How to change guitar acoustic guitar strings

                I usually never change my guitar strings. I have been playing guitar for about 8 years now and I have only changed my guitar strings about 3 or 4 times. It is recommended to change them once a month or so. Some people change them once or twice a week, or like me, I went 5 years or so without changing a string on my guitar. It all depends on how much you play. If you play a lot, you want to change the strings more often. It all depends for different people. Classic signs of needing to change the strings are when the strings become rusted or a little discolored, when the guitar won’t stay in tune for long, and the guitar will sound duller as time passes. There are other factors involved in how long strings will last. Different strings last longer and there are products you can buy to make the strings last.

                In my last restringing, I put Dunlop Medium Light 80/20 Bronze Acoustic Guitar Strings on my guitar. This is my first time using these strings, but I have heard they are pretty good. So now getting to the actual restringing, I start off on the low E string and work my way one by one, rather than taking all the strings off at one time. The first step is loosening the string by lowering the tone of the string, until you can take the string off of the head stock. Then you take the peg off of that string, so the entire string will come out of the guitar. That is the process of taking the old string off of the guitar.

                Next, is putting the new string on the guitar. Take the metal end of the string and put it in the peg hole. Put the peg in to hold the end of the string down and then take the string up to the head stock of the guitar (the skinny part, above the neck). For the four lowest strings you put the string through the small hole (from the middle to the outside). Then start tightening the string by turning the tuning keys until the string is in the right pitch. Make sure that the string is wrapping down the metal part, while putting pressure on the string. The string will stretch out automatically once it is on, so the pitch will drop until it is fully stretched. Everything is the same for replacing the two silver highest strings expect when you put the string through the whole of the metal part, above the neck of the guitar. You are going to want to make sure that the string first spins around above the hole, and then you are going to want to move it down to go below the hole as well, so the string won’t come loose and pop out. It is hard to understand unless you see the process done, but that is how you replace the strings on your guitar.

Music classes you can take

Delta College alone offers a ton of different music classes. You can learn the history of music, learn how to read music, learn how to play guitar, and more. I saw 25 different classes available at delta in music. There are many opportunities to learn whatever you want at Delta.
 Delta offers Elements of music 1-2. This class is the basic fundamentals of music. It will teach you about time signatures, key signatures, rhythms, notes, and basically anything about reading music. The second half of the class is devoted to an introduction into composing music. This is the class I am taking and I would recommend it if you need a humanities credit.
 Another similar class is Music Appreciation. You listen to instrumental music and teaches you about them. It will also go over the different genres of today.
 Delta offers a variety of music history classes. I would not like this class much because I don't like history or memorizing dates very much. Jazz history and the history of Rock and Roll are an option if you like history and music.
 You can learn the piano and guitar through some different classes. There is piano 1-2 that will teach you how to play the piano. Guitar classes are fundamental of guitar, contempt guitar style, classical guitar, and guitar ensemble.
 There is a lot of music classes for vocals as well. You can take a music voice class or you can be involved in a group performance class. Other options are chorale 1-4, chamber choir 1-4, and jazz singers 1-4.
  My music professor has told our class that Delta is bringing in another class that he will be teaching. Music theory will be offered at Delta soon. Music theory is the study of the structure of music.
 Clearly there are tons of choices you can take at Delta if you want to dive into music. I really like the classes that are offered here and they are helpful for the future. I like my professor and he says that the other music professors are really good also. I would be very interested in taking the piano class to learn how to play the piano really well. If I had the time and money, I would take a lot of other music classes offered at Delta.

My college music class

I went to meet with an adviser about the classes I need to take. He told me that I needed a humanities credit. He started giving me more information on what I could take for the credit. He mentioned music and I was suddenly very interested. I was planning to take a lot of credits to start off my first semester at Delta. Taking a music class would be easy for me because of my background and the years of having band in high school. I loved the idea of having a very easy class so I wouldn’t have to do much to get the credit I needed. I decided to take Elements of Music.

