Guitar Noise » Newsletter

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 20 – February 1, 2012

David Hodge — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:28:16 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #20 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. My wishes for a happy “February 1″ (not to mention the rest of the month!) to each of you.

Being the start of a new month, we’ve got the return of another classic Guitar Noise song lesson to our pages – “Three Marlenas,” written by Jakob Dylan and performed by the Wallflowers. This latest lesson joins “Horse With No Name,” “Hey There, Delilah.” and our three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” – back on our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons page, where each lesson comes complete with lyrics, music notation and tablature and also a healthy dose of educational and entertaining text. Again (and always), we’d like to thank Alfred Music Publishing for continuing to work with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.

And, just in case you missed our last newsletter, I’m also pleased to announce that I’ve finished another “Complete Idiot’s Guide” for Alpha Books – “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele.”This title will be out in bookstores (online and on earth) on July 3 this summer.And it features our own Nick Torres, providing vocals for many of the song examples (wait ’til you hear him doing his best Robert Plant voice for “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain!”). Nick also was kind enough to contribute an original song of his own, one of my favorites of his, in fact – (“It’s Not a Love Song – for the chapter on how to play ukulele in a traditional band setting. And if that’s not enough, you’ll also get an incredible fingerstyle arrangement of “Over the Rainbow” for ukulele and voice.

We’ll be posting more about this upcoming book, including some cool ukulele lessons not included in the book, later on this spring. And Paul will be posting a link for the book on our bookstore page as soon as it’s available. As with all my previous books, I cannot thank the Guitar Noise community enough for all their support. I hope you’ll find this new to be up to the high standards you set.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Great songs transcend genres and when a particular band is cited as an influence by those in rock, punk, metal, pop and more, you have to know that it’s the music that made it so. This month Guitar Noise celebrates the Davies brothers – Dave and Ray – and their band, The Kinks. Read about them on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

With everything that’s been going on, I kind of forgot what the February “Topic of the Month” is supposed to be! So, the first thing I’m going to do today is to stop by the Guitar Noise home page and click on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the page, just below the blue banner. I’ll let you know what I find out in the next newsletter! Or you can visit our home page and find out for yourself!

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Guitar Tips: Faster Chord Changing
by David Hodge

We’ve gotten lots of questions from beginners about how to get faster at changing chords. While practice is important, here is one tip that can help a lot.

Q & A: Time In A Bottle
by David Hodge

“Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce draws together all sorts of things we have been learning. It uses capos, features two guitars, and even changes key mid-song.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Scales – Part 5
by Tom Serb

In our last post we learned there is only one kind of major scale. Now let’s look at the minor scale – and there are LOTS of different minor scales!

Q & A: “Gallows Pole” and “Midnight Special”
by David Hodge

Time to dip into the “email bag” once again! Today’s question concerns two of the song arrangements from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar.

Fender Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster
by Steve Williams

The latest addition to the new Fender American Select range is the Fender Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster and it’s certainly special.

To Read Or Not To Read?
Part 1 – The Tyranny of Tablature
by Nick Minnion

It’s an eternal debate as to whether or not a guitarist should learn to read music as opposed to tablature. Nick Minnion gives us his take on the topic.Complete with video!

Three Marlenas
by David Hodge

Learn to play The Wallflowers’ “Three Marlenas” – picking up some easy and interesting chord changes and strumming tips along the way!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

We’re incredibly lucky to have a good number of great guitar teachers as members of the the Guitar Noise community. We’re even luckier to be able to have them contribute to Guitar Noise News on a regular basis!

This month, we’re continuing a terrific series from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb concerning just about every scale you could ever think of:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 7

Exotic scales

After the pentatonic, major, and common minor scales and the modes, everything else – with one exception – can be considered an exotic scale; these won’t be used very often, but they’re still pretty cool, and each has its own sound.

The one exception is the chromatic scale. The word “chromatic” comes from the Greek word “chroma”, which means “color”. We can think of accidentals (sharps and flats) as adding a color, or inflection, to the natural note – so C# can be seen as a ‘color’ of C. If you use all the crayons in the box, you get the chromatic scale, or all the possible colors.

The chromatic scale is used sparingly in all sorts of music as a series of passing tones. It’s also used as the foundation for almost all atonal music, which avoids a sense of key by using all the possible notes equally. That means avant-garde composers are fond of it, and it’s worth knowing.

The guitar’s strings are mostly tuned in fourths, and perfect fourths are two and a half steps apart – five frets on a guitar. The exception is the second and third strings, which are a major third apart, or two whole steps (four frets). Since we can only fret four notes on a string without stretching or shifting position, the most common chromatic scale fingering will shift position on every string except the third/second – here’s a chromatic scale starting from 6th string 8th fret C:

4-5-6-7-8
5-6-7-8
5-6-7-8
6-7-8-9
7-8-9-10
8-9-10-11

In order to get two full octaves, I’ve put five notes on the first string. You could put the extra note on any string, so there are multiple fingerings of a two-octave chromatic scale. You can also shift on any finger – the first string in the example above could be fingered 1-1-2-3-4, 1-2-2-3-4, 1-2-3-3-4, or 1-2-3-4-4. This gives you a lot of possibilities, but a pretty simple structure.

If you use a chromatic scale run in an improvised passage, you’ll find it’s actually trickier than it looks. Because you’re constantly shifting position on each string, you’ll want to keep track of what base scale fingering you were using at the beginning, and know what fingering you’ll move to at the end.

For example, if I were playing in a 7th position C scale, and decided to do a one octave run up from C, I’d have this:

-
-
5
6-7-8-9
7-8-9-10
8-9-10

Now I’m in fifth position, which is very friendly for C major. But other chromatic runs, or other starting points, might not be so favorable. Always know where you are on the fretboard!

The chromatic scale is the simplest of the symmetrical scales – those that have an equal distance between each note. The other fairly common symmetrical scale is the “whole-tone” scale, which has six notes, each a whole tone apart: C-D-E-F#-G#-A#-C (or C-D-E-Gb-Ab-Bb-C). Like the chromatic scale, this requires shifts on most strings:

4-6-8
5-7
5-7
6-8
7-9
8-10

There are a few pieces of music composed entirely of the whole tone scale; most of the ones I’ve heard that sound decent are piano pieces. But there’s one chord where the whole tone scale is appropriate for improvising: the augmented chord.

A C+ chord (the ‘+’ is the symbol for augmented) or a C7+ (augmented seventh) is composed entirely of whole steps or double whole steps: C-E-G# for the C+ chord, and C-E-G#-Bb for the C7+. So even though the scale itself isn’t all that common, there are some situations where you can use a bit of it for good effect, even if your improvisational line is based on a different scale.

The augmented triad is one of two chords in music that is perfectly symmetrical: a double whole step from C brings us to E, another double whole step brings us to G#, and one additional double whole step brings us back to C.

The other chord that’s perfectly symmetrical is the diminished seventh, written as C°7, or just C°. In this chord, you have a minor third between each note: C-Eb-Gb-Bbb (or A), and one more minor third brings us back to C.

All the scales we’ve looked at so far, except for the harmonic minor, have a whole step as the largest interval between notes. The most common exotic scale for improvising over a diminished seventh chord is called the diminished scale, but there are actually two different versions of it: the WH diminished (pronounced whole-half diminished) and the HW (half-whole) diminished.

Since a minor third is a whole step and a half step, if your chord contains only minor thirds you can add them in either order. A C WH diminished scale would be C-D-Eb-F-Gb-Ab-A-B-C; the HW scale would be C-Db-Eb-E-F#-G-A-Bb-C. Some people refer to these scales as “octatonic”, because they have eight tones in an octave.

Here’s a C WH diminished scale, starting in 8th position:

7-8-(10)
7-9-10
8-10
9-10-12
8-9-11
8-10-11

Notice we’ve got one stretch and one shift in that fingering. We could also do it with just one shift:

7-8-(10)
7-9-10
7-8-10
9-10
8-9-11
8-10-11

The HW diminished scale works out pretty much the same way, but with a little more moving around:

6-8-(9)
7-8-10
6-8-9
7-8-10
7-9-10
8-9-11

Next we’ve got a couple of scales that are from traditional styles of music. This one I could have presented earlier, right after the pentatonic (which is what I usually do in lesson) – it’s the blues scale, which is the minor pentatonic with the addition of a b5 note: 1-2-b3-4-b5-5-b7. Here’s the A blues scale in fifth position:

5-(8)
5-8
5-7-8
5-7
5-6-7
5-8

If you’re improvising blues with this, you might or might not fret the “blue note” or b5 – it’s pretty common to bend to it instead.

Then there’s the style of “Gypsy jazz”, like the music of Django Reinhardt. A common scale in this style is called the Gypsy minor scale; it’s the natural minor with a raised fourth, or 1-2-b3-#4-5-b6-b7. Here’s that scale in A, in 5th position:

5-(7)-(8)
5-7-8
5-7
5-7-9
6-7-8
5-7-8

You could do the same scale with a shift:

5-(7)-(8)
5-7-8
4-5-7
5-7
6-7-8
5-7-8

By now you’ve hopefully got a command of the most common scales, and if you’ve worked at it, an understanding of where the notes are on the fretboard. We’ve still got a lot of scales to cover, so from this point forward I’ll be outlining only the scale formulas, and leave it to you to find the fingerings. If you get lost, just go back to the major scale fingering patterns and adjust the notes to the formulas – if you find a lot of notes are out of position, shift the fingering forward or back.

The Hungarian minor scale, which is also known as the Gypsy minor or the double harmonic minor scale, has the pattern 1-2-b3-#4-5-b6-7. You might have noticed that I’ve already shown you a “Gypsy minor” scale – there’s no common naming system for scales, so sometimes the same name will be used for more than one scale. You’ll notice there are two places in the scale where there’s an augmented second (a three fret space): between the b3 and the #4, and again between the b6 and the 7. Since the only common scale that includes an augmented second is the harmonic minor, that’s led to this scale often being labeled the ‘double harmonic minor’ – having no common naming system, we can also end up with more than one name for the same scale!

Continuing the naming confusion a bit further, this isn’t the only Hungarian minor scale. The other one is 1-b2-b3-4-5-b6-7. It’s sort of a cross between the harmonic minor scale and the Phrygian scale, and it’s also called the Neopolitan minor scale, and some folks even call this the “Arabic” scale.

It’s not actually an Arabic scale, as the actual Arabian system is different from our 12 tone system… I’ll cover that at the end, along with scales from India, which is also outside our 12TET system (12 tone equal temperament) – our guitars are designed to produce 12TET tones, so these take some real work to achieve on the guitar.

You might also come across the Neopolitan major scale… but it’s the same as the Lydian mode. Exotic scales seem to have sprung up in many different styles of music, so there ends up being a lot of overlap in the names!

Some of our exotic scales are simple alterations of our common scales. The major/minor scale is a good example of that: it’s a natural minor scale with a major third, or 1-2-3-4-5-b6-b7.

Jazz has also given us a lot of scales, especially bebop jazz. Bebop scales have eight tones, with a passing note between two ‘normal’ scale tones. The scale that’s usually called the “bebop” scale is a cross between the major scale and the Mixolydian: 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7-7. This is also called the “bebop dominant” scale, because it includes the dominant chord tone of b7.

But we can put the half steps in other places, which gives us the Bebop Dorian: 1-2-b3-3-4-5-6-b7. That’s a cross between the Mixolydian and the Dorian scales.

We also have the Bebop Major, 1-2-3-4-5-b6-6-7. This scale works well over major 7th or major 6th chords.

If we lower the third of that scale, we get the Bebop Melodic Minor: 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-6-7.

Finally, we can lower the 3rd of the Bebop Dominant, and get the Bebop Harmonic Minor: 1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7-7. That’s a harmonic minor scale with the added b7.

Jazz also makes extensive use of altered dominant chords. If you’ve read my chord lessons, you might remember that dominant chords have a tension; altered dominant chords increase the tension by including notes altered from the underlying scale – substituting b5 or #5 for the fifth in the chord, or including the b9 or #9 note. These chords may be spelled out in the name, as in C7b9, or they may just be indicated on a chart as “C7alt”, leaving it up to the performer which non-scale tones to include.

Because these chords can include b9 (the same tone as b2), #9 (same as #2), b5 or #5, a scale that will work over any of them should contain those notes – as well as the root, third, and b7 common to dominant chords. The resulting scale is 1-b2-b3-b4-b5-b6-b7.

This one takes a bit of explaining to unravel the spelling – we want it to have just one of each letter name; the b3 is the same pitch as #2 (or #9). Having used a 3, the natural third from the chord ends up being spelled as a b4. b5 is there, as is b6 – that’s the same tone as #5. And the b7 is needed to blend with a dominant chord.

Compare this scale with the Locrian mode, which is 1-b2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7, and you’ll see it’s the Locrian with a lowered fourth. So this scale is sometimes called the “superlocrian” (which is how I first learned it), but a more common name is simply the “altered scale”.

Another big source of scales in music has been the deconstruction of chords used in specific tunes. If you take a chord like a m7b5, we have scale tones (I’ll show those in C): 1-b3-b5-b7. We’re missing 2, 4, and 6. We can fill those in with any tones from the scale, creating these:

1-b2-b3-b4-b5-b6-b7
1-b2-b3-b4-b5-6-b7
1-b2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7
1-b2-b3-4-b5-6-b7
1-2-b3-b4-b5-b6-b7
1-2-b3-b4-b5-6-b7
1-2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7
1-2-b3-4-b5-6-b7

Any of these scales will work over a m7b5 chord, since they each contain all of the chord tones. One (the 1-2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7) is used commonly enough to call it a “half diminished” scale, but in fact ALL of them can be considered half diminished scales!

Some composers will create a chord and build a piece around it. They’ll usually follow the same process I showed above, filling in the missing notes with possibilities from our chromatic scale. The resulting scales are often named after the piece the composer created that contains the chord…

The Prometheus scale comes from a symphonic work by Alexander Scriabin called “Prometheus: The Poem of Fire”. The chord can be spelled in several ways, but it’s often seen in fourths: C-F#-Bb-E-A-D. Arranging these in scale order, we get C-D-E-F#-A-Bb, or 1-2-3-#4-6-b7. To continue the naming confusion, the chord is also called the “mystic” chord – and the scale is naturally also called the mystic scale.

Igor Stravinsky wrote a ballet called “Petrushka”, and in it he used the Petrushka chord. It’s a foray into bitonality, with two different tonal centers at the same time… if you have two guitarists, and one plays a C major chord while the other plays an Gb major chord, the result is the Petrushka chord. Combining the notes C-E-G and Gb-Bb-Db gets us the scale C-Db-E-Gb-G-Bb.

That causes a little problem because we’ve got two G notes. Spelling the second chord enharmonically (as F# major, which is what Stravinsky actually did) gets us two C notes (C and C#). So the scale ends up being spelled as a mix of the two: C-Db-E-F#-G-Bb, or 1-b2-3-#4-5-b7. It’s also known as the “tritone” scale, because it’s made up of several notes that are a tritone, or three whole tones, apart: C-F#, Db-G, and E-Bb.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

One thing we at Guitar Noise would really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!
And we’re also trying to get more information concerning upcoming shows out to our readers in a timely manner. So every Wednesday we’ll be posting our “Events Horizon” calendar up on the Guitar Noise blog. The latest one came got posted today and has events running through February 12,and you can find it here.

As always, you should feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig information (dates, venues, locations and times) to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. Remember that we’ll be posting these every Wednesday so plan accordingly!

And who knows? Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!That’s how Nick got to meet Lars when the Flea Market Band (all the way from Norway) played in Washington DC.

Random Thoughts

Working through “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele,” much like writing “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar,” involved creating quite a few arrangements of Public Domain songs. The idea in both books was to create arrangements that could stand up on their own and make the listener think, “Hey! This song is actually pretty cool!”

And when I listen to the arrangements that Nick and I created for these two books, with me handling the guitar or ukulele part and Nick the vocals, I find myself thinking that there’s a good reason these songs have continued to be sung for, in some cases, hundreds of years. They’re simply fun songs. Some are beautiful and moving and some are silly but it’s impossible to dismiss them as unworthy of attention and consideration.

As I mentioned in the blurb about our Guitar Nose Featured Artist of the Month, great songs transcend genres. A song should never be thought of as just a “guitar song” or a “piano song” or a “rock song” or a “pop song” or whatever. As musicians we have the ability to take the raw material, the gemstone of a song if you will, and place it in all sorts of different settings, each of which will give the beholder a new insight or appreciation of it.

Maybe this is a continuation of the “New Year’s Resolution” theme, but if you find yourself looking to kick start your creativity, try taking a song that you don’t really like and seeing what you can do to turn it into one you enjoy playing and performing. It’s a lot easier than you think! And it’s also usually a lot of fun as well.

