don’t think they meant to do it like that, maybe they need to work on the tech, but usually that isn’t there so I’m going to proceed to teach it as if it wasn’t. I can just take a screenshot which – I’m on a Mac so shift + command + 4 and I’ll just grab it like that and screenshot it and then there it is. It’s here and from here I could just control P and I print that sucker. So that’s the way that I use the E chord for free. It tends to be very accurate, but it’s expensive, they make you pay a lot of money. They give you the chords like this and also they let you transpose with one click of a button like that but then they try to harvest your email login and make you a premium member and make you pay.

So as a guitar teacher, there are some songs I can just find on E chords I’ll just screenshot and print it, because I don’t have a free account with them. I want to show you something really awesome, this is called amazing slow downer and this is really cool. I just bought this software for 49.99 and it’s awesome. Let’s say I’m working on that song, just got paid by Joe Bonamassa, so I dumped it into amazing slow downer. So you see speed is 100 semi tone, so Q puts you where you are at in the song and I have slowed down type 4 ST volume max; these are some technical things you can just set it the way I set it. But watch this, let’s say I’m developing the song and I cut speed or I could actually just drag it. If I put it at 66%… So that’s pretty cool, because I can do that to anything. So imagine you can get really technical nuances like a guitar solo. As a full time guitar teacher offering guitar lessons in Miami, I end up explaining this a lot. You can just do that to anywhere and put the speed wherever you want to put it and then if you just right-click it and you export that sucker, save song as MP4 in mono and it just saved right to your desk top and then from there you click and drag and put it into your iTunes folder or email it to yourself — whatever you want to do. As a matter fact, I should have some slowed down songs in queue, but I’m not going to hover you with that at the moment.

Guitar lessons in Miami by Dyce Kimura

Let me show you another trick that I do, let’s say I’m working on this groove; so the groove is just got paid and I go in songsterr and here’s the song and then let it to load. Here is the songster. So that’s that. Let’s see, I use an attack metronome inside my iPhone app it’s called Pro metronome. I’ll type it out for you people. It’s called Pro metronome app, so get that on your phone. So how do you get a beat? This is really important. Let’s go back to just got paid. Now I’m going to click and tap that beat into this metronome website, this is a.bestmetronome.com, so watch. So it’s saying 94, so now it’s giving me 94. So it’s copied at 94 and here’s is how I like to use YouTube; I could just go 94 drum machine and there’s the drum beat. I like these orange ones. Of all these things that say 94, I think some of this stuff is like 1994. We’re going to go with these orange ones, so here’s an example; it has an 8 count 5,6,7,8. That’s how I use the drum machine. Now what I do personally, I’ll actually take this, copy the URL and I’ll drop it into that YouTube link that I told you about which was youtube–mp3.org and I’ll convert this video from audio and video to just audio. It takes a minute because it’s 13 minutes long. It’s taking a second, but I’m eventually going to download the video. Now I downloaded that video; I’m just going to go over here to show you what I did and if you look here I have all these downloaded rhythms from 40 bpm – BPM stands for beats per minute – I did everything in a 5 BPM increments, so I don’t have 94 but I have 95. I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami.  And here is our song. Now if this is too fast, which I assume for a student it would be, let’s say I bring it to 70 and as we go in there 1, 2, 3. And that’s how I do it. Why do I do it’s like this? I’ll do it at 70 and then have the student go all the way up to 75 and then 80 and then 85 and then eventually 90. Once they hit 95, which is the speed of the song then they should be able to play it right in there with the actual song. So why is that so important? It’s so important, because you need to be able to play — not just to play the guitar with dexterity and not just to play the songs correctly; you have to be able to play to the songs and that’s really going to complete your guitar education and make your guitar playing makes sense. It’s going to allow you to seamlessly work with other people and bands if you can play not just play songs, but play to the songs and that really the huge change that I’ve noticed since like 2006 when guitar hero came out and rock band came out all these people could interact with a guitar and guitar used to be too hard to play. I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami. A lot of these rock songs are too hard to play like; appetite for instruction, guns and roses, welcome to the jungle or it’s so easy or whatever or black dog by Led Zeppelin, but these songs now it’s super easy to play with a guitar hero because they are just like four buttons and people are interacting with the songs and then they are learning them thoroughly and then they are learning them on the guitar. So it’s kind of a controversial thing among guitar teachers whether guitar hero is really good or bad, but I think it’s good because I know that a lot of people got really excited about learning guitar when guitar hero came out. I know my phone was blowing up like crazy; people wanted lessons and I would get like at least two phone calls a day that says, “my son is so crazy about guitar hero and you have to give them guitar lesson,” so that’s fine. What’s so different about the way people are learning now is that they are playing and interacting with the actual song.

Just to go over what I’m talking about here, I’m using the ultimate guitar.com to get chords and to automatically transpose. I’m using the E chords to get screenshots of songs that are obscure if I can’t find them. I’m finding the tabs interactively on songster and I’m playing back and slowing them down, printing them out, looping them and isolating them. I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami. I’m going into the amazing slow downer software and I’m using that to slow and loop tracks and be able to clearly hear what guitars are doing. I’m using youtube-mp3.org to download music and then I’ll take that file and I’ll stick it in my smart phone and just listen to it all day. Then I’ll go to YouTube and I’m looking at tutorials of how to play something plus I am looking at guitar covers. I don’t need to sit through a 15 minutes tutorial; I can watch 30 seconds of a guitar cover and just watch it and figure it out. So there are just so many different ways of learning. Of course, if you’re learning online and if you’re stuck you can hire a sky teacher.   I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami.  I offer Skype guitar lessons; I just got off with a call in New York actually, but I have students all over the world on Skype and more and more people are finding that they want to learn guitar interactively on Skype as well as all these different software and programs. Imagine if you’re doing everything I just said plus you have a Skype teacher. Even if you’re in a remote area and you have good Internet, even if you’re somewhere in Honduras or in Pakistan or Ecuador and there is no really great, like, American Pro musicians or Pro guitar teachers around you that can really play in the style that you want to play. Let’s say if it’s American or British rock, you can get on Skype and interact with some of the best people in the world.

So I just want to make sure I covered everything. The other thing I wanted to say is I’m really excited about artist like John Mayer that is doing old blues songs and like old Hendrix rock and bring it back and a lot of students these days they come to me they want to learn John Mayor songs and then they are astonished to realize that it’s actually a Jimmy Hendrix tuner something like bonus love, little wings. I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami. I just want to encourage you if you come across something like that to don’t just do the recreation, but do the original. John Mayor is great because he’s been recreating so many classic famous tunes in his own way and it’s making all these teenagers and twenty-somethings and even thirty-somethings really excited about music from the 60s and 70s. But don’t just stop with John Mayor, go back and listen and learn to the actual stuff by Jimi Hendrix or Albert King or BB King some of these great singers that John Mayor loves to emulate, because that’s another huge trend that I’ve been seeing as a teacher and I would just love to see you guys dig in and get into the real thing.

I often encounter this while teaching guitar lessons in Miami. So anyway, I just want to end this video with a little shot on my face; usually I do actual shots recording myself, but today I just did mostly a screenshot video. If you like this video, feel free to comment and like it and share and subscribe. I teach all the time on Instagram and Skype and YouTube. Hit me up, Dyce Kimura, I would love to hear from you and thanks so much for watching.