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How To Change Guitar Strings

Trust The Music — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:31:55 +0000

At some point, all guitarists need to learn how to change the strings on their guitar. Sometimes you’ll be forced to change one when a string snaps. But usually, you’ll simply want to change them, as strings lose their brightness and wear out.

The amount of time you leave between change strings varies depending on several factors. If you play your guitar regularly, then you might like to change your strings once a week or once a month.

Most Professional guitarists tend to change their strings before each gig. But in the end, it all comes down to a matter of personal preference. Something to bear in mind if you’re using your guitar for a gig, is that your strings need a few hours of play to break in properly. During this time, your strings will go out of tune as they stretch so you’ll have to retune.

Anyway, here’s what you do:

Remove the old strings by detuning the machine heads until the tension becomes loose enough to allow you to pull each string away from the headstock.

Another quick way to remove the old strings is to snip them using a pair of wire cutters. Be very careful if you do it this way, and make sure they are loose, since the bare ends of the strings can be sharp and easily flap around. Bare guitar strings are amongst the many things you DO NOT want to catch in your eye.

How you go about installing your new strings will usually depend on the type of guitar you have, as many guitars have slightly different methods. However, the strings are usually held in place at one end by fixtures behind or on the bridge, and at the other by turning the machine head on the headstock.

Here’s a small insider tip guitarists have been using for years to get more life from your steel strings once you’ve removed them: Boil them.

Dropping a set of strings into a pan of boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes will remove a lot of the grimy build up and bring a new life back to what would otherwise be lifeless strings.

It won’t last for very long, and you can’t get away with doing it too many times, but it can be an effective temporary measure.

I wouldn’t suggest you rely on this technique too much, strings aren’t too expensive – and using new strings saves you a lot of hassle.

Regardless of what kind of guitar you have, your strings need to be stretched after you’ve put them on. When you first tune your guitar, put your hand under each string around the pickup area, pull the string a few centimeters away from the fretboard, then release it. If the pitch has dropped, retune and repeat the process. Keep doing this until all the strings stay in tune.

On most electric guitars the strings are either secured at the bridge end by an independent tailpiece (like most Gibson guitars), or passed through the body of the instrument from the back into an all-in-one bridge unit (like most fender style guitars).

At one end of every steel string, you will find a tiny disc of metal around which one end of the string is wrapped. This is called the ball end.

Take the opposite end of the string and thread it through the fixture at the bridge.

Pull the string through until the ball end stops you from pulling the string any further.

Most electric and steel-string guitars use a similar system for securing strings at the machine head. The capstan to which the string is attached stands out vertically from the headstock. Strings can be passed through a hole in the side of the capstan.

The end is then passed around and under, trapping it in place when the machine head is tightened. Some capstans have vertical slots instead of holes. To use these, cut the string to length, and insert into the tip of the capstan. Then bend the string to one side and wind it around.

This leaves the string endings neat and tidy.

Here’s what you do next: Slowly turn the machine head for each string, increasing the tension until the string becomes suitably tight.

To save yourself time and energy, you can use a cheap plastic string winder, which simply fits over the machine head allowing you to crank it along more quickly.

Review of Jim Bruce’s Ragtime and Blues Guitar Picking Course

Trust The Music — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 08:59:49 +0000

Learn to Play Finger Style Acoustic Blues Guitar.

Something great has happened for anybody wanting to learn how to play acoustic blues guitar. It’s called Jim Bruce Ragtime and Blues Guitar Picking Course – From Texas to the Delta. Now there’s a mouthful! So what is it?

Well, pretty much as the title says, it’s a guitar course for learning how to play ragtime and blues finger style acoustic guitar. Before I go on, let me just say this isn’t something for the absolute beginner guitarist. If you aren’t yet comfortable or reasonably fluent in playing common chords, then you probably aren’t ready for this just yet, unless you are hyper determined!

About the Course:

The course is quite straightforward. It jumps straight in and shows you how to play a collection of 40 blues songs from blues guitarists such as Blind Blake, Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy to name but a few. Each of the songs are shown on video (MP4 format), first at normal speed and then broken down into small sections, played slowly. The video also uses split screen for showing the left and right hands independently and displaying on screen Tabs and chord diagrams. All of the songs also come with a printable pdf file with the full guitar Tab.