More to the point, it gives you the chance to add your own personal touch to a song. Instead of producing a copy, you’ve come out with an original arrangement. And who knows? It may be your arrangement that inspires someone else to pick up an instrument and play.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 19 – January 15, 2012

David Hodge — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:15:35 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #18 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Emails? We Get Emails!
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

So, did you notice that I still had 2011 in the date of our last newsletter? The one which started out with the bold “In case you’ve not been told, it is now 2012″ as its opening line? If not, forget I even mentioned it! Instead, let me welcome you to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. And I hope that your New Year has been a good one so far.

We’ve also another New Year coming up! A week from tomorrow, which is Monday, January 23, is Chinese New Year. The Year of the Dragon! If you happen to be born this year or (much more likely) happen to be turning 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84 or 96, then this is your year.

Not that it really has all that much to do with anything, but when Nick was up here in the Berkshires last fall to record some songs, we got breakfast at a local shop that had a zodiac based on various delicatessen items. Turns out I was born in the Year of Chopped Liver. No lie. And I swore I’d never tell what year Nick was born in, so don’t ask!

In case you missed the last newsletter, we’ve brought back “Horse With No Name” to the pages of Guitar Noise. It joins “Hey There, Delilah.” and our three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” back on our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons page, where each lesson comes complete with lyrics, music notation and tablature and also a healthy dose of educational and entertaining text. Again (and always), we’d like to thank Alfred Music Publishing for working with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.

And at the risk of being predictable, I’d also like to repeat a bit from our last two newsletters concerning the “Sparks of Life” program at New York Methodist Hospital, in Brooklyn, New You. They are looking for volunteer musicians to spread the joy of music to their patients in their various pediatric, physical rehabilitation, geriatric and oncology units. They are very flexible in terms of scheduling and more than willing to work with you to help them brighten the days of their patients. It can be a once-in-a-while gig or a regular ongoing one depending on your schedule.

Any musician, guitarist or otherwise, is more than welcome. You should have a variety of music to play as you’ll be dealing with people from all ages and background. Obviously you’ll also want to have good communication and people skills.

If you live in the Brooklyn area and are willing to help by sharing your talent, please give Amand Nable a call at (718)780-5397, extension 105, or email her at abn9006@nyp.org.

Here’s hoping we can get some of our New York Guitar Noise community members hooked up with Amanda’s program and bring some music to people truly in need of it throughout 2012 and beyond. This is the sort of New Year’s Resolution you might find beneficial to yourself and to many, many others as well.

Finally, just in case you’re wondering exactly what Nick was up here recording last fall, I’m please to announce that I’ve finished another project for Alpha Books. It’s another in their “Complete Idiot’s Guides” series – “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele” and it will be out in bookstores (online and on earth) on July 3 this summer. Nick recorded vocals for many of the song examples and also contributed an original song of his own (“It’s Not a Love Song”) for the chapter on how to play ukulele in a traditional band setting. We’ll be posting more about this upcoming book, including some cool ukulele lessons not included in the book, later on this spring. And Paul will be posting a link for the book on our bookstore page as soon as it’s available. As with all my previous books, I cannot thank the Guitar Noise community enough for all their support. I hope you’ll find this new to be up to the high standards you set.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

The plan is to have Eddie Van Halen be the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of January and Paul’s whipping up a bio of this celebrated guitarist and you’ll be able to read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

On top of everything else, we’re doing some revamping of our Guitar Noise Topic Pages. For over fifteen years now we’ve been a premiere guitar tutorial website and thousands (if not tens of thousands) of beginner guitarists have found help and advice to start them on their musical adventures. We’re going to be putting the best of all our beginner lessons together in one place. So whether you are totally starting from scratch or whether you’re just looking to get some beginner advice for a particular topic like finger picking or basic theory, you’ll now find them all in one easy step.

Stop by the Guitar Noise home page and click on the latest “Topic of the Month” – Beginner Guitar Lessons – up at the top of the page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Gustavo Assis-Brasil – Hybrid Picking Lines & Licks For Guitar For All Styles
by David Hodge

An excellent companion book for Gustavo Assis-Brasil’s “Hybrid Picking for Guitar.” A great source for lead guitarist whether you use hybrid picking or not.

Andrew DuBrock – Easy Fingerpicking Guitar
A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Patterns & Techniques
by David Hodge

“Easy Fingerpicking Guitar” has to be the best step-by-step fingerpicking tutorial for beginners that exists. You’ll learn great technique immediately.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Scales – Part 4
by Tom Serb

Believe it or not, scales are your friend. There is no reason scales should scare or confuse guitar players and with Tom’s help we’re going prove that. Part 3 covers various the Major Scale, which is considered by most musicians to be the most important one you can learn.

Adding Some Personal Touches
by David Hodge

Our lesson of “Horse With No Name” continues with a advice on how to spice up your strumming as well as a look at the solo from the original recording.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’re continuing a terrific series from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb concerning just about every scale you could ever think of:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 6

Modes

Modes are probably the single most confusing element of music for guitarists. There’s a ton of mis-information out there, which just makes things worse. But they’re not that difficult to understand and use if they’re approached properly.

What we think of today as “modes” are simply scales. Several of them are very old – the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes were used in Gregorian chants written over 1500 years ago. At the time, they weren’t called “modes” (at the time, a mode was actually a rhythm!), but the word was first used in the 6th century by a theorist named Boethius in translating some 1st century Greek music theory. About 300 years later, a monk named Hucbald applied the term to the already existing church scales, and we’ve called them “modes” on and off since then.

The church modes were simply considered different scales that composers could use in creating chants. There wasn’t any relationship between them, and no one thought of them as the same notes. That changed in 1547, when a guy named Heinrich Glarens (or Henricus Glareanus as he called himself in Latin) realized that the four church modes and two secular scales – the major and natural minor – made use of the same notes. Glarens created all the confusion by organizing the six scales this way:

C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C = the major scale

D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D = the Dorian “mode”

E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E = the Phrygian “mode”

F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F = the Lydian “mode”

G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G = the Mixolydian “mode”

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A = the natural minor scale

Since the four church scales had Greek names, Glarens decided the major and minor scales should also have Greek names; he called the major scale the “Ionian mode” and named the natural minor the “Aeolian mode”. He also theorized that there should be a scale which started with B:

B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B

Glarens called this one the “Locrian mode”. That’s pronounced “luh-cree-in”, “lock-ree-in” or “low-cree-in”; I use “lock-ree-in”, but I’ve heard different theory professors use all three… I suppose it depends on where you went to school! He quickly discarded the scale as useless in practice, but it remained a part of music theory.

On to how to use them… I first encountered a mention of modes in a book on rock guitar in the early 70s, accompanied with a brief explanation of Glaren’s classification and a few exercises. They seemed interesting, but it wasn’t enough information for them to actually be useful to me. Then I headed off to college, and modes were covered in a music history class – we had to learn the names of them, again by Glaren’s system: test questions included things like “which mode begins on the third note of a major scale?” I tried my best to use them on my guitar, but they really didn’t sound different from other scales.

Then I took improvisation lessons from Paul Zibits, who still teaches – he’s currently with California State University at Long Beach. I told him the problem I was having, and he told me I was doing it wrong – I was focusing on a related scale – trying to play F Lydian while I was thinking in C major, the “related” major scale. Since modes are scales, and scales relate their pitches to the key note, I needed to be thinking in F, not C. That’s the whole trick!

So let’s start by looking at the F major scale and the F Lydian scale:

F-G-A-Bb-C-D-E-F = F major

F-G-A-B-C-D-E-F = F Lydian

The only note that’s different is the B. Looking at Lydian as a scale formula, it’s 1-2-3-#4-5-6-7. All you have to do to play a Lydian scale is to take a major scale and raise the fourth note! Here’s how it would finger in second position:

(2)-(3)-(5)
(3)-(5)
2-4-5
2-4-5
(2)-3-5
(2)-(3)-(5)

And in fifth position, with a shift on the third and fourth strings:

5-7-8
5-7-8
4-5-7
4-5-7
5-7
(5)-(7)-8

I’m sure you can apply this logic to the other positions of the major scale.

The Mixolydian mode works out the same way:

G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G = G major

G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G = G mixolydian

This means the mixolydian scale is 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7, or the major scale with a flatted 7th. Here’s G Mixolydian in 2nd position:

1-3-5
3-5
2-4-5
2-3-5
2-3-5
(1)-3-5

There are two important things to take away from our look at modes so far:

1. Modes are just scales. If you’re going to relate them to something, relate them to a scale with the same key note; any other approach is extra thinking at best, and musically misleading at worst.

2. There’s no such thing as a “modal fingering”. We’ve already seen that in 2nd position you can play in C major (C Ionian), G Mixolydian, or F Lydian. We can actually play almost ANY mode in this position, and that’s going to be true anywhere on the guitar. If you’re thinking in fingerings, you’re not thinking in sound – so your results will probably seem mechanical.

Time for one quick detour – when I say you can play “almost” any mode in this position, some will be easy, some hard, just like the many varieties of the major scale fingering. The ones that will be impossible will be the ones that are “related” to Eb major. Because of the guitar’s tuning, none of the 2nd fret notes (F#/Gb, B, E, A, C#/Db, F#/Gb) are in the Eb major scale (Eb-F-G-Ab-Bb-C-D-Eb). I call this the “guitar’s gap”; each major scale has exactly one position (and possibly its octave) with no notes.

The remaining modes could also be compared to the major scale, but the ones that are left all have something in common – a flatted third. (The Ionian mode is the major scale, and the Aeolian mode is the natural minor; we’ve covered both of those earlier)

D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D = D major

D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D = D Dorian

1-2-b3-4-5-6-b7

E-F#-G#-A-B-C#-D#-E = E major

E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E = E Phrygian

1-b2-b3-4-5-b6-b7

B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#-B = B major

B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B = B Locrian

1-b2-b3-4-b5-b6-b7

Since each of the remaining modes has a b3, I find it easiest to treat them as alterations of the natural minor scale.

D-E-F-G-A-Bb-C-D = D natural minor (relative to F major)

D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D = D Dorian

Compared to the natural minor, Dorian has a raised sixth. So if you want to play in A Dorian, just take the A natural minor and raise the sixth – make all your F notes sharp. Here’s fifth position:

5-(7)-(8)
5-7-8
5-7
5-7-9
5-7-9
5-7-8

Or you could shift on the fourth and third strings:

5-(7)-(8)
5-7-8
4-5-7
4-5-7
5-7
5-7-8

Next up is Phrygian:

E-F#-G-A-B-C-D-E = E natural minor (relative to G major)

E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E = E Phrygian

Compared to the natural minor, Phrygian has a b2. To play in A Phrygian, think in A minor, and flat the 2nd (B):

5-(6)-(8)
5-6-8
5-7
5-7-8
5-7-8
5-6-8

The final mode, Locrian, is the only one that requires changing two notes from the natural minor:

B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A-B = B natural minor (relative to D major)

B-C-D-E-F-G-A-B = B Locrian

There are two ways you can approach this one, mentally… you can either alter two tones from the natural minor scale, or if you’ve got the other modes down cold first (which I’d recommend), you can alter ONE note from the Phrygian – simply play Phrygian and flat the 5th. Here’s how A Locrian will shape up in fifth position:

5-(6)-(8)
6-8
5-7-8
5-7-8
5-6-8
5-6-8

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy, at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Emails? We Get Emails!

We’ve not dipped into the “email bag” for a bit (not that there haven’t been questions! not a day passes without at least two or three!) so I thought I’d share this one, concerning the CAGED system of learn and other things, with you all:

Hi Dave,

A couple questions, if you don’t mind!

A) Are you familiar with the whole “CAGED fretboard layout” (I’m 99% sure you are!) and what is the “best” way to go about memorizing/utilizing this?? I rack my brain every night, but always feel I’m one piece short of the puzzle!

B) What is the best methodology for learning to sing & play, simultaneously?? Metronome? “Hearing both guitar and vocals, simultaneously”, etc.?

C) Not to be vague, but how can you, objectively, determine if you have the “raw talent” to rock professionally?? If at all.

Thanks for writing.

In regard to “Question A” about the CAGED fretboard layout. While this is a standard traditional way for guitarists to learn their way around the fretboard, for the average guitarist, it can be a lot to take in at once. That’s one reason why I first try to work with students to get through three forms of the CAGED system first, namely the “E,” “D,” and “A” parts of CAGED. Why? Because it’s easy to associate these three shapes with open chords that you already know and use a lot. You might want to check out the article at Guitar Noise called “Moving On Up” to get you started.

As for singing and playing at the same time, most people have troubles with this initially. We have quite a few lessons (including a few of our Podcasts) at Guitar Noise that deal with this topic. You can find them here: Singing Lessons.

Personally, I find it easiest to do this by getting the rhythm of a song down first. A lot of beginners strum to the melody of the song when the reality is that the rhythm has to hold steady while the melody dances around it on its own rhythm. If you can’t hold the rhythm steady you’re always going to have problems doing both strumming and singing.

And as to the “raw talent” needed to rock professionally, well, there’s a lot of things that I have to ask about that. First off, what do you mean by “rock professionally.” There are a lot of people who make their living playing music and only doing that, but it’s more of the living you might associate with being a tradesman like a contractor or a plumber (or even a teacher) more than with the dream life style of a rock god (name your favorite band or guitarist here).

More times than not, the reality is that it’s not about talent but rather about the business effort one puts into making music his or her business. It helps to be good, but that’s secondary to spending pretty much all your time marketing and getting yourself gigs. Essentially you (or your band) is a small business and you have to be willing to put all the effort and energy into it like someone who owns a restaurant or a store or someone who is a commission sales rep does.

I hope this helps. Please feel free to email again with any more questions you may have. I look forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

Events Horizon

And we’re also trying to get more information concerning upcoming shows out to our readers in a timely manner. So every Wednesday we’ll be posting our “Events Horizon” calendar up on the Guitar Noise blog. You can read the one from this past week, which covers from today through January 22.

Random Thoughts

Imagine for a moment that you’ve taken a trip to a place where the majority of the people don’t speak your language. And imagine that you enjoyed the trip so much that you’ve decided to spend some serious time there, seeing the sites, enjoying the food and culture, taking part in the life that you find attractive enough to want to be part of it.

Would you think twice about learning how to say “hello” or “thank you” or “please” in whatever the native language happened to be? I highly doubt it. You’d probably make a point of doing so. And simply being there every day would give you the chance to pick up new words every day. Learning one new word a day, even for the most language-challenged of us (that would include me!) isn’t that strenuous a goal.

And before you knew it, you’d have more and more of the language in your ears and head. Obviously you wouldn’t be fluent at it for quite some time, but at least you’d have the ability to communicate. And you’d improve on your abilities with each use of the language.

I think that most of us would agree on this scenario, even though I suspect some would be more of the “what kind of person would choose to live in a foreign place and not learn at least enough of the language to get by comfortably?” Whatever, the point is that learning something, anything about your surroundings would be to your advantage. If not today, certainly at some point in the future The only reason that anyone would not do so is simply that one chooses not to.

So why shouldn’t we apply this logic to learning to read music? I’ve mentioned this in past newsletters, I’m sure, but it bears repeating. The true reason most guitarists don’t learn to read music is simply because they don’t want to. And I can respect that, provided they are being truthful about that reason and not dressing it up as “I don’t because I don’t need it” or “I don’t because it’s not necessary” or “I don’t because someone-who-s-been-in-the-music-business-all-his-life-doesn’t-and-he’s-doing-okay.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of how I could possibly know what I might need in the future or what is or isn’t necessary to my lifelong enjoyment of playing guitar. And since I’m not that one particular “someone-who’s-been-in-the-music-business-all-his-life” I certainly wouldn’t be so presumptuous to put myself on the same plane as my idol.

What I do know is that any musical knowledge that I have learned over the years has always helped to make me a better player at some point down the road. Not always immediately, but definitely at some point. If I had only learned what I needed to know for that moment, it would have taken me another dozen decades or so to get to the point where I am now. Not that I’m even a fraction of a percent of where I would like to be as a player.

If you’re still looking for a New Year’s Resolution, I’d like to suggest learning a new language. You can start out very easily and learn one note a day. If you do, you’ll have all the vocabulary you need for guitar music in less than a month. Then it’s all about practicing and using your vocabulary and you can find lots of ways to do that.

And, as with all your skills and knowledge, you’ll find ways to use that will surprise and hopefully delight you!

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 18 – January 1, 2012

David Hodge — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:50:54 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #18 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

In case you’ve not been told, it is now 2012. Which means I can say hello and welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. I hope that, so far at least, your New Year is a good one.

