Guitar Noise

Here is the second part of Jamie Andreas’ wonderful video lessons on the Guitar Noise arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” In this video, Jamie walks through the verse section of the song, providing detailed step-by-step instruction on how to move effortlessly from one fingering position to the next. By applying many of her Guitar Principles, taken directly from her teachings and her website (Guitar Principles), she helps make the playing of this arrangement quite a bit easier than just going at it alone.

We can’t thank Jamie enough for taking time out of her busy schedule to create these lessons for us. So please take a moment of your time to drop her a line and say thanks, too!

Here’s something I couldn’t believe – Apparently it was only four years ago (July 1, 2005 to be precise) we started “Volume 3” of the Guitar Noise News. It was the start of the “bi-monthly” newsletter format that we currently have today, and it was certainly a bit ambitious. Even Nick had his own little dedicated soapbox.

But since July 1 is also Canada Day, we were fortunate enough to get a nice mini-piece from Guitar Noise’s creator / owner Paul Hackett. It’s certainly worth a second look as we celebrate Canada Day here in 2009:

Canada Rocks

By Paul Hackett

July 1 is Canada Day, Canada’s national holiday. It celebrates the creation of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867. It is a day generally marked by patriotic celebrations featuring fireworks and entertainment with a Canadian theme. Today being July 1 has got me thinking about some of the more notable rock bands to come out of Canada throughout the years.

Since the emergence of Canada’s first major pop star, Paul Anka in the 1950s, many types of Canadian music have flourished, reflecting the diverse tastes of Canadians. Distinctly Canadian styles of music include French-Canadian music, Maritime music, Native American and Inuit music as well as homegrown folk and country. Some of the more notable singer/songwriters from Canada include Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Bruce Cockburn.

In celebration of Canada Day I want to share my picks for some of the more enduring Canadian rock acts. Rock music in Canada owes a great debt of gratitude to The Guess Who, whose best-known songs (“American Woman”, “These Eyes”, “No Sugar Tonight”, etc.) are among Canada’s most enduring classic rock anthems. Initially the band wanted radio stations and record buyers to believe they were a British Merseybeat band in disguise. So when they released their debut album, it didn’t bear their own name — instead, it was labeled “Guess Who?” The ruse worked, and within a few years The Guess Who were one of Canada’s biggest musical names.

In 1970, the Canadian government introduced Canadian content regulations, requiring radio stations to devote 30 per cent of their musical selections to Canadian content. The most immediate effect of these new regulations was the sudden rise to fame of Anne Murray, whose 1970 “Snowbird” was a multi-million selling record. The rest of the decade proved to be a golden age for Canadian music with the emergence of internationally renowned acts such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, April Wine and Neil Young. Another of this period’s most influential and popular rock bands, Heart, resulted from the collaboration of two sisters from Seattle with a supporting band from Vancouver.

The 1980s produced many mainstream pop-rockers such as Bryan Adams, Tom Cochrane, Platinum Blonde, Honeymoon Suite, Helix, and Corey Hart. This era also produced the country cowpunk of k.d. Lang, who eventually become one of pop music’s biggest names. The late 1980s saw even more popular acts such as Alannah Myles and Jeff Healey (the blind blues guitarist extraordinaire who appeared the film Roadhouse). Alternative rock also emerged as an influential genre, with artists such as 54-40, Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip, Sarah McLachlan, Cowboy Junkies, The Tea Party, and Our Lady Peace all gaining widespread attention during this time.

An unassuming demo tape by the Barenaked Ladies became the hottest item in Canadian record stores in the fall of 1991. Alanis Morissette, who began as a dance-pop artist before transforming into an alternative rocker in 1995, launched an era in which Canadian women ruled the pop charts worldwide. In the late 1990s, Morissette, Shania Twain, Céline Dion and Sarah McLachlan were arguably the four most popular and influential recording artists in the world during this decade.

With such diversity in styles, Canadian rock and pop music has a real staying power. And with a new album by Paul Anka in stores now, there seems to be no end in sight. Hopefully you’ll find some of this music enjoyable, and have a happy Canada Day, eh!

Welcome back to the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer. We’re going to look at some serious playing around this time out. And we’re going to focus on learning this lesson mostly through sound, through listening. When it comes to learning music, aural explanations are often more effective than textual ones.

The sound file works through several ideas for getting creative and improvising a bit, on just three chords. All those chords are formed on our foundational one-finger shape.

Here are the ideas we’ll work through:

Instead of playing the chords in a certain order each time, change the order. For example, start out with the one-finger shape on frets 2, 7 and 9. Maybe pluck each of those chords twice. Once you can play that smoothly, change the order: play frets 9, 7 and 2. etc.

The next idea is lots of fun, and starts to get us into some melodic stuff. Play on frets 2, 7 and 9 as before, but focus your attention on your right hand and ask “what could I be playing besides plucking all three strings at once?” Listen to the sound file for examples of playing around here.

Next idea: approach chords. That’s a single term, like “ApproachChords.” And the underlying idea is, if you know your ultimate target is playing the one-finger chord on fret 7, try playing on fret 5 or 6 first, and then sliding into fret 7.

Next, we change the tempo, a very natural thing to do. You just slow down or speed up based on your preference and feeling.

Change from a dance-like rhythm or an “Oom-pah-pah,” vibe to a “one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four” thing. And this opens up a big area to play around in, because you can get into all kinds of cool rhythms. One approach to discovering interesting rhythms is realizing that you’re already using them all the time in speech. Listen to the rhythm of in interesting sentence and convert it to “One, ta, two, ta,” etc. or some other syllable that works for you. Then, pick up your guitar and “speak” those rhythmic syllables onto it.

