Intense motivation to learn the subject is the single key determinant to whether you will become an excellent guitar player or a mediocre one. ~Umastery.com

Do you have a favorite genre of music that you are itching to learn on guitar?  Maybe several? If you have passion for music, you will be better equipped to learn and practice guitar. Learn how to feel satisfied with practicing guitar, even if it doesn’t feel like you are getting anywhere in the moment, refer back to “Tip #2” when in doubt!

We hope this article has provided some clarity on some of the best ways to learn how to stay motivated to practice guitar. Our blog here on Uberchord has tons of free articles that’ll give further insights as you move along in your playing journey. When you start using a metronome, we’ve got an article on guitar metronome exercises. And when you want to start learning some theory, we’ve got articles on guitar chords in c minor as well as the key g guitar, amongst other topics. Then you can always learn a valuable skill like guitar fingerpicking for beginners.

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As a complete beginner, I played my first guitar chord just a couple of months ago and it was an E minor (Em). This puts me right in line with the majority of beginner guitar players. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I still haven’t properly learned to play G major because the fingering is quite difficult. It surprised me to see G major at the top of the chart since it causes me much strain in my fingers. If you play guitar and happen to remember, is the first chord you first learned listed in the results above?

We want to know what you think, Take the poll!

If you would like to learn these chords, take a look at the chord diagrams below and read our previous blog post “Learn Guitar Chords, A Guide for Beginners” that is dedicated to teaching beginners which chords to get started with. These guitar chord diagrams, taken from our prototype of the  Uberchord app*, will help you get started.

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The 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been announced today. Next year’s inductees include Lou Reed, Green Day, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Bill Withers and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. In addition, Ringo Starr will receive the Award For Musical Excellence and The “5” Royales will be presented the Early Influence Award.

Paying Respect to Artists that Impacted Rock and Roll

Here are some notable songs that we’re listening to from these rock and roll music legends.

The “5” Royales’ “Catch that Teardrop”

Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine”

Green Day’s “Basket Case”

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ relevant “I love Rock n Roll”

Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band’s “Walking Blues”

Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy”

Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble’s “Pride and Joy”

Voters decided not to induct nine other nominees

Who do you think deserved a spot this year? We are pretty surprised that Nine Inch Nails didn’t make it, but better luck to them next year!

• Sting (as a solo artist) Don’t worry guys, Sting was already inducted as a member of The Police back in 2003
• The Spinners are an American Motown soul music group, active for over 50 years
• The Smiths were an influential British alternative rock band in the 80s
• War is an American funk band from California known for “Low Rider“, “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” and “The Cisco Kid“
• Kraftwerk are a German electronic music band and one of the first groups to popularize electronic music
• Chic was best known for “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)“, “Everybody Dance” and “Le Freak“
• The Marvelettes were the first major successful act of Motown Records after the Miracles and released “Please Mr. Postman“
• Nine Inch Nails was founded by Trent Reznor and he remains its only official band member as the main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist
• N.W.A. was an American hip hop group from Compton, widely considered one of the seminal acts of gangster rap with members DJ Yella, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube and MC Ren

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s History

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established by leaders in the music industry to recognize the contributions of those who have had a significant impact on rock and roll. There has been noteworthy controversy over the years that is well documented online. Areas of dispute include vote tampering, exclusion of band members, subjective induction criteria and snubs. Another heated topic is the inclusion of rap and Kiss’ Gene Simmons has a strong opinion. “You’ve got Grandmaster Flash in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Run-D.M.C. in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Simmons asked. “You’re killing me! That doesn’t mean those aren’t good artists. But they don’t play guitar. They sample, and they talk, not even sing … If you don’t play guitar and you don’t write your own songs, you don’t belong there.” We must admit, the guy has a point, but he does come off a bit harsh. What do you guys think?

 Requirements for Induction

• 25 years after the release of their first record and this requirement is highly disputed. Come on, what is the lifespan of a rock star anyways? 25 years after the first album is pushing it!
• Influence and significance of the artists’ contributions to the development and perpetuation of rock and roll.

Notable Artists Never Even nominated

Duran Duran, Kool and the Gang, Dire Straits and Cheap Trick – just to name a few! What artists would you like to see added next year?

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Navigating 2,000+ startups over the course of 3 days at a massive venue (Royal Dublin Society) was quite challenging. Our team discovered a number of promising music startups at Web Summit that will change how we experience and produce music on many levels.

Here is a list of our 9 favorite music startups at Web Summit 2014:

MashMachines is a multi-national team based in Estonia. The Mash Machine is a new form of entertainment that allows anyone to make music. You really need to watch the video. We think that this is what everyone will be asking for this holiday season!

SofaSession is a Vienna based startup that allows you to jam online in real-time with your friends. You can invite any member to play with you in an online session with low latency software that makes it seem like you are making music right next to your friends, even if they are halfway across the world. Sofasession even hosts open jam sessions on their site covering all genres and levels of music. Go check them out to start jamming!

HumTap, headquartered in San Francisco, is on a mission to unleash musical creativity. It allows you to make music by simply humming a tune or tapping a beat. HumTap seeks to change how the world makes and shares music with this unique technology. Definitely watch this demo video to be amazed!

ClapMe, a Brazilian startup, is a virtual stage where artists can perform live for thousands of people. In addition to the visibility, artists can also monetize their work by offering private concerts or by selling merchandise. ClapMe allows for an interactive experience for fans and musicians during the show. The platform already had 10,000 users back in August with much growth since then.