I’ve spent the last week of 2011 with a broken computer, so needless to say I’m in the middle of doing a lot of catching up on things. The plan is to write the newsletter as if everything is going smoothly and according to plan and then to panic and rush about and get as many other things done as possible! So if some of the lessons I mention are not yet up online, please be patient! They will get there as soon as possible. My resolution of not making my life more stressful will obviously have to wait until next year!

First on the to-do list is bringing the latest song lesson back to the pages of Guitar Noise. And what better way to bring in the New Year than by revisiting the very first of our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons, namely “Horse With No Name?” This classic song will be joining “Hey There Delilah.” and our three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” back on our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons page. Each lesson comes complete with lyrics, music notation and tablature and also a healthy dose of educational and entertaining text. Again (and always), we’d like to thank Alfred Music Publishing for working with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.

And although it’s not a lesson or an article, I’d also like to repeat a bit from our last newsletter concerning the “Sparks of Life” program at New York Methodist Hospital, in Brooklyn, New You. They are looking for volunteer musicians to spread the joy of music to their patients in their various pediatric, physical rehabilitation, geriatric and oncology units. They are very flexible in terms of scheduling and more than willing to work with you to help them brighten the days of their patients. It can be a once-in-a-while gig or a regular ongoing one depending on your schedule.

If you live in the Brooklyn area and are willing to help by sharing your talent, please give Amand Nable a call at (718)780-5397, extension 105, or email her at abn9006@nyp.org.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Keeping A Guitar in Open Tuning
by David Hodge

Is it okay to leave a guitar in open tuning? Or should it be retuned to standard tuning when you’re not playing it? The answer is fairly straightforward.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Scales – Part 3
by Tom Serb

Believe it or not, scales are your friend. There is no reason scales should scare or confuse guitar players and with Tom’s help we’re going prove that. Part 3 covers various Hexatonic Scales.

The Left Way
by David Hodge

There is a right way to play guitar, but is there a left way? Regardless of how you play, a regular guitar book will work with a left-handed guitar.

O Little Town Of Bethlehem
by David Hodge

For this lesson on “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” we show how using two notes of a chord can create a beautiful chord melody arrangement.

Consider…
by David Hodge

It’s quite surprising how many people opt to learn guitar by only using videos and when you think about it logically, you’ll come up with a lot of questions that the videos rarely answer. If you’re serious about learning to play guitar, you’ll want to use as many different sources as you can find. And take in every bit of information you can..

The Top Guitar Noise Posts of 2011
by Paul Hackett

As 2011 comes to a close, we at Guitar Noise are taking a look back at our most popular lessons to find out what interested you, our readers..

How Do I Transpose A Particular Song?
by David Hodge

Another question about capos and transposing songs. How do you know which fret to put the capo on if you’re playing along with another guitar? And what if that other guitar has a capo on a different fret? David gives you some good advice on how to figure it all out!

Horse With No Name
by David Hodge

Our very first “Easy Song for Beginners” lesson returns to the pages of Guitar Noise. You’ll learn the very basics of the song and then get a chance to tinker with the rhythm and the strumming.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’re continuing a terrific series from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb concerning just about every scale you could ever think of:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 5

Minor scales

Just as we have major and minor chords, we’ve got major and minor scales. Minor chords and scales have one thing in common – they’ve got a flatted third (when compared to the same major chord or scale). But there’s also one big difference worth noting: there’s only one kind of major scale. That’s what makes it so valuable to music theory as a yardstick for measuring other scales and chords – there is never any confusion about what the notes will be for any given application. On the other hand, there are LOTS of different minor scales!

There’s also one area where major and minor scales overlap: the ‘relative’ major and minor scales can be constructed using the SAME notes. This concept is called “modality” (as in “modes”), and it can be one of the most confusing aspects of music theory for guitarists. So before we get into the various types of minor scales, we’re going to take a brief detour back to the pentatonic scale and apply the concept of modality.

Our first position minor pentatonic scale looked like this (in A):

| 5 |   |   | 8 |
| 5 |   |   | 8 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   | 7 |
| 5 |   |   | 8 |

The notes in the scale are A (the root), C (the b3 – because an A major scale’s third is C#), D (the 4th), E (the 5th), and G (the b7, because A major contains G#). But if we look at the letter names, A-C-D-E-G, we can see that they’re also all part of the C major scale.

These notes can be arranged C-D-E-G-A to create the C major pentatonic scale. Comparing it to the major scale, we find the formula 1-2-3-5-6. And here we’ve got a big clue for why this scale is so useful… the major scale notes that are missing are 4 and 7. I’m going to digress even more here and show you why the pentatonic is the most widely used scale for beginners.

When notes interact with each other, as in simultaneous melodies or notes played against a chord progression, the result is harmony. And although the word ‘harmony’ implies agreement, that’s not always true in music. Some sounds agree very well, and we call those “consonant” sounds. Other notes played in tandem sound more like two cats tied up in a bag; we call those “dissonant” sounds.

What one listener considers pleasing won’t be universal. That might explain why some folks prefer listening to the Carpenters, while others put on Korn when they want to relax. So when we classify sounds as consonant or dissonant, we’re really talking about what the average listener perceives. To complicate things a bit, what the average listener considers consonant or dissonant has changed over time. Given today’s ears, we can classify intervals (two pitches sounded at the same time) into these broad groups:

Consonant              Mostly consonant         Mostly dissonant          Dissonant
Unison/octave (C-C)    minor 3rd (C-Eb)         Major 2nd (C-D)           minor 2nd (C-Db)
Perfect 4th (C-F)      Major 3rd (C-E)          minor 6th (C-Ab)          tritone (C-F#/Gb)
Perfect 5th (C-G)      Major 6th (C-A)          minor 7th (C-Bb)          Major 7th (C-B)

These are broad categories, and the “mostly” ones will depend on context – a minor 6th may sound just fine in one sequence (especially in a minor key), and not so good in another. These are the grey areas of music. But the consonant ones will always sound consonant, and the dissonant ones will always disagree.

Music, like cooking, can be improved when you add a little spice. Just like cooking, too much spice makes something unfit for human consumption. Dissonance is the spice of music – you want some, but not too much. Let’s look at the major scale notes played against each other – upper case “M” is major, lower case “m” is minor. I’ve also marked the usually dissonant intervals with an asterisk, and the always dissonant intervals with two:

	C	D	E	F	G	A	B
C	Unison	M2*	M3	P4	P5	m6*	M7*
D	m7*	Unison	M2*	m3	P4	P5	M6
E	m6*	m7*	Unison	m2**	m3	P4	P5
F	P5	M6	M7*	Unison	M2*	M3	Tritone**
G	P4	P5	M6	m7*	Unison	M2*	M3
A	m3	P4	P5	m6*	m7*	Unison	M2*
B	m2**	m3	P4	Tritone**	m6*	m7*	Unison

Using the major scale, 20 of the 49 possibilities create some dissonance. If you’re playing random notes you’ve got about a 40% chance of adding some spice through dissonance. Also notice that two asterisks only appear when one or both of the notes is F or B. Let’s knock out these notes and see what happens:

	C	D	E	G	A
C	Unison	M2*	M3	P5	m6*
D	m7*	Unison	M2*	P4	P5
E	m6*	m7*	Unison	m3	P4
G	P4	P5	M6	Unison	M2*
A	m3	P4	P5	m7*	Unison

Now only 8 of the 25 possible combinations results in dissonance – a 13% chance of adding spice. And not one of the notes results in a combination that will always be dissonant.

A dissonance in music needs to be ‘resolved’ to feel fulfilled. A beginning improviser, whose command of the instrument (and his or her ears) isn’t fully developed is playing more or less at random. If you have a 40% chance of playing a dissonance, you have a 60% chance of resolving it by accident – maybe not in the best method, but at least following it by a consonance. And 40% x 40% = 16% of the time what you’re playing won’t be immediately resolved.

If we use the pentatonic scale, 87% of our notes are already consonant. The 13% that aren’t will be followed (again, at random) by notes that resolve 87% of the time. 13% x 13% = less than a 2% chance that you’ll be dragging out the dissonance. The pentatonic scale is practically built for poke & pray soloing – 98.3% of the time you’ll sound like you know what you’re doing, even if it’s completely random. And you will never face a harsh dissonance of a tritone or minor 2nd! Add just a little bit of experience and the success ratio quickly becomes 100%. You may not sound like the greatest soloist – because you’re not taking the biggest chances – but you’ll sound like a competent improviser.

All this is great in theory… but let’s start putting it under your fingers. Put on a backing track in a MAJOR key, and put your fingers into minor pentatonic position 1 three frets below your key note – if your backing track is in B, you’ll be playing in G# minor. Go ahead and solo, but end your solo on the SECOND note of the minor pentatonic scale – the B note on the 6th string (7th or 19th fret), the 3rd string (4th or 16th fret), or the 1st string (7th or 19th fret). You’ll find that no notes were difficult to work with, and the end result sounded anywhere from a little bland to really good.

Ok, I’m done with that digression, although we’ll return to the concept of modality in a later section. But it wasn’t completely a digression, because we’re about to apply it.

We’ll start by looking at the most basic minor scale, the natural (or “pure”) minor. This is the scale that uses exactly the same notes as the major scale. The natural minor scale is created by starting from the 6th degree (or note) of the major scale – if you’re working in C major, the relative natural minor will be C major notes starting from A: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A. You can use the SAME fingerings we reviewed for the major scale, but you’ll be treating a different note as the tonic, or ‘home base’.

Because the notes are the same as the major scale, the fingerings are also the same. All we do is make a different note the focal point of the melody, and we’ve shifted from the major to the relative natural minor scale.

One quick note about the focal point – it’s incredibly difficult to set ‘rules’ that determine which tone will be the tonic. Some folks will tell you it’s the last note of a melody (often true, but not always), the note used most frequently (sometimes true, but usually not), or the first note (rarely true unless the soloist is a beginner). But a melody will always feel like it has come to a resting point when the tonic is reached… so determining the tonic is sort of like defining pornography: you know it when you see/hear it.

Get a backing track in A minor, and use one of the C major fingerings over it… but focus your attention on the A notes. If you’re using the fifth position fingering, it’ll look like this:

5-(7)-(8)
5-6-8
5-7
5-7-9
5-7-8
5-7-8

When you solo over the progression, you might notice a couple of notes are harder to work with. In particular, the G note (4th string 5th fret or 2nd string 8th fret) may clash with the dominant chord. Understanding why that happens requires another brief detour into harmony.

Earlier I explored the harmony created by two notes of the major scale sounded simultaneously. Those two sounds create intervals. If we add a THIRD sound to the mix, we get a chord.

There are several different systems of harmony out there, but most music makes use of “tertian” harmony, building chords in thirds. The simplest chords contain only three notes, and they’re called “triads”. What that means is that whatever note we start with in chord construction, the chord will consist of every other note – if you start from C, you’ll skip over D and use E (the third note of the C scale). Skipping over F gets you to G, and the combination C-E-G creates a C major chord.

Different chords have different formulas; the major chord works out to 1-3-5 against the major scale. A minor chord uses the b3 – C minor is C-Eb-G. There are two other common triads, the diminished (1-b3-b5) and the augmented (1-3-#5).

We don’t typically use random chords in constructing a progression. Instead, we use chords that belong to the same key. That means if we’re in C major, we’ll usually use only chords that have notes from the C major scale. Building chords in thirds using only C major scale tones gives us the following:

C-E-G (C major, 1-3-5)
D-F-A (D minor, because a D major scale has F# in it, so F is a b3; we always use the major scale of the chord root to figure out the chord’s formula)
E-G-B (E minor, since E major has G#)
F-A-C (F major)
G-B-D (G major)
A-C-E (A minor, because A major has C#)
B-D-F (B diminished, because a B major scale has both D# and F#)

These chords will sound perfectly acceptable together, and many simple songs are made from various combinations. But we do want a little spice in our music, so we sometimes harmonize chords in four notes. Without getting into chord theory too much, a chord that has the seventh note of it’s root scale is a “maj7” (major 7th) chord; a chord that has the b7 of its major scale is a “7th” (or “dominant 7th) chord. We can combine these terms – a minor chord with a b7 is a m7 chord; a minor chord with the natural 7th will be a m/maj7 – that’s kind of rare, because it’s pretty dissonant, but the labeling of chords is consistent.

Harmonizing the C major scale in four parts gives us these additional chords:

C-E-G-B (Cmaj7)
D-F-A-C (Dm7)
E-G-B-D (Em7)
F-A-C-E (Fmaj7)
G-B-D-F (G7)
A-C-E-G (Am7)
B-D-F-A (Bm7b5)

With these additional chords, there are three that have a “tension” – they sound like they have to move somewhere. These chords are the B diminished, the G7, and the Bm7b5.

Most music makes use of tension/release: building excitement, then letting the listener back down. One of the most common ways to do that is through a V7-I cadence, moving from G7 to C.

Since the notes of the natural minor scale are exactly the same as that of the major scale, we end up with exactly the same chords – except they’ll appear on different scale degrees. If we use a G7 to build tension in the key of C, we can get a satisfying C-F-G7-C chord progression, or I-IV-V7-I. Applying exactly the same logic to the A natural minor scale, we’d get a progression of Am-Dm-Em7-Am.

There’s nothing wrong with that progression, but it lacks the excitement of the dominant 7th chord. So hundreds of years ago, composers began altering the minor scale – they wanted an E7 chord to create tension that resolves to Am.

Since a dominant 7th chord is 1-3-5-b7 against the major scale, E7 will be E-G#-B-D. Raising the G note to G# creates the desired harmony, so replacing G with G# in an A natural minor creates a scale called the A harmonic minor.

Using the A natural minor fingering above as our base, we can get the A harmonic minor fingering below:

5-(7)-(8)
5-6-9
5-7
6-7-9
5-7-8
5-7-8

Just as we did with the major scale, we can find alternate fingerings for the notes you have to stretch for. This scale becomes a lot more finger-friendly if we shift to fourth position when we get to the third string:

4-5-(7)
5-6
4-5-7
6-7
5-7-8
5-7-8

There was one big problem with this scale: singers hated it. The harmonic minor scale uses an augmented second interval between the 6th and 7th notes (from F-G# in Am), and that’s a difficult interval to sing accurately. Singers prefer to use half steps – one fret on the guitar – or whole steps (two frets).

One solution is to raise the 6th note of the minor scale. That creates a whole step between the 6th and 7th notes, and the distance from the 5th note to the 6th changes from a half step to a whole step… still very singable. Our A minor scale would now be A-B-C-D-E-F#-G#-A, or 1-2-b3-4-5-6-7.

This scale wasn’t used very much, because it’s so close to the major scale. In fact, it’s the major scale with only one note changed – so if the melody spends much time away from the third note, it starts to sound major. Composers quickly discarded it (in favor of the scale we’ll look at in a moment) – but this scale did find a resurgence in jazz, where it’s called the “jazz minor” or the “bebop minor”. Folks from Berklee call it the “real melodic minor”, but folks from Berklee often have their own names for things!

Using fifth and fourth positions again, this minor scale can be fingered like this – the shift is now on the 4th string:

4-5-(7)
4-5-7
4-5-7
4-6-7
5-7
5-7-8

The solution classical music composers found to the problem of both creating the desired harmony and keeping the singers happy was unusual: they created a hybrid scale. This is one area where pedagogy (how things are taught) differs a bit from actual practice; here’s the pedagogy part:

Going up, the scale raises the 6th and 7th notes, creating the right harmony and keeping the singers happy. But going down, it will be the same as the natural minor scale, giving a minor sound to melodies that don’t touch on the flatted third for a while. In a minor, it will look like this:

A-B-C-D-E-F#-G#-A-G-F-E-D-C-B-A
 (going up)        (going down)

Because the direction of the melody determines which pitches will be used for the 6th and 7th notes, this is called the melodic minor scale. You’ve already got the fingerings – it’s the jazz minor going up, and the natural minor going down.

In practice this scale doesn’t always work the way it’s taught. Composers and improvisers can use the natural minor part going up and the jazz minor part down – they simply try to avoid that hard to sing interval. In either direction, melodies will sometimes use all the notes, treating the one from the ‘wrong’ direction as a passing tone. As we’ll see, minor scales are incredibly flexible.

There are still more minor scales to come: I’ll cover the Dorian and Phrygian in the next section about modes, and a few others like the Gypsy minor in the final part, exotic scales.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy at their website, http://mwmusicacademy.com/, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

Looking back over 2011 I find myself remembering all sorts of musical moments that I had the good fortune to be a part of. Personally, I’m not one who worries about recordings or videos. I’m simply there to enjoy the music and to be in the moment. But it’s fortunate that, from time to time, some of my friend come up with some tangible memento of a song or two. About a month ago, I got to play with Nick Torres, Greg Nease, Jeff Brownstein, Helena Bouchez, John Mazzeo, Glen Polson and Karen Berger at a show in Pennington, New Jersey and Nick managed to make a passable recording of our cover of “Everybody’s Talking” which I present for your enjoyment. Appropriately, everybody is talking!