Although Jim offers a few tips in the videos, you are expected to know certain things like how to read guitar tab and are already familiar with the basic chords. Although this is called a guitar course, just be aware that it isn’t a course in the traditional sense; it’s more of a jump straight in approach. I personally think this is a good thing because most guitar courses waste half of the time telling you things you should already know.

With that in mind, you aren’t going to be given any baby steps in fingerpicking exercises that lead you progressively into more advanced techniques, you’re just going to go ahead and learn how to play the songs in any order you like. Ordinarily, I may think this kind of teaching is too fast, however, with fingerpicking the blues I think the hands on approach is better. It’s exactly how all the old time blues players learned after all.

Once you have spent the time to learn one song, the right hand adapts very quickly. You’ll find it gets much easier the more you do. This is why I think the traditional route of building your technique slowly through a series of boring exercises is not necessary for this style of guitar. The songs themselves are the exercises. You get to kill two birds with one stone and have a lot of fun in the meantime.

Is Ragtime Blues Difficult to Play?

If you have never played any kind of ragtime / blues fingerstyle guitar before then you might be thinking it sounds too difficult. There is a lot going on in this style and you might think it’s only for the super advanced guitarist. Don’t let that fool you.

There’s something about the sound of acoustic blues guitar that is very deceiving. Most of these songs aren’t as complicated as they sound when you break them down, most of them are well within the capabilities of the average intermediate guitarist who has been playing for maybe six months to a year. If you want to impress your friends (and yourself), this is the stuff to learn!

Full Money Back Guarantee.

You don’t have anything to lose. Jim’s course is available for instant download and if you aren’t satisfied then you have the advantage of a 60 day full money back guarantee with no questions asked. At the moment the price is $69 which is a bargain when you think the average guitar DVD tutorial will come with around four to six songs for you to learn at around $30. Jim’s blues guitar course gives you 40 songs, which equates to about 4x the teaching for less than twice the price of a typical guitar DVD.

This course is a breath of fresh air when compared to most of the guitar teaching material that you find on the Internet. You know the stuff, promises of secrets and miracle systems that are nothing more than a downloadable e-book – containing the same information you find in any typical teach yourself guitar book available in print, but four times the price!

Jim’s finger picking blues lesson are nothing like any of that nonsense. It’s as real as it gets, packed with hours of videos that teach you exactly what you need to know and how to do it. That’s it. As far as value is concerned, Jim’s course gives you
everything you pay for and more.

Beginner Guitar Lessons. What You Need to Know.

Trust The Music — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 06:45:23 +0000

Online Guitar lessons

Beginner guitar lessons will usually introduce you to basic music scales and how to position for certain chords; it’s vital to have some amount of music theory so that you can save time, reduce frustration and communicate with other musicians.

Private tuition one-on-one is still a great way to learn guitar; a good flesh and blood tutor will take a personal interest in your progress, meet you at your level of ability and help you with your own specific challenges. Personal tutors also make you accountable because if you don’t practice it shows and poor progress due to not practising is quite disrespectful to a teacher. Just sayin’.

The down side to personal tutoring is being accountable, finding mutual time, commuting and, of course, cost.

Finding beginner guitar lessons online is easy and has many advantages: The cost is a fraction of the cost of personal tuition. Beginner lessons are the same for everyone. Video formats allow you to repeat things over and again without you feeling like a dummy. You can skip the lessons you already know, do the whole thing in your own time and advance as quickly as you can get away with being holed up in your room without anyone noticing.

Look for a program that’s been around for a while because that usually means it’s been refined over time. Make sure the virtual tutor is a good guitarist in his own right, a professional I-make-my-living-from-guitar-playing kind of person. The program should take you a long way for your initial investment and it should have add-on options for more advanced training now that you’ve become used to this particular tutor’s style.

There should always be a money back guarantee and lots of real people saying how good the program is (testimonials). The cost of even the best online programs won’t cripple you so you can take a risk. It’s hard to disengage from a flesh and blood tutor you don’t like; it’s awkward. But killing an online program with a money back guarantee is a bloodless murder and you won’t lose any sleep.

Playing with other people in jams or ensembles improves your playing without you even noticing because you’re having so much fun! Sharing chops and licks, tips and your favourite performers comes with the territory that is playing with others.

