My favorite things about music and playing guitar!

1. I love how you have total freedom to express yourself through the notes you play. There’s no better way to express a feeling you can’t describe than to say it in musical form!

2. I love the feeling and emothion in music. I love to listen to music or watch someone perform and I get this feeling that I can’t describe. It’s like I can feel what they feel. It’s like they’re communicating with me through music notes

3. I enjoy seeing and knowing that guitar players and other musicians are at one with their instrument. That’s what can really make a great musician.

4. Music is limitless. You can never learn it all. No matter how far I get I will always be an aspiring musician that is constantly growing.

5. Meeting other musicians. When I meet a total stranger that loves music as much as I do, it’s like we’re instantly family.

6. I enjoy the relaxation and peace I get from writing music and playing guitar. There’s nothing like it.

7. I like the ability to tell my listeners a story with my instrumentals. I like to paint them a picture, so to speak.

8. Knowing that I’m drawing people in and getting their attention when they listen.

9. The thought that the people that inspired me may very well have heard the music I’ve written online.

10. I love sharing music with people! That is the absolute greatest thing in the world! Nothing makes me feel better!!!

Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Thanks for reading!

-Chris-

Have you ever been put down by someone that was only trying to make themselves feel better?

Have you ever been put down by someone that was only trying to make themselves feel better? I have several times by other musicians and other people I’ve met in my lifetime. It seemed as though everytime things would be going great someone would knock me down and do everything they could to keep down. It amazes me that people can manage to bring themselves to do something like this and I feel sorry for them.

It seems more and more people these days are envious or jealous of the people around them because they feel that someone is better than themselves or because they feel intimidated by them for some unknown reason. I personally can’t find any logic in this at all….. How can a person possibly think that it’s gonna make their life better if the make someone else’s life miserable? People do this to one another every single day. We’ve all done it. We all have come home from work mad and gotten aggravated with our parents, spouses, friends, etc. unintentionally because we’ve had a bad day. But that’s not quite what I’m talking about….

I’m talking about a situation where a total stranger who knows nothing about you would want to spoil your day just because they’ve had a bad one. We’ve all met someone like this. I have never been able to even come close to making any since of this…. I think that it really shows a person’s character when they do something like this. This is how you can pick out a bully.

Now, excuse me for saying, but I don’t like bullies. Bullies are pussies. Excuse the term… I just want to clarify how strongly I feel about bullying. I’ve seen many people in my lifetime ruined because of someone they know that had a hard time bulling them. All because they wanted to make themselves feel better. That shows that people that do this are jealous and selfish and will never be anything in life because they dont have what it takes to suck it up and be somebody. They don’t want to put forth the effort to really make something of themselves.

This goes to show you. That person that’s always knocking you down or kicking you when you’re down is probably a nobody that’s too sorry to toughen up and live. I hate it for the people that have this problem. It’s hard for them to see that they’re not doing anything but making their own lives worse by hurting others….

Hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Thanks for reading!

-Chris-

Recording music…..

Recording music is very fun, healthy, and stressful at the same time. Usually a band breaks up during the recording process because of the stress and frustration it can cause. Recording music with others can bring about significant differences in opinion and differences in tastes that can instigate and antagonize conflict between even the best of friends. I’m going to tell you about some of my personal experiences recording with a band and about some of my experiences recording my own original instrumental work.

Usually about once a year or so a band will decide that they want to record a cd or their next cd, if they have already been through the process before. They save up money from gigs and they practice and work very hard gathering every last penny to invest in studio time. They spend hours working and putting together music for their new masterpiece. Then the big day comes… The first recording session. Everything goes good. They get a song recorded and they critique and analyze until they’re satisfied. Then things start to go so perfectly and slowly but surely you have an all out war amongst bandmates. Some bands can grit their teeth and bare it throught the proces of disagreeing and fixing mistakes, and re-doing over and over again. But some can’t and it destroys the band.