I hope that 2012 gives each of you the opportunity to make and share your music with your family, friends and the rest of the world.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 17 – December 15, 2011

David Hodge — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:37:15 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #17 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the last issue of Guitar Noise News for 2011. The next issue of your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com – comes out on New Year’s Day.

So let me take a moment to wish all of you, as well as your families and friends a safe and joyful holiday season, for whichever holidays you celebrate!

As you read last time out, our latest song lesson to return to the pages of Guitar Noise is “Hey There, Delilah,” which joins our three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” (each with all the music, tablature and lyrics) – back on our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons page. Again, and always, we’d like to thank Alfred Music Publishing for working with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.

And speaking of both Alfred Music and the Guitar Noise song lessons, Paul and I are also pleased to announce that Alfred has contracted me to write a book of song lessons in the Guitar Noise style.The title is tentatively “Songs Made Simple” and the first book will have between twenty and twenty-five song lessons in it as well as an audio CD with the various musical examples from the book. The full table of contents is still being decided but as soon as it is, we’ll make sure you know all about it! If all goes according to schedule, this book should be out sometime during the summer of 2012. Also (again if all goes well) we’re hoping that this book is the first of a series of such books. Again, we’ll definitely keep you posted on all the latest about it.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

It’s been just over ten years since George Harrison passed away.We’re celebrating his life and music all through the month of December as our featured artist. Read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas! We’ve always prided ourselves when it comes to the incredibly diverse selection in our “Easy Christmas Songs for Guitar” lessons. So it’s a bit of a no-brainer to feature these terrific tutorials as the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month for December. Stop by the Guitar Noise home page and click on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the page, just below the blue banner. That will take you to some fun and easy lessons that will get you in the holiday spirit in no time! Plus you’ll have a great time impressing your friends and family.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Scales – Parts 1 and 2
by Tom Serb

Believe it or not, scales are your friend. There is no reason scales should scare or confuse guitar players and with Tom’s help we’re going prove that. Part 1 covers the Minor Pentatonic Scale and the Blues Scale is the subject of Part 2.

How To Play Guitar Standing Up
by David Hodge

Most people tend to play their guitars really low because it looks really cool. It’s actually a lot harder to play well that way. So what is good posture? David gives some sane and simple advice in this Q & A.

The Music Margin: Why Technique Equals Musicality
by Jamie Andreas

To allow your musical feeling to emerge and give life to the notes you play, you must have the technique required to produce those notes in the first place.Jamie Andreas discusses the “music margin” and gives some excellent advice sure to help you with becoming more musical with your guitar.

HOW NOT TO BE CREATIVE
by Gerald Kickstein

Gerald Klickstein, author of “The Musician’s Way,” offers up this very creative discussion on how to not be creative! Great advice, as always, from Jerry!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’re continuing a terrific series from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb concerning just about every scale you could ever think of:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 4

The Major Scale

Now we’ll get into the grand-daddy of music theory, the major scale.

The major scale is important to theory, because it’s the yardstick by which we measure all other scales… when I’ve said that the minor pentatonic is 1-b3-4-5-b7, I’ve meant that those are the pitches compared to the major scale.

To understand the structure of the major scale, we first need to look at the spacing between the letter names. Not all letter names are the same distance apart. The letters B and C are just one fret apart, and the letters E and F are one fret apart – all the other letters are separated by two frets. That leaves one fret in between the other letters… a fret between A and B, C and D, D and E, F and G, and one between G and A.

We can think of an ‘in between’ fret as a letter name that has been inflected, or changed a little bit. The Second fret of the first string can be thought of as a little bit higher than F (F-sharp, or F#), but it can also be seen as a little bit lower than G (G-flat, or Gb). As a result, each of these in-between pitches have two names.

The two names are called “enharmonic”, which means they’re written differently, but they sound the same. Some guitarists will tell you this means the names are interchangeable, but they’re not.

The major scale is our first diatonic (through-the-tones, or seven note) major scale. That means it’s going to have exactly one of each letter name.

To illustrate that, I’ll use the A major scale. We’ll need one of each letter name: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

The pattern of the major scale is whole step (two frets), whole step, half step (one fret), whole step, whole step, whole step, and half step. So if we started on the open fifth string, we’d get this:

----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
-0-2-4-5-7-9-11-12
----------------------

The open string is A, and two frets above it will be B. Our next scale pitch is two frets higher than that – on one of the ‘in between’ notes… it’s either C# or Db. The pitch after that falls one fret higher, on D.

If we call the scale note Db, we’ll end up with TWO D notes (one flat, one ‘natural’, or unchanged). Because our major scale is diatonic, we MUST call this note C# in the context of the scale.

After D, we go up two frets to E, and then we have to go up two frets again – to the pitch between F and G. Since we haven’t used the letter F yet, this note must be F#. Two frets higher than that must be G#, because we’ve already used A as our starting point.

That means our A major scale spelling will be A-B-C#-D-E-F#-G#-A. When we’re looking at any scale or chord with an A root, that’s our yardstick for comparison: anything containing C natural will have a b3 – which means it will be ‘minor’.

The next thing to realize about our major scale is that we’ll have to play three notes on most of the strings because of the way the notes are spaced. Unlike the simple pentatonic scales, this means we’ll have a LOT more fingering choices!

Only two fingerings will put all the major scale notes underneath your fingers. One is the major scale with the root on the 6th string under your 2nd finger – here’s the C major scale in that fingering:

-7- 8-(10)-
-8-10-
-7-9-10-
-7-9-10-
-7-8-10-
-(7)-8-10-

The notes I’ve marked in parenthesis lie above or below the scale root – they’re part of the scale, but they’re not part of a complete octave in this fingering. That means when you’re using the scale to improvise, these notes are available… but when you’re practicing the scale, you want to start and end with a C note; otherwise it won’t sound like C major, and you want to get your ears used to the sound of the notes in relation to ‘home base’. That’s going to be important later on when we look at the modes of the major scale.

The other fingering that puts all the notes under your fingers starts with the root under your fourth finger on the 5th string. In C major, that’s in 12th position:

-(12)-(13)-(15)-
-12-13-(15)-
-12-14-
-12-14-15-
-(12)-(14)-15-
-(12)-(13)-(15)-

Many other fingerings are possible, and there are variations of these fingerings. For example, if you start with the root under your fourth finger on the 6th string (in the key of C, that’s in fifth position) you’ll find you have to stretch for one note – in the key of C, there’s a B note that’s not right under your fingers. You can get it by stretching or shifting on the fourth string, like this:

-5-7-8-
-5-6-8-
-5-7-
-5-7-9-
-5-7-8-
-(5)-(7)-8-

Or by stretching or shifting on the third string, like this:

-5-7-8-
-5-6-8-
-4-5-7-
-5-7-
-5-7-8-
-(5)-(7)-8-

These choices actually create three different fingerings of the major scale in this position! In the first, you’ll hit the B by stretching your fourth finger to the 9th fret; in the second, you’ll stretch to reach the B on the 4th fret… and because you’re stretching, you’ll return to position by also playing the C with your first finger, playing the 3rd string notes with a 1-1-3 fingering… or you can shift to fourth position for the 3rd string, playing those notes with a 1-2-4 fingering, and returning to fifth position for the 2nd string notes.

Because we have so many choices, guitarists take one of two approaches to learn the major scale. Option 1 is to memorize just a few fingering patterns (typically four to six) that let you get all the major scale notes on the fretboard. Option 2 is to learn the spellings of the major scale in each key, and the name of each note on the fretboard. In my opinion, while option 1 is ‘faster’, option 2 is better for two reasons: first, because you won’t be locked into ‘box’ playing when you’re improvising you’ll be able to find easier fingerings for many passages; second, learning the spellings and note locations will be a great help when you’re dealing with other things, like complex chord structures.

On to some of the other useful fingerings – if you put the root under the second finger on the 5th string, you’ll reach for two notes, the fourth note of the scale on the 1st and 6th strings. In the key of C, you’ll be in second position:

-(1)-(3)-(5)-
-(3)-(5)-
-2-4-5-
-2-3-5-
-(2)-3-5-
-(1)-(3)-(5)-

Scales can also be started with the first finger, and many guitarists use these for a reason I’ll get into shortly. With the root on the 6th string, our first note is on the 8th fret in C; you can think of this as eighth position or ninth – the difference is what notes your second finger plays. In 8th position, your second finger will get the 9th fret, and you’ll stretch for the 12th fret notes… in 9th position, your second finger will get the 10th fret, and it’s the first finger that’s doing the stretching. Here’s C major again:

-8-(10)-(12)-
-8-10-12-
-9-10-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

Just to add one more variation, the G note on the 8th fret of the second string is also found on the 12th fret of the 3rd string, so you could do this instead – if you’re keeping track, that means you have four possible ways to finger the scale in this position:

-8-(10)-(12)-
-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

Starting from a 5th string root, we can also do C major in 3rd position, which looks like this:

-(3)-(5)-(7)-
-(3)-(5)-(6)-
-4-5-
-3-5-7-
-3-5-7-
-(3)-(5)-(7)-

Or like this:

-(3)-(5)-(7)-
-(5)-(6)-
-4-5-(7)-
-3-5-7-
-3-5-7-
-(3)-(5)-(7)-

The reason these fingerings are widely used in spite of the stretching involved is because they start with a first finger root, and put three notes on almost every string. When you have three notes on a string, you can use economy picking – playing the first note down, the second one up, the third note down… and continuing the downstroke to the next string. If you’re going down the scale, you can reverse this, playing the highest note on each string with an upstroke.

Economy picking conserves motion, allowing you to play a bit faster. If we combine these scale forms with a shift of position on the second string, you can get a quick scale run that spans almost 2-1/2 octaves:

-10-12-13-
-10-12-13-
-9-10-12-
-9-10-12-
-8-10-12-
-8-10-12-

There are even more possible fingerings – the ones that start with your third finger on a scale root. But as these require even more stretching, they’re seldom used. If you’ve got the inclination to try them (and I play them sometimes as finger stretching exercises), apply what you’ve learned so far to the fretboard.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy at their website as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

Paul and I got an email the other day from Amanda Nable, who works with the “Sparks of Life” program at New York Methodist Hospital, in Brooklyn, New You. They are looking for volunteer musicians to spread the joy of music to their patients in their various pediatric, physical rehabilitation, geriatric and oncology units. They are very flexible in terms of scheduling and more than willing to work with you to help them brighten the days of their patients. It can be a once-in-a-while gig or a regular ongoing one depending on your schedule.

If you live in the Brooklyn area and are willing to help by sharing your talent, please give Amanda a call at (718)780-5397, extension 105, or email her at abn9006@nyp.org.

Here’s hoping we can get some of our New York Guitar Noise community members hooked up with Amanda’s program and bring some music to people truly in need of it throughout 2012 and beyond.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 16 – December 1, 2011

David Hodge — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:29:19 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #16 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. Today is December 1 and it won’t be long before 2011 is over. It’s been quite a year and all of us at Guitar Noise would like to offer all our readers the best wishes for a safe and joyful holiday season, whichever holidays you’re celebrating this month!

By now hopefully all of you know that Paul has negotiated successfully with Alfred Music to purchase the rights to some of their songs for our song lessons here at Guitar Noise.One by one, we’re bringing back some of our old song lessons and we’ll also be adding brand new ones as well!

This month we’re pleased to announce the return of “Hey There, Delilah” to the pages of Guitar Noise. This particular lesson has been a runaway favorite with our readers since it made its debut just a few years ago and we’re thrilled to have it back.

“Hey There, Delilah” joins our three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” – each with all the music, tablature and lyrics. And again we’d like to thank Alfred Music Publishing for working with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.And, as always, we hope you enjoy all our Guitar Noise song lessons and also find them educational, entertaining and inspirational.

Just in case you’re interested, rumor has it that a certain horse (who chooses to go nameless) will be our next lesson subject, which should pop up online right around the start of the upcoming New Year.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas! We’ve always prided ourselves when it comes to the incredibly diverse selection in our “Easy Christmas Songs for Guitar” lessons. So it’s a bit of a no-brainer to feature these terrific tutorials as the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month for December. Stop by the Guitar Noise home page and click on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the page, just below the blue banner.That will take you to some fun and easy lessons that will get you in the holiday spirit in no time! Plus you’ll have a great time impressing your friends and family.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Revisiting The Capo – Parts 2 and 3
by David Hodge

Why do we acknowledge that using a capo changes the chords we play but continue calling them by their open position names? What are the real chords? Pars 2 and 3 in our series “Revisiting the Capo” addresses some of the confusion that transposing a song invariably causes humble guitar players.

How Do You Play “Double Stop Rock?”
by David Hodge

This little exercise from David’s “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar” has proved to be quite a fun and popular little piece. In this little “Q and A” session, he discussed how to best go about playing different types of double stops on the guitar.

What Is Dissonance?
by David Hodge

What do people mean by “dissonance” and other such terms when talking about chord changes? As David explains, not everyone hears the same sorts of dissonance.

Hey There Delilah
by David Hodge

Here’s a great example of how a simple pop song can help you to build up some solid technique in using partial chords, playing with finger-style or pick, and making some interesting chord changes on the fly. And to top it off, it’s even got some very easy (and short!) walking bass lines. Not to mention it’s a great work out for your basic rhythm!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’re continuing a terrific series from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb concerning just about every scale you could ever think of:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 3

The Hexatonic Scale

Hexatonic scales are any scales that have six notes; the blues scale was actually your first hexatonic scale. But now we’ll try a different note: the 6th of the major scale.

This pitch is located one fret below the b7, or two frets above the 5. The hexatonic scale has been widely used in rock, in solos ranging from Jimmy Page’s “Stairway to Heaven” solo to Carlos Santana’s work on “Black Magic Woman”. Many guitarists incorrectly identify this particular hexatonic scale as the Dorian scale – we’ll look at the differences soon.

Going back to our first minor pentatonic fingering, here’s the hexatonic scale with the addition of 6 – we have two possibilities:

 | R  |  |   | b3 |
 | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 | b3 |  | 4 |
 | b7 |  | R |
 | 4  |  | 5 |    | 6 |
 | R  |  |   | b3 |

 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |  | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |  | 4 |
 | 6 | b7 |  | R |
 |   | 4  |  | 5 |
 |   | R  |  |   | b3 |

The second fingering only has one practical fingering:

 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |
 | 4 |    | 5 |    |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |

And that’s also the case with the third fingering:

 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    | 6 |
 |   | R  |   |    | b3 |   |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |    |   |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |    |   |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |    |   |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |    |   |

In theory, the fourth fingering could have a couple, but in practice only one is easy:

 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |    | R |    |
 |   | 4  |    | 5 |    |
 |   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 |   | 5  |    | 6 | b7 |

And it’s the same with the fifth fingering:

 |   | b7 |   | R  |
 |   | 4  |   | 5  |
 | R |    |   | b3 |
 | 5 |    | 6 | b7 |
 |   | b3 |   | 4  |
 | 6 | b7 |   | R  |

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

This time of year tends to be one of reflection and those reflections often lead to resolutions to start out the upcoming year. Invariably putting more practice time into one’s schedule turns up as either a lament or a resolution – often both.

It’s certainly not too early to be thinking that way, but I’d like to suggest that you don’t have to wait until an event like New Year’s Day to do so. Let’s face it, we’re all for getting in more practice or improving ourselves in some way – eating better, exercising more, practicing more (“more” in some cases meaning “more than I do now,” with “now” often meaning “not at all!”) – but we’re all also great at starting off our new found resolve with a conditional clause. Does this sound familiar:

“I’m going to practice more starting January 1″

“Wait. January 1 is a Sunday and I’ll probably be too tired because of the New Year’s Eve party. I’ll start on Monday. Great way to begin the week!”

“Wait. Monday will be the first day back at work after the holiday weekend. It’s going to be a zoo and I’ll be lucky to get anything done, let alone have any spare time. What about Tuesday? Who starts a new routine on a Tuesday?”

And before you know it a good week or month or even a season is gone by and you’ve not made a move to change your practice habits.

You can, of course, avoid this by starting right here and now. Think of the month of December as a trial run to work out all the kinks and snarls of scheduling. Practicing for improving your practice, if you will!

Remember that life is always going to throw things your way and you have to be flexible and adapt to whatever may happen. You probably won’t get practice time every single day, but you could be making a mental log of what available times you actually do have. If you start to objective look at your goals and plan for them now, and even move on to the next step of working on them, you’ll hit 2012 already working on your resolutions. That will certainly put you in a great mindset to keep your resolutions going in the first part of the New Year.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 15 – November 15, 2011

David Hodge — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:21:07 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #15 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the November 15 issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. Can you believe there are only two more newsletters between now and the one for January 1, 2012?