Online courses (some) can take you to professional level playing, certainly. However, you may find eventually that a mentor will be best to deliver finesse in keeping with your style and genre of music.

We were talking about beginners.

Five Guitar Playing Tips to Help You Play Better Guitar.

Trust The Music — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:48:29 +0000

In this article, five guitar playing tips to help you improve your playing skills. So let’s get started…

1) The first guitar playing tip is to have good posture.

You should sit up straight in an armless chair. Sit up straight to protect your back.

If you get a backache after a bit of playing, you will realize how having good posture while playing the guitar is so important.

2) The next guitar playing tip is to hold the pick firmly but not too firmly.

If you do not grip the pick firmly enough, you may lose it during a vigorous bout of strumming! But if you grip it too tightly, you may find your whole arm getting tired. Middle of the road is the best guitar playing tip I can give you where pick grip is concerned.

3) Choosing the right pick is another guitar tip that is important.

Picks come in finger and flat styles. Most guitarists use a flat one. They also come in three different levels of flexibility.

Several professional guitarists have given me the advice of getting the softest, flabbiest pick I can find for learning to keep up with fast strumming. It’s easier on the arm. Flabby picks are harder to use, however, if you are trying to pick out individual strings, as in adding a bass line, or flat-picking.

After some practice with a soft pick, you will probably want to move on to a firmer one. A final guitar playing tip about picks is that the firmest picks make the richest sounds.

4) Here is a guitar playing tip – learn to play arpeggios.

It’s fun, great for old folk songs, and sounds beautiful! You won’t be able to use a pick, though. Finger the chord. Now, pick the bass note of the chord with your thumb. You can use a thumb pick for this, however, it works just fine to use your thumb. You will grow a little callus there which will make it easier.

Now use your index finger to pluck the third string. Next, pluck the second string with your middle finger. And then pluck the top string with your ring finger. You’ve picked four notes.

If you repeat the sequence, giving each note the timing of an eighth note, you will fill a measure of a song written in four/four time. This guitar playing tip will make people sit up and take notice, but it does require practice, and calluses, to play this way. Try playing the strings in different order, and alternate bass strings.

Thank you Sean Daniel.

5) A final guitar playing tip involves the chord D.

While playing the D chord, try adding your pinkie finger to the chord at the third fret. This new chord is often called “D-suspended” or “D-sus.” Then play D again. Now try lifting your middle finger so that the top string of the chord is open. And back to D again.

You can do the same thing with the A-chord, but have to do the change on the second string. Up one fret to the third makes A-sus, and you can also lift that finger to go down a step on that second string. C-suspended requires you to go up a half step on the fourth string. G-suspended requires you to do it on the fifth string. Learning suspended chords is a guitar playing tip you’ll find yourself using when you play contemporary songs.

I hope you’ve found these guitar playing tips helpful. It’s important to remember that the best way to improve your guitar playing skills is to practice, practice, practice. Good luck! Have fun!

How To Slow Down Music – A Guitar Player’s Dilemma

Trust The Music — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 07:33:43 +0000

One of the best ways to learn and practice music on guitar is to play along with songs that have been slowed down.

There are different apps you can use to slow down music as well as loop song segments and change the pitch of the music which has many useful benefits:

You can hear what’s happening in a song more clearly. You can play along with the song and stay in time with the music more easily. You can practice your technique by playing along with looped song segments and finally you can change the pitch of songs that do not match your guitar tuning.

How To Practice Guitar In 20 Minutes

Trust The Music — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 08:08:23 +0000

Many guitarists don’t have enough time to practice for long periods of time. But if you want to progress fast, you need the guitar in your hands as regularly as possible.

It’s better to practice for ten to twenty minutes every day, than four hours on just one day of the week. Getting into a rhythm of regularly picking up your guitar for a quick practice session is a great habit to get into.

So if you don’t have enough time for a full practice session, and you have ten to fifteen minutes to spare, here’s some ideas for what you should practice:

Practice a chord change.

Perhaps switching from an F bar chord to a D open is causing you difficulty.
If you spend just ten minutes going over and over the change, you will increase your ability to do it at the level you require.

The key is to focus and hone in on one skill that you can improve in a short period of time.