WaveStack, based in Mexico, is a project management platform for creating music. Think of it as the cloud for music production that enables you to visualize your projects changes and track all changes you and your collaborators make as you go through the music production process. Think about all of the time this could save musicians!

Xhail, an Irish startup, let’s users compose music in real-time with unlimited sound resources. Whether you need music for a TV show, movie, advertisement or game, Xhail is a great new platform to consider. It gives users access to unique music cues under an exclusive global license for each project. In addition, Xhail is pioneering an industry change that opens up a new revenue stream for session musicians, which they didn’t have access to before.

Voxtrain, a fellow Berlin-based startup, is an online platform for singers designed to help train your voice. Similar to fitness, everyone wants to be fit and strong, but few stick to a clear program. This voice program includes exercises, great soundtracks and a personal trainer leaving you with a practical program to help you achieve your singing goals. Keep an eye out for Voxtrain’s advertisement on The Voice of Germany!

BantaMu from Italy, is a professional network that lets you find new collaborations and unique opportunities in the music industry. It comes from the need to give a free area where music professionals can create an online portfolio in a quick and easy way, making it visible to people that need their talents. Want to know where the name “BantaMu” comes from? It is the union of the words Bantum & Mu. Bantum are the cables used in the recording studios to patch different audio signals & Mu is the name of a fictional submerged continent.

WholeWorldBand, based in Dublin, is an interesting music platform that brings musicians together from around the world. Using the app is like entering a virtual recording studio where fans just pick a recording session & contribute a vocal, instrumental, visual or anything else they feel like adding. Users don’t even need to be musicians, as they can simply create their own custom music videos. 

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Allow us to introduce you to this incredible group of international MBA students!

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Have you been thinking about attending Dublin’s famous Web Summit tech conference this year? Web Summit ticket prices are really expensive (1,618 Euros!) so we don’t blame you if the cost was what deterred you.

Luckily for you, we have 1 free Web Summit ticket that we are giving away & your chances of winning it are still very high. For a chance to win the free Web Summit ticket, simply visit our Twitter profile  and retweet this post for a chance to win!

What is Web Summit? Web Summit has become one of the most influential and international tech events. This year, on November 4-6, Web Summit will showcase over 500 world-renowned speakers, 10 stages including the Digital Marketing, Internet of Things, Enterprise, and Builders Summits, 2,000 worldwide startups invited to exhibit their ideas, 200+ satellite events, 1,000 experienced investors, and 800 of the best tech journalists. For 3 days this November, Dublin will once again become the international tech capital.

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The speed dating pitch competition took place on Saturday at the deGUT startup fair in Berlin. Uberchord was one of the five pre-selected finalists invited to pitch. The pitch event included some really cool teams with promising ideas. In fact, one of the startups was already in the green, which does not happen too often in an early stage pitch. Also, what we really liked about the outcome of the event is that everyone  benefited. All five startups ended up receiving mentors from the BACB to help with advice on strategy and financing.

As the winner of the competition, our team will have the honor to work directly with Thomas Dankwart. Thomas was recently appointed head of the entire Business Angels Club Berlin. We are excited to get started!

As always, thanks for reading. There’s more to come, so sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

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We are thrilled to be selected for an upcoming ESMT MBA consulting project. ESMT (European School of Management & Technology) assigns MBA students consulting projects with local small businesses over the course of seven weeks. If you haven’t heard of ESMT, it is a highly accredited private university in Berlin, Germany, and among the top 30 MBA programs in the world. We are really looking forward to what will be a productive partnership. UPDATE: Bloomberg Businessweek recently ranked ESMT 3rd in its international ranking.

The ESMT MBA consulting project will be invaluable to our startup’s current staff of six and we will be in partnership with them over the course of two full months. We are incredibly impressed with the group that chose to work on Uberchord. Each student has extensive academic and vocational experience in their respective fields. Their diverse backgrounds will bring relevant expertise in mobile customer acquisition, product management, economic situation analysis, and business management to name a few. In addition, Professor Stefan Wagner will be the ESMT coach and resource for the team, even though we are already in good hands with these brilliant students. We will be posting updates on the ESMT MBA consulting project in the weeks to come so stay tuned.

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Uberchord was at Startup Night in Berlin

Startup Night is Europe’s biggest startup event, hosted by Deutsche Telekom and IHK Berlin (also known as Lange Nacht der Startups in German). Uberchord was one of 100+ startups presenting themselves to more than 2,500 attendees! The event allowed us to present Uberchord in a booth with live demos of the iPhone app using an electric guitar and a cool Yahama THR5 amp. We received a ton of attention and feedback from the general public that will help us fine-tune the app before it is released in the coming months.

It was especially encouraging to be approached by multiple investors with great interest and productive conversations. Although the team had been at Startup Night from 9am until midnight (15 hours to be exact!), we went home feeling inspired and energized… Sleeping until 3pm the next day definitely helped, however. ;–) To learn more about Startup Night, check out the site: www.startupnight.de.

As always, thanks for reading. There’s more to come, so sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

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On Friday, September 5th, our team attended and received a prize at the 2014 IKT startup competition awards ceremony at IFA.  We won the IKT Innovativ Gründerwettbewerb, which translates to “Innovative Founders Competition” in English.

This is a particularly important win for us because IKT is the largest German startup competition with over 290 applicants this year. The prizes were handed out by Brigitte Zypries, the German Secretary of State for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BWMi). The news was recently picked up by Heise.de, a large German technology news site and we’ve already noticed a large spike in referral traffic as a result.

As always, thanks for reading. There’s more to come, so sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Facebook & Twitter!

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