I know that this was our lead story last time out, but it truly bears repeating:

Our big news is that Paul has negotiated successfully with Alfred Music to purchase the rights to some of their songs for our song lessons here at Guitar Noise. Little by little, we’ll be bringing back some of our old song lessons, as well as brand new ones! This has been a long time coming and we can’t thank you enough for both your patience and your support.

We’ve chosen three R.E.M. song lessons – “Man on the Moon,” “Losing My Religion” and “Driver Eight” – to help us celebrate being able to bring back the music and tablature into our Guitar Noise lessons and we also do so to commemorate this great band who’ve recently decided to part ways. And we hope you will join us in thanking Alfred Music Publishing for working with us in order to bring copyrighted material back into our song lessons.

And as we bring some of these old lessons back, we’re going to try to tidy them up a bit. We hope you enjoy them and find them educational, entertaining and inspirational.

You can also read Paul’s “formal announcement” on the Guitar Noise site right here: The Return of Easy Songs for Beginners.

By the bye, “Hey There Delilah” will be the next lesson posted and that should occur right around the first of December. We should even have a few more announcements that may interest you by then.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Chuck Berry turned eighty-five last month. We’re giving him a belated birthday celebration by naming him the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of November Read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page: http://www.guitarnoise.com/artists/

Topic Of The Month

With the holidays coming up sooner than we’d like, it made sense to choose “Buying a Guitar” as November’s Guitar Noise Topic of the Month. We’ve had quite a few articles over the year dealing with the topic, ranging from going into the music store for the very first time to buying used instruments to making sure you’ve thought about your guitar’s shape when it comes to making a purchase. You’ll find all there and more by visiting the Guitar Noise home page and clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the middle of the home page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

When Do You Change Chords?
by David Hodge

Chord changes in songs are always a matter of timing. So when you’re looking at a chord sheet with lyrics how do you know when to change chords?

On Becoming A Musician
by Tom Serb

How do you go from being an amateur musician to a professional musician? Practice is important but the real key is in developing a sense of musicianship.

How Do You Find Time To Play and LEARN The Guitar?
by David Hodge

When you’re busy you not only have to make time to learn guitar, you also have to ensure you’re making the best of your time. But how do you make time?

A Practical Guide To Shopping For The Guitarists In Your Life
Gifts for Less than $30
by David Hodge

Buying a gift for a guitarist doesn’t have to break your budget! Here are a lot of gift ideas for the musician in your life – all under $30!

Revisiting The Capo – Part 1
by David Hodge

When you find yourself playing with a lot of other guitar players somebody’s going to have to slap on a capo. But how do you know which fret to put it on?

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’ve another great bit of advice from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 2

The Blues Scale

Almost all of the other scales we use can be seen as the pentatonic scale with the addition of one or more notes. This has led to teaching methods based on five scale positions (like the CAGED system that you might have heard of), but I think that’s limiting. As we add notes to the scale, we’ll end up with MORE than two notes on some strings, which opens up a lot more fingering possibilities. But for the next couple of scales we’ll keep things simple, and look at only five fingerings.

Blues is a traditional music that uses the pentatonic scale with additions. Many blues tunes use a number of additions to the pentatonic scale, but a lot of blues tunes add just one note – the b5 of the major scale, often called the “blue note”. That gives us a scale formula of 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7.

Looking at our first pentatonic fingering, here’s the scale you’ve learned:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

Here’s the same scale with the addition of the “blue note”:

 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 | 11 |
 | 8  |    | 10 |
 | 8  | 9  | 10 |
 | 8  |    |    | 11 |

When we take this scale into the next fingering, we have a problem: not all of the note fit under your fingers. This is a lot like the situation we encountered in the minor pentatonic scale’s 3rd fingering, where we have to shift on one string. But now, because of the layout of the guitar’s tuning, we have a couple of different options…

We can add the ‘blue note’ by reaching back:

      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |
      | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
      | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 9 || 10 |    |    | 13 |
      |    | 11 |    | 13 |

Or we can add the blue note by stretching forward:

 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 |
 | 10 | 11 | 12 |    |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 | 10 |    |    | 13 |
 |    | 11 |    | 13 | 14 |

Because we’ve got a couple of options, we now have more than five scale fingerings. The trick to unlocking the possibilities lies in learning which note is which in the scale fingerings.

Our first minor pentatonic scale fingering looks like this, in terms of the notes we’re playing compared to the major scale:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

“R” designates the root note (the tonic) of the scale; each additional pitch is now designated by its position in the major scale. The ‘blue note’ is the b5 of the major scale, which is one half step (one fret) below the 5… or one half step above the 4. Applying this to minor pentatonic fingering 1, we get this:

 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |

Now let’s look at minor pentatonic fingering 2:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  |    | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  |

We can add the blue note by going one half step below the 5:

   |    | b3 |   | 4  |
   |    | b7 |   | R  |
   | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
   | R  |    |   | b3 |
 b5| 5  |    |   | b7 |
   |    | b3 |   | 4  |

or by going one half step above the 4:

 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |
 | 4  | b5 | 5  |    |
 | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |

Changing the third minor pentatonic fingering is easy:

 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |    | b3 |
 | 5  |    |    | b7 |    |
 |    | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |    | b7 |    | R  |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 |  5 |    |

The fourth leads to two fingerings, one moving back:

 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    |    | b3 |   | 4  |
 |    | b7 |    | R |    |
 |    | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 |    | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | b5 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

And one moving forward:

 | 5  |    |   | b7 |
 |    | b3 |   | 4  | b5 |
 | b7 |    | R |    |
 | 4  | b5 | 5 |    |
 | R  |    |   | b3 |
 | 5  |    |   | b7 |

The fifth position also leads to two different fingerings:

 |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 | R |    |    | b3 |    |
 | 5 |    |    | b7 |    |
 |   | b3 |    | 4  | b5 |
 |   | b7 |    | R  |    |

 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |
 |    |   | 4  | b5 | 5  |
 |    | R |    |    | b3 |
 | b5 | 5 |    |    | b7 |
 |    |   | b3 |    | 4  |
 |    |   | b7 |    | R  |

As you work with incorporating the b5 into your fingerings, you’ll see how being able to view it as the b5 (one fret below the 5) or as the #4 (one fret above the 4) will help your mastery of the fretboard.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

This may be a little early, particularly since Thanksgiving hasn’t even gotten here in the States yet (although it made it to Canada last month!). Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot of late and, knowing that I’d written something about it ages ago that I couldn’t do a better job of writing now, I went and got it out of our newsletter archives. This would have been written close to Christmas 2003, a very shall we say thoughtful time in my life as I was about to leave Chicago with a truck filled with close to thirty years of living there and drive to Massachusetts,where I had no job and knew no one save the woman I would be living with. Sometimes that still seems like just yesterday, Of course, sometimes it also seems like the dinosaurs were still stomping around and keeping us up nights…

Christmas is upon us this week and this newsletter is a little short owing to all of the things going on in my life, but I’d like to tell you something about Christmas that has always bothered me. It’s how people say “if only every day was like Christmas” without thinking that making that particular wish come true is actually very easy.

Last August, the Riverside Jam was held in Chicago. Many of my students were very keen on participating and I’d like to tell you of one in particular.

On Saturday night of the weekend-long event, we’d rented a bar and were playing several sets. Each set was geared to either a specific musical genre or skill level; participants selected (in advance) which set or sets they wanted to play in.

The student in question opted to take part in what we called the “beginners” set. It was mostly straightforward rock and roll songs – the idea being to keep things as simple as possible. We played things like Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, Wooly Bully, Jump Jive and Wail, Wild Night and CCR’s Midnight Special.

Long after the show, he made it a point to thank me not only for being able to take part in the Jam but also for having to learn songs that he’d never played before and probably would never have learned otherwise. For the performance he had come up with several simple leads for many of the numbers and the beginners’ group probably got more compliments than any of the others. To him, the greatest part of the night was finding out how much other people enjoyed hearing him play. And, he admitted, they probably wouldn’t have heard him play if they weren’t interested in the songs in the first place.

So what’s all this got to do with Christmas? Well, depending on how you look at things, this holiday (and all the holidays at this time of year) are either about getting or giving. We like to think it’s more about the giving…

When we play music, we often exclusively play things that interest us. This is what brings us happiness. But part of any musician’s joy is a shared emotion involving an audience. So guess what happens when you learn a song for someone else?

Think about how wonderful a gift that is. Caring enough about someone in order to learn and play music especially for them. The beauty of music is that you can make anything incredible personal. Your performance, whether in front of a group of people or on a tape or CD or just between you and one good friend, is an ultimate expression of what life is all about.

When you give gifts like this, here is what you get: the spirit of the holidays each time you play. In other words, Christmas, or whatever you choose to celebrate, can happen every single day of your life. It’s all in your hands.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 14 – November 1, 2011

David Hodge — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:39:28 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #14 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Spotlight on the SSG
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the November 1 issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com.

I’m writing this on October 28 and we’ve got snow three inches of snow or so that’s covered the ground all day. And it’s not even Halloween yet! Speaking of which, do try to have a safe and fun Halloween if you’re out and about.

And as we bring some of these old lessons back, we’re going to try to tidy them up a bit. We hope you enjoy them and find them educational, entertaining and inspirational.

Spotlight on the SSG

Last Sunday, October 30, the Sunday Songwriters’ Group finished its tenth year. It’s an incredible achievement and a testimony to Nick Torres and Ryan Spencer, who came up with the idea back in the early autumn of 2001. And a great deal of credit has to go to both Bob Mothers, who ran the SSG for four years and to Vic Lewis who’s also done more than his far sharing of keeping the SSG up and running.

But as much as the Sunday Songwriters’ Group has its founders and leaders to thank for its continued success, that’s nothing compared to the accolades we have for every single person who has contributed to the SSG over the past ten years, whether by sharing the song lyrics and music one has written or by offering up candid, constructive and encouraging observations on each other’s work. This cooperative and friendly support has resulted in hundreds of songs begin written and has also hopefully helped many would-be songwriters become songwriters as well as helped songwriters become better songwriters.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Easy Songs For Beginners

Man on the Moon – R.E.M.

Man on the Moon by R.E.M. is a beautiful song that beginners can easily learn to play. We’ll also add some nice touches for a solo arrangement.

Losing My Religion – R.E.M.

In our beginner arrangement of R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion you can play the guitar, mandolin and bass parts all on a solo acoustic guitar. Sounds great.

Driver Eight – R.E.M.

This is a fun and easy to way to play the REM song Driver 8. We’re also going to learn a few new tricks like incorporating riffs into strumming.

Determining The Key Of A Song
by David Hodge

Figuring out what key a song is in is something guitarists usually do if they are playing music with others. How can you tell what key a song is in? David gives you some tips in this three parts mini-series.

Where Do I Begin…
by David Hodge

This is easily one of the most common questions we get: What order should I read the lessons in? Well, that really depends on who is asking the question.

Book Review: “Travis Picking” By Andrew DuBrock
by David Hodge

Andrew DuBrock’s latest guitar tutorial book, “Travis Picking” does an excellent job teaching not only the basics of Travis picking but the intermediate and advanced techniques, too.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’ve another great bit of advice from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb:

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Scales – Part 1

In this series I’m going to show you what scales are, and how to use them. Since members of Guitar Noise are guitarists, we’ll start off with the “guitar friendliest” scale, and move from there to the other ones that are the most musically useful (the major and minor scales).

After that, we’ll look at what modes are – and how to use them – and wrap up with some of the more unusual scales used in different types of music.

The Minor Pentatonic Scale

The most commonly used scale for guitarists is the minor pentatonic scale. A few definitions before we start playing it, because these terms will come up again: “scale” comes from the Latin word for “ladder”, and it’s used to describe any sequence of tones that rise or fall through one octave. (An “octave” is the distance from any pitch and the next pitch with the same name – like the distance from fifth string, third fret C to second string, first fret C.). “Pentatonic” comes from the Greek words “pente”, which means five, and “tonikos”, or tone; pentatonic scales are any scales with five different notes in the octave. And “minor” is a term applied to any scale or chord that contains the major scale’s third note lowered by a half step – a C major scale is the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C; any C based chord or scale that has Eb in can be considered minor.

What makes scales sound different from each other isn’t just the notes in the scale – it’s also the relationship of the sounds to each other. In most melodies, scales, and chord progressions, there’s going to be one pitch that sounds final… like you’ve arrived at the end of the musical journey. That pitch is called the “tonic”, and it’s the note that names the scale: A C minor pentatonic has C as it’s home base, while an Eb major pentatonic (which contains exactly the same pitches, as we’ll see later on) has Eb the tonic.

When we analyze the makeup of a scale to see what makes it different from other scales, music theorists compare them to the major scale – the building block of almost all music theory. Later on in this series we’ll look at what makes up a major scale; for right now, we’ll just say that the minor pentatonic scale has the formula 1-b3-4-5-b7, which means a C minor pentatonic scale has the notes C, Eb, F, G, and Bb.

If we start from the C note on the eighth fret of the sixth string, we’ll find the easiest way to finger this scale is C, then Eb on the 11th fret of the 6th string, F on the 8th fret of the 5th string, G on the 10th fret of the 5th string, Bb on the 8th fret of the 4th string, and C again at the 10th fret of the 4th string. Those notes make up the entire scale, but we can keep going through the next octave and get this fingering:

| 8 | | | 11 |
| 8 | | | 11 |
| 8 | | 10 |
| 8 | | 10 |
| 8 | | 10 |
| 8 | | | 11 |

A brief note about fingering: although there are some guitarists, even a few famous ones, who use just two fingers for these scales, I’d advise you to learn them in strict position (fingering 1-4, 1-3, 1-3, 1-3, 1-4, 1-4 for the one just shown. Avoiding unnecessary shifts of position will help you visualize the fretboard; once you can “see” the notes that belong to this scale, feel free to use whatever shifts and stretches you’d like.

Notice there are just two notes on each string. That’s because of the scale structure, and the way the guitar is tuned… and it gives us a huge advantage over other instruments in using this scale. Since each string will have only two notes, one of them must be the lowest note on the sixth string – and as a result, there will be only five possible fingerings, one beginning with each scale note.

To put it another way, if you’re playing the C pentatonic scale in 8th position, you’re playing 10th fret notes on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th strings, and 11th fret notes on the other three strings.

If you want to move your hand up to the 10th position, you can play those same notes using the first and second fingers; we can complete the next scale fingering by filling in the pitches C, Eb, F, G, and Bb that we can reach from the 10th position:

| | 11 | | 13 |
| | 11 | | 13 |
| 10 | | 12| |
| 10 | | | 13 |
| 10 | | | 13 |
| | 11 | | 13 |

We can continue moving up the fretboard to the 11th position and get this fingering… which is actually the one I teach last in lessons, because it’s the only one that involves a shift of position:

| | 13 | | 15 | |
| | 13 | | | 16 |
| 12 | | | 15 | |
| | 13 | | 15 | |
| | 13 | | 15 | |
| | 13 | | 15 | |

You can also play that fingering one octave lower, in open position. But when learning scales, I find it best to stick to “closed” fingerings (no open strings) until you’ve mastered the positions. If you can’t reach the 16th fret on your guitar, no problem – just practice these fingerings in a different key. In the key of F, the first fingering will be at the first position, the second fingering in third position, and this fingering will be in 5th position.

Now I’m going to drop an octave – notes on the 15th fret are an octave higher than the notes on the 3rd fret, so this fourth fingering pattern will begin with the G (the fourth note of the C minor pentatonic scale) at the third fret:

| 3 | | | 6 |
| | 4 | | 6 |
| 3 | | 5 | |
| 3 | | 5 | |
| 3 | | | 6 |
| 3 | | | 6 |

There’s one thing I want you to notice about this fingering: it’s the same as fingering 1, but with two notes moved up a fret – the higher note on the 5th string, and the lower note on the 2nd string. The reason why that happens is important in music theory, but it’s beyond the score of this lesson – I’ll talk about it at some point in the future.

Finally, our last fingering begins with the fifth note of the scale – Bb if you’re in the key of C. We end up with this:

| | 6 | | 8 |
| | 6 | | 8 |
| 5 | | | 8 |
| 5 | | | 8 |
| | 6 | | 8 |
| | 6 | | 8 |

Notice two things about this fingering: first, it’s the only fingering that’s perfectly symmetrical, with the two ‘outside’ strings fingered 2-4, and the two central ‘inside’ strings fingered 1-4. Second, I want you to notice that there is a note on the 8th fret of every string… just as there was in our first position.