                The course is made to teach students how to understand basic music elements such as rhythm, meter, form, melody and harmony through seeing, hearing and performing musical examples. I have previously learned everything described in the class, before I took the class because of band. The only new information I learned is how to determine different key signatures in music. I knew what the key signature did to music and notes before the class, but I didn’t know how to identify key signatures and their names.

                We just had our exam in that class last Tuesday. I made sure I was prepared for the exam, but I didn’t have to put much effort in to studying because basic music is a second nature to me at this point. Our professor told us we were done learning for the semester. The second half of the class will be dedicated to composing 8 measures of a melody. We have practiced composing music for homework, and we have been assigned composing a melody in group work. I don’t think it will be too hard to come up with 8 measures of a melody.

                I did think that the class might have been harder than what it is on the first day. Each class, we sit in front of a piano to take notes. I thought for sure that we would learn how to read the music and to play it on the piano. Unfortunately, that is not the case because we have not done it yet and we are done with our learning session. I also thought that we would have to play our final composition, but the professor recently told us to just turn it in for him to grade. I am glad I can take an easy class that does not take much time to get the credit I need.

My favorite music genre

    I do not listen to the most popular kind of music. No rap, or rock or anything you would probably guess. My favorite genre of music is contemporary Christian music. I grew up listening to it in the car all the time. My mom would listen to nothing but that. I actually encouraged it in the car. My older sister was never a big fan of listening to Christian music, especially when she got older. I loved it because I was born and raised listening to Christian music.

   Christian music first became popular around the 1950’s or 60’s. There was only country Christian music and gospel around this time. Christian music all together died down and didn't get too popular again until 1975 or so. As the Christian music started the increase, more genres of the music became popular. Christian music gradually got much more popular until it hit its highest popularity in 2010. Since its highest point, it has gone down from today. The graph below mainly focuses on Christian/Gospel music instead of every genre for Christian music

   There is a large variety of Christian music to satisfy different taste. Christian music is similar to all the regular genres. There is gospel, rap, alternative, metal, pop. The most I listen to is alternative. Radio stations that provide alternative Christian rock are AirOne (90.9 FM), KLove (89.1) and smile FM (88.3). Alternative Christian music is very encouraging music with a good message.

   Some of my top bands I like are: Third Day, Tenth Avenue North, MercyMe, Newsboys, Lecrae, and Jeremey Camp.  It is so cool to see these bands in concert because they connect with the crowd really well. Some of my tops songs are: Start a Fire, Tell the World, From the Day, and Just Say Jesus.

   It is very encouraging hearing some of the things that are on the radio stations. KLove has an encouraging story of the day around the same time every day. I love being able to hear some of the things that happen in peoples life. It brightens up my mood for the day. Callers may call the air and tell them that they are free of cancer, or some people may call about being drug free for a certain time. It is nice to hear positives in the world with all the negatives we hear on the news all the time. I love Christian music for its songs and encouragement in them.

Instruments I want to learn

The top instrument I would like to learn to play really well would be piano. I know a little bit of it from band and playing mallet instruments, but there is a lot I need to learn to play it efficiently. I know what the notes are on the keyboard and I can already read music, but it stops at that. I don’t know the chords on the piano, and I cannot read the grand staff well yet. It takes me a long time to sight read something on the piano because I am not used to seeing that kind of music. I have no idea what the pedals do on the piano. My goal is to sit down and read piano music very well with sight reading, and eventually learning to play famous songs on the piano. I would like to play famous piano pieces from Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart eventually.

An instrument that I would like to learn from the brass section would either be the trumpet, trombone, or tuba. I have never even attempted playing a wind instrument at all, but I find it fascinating how brass players make different sounds from air. The tuba would be cool because of the very deep notes that the tuba produces. Tuba is usually the bass part of songs, which is a bit easier to read. Trombone would be good to learn because of the slide. The farther your arm is on the slide, the deeper pitch is made. It would be good to learn the different positions and how to produce the sound from what note you need to play. The trumpet is a higher pitched instrument. The trumpet reads harder and faster music, usually having the melody in some songs. The trumpet has three different valves that can produce different sounds with a combination of the valves.