Work on a song you want to memorize.

This will give you a chance to actually play some music! You need to have fun in your practice to keep you fresh and focused.

Listen to a song on a CD and jam along.

This is a great way to improve your playing and it’s particularly suitable for short practice sessions.

An important part of learning guitar is to train your ear, and jamming along to a CD is the perfect way to do it.

Work on a lick you want to learn.

You’d be surprised how many times you can work through a lick in just a few short minutes. You can also combine this practice technique with practicing chord changes.

This will improve your skills in a short period of time.

Work on picking skills – do drills up and down the neck.

You can use your metronome to work on speed picking skills, or you can slow everything right down and work on keeping your body relaxed so that you develop an ease to your playing.

Work up and down a scale.

In ten minutes you can play through a scale around fifty to a hundred times. This will improve your stamina and also help you to build speed.

Remember to use a metronome when you’re trying to build speed though because you want a smooth rhythmic sound to your speed picking, not a struggling, hurried sound.

So build up gradually.

Be Creative!

Play some chords in combinations that sound good to you, or play some single note melodies. Again, this improves your ear and you could maybe work out some parts to a song of your own.

Okay, that’s all the ideas I’m going to give you for now. Use your imagination to come up with more things that you could try, and mix it up so that it doesn’t get boring.

Also, keep your guitar ready and set-up. Sure, it’s protected and all hidden away in your case, but if it’s ready for you to have a short practice session, then you’re more likely to pick it up and practice, even if it is just for a short time.

So keep that guitar out and ready to practice!

You may not think these short practice sessions help much, but doing this builds up your skills fast – and you’ll surprise yourself by how much you will improve just by having the guitar in your hands regularly.

However, you don’t want to solely rely on these quick practice sessions. Like most things, you need to strike a balance. A good way of finding that balance is to set a routine.

When you have a routine, you will find that it gets easier to find the time for practice. Once you’re in a habit of practicing regularly, you’ll find it harder to break out of, and that’s a good habit to have!

Guitar Sheet Music

Trust The Music — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 08:08:06 +0000

Learning to read guitar sheet music will be vital in expanding your guitar playing skills. Playing by ear will only get you so far; you will need to take it to the next step. I will show you some basic tips and tricks to help you learn to read guitar sheet music and hopefully that will make you a better and more versatile guitar player.

I will now give you a list that will show you that it is not hard to learn to read guitar sheet music.

Finding the right material

Most guitar books will have some basic sheet music and songs in the front pages that are designed to help you learn to read guitar sheet music quickly. Once you have basic guitar knowledge it is relatively easy to learn to read guitar sheet music. Start in small sections, one chord at a time. Use your guitar and play the chord out loud until you know it sounds correct.

Setting your self up

You will need to be in a small quite room where you will not be distracted by anything when you learn to read guitar sheet music. The only way to know when you get it right is if it sounds right and it can be difficult do that if you have screaming kids in the room with you or loud street noise outside. Concentration is key and this will make it easier to learn how to read guitar sheet music. If you are distracted you may find a whole day can be wasted trying to focus.

Getting started

Remember what I said, be free from distraction! I cannot stress that enough. Now that you’re alone and it’s quiet, find a music book with sheet music, try to pick something easy but also try to pick something you are familiar with. It makes it much easier to learn to read guitar sheet music if you are familiar with the tune. Make sure you are confident with one piece before you move on to the next.

Continue practicing

Continue to practice as much as you can, you will find that the better you get the more you will practice. When you enjoy something you will generally apply more time to it. Trying to learn to read guitar sheet music is easy as long as you practice! Once you have mastered reading sheet music then you can attempt to write your own music and that is where the real fun begins! It is essential that you are confident or you will only have to go back and learn to read guitar sheet music all over again.

How to Restring an Electric Guitar

Trust The Music — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 08:08:03 +0000

For a newbie, this may seem a little intimidating but with the right tools, a little knowledge and some practice, you’ll be able to restring an electric guitar like a professional guitar tech. When I was gigging regularly, I would restring my guitar every week. My body chemistry is acidic and the sweat and oils from my hands would tend to dull the brightness of the strings as well as make them feel “dirty”. For me, the bright sound and smooth feel of a new set of strings would inspire my playing. It became a ritual for me to change the strings the night before the weekend’s gigs. I would sit in front of the TV and restring my electric guitar; my acoustic much less frequently.