I’ve seen bands that were so sick of recording and in such a hurry to get it overwith they left many mistakes hidden in the basslines and covered up instument errors or left harmonies slightly unsyncronized because “nobody will know the difference”. The recording process as you can tell will severely impair ones judgement on what they are working on. It is hard to remember that you are putting forth a lot of money for the production of your CD or demo and you should make every penny worth it by settling for nothing less than the absolute best you can do.

I record my music and I don’t stop until I’ve got it perfect. If I don’t absolutely love what I’m hearing when I play it back, it does not get publicized, and I continue until I feel like it has reached it’s peak. I myself have spent months working on one piece of music simply from not being satisfied with what I heard. I found myself thinking, “This harmony can be better.” “This chord is slightly off time.” “That track is too hot.” I kept finding ways to knock it down and start over.

It is plain to see that a musician is never fully satisfied with their work. It is also very clear why the recording process destroys bands. If you have a room full of uncontent musicians working on the same thing together, it is surely to happen that there will be disagreements between them. It is our responsibility to remember that music is supposed to compassionate, heartfilled, relaxing, and fun. Recording is just another way of sharing music. It should be looked upon as a learning experience for every band and individual that participates.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading!

-Chris-

Some of my contact information.

Hey everybody. My name is Chris Woodward. I am a professional musician. I am also a guitar instructor. I would like to share my pictures, videos, blogs, and my music with you.

You can check me out on my other pages:

www.myspace.com/chriswoodwardguitar
www.youtube.com/chriswoodwardguitar
www.twitter.com/cswguitar
www.blogster.com/chriswoodward

I am also on Facebook, Friendster, and Bebo.

You can e-mail me at:

christopher_woodward01@yahoo.com
christopherwoodward02@gmail.com

Could you live without music?

I want everyone reading to think about this… Really think about it…. I have a question for everyone…. Could you live without music? If you never heard music again, would you go crazy or would it not bother you?

Now, let me clarify… When I say music I mean all music. From your CD’s, radios, IPods, computers, cassette tapes, video games, movies or any other form of soundtrack, cell phone ringtones, or even whistling, humming, or snapping your fingers. These are all musical things we encounter every day of lives, whether we realize it or not. Imagine if every movie you watched had no music. Imagine if all the video games you played had no music. What if your cell phone had no ringtone at all. What if your radio in your car only had talkshows with no music or the news with no music. What would you do? Could you handle it? Or would you go crazy?

Maybe I’m crazy… (I’m sure a lot of you think I am after a blog like this one). Or maybe I posted this to make you think about just how much we all love music and need it whether we know it or not… I wouldn’t mess with you heads or anything. I just wanted to make you think…

Now that you have a better understanding of what I’m asking you, I’ll ask you again…..

Could you really live without music? =)

Hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks for reading!

-Chris-

Respect for all music and musicians

I was at the Railroad Days gig a while back and there were a lot of bands there along with myself. There were also several duets and guitar players. This brought up an interesting topic to me. Musicians should respect other musicians. Every time you have more than one band playing together at the same gig, you have a competitive nature between the bands and this, to me, doesn’t seem like the right thing.
In my personal opinion, musicians are like family. We should all stick together and work as a team. Not fight to shoot each other down to build ourselves up. I’ve found in my experinces with people that have done this to my friends, bandmates, and myself, most musicians that try to shoot other musicians down are doing it because they feel self-concious about theirself or their music. This takes us back to the competitive nature that I mentioned earlier. Because of this competitive nature, musicians not only shoot each other down, but we shoot ourselves down as well. There’s really no since in doing this. Why can’t we all get together, go to a gig, and have a good time doing what we all love? Why do we make it a competition? Why do we ruin a show for someone to make ourselves feel better? It’s not our place to be the judge of another musician’s music. Sure we can help each other out and give our opinion, but don’t deliberately hurt someone to make yourself feel superior. That’s not the right thing to do and it’s definitely not what music is about.
I know I’m just one person. I’m just one guitar player in a million. But hopefully I’ve made at least a little bit of a difference bringing this up. This is just my personal opinion. I’m not trying to attack anyone or question anyone. I just thought about this subject after having seen all the different performances and musicians. These are just my personal feelings on this. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading.

-Chris-