I would want to learn the saxophone if I were to learn a woodwind instrument. The saxophone is a good instrument to learn because it has many keys. It uses a reed that will vibrate once you blow air into the instrument. The saxophone has a lot of cool parts in band that would be fun to play. It is hard to hear them in a full band, but they occasionally will have the melody.

There are many instruments I would love to sit down and learn, but I have lost some opportunities to learn some of the instruments. It would be hard to learn any band instruments because I would have to buy an instrument to practice on. It is also hard to find time to learn all the instruments. I do have a piano that I can learn on, but the challenge is finding time to sit down and learn the piano. I would love to learn these instruments if I was given the opportunity.

My Favorite Songs

My favorite song right now would have to be one from Lecrae. Lecrae is a Christian rapper. You may be confused because you usually don’t associate rap with Christian music. I thought the same thing when I first heard it. The first song I heard from Lecrae was Don’t Waste Your Life. I was very hesitant towards it and I didn’t know if I truly liked the song or not after the first time I listened to it. It was so new to me that I didn’t know what to expect. I listened to that same song over and over again to get a feel for it. I looked up the lyrics to it and I made the decision that I really liked it. Don’t Waste Your Life is a fast song with a good beat. Most importantly to me I really like the lyrics that Lecrae puts in the song. I didn’t know what to expect at first, but once I gave the song a try it became one of my favorites.

    One of the newer songs from Lecrae is Tell The World. Thankfully, this is a slower song so I have a chance to rap the words once I learned them. I can’t decide which one of these songs I like more right now. My first favorite from Lecrae was Don’t Waste Your Life, but now Tell the World is competition to that. If I decided not to give Lecrae a chance then I wouldn’t have known about these two amazing songs, along with many other great songs from Lecrae. Once I stepped in and gave it a try I really liked it and I was glad I did.

     My favorite song that I played in band was Transcendent Journey by Rossano Galante. Transcendent Journey was a very happy and victorious song. I played the snare drum in this song. The entire band enjoyed playing this piece because it gave us a challenge, but it was fun to play. We played this my junior and senior year in band. My band director told us that it would be a difficult piece of music and that some college bands struggle with this piece. We were up for the challenge. We practiced and perfected the music and performed it for a huge festival at Western Michigan University my junior year. We got feedback from the performance and saw what more we could work on. My next year we played this piece at our festival, where our band would be graded based on how well we played. The results came back as all 1’s. This is the best grade a band can receive. We were so happy and proud of what we accomplished with this song alone. 

Most boring aspect of music

The most boring part of music is learning how to play it. It is very difficult to focus in class when you are in a band room with an instrument sitting in front of you. Naturally, you would want to pick the instrument up and start making noise with it. Unfortunately, the only way you will know how to play an instrument and read music is to understand what is written on a piece of music and what it means. There was a lot more I had to learn than what I thought starting out. As a 6^th grader, I learned about different time signatures, key signatures, accidentals, note values, dynamics, and the list goes on and on. The only way you can learn about it is through boring lectures. Our teacher had to explain what all of these concepts of music meant and how we can use that information to play in the instruments.  The first part of learning music is learning the information and the second part is applying what you have learned.

 I hated the boring lectures before we know how to play. I think I would have rather taken a class on British History rather than learning about what a time signature will do to read the music. I was close to quitting band because I didn't like it so much. I was in a tough situation because I really wanted to be a good musician but it was so difficult for me to focus in class. The only thing that kept me going was watching the high school band perform. I wanted to be in that situation and I knew the only way I could was if I learned the boring part of music.
 Halfway through the year we learned enough to start playing the music on our instruments. Band got so much better when I could apply what I learned. I was actually enjoying band rather than dreading going to class every day. We played several pieces of music and eventually, with a lot of practice, put on a concert for our parents. I was so happy I was done with the boring part of music, and now I could finally play it. All the hours and exams of the lectures were worth it once I would practice what I learned. Now that I know how to read music and I know what everything means I enjoy playing new pieces of music and learning new instruments. I am surely glad I didn't quit band because  I was bored learning about music at first.