This means we’ve come full circle, and have now identified every possible fretboard position of the notes in this scale. A complete view of the C minor pentatonic will look like this:

( fingering 3) (fingering 5) (fingering 2) (fingering 4)

| 1 | | 3 | | | 6 | | 8 | | | 11 | | 13 | | 15 | | | 18 | |
| 1 | | | 4 | | 6 | | 8 | | | 11 | | 13 | | | 16 | | 18 | |
0 | | | 3 | | 5 | | | 8 | | 10 | | 12 | | | 15 | | 17 | | |
| 1 | | 3 | | 5 | | | 8 | | 10 | | | 13 | | 15 | | 17 | | |
| 1 | | 3 | | | 6 | | 8 | | 10 | | | 13 | | 15 | | | 18 | |
| 1 | | 3 | | | 6 | | 8 | | | 11 | | 13 | | 15 | | | 18 | |
(fingering 4) (fingering 1) (fingering 3)

Depending on your guitar, you might be able to keep going for another position, or even two.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

Between getting the green light to get back to work on the Guitar Noise song lessons and the start of Year 10 of the Sunday Songwriter’s Group,not to mention spending the better part of the last fifteen months working with Nashville songwriter Casey Kelly on “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting,” it’s no surprise that songwriting has been on my mind a lot of late.

There are a lot of reasons why people write songs – but usually it all comes down to communicating with someone about something. Maybe the something is the someone. That happens quite a bit.Songs, like conversations with friends or like books or movies or even paintings and photos, give you a shared connection with both the songwriter and everyone else who’s heard to song. That’s a lot of power.

Like any trade or art form, there are all sorts of songwriters. There’s the casual enthusiast who writes for his or her own enjoyment as well as the seasoned veteran who gets commissioned to ply his or her craft. You’ve got the songwriter who is into writing more as a way to validate his own life, making everything about the song draw your attention to him. And you’ve got the songwriter who makes you see the world in entirely new ways without even noticing that it was a song that made you do so.

Over the past ten years I have had the honor and the pure pleasure of watching music being created before my eyes and ears at the Sunday Songwriters’ Group. People from all over the world (some I’ve met as a result of becoming involved with their music) have become part of my life with their melodies, harmonies and rhythms. I can’t thank you all enough for making the world a better and brighter place. I eagerly look forward to hearing more!

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 13 – October 15, 2011

David Hodge — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 13:30:50 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #11 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and greetings to all! Welcome to the October 15 issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com.

It seems to be my lot to start out these newsletters with wishes of safety and health for people from just about every corner of the earth lately. Today, I’m sending my thoughts and heart to our friends and almost the entire country of Thailand, who are in the midst of flooding so bad that two thirds of the country is thought to be under floodwater and the forecast is that some places may not even begin to recover for the next two months.

As always, I hope you keep these people in your hearts and thoughts.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Great musicians are always exploring and expanding and Carlos Santana is certainly a testament to that! And that’s just one of the reasons why he’s the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of October Read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

We’re highlighting our “Practicing” lessons as our Guitar Noise Topic of the Month of October. With all the great guitar teachers we have contributing to this website – folks like Tom Serb, Tom Hess, Alan Green, Jamie Andreas, Nick Minnion, Paul Andrews and more – you can find a lot of great lessons full of tips on making your practice as productive as possible.

Visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find about practicing by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the middle of the home page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Language Based Soloing
by Tom Serb

Tom’s great essay on how to start out playing lead guitar is up for all to read at Guitar Noise. You can find it at the following URLs:

Tutorial Tip: Making The A Major Chord
by David Hodge

Some guitarists actually have a lot of trouble with the A major chord. It looks like it should be easy enough, but that’s exactly where the problem lies.

Holding Your Guitar
by David Hodge

How you hold your guitar can make a big difference on how quickly you make progress learning to play. David gives you a few tips to help you out.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

This month, we’ve another great bit of advice from long time Guitar Noise contributor Tom Serb:

On Becoming a Musician

There’s a noticeable difference in skill level between the average amateur musician and the average professional. That’s obvious to even the casual listener. But if you’re an aspiring musician, the trouble is getting from here to there – and I’ve seen a lot of musicians waste a great deal of time heading down a path that seems correct: focusing only on technical skills.

Technical skills are important. The average professional musician will make fewer mistakes than the average amateur. The pro will be able to handle more difficult fingerings, play faster, and so on. The pro puts a lot more time into practice and performance rehearsal. These differences are obvious.

This leads the average aspiring musician to focus exclusively on their practice time. Putting in more time (and putting more into your time in terms of focus, practice organization, etc.) will probably make you a better technician. You might even become so good that you can make a living at playing. But that won’t necessarily make you a better musician.

Musicianship is the big picture – the total package, the creation of the entire musical experience. Technical ability is the toolbox we use for creating our big picture. The brush strokes of a sign painter might be just as precise as those of Rembrandt… but that technical ability won’t help the sign painter become a great artist without adding a few extra ingredients. Someone who has the big picture can be a great artist without having extreme technical ability – in the art world, a parallel might be Grandma Moses or Jackson Pollack. Their works don’t show the technical ability of many others, but that didn’t keep their art from rising above the pack.

I’m going to look at three and a half of the non-technical skills that great musical artists develop. Maybe you can use these musings as a road map for your own advancement.

1. Great musicians listen deeply.

There’s a lot going on in music. There’s the timing, the choice of notes, the relationship of pitches in a melody to each other, the interaction of pitches to create harmony, and the distribution of that harmony across instruments. There are variations in dynamics and phrasing that make each interpretation of a song slightly different from all the others – even if they’re played by the same group. The result is many layers of complexity, even in simple music.

When you’re listening to music, strive to get the most out of it that you can. When you’re practicing, keep those ears working: listen closely to the sounds you’re making, and how they relate to the techniques you’re using. When you’re playing with others, listen to what they’re doing, and how you’re relating to them. Eventually, you want to develop what pros call “big ears”, the ability to take in and process the big picture as it happens.

2. Great musicians categorize sounds in their minds.

Every rhythm, every scale, every interval, chord voicing, arrangement etc. is different. But they’re made up of the same stuff: sounds happening in time. Great musicians define sound in terms they can use.

For some that means understanding traditional music theory. For others it might be focusing on the ‘color’ they get when tones are distributed in a different way. But no matter how they go about it, great musicians organize their mental toolbox of sounds.

When you hear something that you like, listen to it over and over. Break it down: what makes it different from other things you’ve heard? What makes it similar? Can you apply the difference to another melody, or chord progression?

Great music and great performances break down into the combination of small things that aren’t remarkable in themselves. Becoming a musician isn’t just about adding more tools to your technical toolbox – it’s about taking the tools you already own and understanding exactly what you can do with them.

3. Great musicians use time.

Music is sound occurring as time unfolds. Time is the scaffolding on which we hang everything musical. We can organize everything neatly on that scaffold – with every sound happening in precise, regular time – or we can move those sounds forward or back against the beat.

The beat is the pulse of music. But the beat is not the music. We can divide up beats in different ways, we can play ahead of (or behind) the pulse of a tune. Great musicians ‘feel the beat’ and exploit the relationship between the pulse and what they do over it.

Any rhythm you can play on a guitar has three basic parts: the attack (when the sound begins), the duration (how long it lasts), and what happens in between. Silence is a huge part of rhythm. Listen deeply to the rhythms you hear, both in music and in everyday life, and categorize them in a way that works for you. Sharpen your sense of musical pulse at every opportunity – there is no substitute for an internal sense of rhythm.

3.5. Many great musicians know where they came from musically.

You’ll hear most musicians talk about their “influences.” For some, it’s just a laundry list of artists they like to listen to. And yes, those artists will influence your playing – because they shape the sound you hear inside your head… and great musicians take that sound in their head and put it out through their instrument, duplicating their vision as closely as possible.

But most of the great musicians I’ve known listen widely as well as deeply. I know a brilliant sax player who spends a lot of time listening to Hendrix. I know a punk guitarist who listens to a lot of Stravinsky. And I know classical musicians who spend time with bluegrass – and vice versa.

Listening widely as well as deeply, and categorizing the sounds they hear, allows these musicians to be deliberately influenced by other sources. A great example would be Paul Simon being influenced by African music (especially Mbaqanga) on the album “Graceland.” These musicians continually seek out and experiment with the unfamiliar, keeping what works for them and discarding the rest.

I hope you’ll find these observations useful in your own development as a musician.

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, http://mwmusicacademy.com/, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

Random Thoughts

A number of people have been posting on the Guitar Noise Forums of late about their “anniversary dates, meaning how long they’ve been part of the Guitar Noise community. “Bish,” who started it all, has been coming to Guitar Noise for six years this month. And “Nuno,” from Madrid, has been part of the GN community since October 2006. Alan Green’s been on the scene since September 2002.

Some of you with incredibly long memories may remember that we had to totally reset the Guitar Noise Forum in June 2002 – aside from Paul, who’s “officially” listed as joining in May 2002, it looks like a huge virtual tour bus descended on the place around June 15, carrying folks like Nic, Helgi Briem and Dan Lasley, among many others, all eager to sign the electronic guest book.

Naturally, this makes me think that next month, November 11, I’ll be wrapping up my twelfth year here. That’s longer in one specific place than any job I’ve held or place of residence I’ve found myself living. Seems strange in some ways and perfectly as it should be in others.

What I did not realize, though, is how many little bits and pieces I’ve written when it comes to answering emails and forum posts as well as the more than occasional newsletter musing. Part of going through the whole of Guitar Noise has unearthed a number of interesting ramblings that Paul and I feel worth sharing – at least once I’ve tidied them up a bit! So every now and then we’ll pop one up on the Guitar Noise blog, like this one: Why don’t you play the low E string on a C chord?

Some of these may be brand new for quite a few of you, I expect. But whether you’re reading them for the first or the two hundred and eighty-first time, I hope you find them both helpful and enjoyable.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 12 – October 1, 2011

David Hodge — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 21:23:48 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #12 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the month of October! That, of course, means that this is the October 1 edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com.

And I’d like to kick off this month with more of a note than an announcement. Throughout the remainder of 2011, Paul and I will be trying out some new things at Guitar Noise. Some will be fairly obvious, others hopefully not so. For instance, since our “Events Horizon” feature in this newsletter is meant to help generate interest in shows being performed by members of the Guitar Noise community, we’re going to start posting a weekly “Events Horizon” calendar on the Guitar Noise Blog, which will also be picked up on our Facebook page. The idea being that we can make the events more immediate, as opposed to weeks away.

When you think about it, the Internet is becoming more and more of a place where things happen in any given moment and less of a place where one can say,”I think I’m going to sit down and read this and learn something.” That makes what we do best at Guitar Noise, namely teach guitar and music, a little tricky, to say the least! So we are going to try to do our best to integrate both the tutorial world and the “quick hit” Internet mentality that exists today.

Wish us luck!

One thing that won’t change, though, is the quality of the lessons and information that you will get here at Guitar Noise. And you also won’t lose your ability to tell us exactly what you think and what suggestions you might have! As always, feel free to write me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com any time. I look forward to chatting with you.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

We’re highlighting our “Practicing” lessons as our Guitar Noise Topic of the Month of October.With all the great guitar teachers we have contributing to this website – folks like Tom Serb, Tom Hess, Alan Green, Jamie Andreas, Nick Minnion, Paul Andrews and more – you can find a lot of great lessons full of tips on making your practice as productive as possible.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Transcribing – Part 1
by Paul Andrews

A few years ago figuring out songs by ear was the primary way of learning guitar. Let’s see how you can develop your musical ear through transcribing songs.

How To Discover The Best Guitar Learning Material
by Tom Hess

There are lots of guitar tutorials. Tom Hess explains how knowing precisely what you should be practicing will help you get the results that you want.

Ten Ways For Beginner Guitar Players To Improve In A Hurry
by David Hodge

Teaching yourself guitar runs the risk of developing some potentially harmful habits Avoid many common beginners’ mistakes with these helpful tips from David.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

We’re thrilled to have Tom Serb rejoin us for this issue of Guitar Noise News. Here is the first of a two-part piece on “Language Based Soloing” and I hope you both enjoy it and learn from it:

Language-Based Soloing (Part 2)

Now we’ll add two more words. In terms of language acquisition, maybe you can picture “give,” “me,” and “now.” In terms of musical acquisition, the two notes you’re adding are the ones just above and just below your first note, in whatever scale you’re working with.

Before you start to play, imagine the possibilities: give. Give, give, give. Give me! Give now! Give me now! Now give! There are lots of possibilities. Combine them with the nuance of emotion in your mind: pleading, begging, demanding, asking. Is your musical child curious or angry? Hungering or relatively indifferent?

Now go to it with the backing track and your three word vocabulary. See what you can do. See how it feels. Notice how you’re becoming familiar with what the notes are going to sound like over each chord. Become aware of what you hear when you go from the first note to the second, or the first to the third, or the second to the third. Is it different when you reverse the order? How?

After you’ve got three notes down, add the other scale tones one at a time. In a half hour, you can easily go from using one note to using three or four, maybe even five, and being confident about what they’ll sound like.

When that happens, you’ve started soling deliberately. It’s no longer a “poke and pray” situation. You are saying something with music!

I’m a big fan of learning music theory. But theory follows function: some composer did something, and theorists created rules to describe what happened. In English (or any other language), grammar follows usage: people learn to speak first, and then learning grammar helps them speak ‘properly’. If they choose, they can speak ‘improperly’ – doing it for effect. It’s their choice.

But the point here is that they learned to speak before there was ever a distinction between proper and improper speech – you start by learning to say something, and then refine as you gain experience and knowledge. And you learn to speak with meaning by starting with one word.

Try it. I’ve heard students make amazing progress in just one or two lessons with this approach (and they’ve heard it too!) Even if you consider yourself pretty expert at soloing, I think you’ll find the exercise pretty eye opening.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

Events Horizon

So please feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dates to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. And remember that Guitar Noise News is (usually) sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. And one needs a few days notice ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of April (that is, after the fifteenth), then write by the tenth or the twelfth.

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

The Wishing Well, a fantastic Australian band has hit the shores of America! They’ll be playing tonight, Thursday, September 15 at the European Street Cafe, located at 1704 San Marco Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida. If you have the chance, please welcome this wonderful band to the United States. You’ll have a great time!

We’d like to wish Tom McLaughlin a belated “Happy Birthday” (it was yesterday) and also pass along that he’s once again playing out tonight, Saturday, October 1 with the Odd Pops at The Irish Legend (8933 S Archer Ave, Willow Springs IL). He’s sitting in with group and will be playing some different styles (Classic Rock, Island, Reggae – think Santana, Matchbox 20, Buffett, etc).The show is from 9:00pm-1:00am. You can check the band out at their site, www.oddpops.com

And an early alert for Lee Hodge and his band Doesn’t Madder – they will be at George’s on the Lake, located at 101 Catawba Avenue in Rhodhiss, North Carolina on Saturday, October 15. Show goes from 8:30PM until midnight.

Finally, you can catch Australian band, The Wishing Well, as they tour America for the first time. They’ll be in the great Southwest this month with a show at the Cowgirl BBQ i Sana Fe,.New Mexico (located on 319 South Guadalupe Street) on Wednesday, October 12 (9PM start) and then in Albuquerque at the Winning Coffee Company on 111 Harvard Drive Southeast for a 9PM show the following night, Thursday, October 13.

Random Thoughts / Email of the Moment

With your permission, I’d like to go into the “mailbag” this month and look at a recent email. Since Paul has posted my old article, “The Underappreciated Art of Using a Capo,” I’ve been getting quite a few notes like this and thought it might be good to share the whole thought process behind transposing:

Hi there,

I’ve just read your articles about using a capo and transposing songs into different keys. However, I’m struggling with this particular song:

http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/o/oasis/dont_look_back_in_anger_acoustic_crd.htm

He’s playing with capo on the 4th fret, but I’m wondering what chords the other guitarist (Gem ;) is playing. I know that he plays the guitar with capo on the 2nd fret.
How do I transpose this song?

Thank you in advance!

Hello and thank you for writing.

There are a couple of ways of figuring out the chords the second guitarist is using. You could either figure out what key the song is in (meaning the chords you’d play without a capo) and work from there or work from the chords you have (for the guitar with the capo on the fourth fret) and figure out how they relate to a guitar with a capo on the second fret.

Whichever way we go, you first want to take a look at the song with the chords you have, namely with the guitar having a capo on the fourth fret. Just listing out the intro and first verse we’ve got this (and I’m simply listing the chords as they appear in each line of the song):

Capo on 4th fret

Intro
G Cadd9 G Cadd9

Verse 1
G G/F# Em7
G/B Cadd9
G/F# G Em7 G/F#
G G/F# Em7
G/B Cadd9
G/F# G Em7 G/F#

It’s pretty safe to assume this song in in the key of G. But with the capo on the second fret, you’ve raised the G two whole steps (four half steps and every fret is a half step) up. So therefore when you play G with the capo on the fourth fret, you’re playing in the key of B.

