Learn Acoustic Guitar with YouTube

in Music, YouTube | March 8th, 2009

It was time to do some­thing new. So I bought an acoustic gui­tar and decid­ed to see what I could learn on my own. And this, then, led me to look for free resources on the web. Not shock­ing­ly, YouTube has a fair amount to offer. A num­ber of dif­fer­ent video providers have post­ed lessons that can get you going. How to buy an acoustic gui­tar, how to tune it by ear, how to strum, how to fin­ger pick (a video viewed close to 1 mil­lion times), how to play var­i­ous chord pro­gres­sions (above), etc. It’s all there — although it’s also kind of jum­bled togeth­er, and you’ll need to do some sift­ing to find what you need. Some of the major YouTube chan­nels fea­tur­ing free gui­tar lessons can be found here, here, and here. 

As a last note, you’ll notice that these videos are gen­er­al­ly pro­duced by ven­dors look­ing to upsell more com­plete video pack­ages. This means that you’ll have to suf­fer through a lit­tle bit of mar­ket­ing. But, it’s hard­ly unbear­able and the lessons are oth­er­wise quite help­ful.

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New Bob Dylan Album Coming

in Music | March 5th, 2009

Appar­ent­ly, in April, Bob Dylan plans to release a new album. Let’s hope that he con­tin­ues to defy grav­i­ty. Get more details here.

Relat­ed Con­tent

When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: New­port, 1965

Like A Rolling Stone 1966

Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl

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Stream the New U2 Album

in Music | February 20th, 2009

U2’s next album, No Line on the Hori­zon, will be released inter­na­tion­al­ly in ear­ly March. But not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing­ly the album is already being cir­cu­lat­ed (not legal­ly) on Bit­Tor­rent. And this has moti­vat­ed the band to give fans free access to a streamed ver­sion on MySpace. To lis­ten, just click here, scroll down to the music play­er, and tog­gle the “Fea­ture Playlist” to No Line on the Hori­zon. You should be able to access the album in its entire­ty.

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Dylan and Baez Sing Blowin’ in the Wind

in Music | February 19th, 2009

Some­where back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites.  As men­tioned a few weeks back, Dylan recent­ly agreed to lend this clas­sic song to a TV com­mer­cial for an eth­i­cal bank­ing and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare com­mer­cial­iza­tion of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flag­ging that.

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Sounds of Opera 1907

in Music | February 17th, 2009

In 1907, exec­u­tives from the Gramo­phone Com­pa­ny head­ed to the base­ment of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax record­ings of famous opera singers. Now, a cen­tu­ry lat­er, these record­ings have been opened, dust­ed off, and (yes) even com­mer­cial­ized. Lat­er this month, EMI will release the record­ings under the title, “Trea­sures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes arti­cle and scroll down a lit­tle to the Mul­ti­me­dia sec­tion, you can sam­ple these cen­tu­ry old record­ings. The Times col­lec­tion fea­tures out­takes from Verdi’s Aida, Otel­lo and Rigo­let­to. Find them here.

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John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 6th, 2009

This week marks the 50th anniver­sary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talk­ing about the 1959 air­plane crash that cut short the bud­ding lives and careers of Bud­dy Hol­ly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bop­per” Richard­son. In ’59, Bud­dy Hol­ly’s musi­cal career was just get­ting start­ed, but his influ­ence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all cov­ered Hol­ly songs dur­ing their ear­ly careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon mov­ing from a Lead Bel­ly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a lit­tle Bud­dy Hol­ly med­ley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peg­gy Sue.” (The Bea­t­les’ take on “Words of Love” can be lis­tened to here as well.) Enjoy.

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Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl

in Music, Television | February 1st, 2009

As you’ll recall, we men­tioned a few days ago that Bob Dylan allowed “Blowin’ in the Wind” to be used in a British com­mer­cial. Nev­er before had Dylan allowed that to hap­pen, at least in Britain. For one of our read­ers, there was a small sil­ver lin­ing. The com­pa­ny using the clas­sic song (the Co-oper­a­tive Group) has some clear virtues. “The Co-op is eth­i­cal; The Co-op sup­ports Fair­Trade; The Co-op is still a co-oper­a­tive; They sure ain’t Victoria’s Secret.”

Fast for­ward a few days, and we strange­ly find Dylan doing a Super Bowl ad for Pep­si — not the worst com­pa­ny in the world, but also not the best. Above, Dylan and Will.i.am (Black Eye Peas) sing a song that they wrote specif­i­cal­ly for the Super Bowl ad, and you might even­tu­al­ly find it being sold on iTunes. I can hard­ly wait.

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Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Arturo Toscanini, 1952

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 31st, 2009

Here’s a nice vin­tage clip that comes out of a YouTube Chan­nel called The Great Per­form­ers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Col­lec­tions. The video fea­tures Arturo Toscani­ni con­duct­ing Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the sec­ond move­ment here.

For more clas­si­cal music see:

Free Beethoven and Mozart Record­ings via Pod­cast

Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 9 — Kara­jan or Mup­pet Style

The Ten Best Clas­si­cal Music Record­ings of 2008

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