The overriding idea that includes these other ideas is “Be creative. Have fun. Avoid monotony and keep that guitar in your hands.”

Here’s the sound file for this lesson. Go to this address and RIGHT-click on the sound file link. Do not left-click.

Send your comments to dk_NO_SPAM_@MaximumMusician.com. Remove the no spam bit.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2009 Darrin Koltow

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News - January 15, 2008 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.

Although it seems like ages ago, it was just around this time last year that we premiered the first of what has turned out to be a very popular series here at Guitar Noise, our lessons called “Turning Scales into Solos.”

While these lessons have been shorter in length than many of our other song lessons and guitar columns, they have been full of information on how to go about that seemingly impossible task of creating a solo. Plus, each lesson not only has MP3 files demonstrating the ideas covered in that particular article, they all include a “play along” backing track that allows you to create your own solo based on what you hopefully learned.

We’re currently up to Part 8 in this series, but if you’re interested in seeing where it all began, here are the first two, originally posted in the last half of June, 2008: Choosing Colors and One Note at a Time.

Sometimes it’s amazing when I think of how much material that there is here on Guitar Noise, and how most of it has come about in the last ten years. So, to celebrate our longevity, how about we look back from time to time at things that have happened?

For instance, going back just three years, to June 1, 2006, you would have found these two new lessons at Guitar Noise:

Irish Flatpicking Guitar - “The Humours of Tulla”
by Doug Sparling

Doug takes a break from finger-style guitar to bring us a few lessons in flatpicking. In addition to a terrific arrangement of a Celtic reel, you’ll learn a little more about timing and ornamentation, specifically the “staccato triplet.”

Friend of the Devil
by David Hodge

Sometimes the simplest things, such as a descending scale line, make all the difference between a song that is just strummed chords and one that sounds like you put a little work into it. Here’s an easy and very recognizable arrangement of this classic tune from the Grateful Dead.

Obviously, I’ve been into this whole descending bass lines for quite some time! The new lesson on Lay Lady Lay is just the latest example of how much time we’ve spent using this technique in our song lessons. Pretty wild, eh?

I wonder what year we’ll visit next time?

Reprinted from Volume 3 #91 of the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Hello to all!

Our latest Guitar Noise Podcast picks up right where GN Podcast #26 left off. Having gotten the basics of this song under our belts, it’s time to explore what to do when (notice I didn’t say “if”) we get around to playing with another guitarist. So here we start out with a simple arrangement for two guitars.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

If you’ve been a long-time reader of Guitar Noise, you’ll probably be aware that we’ve been long-time fans of Jamie Andreas and her Guitar Principles website. Jamie has been a strong tutorial presence on the Internet for ages and her teachings focus on posture, relaxation, muscle movement and memory and the other physical aspects of playing the guitar. 

Needless to say, we were thrilled when Jamie offered to do some video lessons based on our recent Guitar Noise Song Arrangement Lesson of George Harrision’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which is done in a combination of chord melody and fingerstyle playing. 

In her first video lesson on this song, which you can find here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P76DWglLsPE, Jamie introduces some of the elements and techniques she teaches at Guitar Principles, and they are certainly helpful when playing this piece. 

You can find the tablature here: Download gif (Right-click and “Save as”) and you can also find more helpful advice on this arrangement right from the source While My Guitar Gently Weeps - Performance Notes.

Paul and I hope that you enjoy this video and we’d like to especially thank Jamie for taking time out from her busy schedule to make this for the readers of Guitar Noise. 

Peace

Here’s a song I’m sure most of you know and maybe learned in some summer camp or musical get together. It’s a lot of fun to play and we’ve kindly provided the words and chords to the first verse and chorus:

For this Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll work on getting the basics down, plus have a little fun with the bass line. Next time out, we’ll add the challenge of playing along with a second guitarist.

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Hello to all!

In our latest Guitar Noise Podcast, we’ll finish our look at “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by looking at a slightly more complicated strumming pattern as well as learning about a new voicing of the G7 chord. This particular use of the G7 will be turning up again in the upcoming Guitar Noise Intermediate Songs lesson on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

As always, I’ll be walking you through each step, so come on along and join in the fun. And, again as always, please let us know what you think.

Peace

Download mp3 (Right-click and “Save as”)

Once again our hometown hero is getting good press. David Hodge is featured on the guitar site Jemsite as part of their Guitar Hero series. Have a read of this great interview. There’s always something that rings true when David talks about how he does things in his own words.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

As a guitar teacher, would you say that you’re making a significant contribution to your students’ playing? 

My contributions aren’t so much contributions as they are me just being me. I run into more people than I care to say who will tell me, “Oh yeah, I used to play an instrument. I used to make music.” And that, to me, is possibly the saddest thing one could ever hear. So, as a guitar teacher my goal isn’t even to turn someone into a professional guitarist. I simply hope that I can give my students a gift that will be with them throughout their lives, a gift that they in turn can share with others. I will give them what tools I can to achieve their goals, but ultimately it’s all about the contribution they are going to make to the world. I’m just a very small part of that. 

Read the complete interview on Jemsite here: The Guitar Hero Series: David Hodge

And congratulations to David for receiving recognition for being a Guitar Hero. Indeed you are. We look forward to many more great things from you. Again.