Now let’s take a moment and imagine if we were playing G on the second fret. Why? Because the difference between a guitar with a capo on the second fret and a guitar with a capo on the fourth fret is two frets, right? So if the guitar with the capo on the second fret was playing without a capo, the guitar with the capo on the fourth fret would have to play with the capo on the second fret in order to be playing the same. as the second guitar. And if you play a G with a capo on the second fret, you’re playing an A because A is one whole step (two half steps) higher than G.

And now let’s assume that the guitar with the capo on the second fret is playing in A. That would make perfect sense because when you play an A with a capo on the second fret it’s B because B is one whole step (two half steps) higher than A. So that totally jives with what we know about the song. The “real” key is B. If we have a capo on the fourth fret we should play in G and if we have a capo on the second fret we should play in A.

Now we look at the chords that we have and raise them all one whole step to put them in the key of A. It would look like this:

Capo on 2nd fret
Intro
A Dadd9 A Dadd9

Verse 1
A A/G# F#m7
A/C# Dadd9
A/G# A F#m7 A/G#
A A/G# F#m7
A/C# Dadd9
A/G# A F#m7 A/G#

I hope this helps. It’s really just a matter of writing it down and thinking it through.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 11 – September 15, 2011

David Hodge — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:42:27 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #11 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Welcome to the September 15 edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com.

Hot on the heels of last issue’s news about Todd Mack playing in Taipei and Hong Kong, we are thrilled to get news from Tom Hess, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and highly respected guitar teacher, that he will be doing a world tour shortly with Italian metal band, Rhapsody of Fire. Tom joined Rhapsody of Fire for their summer festival shows in Europe this past summer and now is gearing up to play all over the globe.

You can read a lot more about this news in the Guitar Noise Interview with Tom Hess. Just follow the link in the “New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff” section below. And please join us in offering Tom a big round of congratulations with the upcoming tour. Be sure to check out Rhapsody of Fire should they come to your corner of the world.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Glen Campbell, who is hitting the road for one final “thank you tour” these last four months of 2011, is the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of September. While many of you may know of Mr. Campbell’s career because of a single song, like “Rhinestone Cowboy,” the fact is that he has always been an incredible and much respected guitarist and musician. Read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

Since September is traditionally the time when people start heading back to school, supposedly for the sake of an education, it seemed like a good idea to make the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month for September reflect the whole learning process. So we’re highlighting our “Strumming for Beginners” lessons this month. And, actually, these are great lessons to highlight at any time because rhythm is at the heart of guitar playing and you can’t spend enough time making your rhythm playing (that is, “playing in rhythm” as opposed to “not lead guitar playing”) as strong as you can.

Visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find about our topic by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the middle of the home page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Speed Secrets – Part 5
by Tom Serb

Now that we’ve covered all the basics of speed playing,Tom Serb concludes this series of “Speed Sectrets” with some important practice strategies that you’ll find useful.

Going For The Music: From Guitar Student To Guitar Player
by Jamie Andreas

Jamie Andreas’ offers her secrets to “going for the music,” helping your musical performances channel the very soul of music from you to your listeners.

An Interview With Tom Hess
by David Hodge

In this online interview, Tom Hess discusses how he joined the band Rhapsody of Fire as well as their upcoming album and what it’s like to be part of a world-wide tour.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

We’re thrilled to have Tom Serb rejoin us for this issue of Guitar Noise News. Here is the first of a two-part piece on “Language Based Soloing” and I hope you both enjoy it and learn from it:

Language-Based Soloing (Part 1)

When I teach improvisation to guitarists who’ve never done it before, very few launch right into it naturally. What’s much more common is a student freezing up – some won’t play anything at all; most will do a few notes, or even a few measures and then stop.

When I ask what’s wrong, the answer is always the same: “I don’t know what to do!”

Over the years I’ve been teaching (33 so far, and still having way too much fun to stop!) I’ve developed an approach that solves this problem with almost all students. I can’t take the credit for this – my kids helped me with my homework.

My youngest son now towers over me – he’s got me by a good eight inches in height. But I still remember when he was just a tiny thing, and starting to learn about his world. The thing that really helped my teaching was him learning to talk.

Children start talking by imitating. Momma hold the little one and says “mama” over and over. After ten thousand or so repetitions, the little one gurgles something that might sound a little bit like what she’s saying. Mama’s pleased. The little one notices. “Mama” starts tumbling from the little one’s lips whenever he or she wants someone to fuss over him or her. A linguist is born.

I remember wearing out the grooves in my Led Zeppelin albums, playing them over and over trying to imitate the sounds. Just like our little linguist, I had no idea what Jimmy was actually doing. But I tried and tried to imitate what I thought it sounded like, and every once in a while I’d succeed a bit – at least enough so I’d feel good. Music and language aren’t very different.

Just like Junior, I wasn’t really saying anything. I was just imitating, and not understanding what I was doing. But a lot of good guitarists started soloing just like I did. They imitate what they hear, and eventually internalize the sounds they make. It’s a long process – think about how long it took you to learn to speak, to build up a reasonable vocabulary. Years, right? Maybe you still stop to look up a word now and then (I know I still do, and I’ve been speaking English for quite a while). It’s a long road, and you’re never quite done.

Let’s skip ahead a bit in the child’s development. The big leap comes when he or she starts actually communicating – the point where the child figures out that they can ask for something.

And that starts with one word. It doesn’t even matter what that one word is! Your little one might say “want!” (and point to something), or “give!” (and point to something), or “now!” (and point to something). Whatever word they choose, they’ve communicated. This marks a massive shift in development: they’ve gone from using a word to gain approval to using one word to say something!

Saying something with music is what soloing is all about. When my kids reached that stage, I had one of those “Aha!” moments, and it changed the way I teach.

Think about how most teachers teach soloing: they show you a scale fingering, and say “now play”. I wouldn’t dream of tossing a two year old a dictionary and saying “just put together the words you want”. We’re giving too much information to be truly useful. Our students end up struggling in a ‘poke and pray’ manner, trying to find the combination that works right – and if they do, struggling some more to understand why it was right.

I know you’re not two years old. You might have learned a scale fingering or two (or ten or twenty), but I can assure you that taking the big step back to the very beginning of language acquisition will change the way you solo: you’ll be more deliberate about it, and actually communicate in music.

It starts with one word. In a musical context, that means it starts with one note. Every solo has to start somewhere, right? So start with one note. And stay on that one note. See what you can do with it.

I had an improvisation teacher in college who had me solo over five choruses of the blues using a single note. I hated the exercise. But I also had to admit it made me better. At the time, I thought he was getting me to focus on rhythm alone; it wasn’t until more than ten years later, when my oldest child began to talk, that I realized what he was doing: he was teaching me to speak in music.

One word = one note.

I want you to start by putting on a backing track. You’ll take any note from a scale you know “should” work over the chord progression, and you’ll use that note exclusively. But before you start, I want you to close your eyes and think about how a small child uses one word… they may say “give” (and point) with a soft, trembling, quiet voice and pleading eyes… or they may say “Give!” (and point, and stamp their feet and cry). They may fall sobbing to the floor, repeating “give, give, give….”.

Your note is your “give”, or your “now”, or your “want”, or your “need”, or your “mine”, or whatever other image works. Picture in your mind’s eye how many ways you can use that one word in different ways.

Now play. Wring everything you can out of that one note – rhythm, volume, duration of the sound, timbre (the quality of the tone). I’ll wait.

How did that feel?

I’ll bet you got to know that one note better than you ever have. You’ve explored some of the possibilities. You’ve made it your friend. You now know what that note can do.

–

Be sure to keep up with Tom and the goings-on at the Midwest Music Academy (like their recent purchase of a Deagan marimba!) at their website, as well as their Facebook page.

And if you’re interested in more on soloing, be sure to check out the Guitar Noise Topic Page on Solos. After reading this essay from Tom, you might find our series on “From Scales to Solos,” Part 2 will be particularly helpful in preparing you for the second part of Tom’s series.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Tom McLaughlin is playing with his old band, Slightly Offensive, this Saturday, September 17 at Shakers, located at 121 West Stevenson Road in Ottawa, Illinois from 10:00pm-1:30am.

Lee Hodge and his band Doesn’t Madder are going to be in Newton, North Carolina at The Artist’s Cafe (100 North Main Street) this Saturday, September 17. Show goes from 8 PM until midnight. The following weekend they’ll be at the Do Drop In, located at 6224 Highway 421 South in Mountain City, Tennessee. They’re playing both Friday and Saturday (September 23 and 24) and both shows start at 9 PM.

Random Thoughts

One of my younger students came today with an even younger brother who was doing some schoolwork, being putting together old maps, such as those from before Columbus’ voyages. He called them “maps from before we knew everything.” For whatever reason that struck me as hilarious. And not just for the obvious humor.

You see, I can remember knowing everything. Or at least thinking I did. No, that’s not quite right because I would never think that. I don’t think anyone truly does.

But most people certainly go through a phase in life where, while they don’t think they know everything, they assuredly act as if they do. I definitely did. And,truth be told, I was not a good person to be around or be friends with at that time.

Eventually, though (and, again hopefully like most people), I grew out of it. If anything, it seems that one is likely to tailspin in the other direction as one grows older. Meaning, the older you get the more you realize that there’s a universe of things out there that you have no clue about.

Learning and playing music bring that home to me on a daily basis. It seems impossible for a day to go by where I don’t learn something new or discover some music I’ve never heard before or uncover some layer or depth to a song I’ve been listening to for ages. And doing so is thrilling.

But it’s also impossible if you are in the “know everything” mindset. Maybe that’s why we’re supposed to grow out of it – what could be duller than knowing everything? It’s hard not to feel sympathy towards anyone who does, because he or she can’t be surprised or excited or challenged.

If you care about such things, it’s always a good idea to take stock of your mindset from time to time. Have you listened to any new music of late? Gone to see any shows? You should be able to find something worth enjoying (and learning) from any experience. Not only musical but with all your interactions, be they personal or virtual.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 10 – September 1, 2011

David Hodge — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:25:26 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #10 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Welcome to the September 1 edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com. Hopefully, we addressed you by name this time out and not by “[Name]” as we did last time. But the fact that we did do that should tip you off to the fact that we are trying to get more up to date by using sophisticated “newsletter software.” In the past, we used to type each one of these twenty-five thousand and change newsletters out individually in order to get all the names straight. Using this sophisticated software should cut down on us being late with the newsletter because it’s just Paul and I typing out all of them. Don’t know if you’re going to believe that or not, especially since this isn’t the April 1 issue, but I figure it’s worth a shot. We’ll see.

The big news for this newsletter comes from Todd Mack, musician, songwriter, producer and founder of Music In Common – producers of FODfest, and local and International school music education programs and various multimedia productions. He’s going to be doing a number of shows and other events in Taipei and Hong Kong between September 8 and 15.

On Thursday, September 8, he’ll be at Bobwundaye playing with Blues Vibrations for an 8:30 show.

On Saturday, September 10, Todd will be at Zhongshan Hall, the last of six speakers of a TED Talks conference. He will discussing his ongoing work of building community through music, which will undoubtedly detail a lot of Music In Common’s work across the globe. The whole event starts at 1:30 PM.

On Sunday, September 11, Todd will be one of the artists taking part at the Daniel Pearl Day Festival at Huashan Grassland in Taipei. This is a free concert that starts at 1:00 PM.

And then it’s on to Hong Kong where Todd will be playing a show on Wednesday, September 14 at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondent’s Club.

You can find out more about these shows (not to mention the rest of Todd’s schedule) at his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/toddmackmusic

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

Since September is traditionally the time when people start heading back to school, supposedly for the sake of an education, it seemed like a good idea to make the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month for September something to do with Absolute Beginners Lessons, to show our support for those of you getting back into the education mindset.

Visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find about our topic, whatever it should happen to be called “Strumming for Beginners”, by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the middle of the home page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Speed Secrets – Part 4
by Tom Serb

In the latest installment of Tom Serb’s series on adding speed to your playing, we’re going to try some more difficult speed drills. If you’ve been following Tom’s lessons on playing fast you’ll like these new more challenging patterns.

Strength In Numbers
by David Hodge

If you’re learning guitar and want the advantages of having a teacher but you’re worried about finances, taking group lessons may be just the thing for you!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

In this issue of Guitar Noise News, we reintroduce you to guitar teacher and Guitar Noise contributor, Paul Andrews, who offers some advice on developing your musical ear through transcribing:

Transcribing – Part 1

For this newsletter I thought I would address a topic that has arisen in numerous lessons of late with my own students and something that I feel needs addressing. This topic is the importance of developing a good musical ear through transcribing songs.

I often have students ask me if they can learn to play their favourite song (which is definitely something I strongly encourage) but they often look back at me horrified when I ask if they have tried working it out themselves. It seems this idea had never crossed their minds!

Go back a few years, though, and working out songs by ear was the primary means of learning to play the guitar. This is how most of our guitar heroes and legends taught themselves how to play. You read over and over again in interviews how they would sit with a vinyl record and play it repeatedly in order to learn the guitar parts they admired. Nowadays Internet tab and artist song books are a student’s first port of call but you can only get so much from a tab. If you want to get the true feel and tone of an artist you have to use your ears. Perhaps even more important is that you will learn to hear parts that aren’t always written out in transcription. There’s nothing stopping you from playing the saxophone part from a song like, for example, “Take Five” except, perhaps, your current lack of confidence in your listening skills.

So what is transcribing?

Transcribing, technically, is writing out a song so that another person (yourself included) can play it from your written notes. But because transcribing is becoming such a rare ability we tend to think of it these days as the art of working out songs through using your ears and also writing it down. But for now we are only looking at working it out at this stage.

It is important to note, though, that there are different levels of transcription. You could be doing something as simple as figuring out the time signature and the chords of a song so that you can strum along to it. Or you could be trying to work out a note-per-note transcription of a single guitar part. Or you could be working all note-per-note transcriptions of all the guitar parts of a single song. Since we’re just getting started, let’s focus on figuring out the chord progressions, okay?

So when do I start trying to transcribe?

As soon as possible, obviously this seems daunting to the beginner guitarist but developing a good musical ear is all about experience, so just give it a try but most importantly keep trying! Start with your favourite song and try to clap along with it, is it 4/4 time? Listen closely to the Bass guitar which often plays the root notes of the guitar chords, try to pick them out along the ‘E’ string and change chords with the guitar.

There are a number of excellent articles here at Guitar Noise that can help you get started. David’s “ear training trilogy” is a good place to begin. The first and, especially, the last lesson of this set are the ones to which you’ll want to direct your attention:

As mentioned, definitely take your time with the last lesson, which goes through figuring out three song examples step by step. And don’t forget that most people who teach have been working songs out by ear for quite a while so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t come to you magically in an instance. Like everything about the guitar (and music), transcription takes practice. But at least now you’ve got something to go on in order to start practicing.

The song is too fast, I can’t keep up.

And, unlike your guitar heroes, you’ve also got a lot of help! There are many computer programs available such as Transcribe! and Amazing Slow Downer which allow you to slow down, loop sections and change the pitch of audio tracks. Plus the digital players in some computers also provide such assistance.

Homework assignment

So now you have an idea of where to start it is time to begin. Have a go at transcribing one or more of the four songs below, in this case “transcribing” meaning “work out the chord progressions, just as David did in “Solving the Puzzle.

To give you a hand, all the songs in question use some or all of the chords G, D, A, C, Em, and B7. All you have to do is work out which ones and in what order.

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton
Hot & Cold – Katy Perry
Sweet Child O’Mine – Guns ‘N’ Roses

And don’t be shy about attempting songs not on the list! The more you practice on the better you’ll get at working out songs by ear.

I shall return in a few weeks with the answers but until then good luck and happy listening.

P.S. Extra credit marks for working out the guitar solos!
–

In case you’re not familiar with Paul, he has just recently launched the Online Guitar Academy. There is a 30% off Introductory Offer going on through the month of September, by the way!

And Paul has also recently co-written a method book called “Electric Guitar Playing,” which you can also find at his website. We should be having a review of it here at Guitar Noise sometime in the next month or so.

Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group

The Guitar Noise community has a great many gifted songwriters as members and Paul and I want you to get acquainted with them. Each month at the Guitar Noise Blog we’ll be posting a song written by a member of the Sunday Songwriters’ Group (or “SSG” for short). Some will be relatively new songs and some will be from the eight years of archives that we have. Most SSG pieces are modest recordings done on the fly, simply meant to give the listener an idea of what the finished piece will hopefully sound like. And usually the heart that goes into any of these SSG songs more than makes up for the lack of recording it in a professional studio.

I’m especially looking forward to this month’s Spotlight because, as of the time I’m writing this, I have no idea who is going to be our featured SSG artist! Vic has got a number of good choices and I’m anxiously awaiting his interview so I can post it up online as soon as it arrives!