OK, so you’ve decided you don’t want to pay the guys at the music store and you want to know how to restring an electric guitar yourself. Here is the list of tools and supplies you will need:

· A new set of strings (naturally!)

· A string winder (not required but very handy)

· A pair of wire cutters

· A guitar tuner (again, not required but helpful)

You will need to set aside about an hour of time to do this correctly; with practice you will know how to restring your electric guitar in about 20-30 minutes.

First thing to remember, do NOT remove all six strings at the same time. The guitar neck is designed to withstand the tension of the strings and if all of the tension is removed for any significant amount of time you could damage your guitar.

Also, there are some guitars that are literally held together by the string tension. I remember reading a story about a guy who was a new guitar tech for the Ramones. He decided to restring his guitar for him right before the show. He removed all six strings and Johnny’s Mosrite guitar literally fell apart in his hands. The string tension held the whole guitar together! What’s worse, the bridge of the guitar bounced across the floor and fell down the air conditioning duct.

If I remember the story correctly, they spent quite some time using a coat hanger and chewing gum trying to rescue the bridge from the duct. He retrieved it and managed to keep his job, living to restring the guitar another day. But not all six strings at once!

But I digress. Some people work in pairs of strings at a time, I prefer to work on individual strings. You will quickly decide what works best for you. Use this article as a guideline to get you up to speed quickly.

OK, let’s get down to it. I always start with the high E string (personal preference); it helps keep me organized.

If your guitar has a locking nut tremolo (whammy bar) system you will have to unlock it. It works best if you remove the clamps completely and work with just the nut until the restringing process is done and the strings are stretched and tuned. Then replace the locking clamps and fine tune using the tuners on the tremolo bridge.

· Use your string winder and loosen the string until there is enough slack that you can unwind the string from the tuning post by hand.

· Use your wire cutters to cut off the curled end of the string and discard. Do this to minimize the chance of scratching the finish of your guitar. Push/pull the string back through the bridge slowly making sure it does not drag across the body. You don’t want restringing your guitar to result in refinishing your guitar!

· Next, unwrap the appropriate new string. Insert it through the bridge of the guitar, over the saddle, up the neck, over the nut and into the hole in the tuning post. Again make sure the trailing end of the string doesn’t drag across the guitar body.

· Start turning the tuner by hand making sure the string wraps over the top of the tuning post. Ideally you want to have 3-4 wraps of the string around the tuner, but this in nothing to stress over.

· Turn the tuner until the slack is out and the string is properly seated in the nut and over the bridge saddle.

· Next clip the excess string off close to the tuner and use your string winder to bring the string up to pitch.

· Use your digital tuner and tune to pitch.

· Next, grab the string with your picking hand halfway between the bridge and the nut and lightly tug the string away from the fretboard. Do not pull real hard, just hard enough to pull the stretch out of the string and tighten it around the tuner post.

· Tune to pitch and repeat the stretching process until the string stays in tune.

Now repeat the entire process for the remaining five strings. Know that the pitch of the new strings may fluctuate as you work on the remaining strings. This is especially true with a Floyd Rose or similar type of floating bridge. When you have replaced and stretched the last string make sure all six strings are still in tune. If you have a locking tremolo system, replace the clamps for the locking nut, tighten, and use the bridge fine tuners to get the proper pitch.

The final step is the best one; sit back, crank up your amp and enjoy. Make sure you play something with lots of note bending in it and make sure the stretch is all played.

Take satisfaction in knowing that you now know how to restring an electric guitar.

Have you hit a plateau? Are you playing the same stuff over and over and not even sure what you should be practicing next?

Are you ever bored or just not enjoying the guitar like you used to or you’re struggling to find time to play?

Would you love to improvise exactly what you hear in your head and finally get those sounds you’ve been looking for?

Do you want to play smokin solos up and down the neck instead of being stuck in the same old boxes and patterns?

Wanna know exactly how and where to use scales so it sounds like real music, how to create solos for any song, and what riffs go with what chords?

Does it feel like you’ve been stuck forever at a certain speed? Want to master picking and smash all your speed limitations?

Do you want to play smooth tasteful licks with expressive phrasing, great vibrato, and finally put it all together on the guitar?

Well, if you said yes to ANY of these questions then you’re in for a real treat because I’m about to show you how you can achieve all of your guitar goals and more.

Hi, my name is Claude Johnson. I’ve been playing and teaching guitar for over 25 years and I’ve helped over 4.3 million guitarists with my Guitar Control Newsletter and I’ve sold over half a million instructional DVDs in over dozen countries.

If you wanna improve your playing quickly, without years of practice or you want to play smokin solos with intense passion and total control then this is EXACTLY what you’ve been looking for.

If you’re like I was when I first started working on my guitar playing, you’re probably not as great as you’d like to be, yet. But don’t worry…

Learn To Play Guitar By Ear

Trust The Music — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 08:01:20 +0000

Learning to play guitar by ear is one of the hardest things to learn. However require natural talent and knowledge of music and sound. If you want learn to play guitar by ear you will need to be patient and have a quiet place to practice.

Basic music knowledge

If you want to learn to play guitar by ear it is always best to have a basic knowledge of music. This does not mean you need to be able to read sheet music or be a professional. It just means you need to have had some basic experience with another instrument or general music knowledge.

Patience

Patience is definitely the key when you learn to play guitar by ear. You need to be able to repeat the same chords and riffs many times in order to perfect the sound. His will be very repetitive and you need to be prepared.

The use of CD’s

The main key when you begin to learn to play guitar by ear is to sort through your CD collection and find CD’s with an extensive guitar section. A fantastic example is Carlos Santana or Mark Knopfler (lead guitarist for Dire Straits). This will allow you to hear some of the best guitarists in the world and help you try to replicate their sound.

No need for sheet music

When you learn to play guitar by ear there is no need for sheet music or for long lessons of chords and riffs. Listening to a guitar set and replicating it is a way of developing your natural talent and will also help you in the future if you decide to join a band. If you learn to play guitar by ear, you will be able to cover any mistakes made by other guitarists and it will also help you improvise on stage. That said, it would be advised to learn sheet music down the track.

A rewarding experience

When you learn to play guitar by ear you will find your accomplishments more rewarding as you are completely self taught with no help from teachers or books. In the entertainment industry, guitarists who learn to play guitar by ear are well respected and often called upon for their expertise and experience.

Surroundings

Ensuring your surroundings are quiet is an important factor when you learn to play guitar by ear. Silence is needed so you can hear every chord and riff on the CD’s and so you do not skip a note. A quiet atmosphere will also ensure you remain calm and patient and can absorb everything you need to when you learn to play guitar by ear.

Don’t forget practice is what makes the difference between a good guitarist and a great guitarist! So keep practicing and you will be rewarded with a fantastic talent!

Hammer-Ons and Pull-Offs

Trust The Music — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 07:55:06 +0000

One of the primary legato (smooth and flowing in manner, without breaks between notes.) techniques all guitarists must learn is the hammer-on, pull-off. This technique is important because it allows for nuances in tone and expression, and it allows the picking hand a “break” since it does not have to pick the notes on the hammer-on or the pull-off. This results in a faster progression of notes, sometimes called licks.

The hammer-on is accomplished when you pick a note and then using another finger hammer down on the same string. The sound of the hammered note is less pronounced than the picked note. For example place your first finger on the 5th fret of the 3rd string, and the hammer down your third finger on the 7th fret of the 3rd string. Don’t use your just quickly strike the second fret position with the tip of your 3rd finger. This would be described in guitar tab as 5h7 or 5 hammer 7. Keep your first finger on the 5th fret because you are going to pull-off of the 7th fret in the next example.

The pull-off results when you release a plucked note with enough force such that the second fretted note rings. This may require a slight side way motion to create enough friction to cause the string to ring out. The sound of the pulled-off note is less pronounced since you aren’t using your pick to create it. This would be illustrated in guitar tab 7p5 or 7 pull 5.

If you combine these techniques you can create very fast note runs or licks. Imagine how this sequence of hammer-on, pull-off’s would sound when played very quickly 5h7p5h7p5. In deed the hammer-on, pull-off technique is the cornerstone for legato and most speed playing techniques.

It takes time to perfect the technique but it is worth the effort.