And when that happens, you will find all that here.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

By the way, the Sunday Songwriters’ Group has been a part of Guitar Noise for over eight years now. Writing songs is much like playing an instrument in that you won’t get better without practice, so each week a new “assignment” is posted in the hopes that it will both challenge and inspire the readers to create a new song.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

The Wishing Well, a fantastic Austalian band that’s been playing in Europe for a little more than the past year, makes its first trip to America and will be in Florida during the first half of September. Their first show is Friday, September 9, playing at the Barnacle Historic State Park (3485 Main Highway) in Coconut Grove, Florida. Show starts at 6 PM.

From there, they’ll head to the Dunedin Brewery. located at 937 Douglas Avenue in Dunedin for a 6 PM show on Sunday, September 11.

Then it’s on to Orlando and an 8 PM show on Wednesday, September 14 at the Peacock Room at 1321 North Mills Avenue, followed by an 8:30 PM show the next evening (Thursday, September 15) at the European Street Cafe, located at 1704 San Marco Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida.

If you have the chance to see this wonderfully energetic band, stop in and give them a listen. You’ll have a great time!

Tom McLaughlin and his new band, Life is Drama will be at Exit 197, which is at 952 West Reynolds Street in Pontiac, Illinois on Saturday, September 10, playing from 10:00pm-1:30am.

Lee Hodge and his band Doesn’t Madder are going to be rocking out in North Carolina the first two weekends of September. Tomorrow, Friday, September 2, they’ll be at George’s on the Lake (101 Catawba Avenue) in Rhodhiss, playing from 8 PM until midnight. Then on Saturday, September 3, they’ve got a 9:30 PM to 1:00 AM show at Horsefeathers Roadhouse, located at 3746 Mount Pleasant Road in Sherrills Ford.

The following weekend they be playing Friday, September 9 at The Alibi, at 819 West Avenue NW in Lenoir and then on Saturday, September 10 they’ll be back at George’s on the Lake again for an 8:30 show.

Random Thoughts

It’s been a bit of a weird month, to say the least, especially this last week which saw the east coast of the United States get hit by both an earthquake and an even more sizable hurricane. Truth be told, we didn’t feel the quake at all where I live and the hurricane had thankfully dwindled considerably in size before it thoroughly soaked our neck of the woods.

But unfortunately, much of the rest of the country didn’t fare so well. Not all that far west of me in the Catskills of New York, and to the north in Vermont, small isolated towns were devastated by flash flooding, while areas in the Carolina, Virginia and other Mid-Atlantic states were also hit hard.

It’s easy to say that these are tough times economically, and saying that natural disasters take no notice of economies is a bit of a cliché, but the truth is that there is almost always a need for assistance somewhere in the world. And while one can’t be constantly giving, being aware of it and treating people as kindly as possible can certainly help. Sometimes life is very much a matter of seeing what you have to spare (and it can be time or simply kindness and a willingness to listen) and offering what you can.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 9 – August 15, 2011

David Hodge — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:28:06 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #9 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Don’t look now, but summer (or winter, if you’re south of the border) is rapidly drawing to a close. In just over a month we’ll be celebrating the start of autumn or spring, depending on where you happen to live. In other words, “Hello and welcome to the August 15 edition of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com)!” Where does the time go?

And speaking about not knowing where the time has flown off to, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting is now out at bookstores, both online and in the physical world.As mentioned in the last newsletter, this is the first book I’ve co-written, working with Nashville based songwriter, Casey Kelly. Any of you who’ve seen George Strait in concert will be familiar with Casey as his song, “The Cowboy Rides Away,” is usually George’s closing number. Casey has also written hit songs for Kenny Rogers and Dottie West and Tanya Tucker, among many others and he’s also been nominated for Grammy Awards.

We put in a lot of time and effort into this songwriting tutorial and I hope that those of you who might happen to buy it find it worth you while. As always, you can email me with any questions you may have about the book at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Guitar Noise’s Featured Artist for the month of July is Jeff Healey, a remarkable blues-rock artist whose unique style of playing the guitar flat across his lap won him many admirers. Read all about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

A lot of people pick up the guitar in order to play and sing songs with other people. Singing is something that anyone can learn to do. Much like learning guitar, it’s a physical activity that you can improve with the right practice.

And there are many articles and lessons here at Guitar Noise to help you get started on singing. These lessons look at singing and playing guitar at the same time. Not only is this something you can do, but with proper practice, you can even learn to do it quite well.

Visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find about singing (both while playing the guitar and without) by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up at the top of the middle of the home page, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

The Fabulous Flea Market Band Live at the Black Cat
by Nick Torres

Nick Torres reviews Oslo’s The Fabulous Flea Market Band at their August 9 show at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. See GN member Lars Kolberg play trombone!

What’s In A Word
(or “Repetition Bears Repeating”)
by David Hodge

One easy way to improve as a guitarist and musician is to simply change your approach to practicing. Here’s the first step to avoid avoiding practice!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

In this issue of Guitar Noise News, we conclude Tom Serb’s multi-part series on “Speed Secrets:”

Speed Secrets – Part 5

Now that we’ve covered all the basics of speed playing, there are a few practice strategies that I’ve found useful over the years.

First, you’ll need to practice with a metronome. A metronome is a great way to measure your progress, and it helps keep your rhythm honest – you don’t want to become sloppy as the speed increases.

A metronome is useful for two types of drills. The first, which I call ‘laddering’ involves playing with a metronome at a given speed until you can play a drill perfectly. At that point, you’ll increase the speed of the metronome clicks, and start over again. Metronomes come in two basic flavors: mechanical and digital. Mechanical metronomes are basically clocks with a sliding weight that allows you to adjust the speed of the ‘click’ it produces; they typically have divisions ranging from 40bpm (beats per minute) to 208bpm. Digital metronomes, which are available as stand-alone battery or electric units, and as software for computers or iPhones. They can have various whistles and bells – literally. I’ve got one that rings a bell for beat one, and clicks on the other beats in various time signatures. Some will give you other sounds for divisions or subdivisions of a beat, and some will give you the option of a flashing light to accompany the click.

In a laddering drill, you might practice at 60bpm until you have a pattern down solidly, then move to 63, 66, 69, 72, 80, and so on. When you reach the top end of the metronome’s range, just cut the time in half and use subdivisions – eighth notes at 208 are the same speed as 16th notes at 104, so you can start there and move up to 108 and keep building your speed.

The other type of drill is one I call “leaping.” This will build your speed faster than laddering, but there’s a downside: because it forces your speed along, it also risks introducing sloppy behavior. I’d advise doing this leaping strategy only periodically – twice a week at most; the rest of your speed drills should be done with laddering, where you can focus better on your technique.

In a leaping drill, you start by playing at a speed you’re comfortable with. Then adjust the metronome to TWICE that speed and try it again. You won’t be able to keep up. Do your best with it, but just do it ONCE. Then set the metronome to slightly faster than your starting speed – if you started at 80bpm, try it at 84. You might find that you can now play it – in contrast to the frantic pace you were just trying to play, 84 seems a lot slower, even if 80 was your best effort to date. If you can play it properly at 84, leap up to 160 again and try it ONCE. Then try it at 88 – if you succeed, keep repeating until you find the speed where you fall apart.

If you make a mistake at the slower speed, stop! You don’t want to be practicing your mistakes and making them habits! Instead, go back to your original speed (80bpm in this example) and start over.

Finally, keep a log of your progress. Jot down the exercises you did, and the speeds you’ve achieved. That will give you a record of your achievements, and that can help you keep at it when you hit the inevitable plateaus.

Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group

August, for me anyway, usually signals the annual Riverside Jam – a musical get together that was started back in August 2000 by Dan and Laura Lasley. You can read about that very first one at either of these two articles:

Over the years, I’ve gotten to meet a number of Guitar Noise folks at Riverside Jams, from GN founder, Paul Hackett, to Nick Torres to Tim (“Musenfreund”) Bennett. And the Riverside Jams have also featured some great music written by members of the SSG.

One of those songs, “One By One,” happens to also be one of the very first SSG collaborative effort, with me providing melody and music to a hauntingly poignant lyric that Nick had written as an SSG assignment. This song has probably gotten played at almost every Riverside Jam since 2003 and with good reason. It’s a powerful song that works well both as an individual showcase and as an ensemble piece. And Vic Lewis has managed to talk me into making it the Auguste Spotlight on SSG feature for the month of August. That means you get two interviews – one with Nick and one with myself – as well as a couple of recordings of the song – one as a solo (albeit multi-tracked) SSG demo and one where it gets the full Riverside Jam treatment.

And you can find all that here.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

So please feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dat es to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. And remember that Guitar Noise News is (usually) sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. And one needs a few days notice ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of April (that is, after the fifteenth), then write by the tenth or the twelfth.

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Australian band, The Wishing Well wraps up the month of August with a number of gigs in Scotland before crossing the Atlantic for their first shows in the United States. They’ll be at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, playing at Bannerman’s (212 Cowgate in Edinburgh) on Wednesday, August 24, starting at 9 PM. The next night, Thursday, August 24, you can catch them at Hootananny’s, located at 67 Church Street in Inverness. That’s another 9 o’clock show. And they’ll be in Glasgow on Sunday, August 26, playing at the Clutha Vaults on Stockwell Street.

Tom McLaughlin and Life is drama have got two shows this upcoming weekend.This Friday, August 19, they’ll be at Sullivan’s Irish Pub & Eatery (4660 W 147th Street in Midlothian, llinois, between Knox Ave & Kilpatrick Ave.). They’ll play from 10:00pm-1:30am.

And then on Saturday, August 20, catch them at Boobens Bar & Grill (109 East Chippewa Street, Dwight, Illinois). Tom and Life Is Drama play here on a two- month rotation so if you can’t make it this time, try to see them when they come back in October!

And Lee Hodge and Doesn’t Madder have two shows to close out the last weekend of August. On Frday, August 26, they be at Mayo’s Restaurant, located at 321 North Center Street in Statesville, North Carolina from 8:30 until midnight. The next evening, Saturday, August 27, you can hear them at Horsefeathers Roadhouse (3746 Mt. Pleasant Road in Sherrills Ford, NC) from 8:30 to 12:30.

Random Thoughts

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 8 – August 1, 2011

David Hodge — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 21:19:44 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #8 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the August 1 edition of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com).

I’d like to kick off this newsletter with a note from Lars Kolberg. Lars has been part of the Guitar Noise community for quite some time (I think he started posting regularly on the forums in late 2005 or so) and while he’s not been active of late, he did drop by to let us know about his latest news. He’s been playing in a “punk / bluegrass” band (he’s the tall guy with the trombone, violin and harmonica) called “Flea Market” and it turns out that the band is going to be playing a week of shows here along the East Coast of the US. Here’s a bit of the promotional material:

Flea Market – Norway’s finest Bluegrass punk

“Love songs for lumberjacks, bluegrass for punk rockers, serenades for sailors, drinking songs for desperate nights; love, insanity, murder, natural disaster and three-legged dogs are some of the themes covered in the Flea Market songbook, blending shadows from the Norwegian forest with darkness from the margins of America. When civilization collapses and mankind once again huddles around communal bonfires, the songs of Flea Market will rise up through the night… ”

And this is the complete tour list for “American Splendor Tour 2011:”

August 5 – NYC, NY – Banjo Jim’s
August 6 – Brookyn, NY – Hank’s Saloon
August 7 – Baltimore, MD – Free Farm
August 8 – Philadelphia, PA – The Fire
August 9 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
August 10 – Wilmington, DE – Mojo 13
August 11 – Chapel Hill, NC – The Cave
August 12 – Richmond, VA – The Camel
August 13 – Philadelphia, PA – Raven Lounge

Now, I know I’m an unabashed and chronic sentimentalist, but I cant’ help thinking what a great thing it is for these guys to be doing this small tour of small clubs, far from home and undoubtedly in front of a relatively small handful of strangers. Especially in light of recent events in their home country (Lars is from Oslo, Norway).

And maybe that is the point – that an incredibly intense moment sharing music and dreams can make any evening, any day, any life a lot better. So, if you can, get out to see Flea Market if they happen to be in your neck of the woods. Or just get out of the house and away from the computer and connect with whatever live music you may happen to find close by. At the heart of it all, music is about communication and about sharing emotions with one another. And heaven knows we can all use that whatever chance we can get.

In other news, and I don’t know where the time has gone, but it seems that on Tuesday, August 5,The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting will be arriving in bookstores, both online and in the physical world. This is the first book I’ve co-written, my partner being the extremely talented (and Grammy nominated) Casey Kelly. Any of you who’ve seen George Strait in concert will be familiar with Casey as his song, “The Cowboy Rides Away,” is usually George’s closing number. Casey has also written hit songs for Kenny Rogers and Dottie West and Tanya Tucker, among many others. We put in a lot of time and effort into this songwriting tutorial and I hope that those of you who might happen to buy it find it worth you while.

As always, you can email me with any questions you may have about the book at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Owing to a number of summer activities, some of these new articles may not be up online on August 1, try as we might to make that so. If you find one that’s not, don’t panic! Just give us a day or two and you should find it posted up and ready to read!

Making A Living As A Guitar Teacher – Part 3
by Alan Green

Alan has been teaching guitar full-time for two years now. In his latest blog post he reveals more about what he has learned in that time.

Speed Secrets – PART 3
by Tom Serb

There are all sorts of barriers to playing fast. In his latest post Tom shares some practice tips for developing speed in all of your fingers.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Let’s get back to Tom Serb’s multi-part series on “Speed Secrets:”

Speed Secrets – Part 4

Next we’ll up the difficulty level by changing strings. You’ll do the same exercises, but change strings in a regular pattern, moving right across the fretboard. Here’s a sample drill using fingers 1 and 3 at the fifth fret, changing strings every four beats (each stroke is an eighth note):

-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
-----------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-
---------------------------------5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7- etc.

Repeat this drill with each finger combination. Your top speed will be slightly less than it was practicing on a single string, but over time the difference won’t be a noticeable one.

With this much technique development under your belt, you can turn to scale runs. The difference between the simple drills shown above and most scale patterns is the number of notes on a string – if there are three notes, your hand will end up in the wrong place to pick the next note. Here’s a C major scale in 7th position:

----------------------------------7-8-
 ---------------------------8-10------
 --------------------7-9-10----------
 -------------7-9-10-----------------
 ------7-8-10------------------------
 -8-10-------------------------------

Strive for accuracy as you play. Remember everything we’ve covered so far, and focus on keeping your motions as small as possible in both hands, and stay relaxed.

As you played through that exercise, you’ll find your top speed is not as fast as it was with the earlier drills. That’s partly due to more complex fretting hand movements, but it’s also a result of your pick being in the wrong place for the next stroke – if you start with a downstroke, the third note on the fifth string will be a downstroke – which means you’ll now have to move PAST the fourth string in order to maintain alternate picking. We can eliminate this motion through economy picking, but before we get there I’ll digress into string skipping; economy picking takes some effort to develop, and you’ll need string skipping in your bag of tricks to play most solos.

Many solos or runs, or at least some of the more interesting ones, have notes on non-adjacent strings. You’ll need to avoid the string(s) in between, and that presents a couple of new challenges.

When you’re skipping strings, your hands have to cover a greater distance between notes. As a result, your top speed for string skipping will be slightly less than going full out on a scale run, but with practice the difference can become manageable.

To practice string skipping, I like to alternate scale runs with a fixed note, called a pedal point. This example uses a 1st string pedal G note on an open position C scale – the scale note is a down stroke, the first string is always an upstroke:

---3---3---3---3---3---3---3----3---3---3---3---3----
 -------------------------0---1---0---------------------------
 -----------------0---2---------------2---0------------------
 -----0---2---3-------------------------------3---2---0----
 -3----------------------------------------------------------3-
 ----------------------------------------------------------------

For a drill that’s a little tougher, make the skip to an inside string. This exercise is an open G scale against a 2nd string D pedal. Put your third finger on the D note – you’ll need your fourth finger free to hit the F# on the fourth string:

 -
 ---3---3----3----3----3----3---3-
 -----------------------------0------
 -----------------0----2----4--------
 -----0---2----3---------------------
 -3------------------------------------- etc

Ok, back to solving the problem of the pick being out of position for the next note. A faster approach to runs like this is to shift to economy, or directional picking. Here ‘economy’ refers to economy of motion – and ‘directional’ is how you achieve it: if your pick is moving in the direction of the next note you’ll need to play, you simply continue in that direction, playing two notes in a row with the same stroke. I’d advise you not to start working on this until you’re very comfortable with alternate picking – otherwise you’ll find it more confusing, and perhaps counter-productive.

Here’s the same C major scale done with economy picking. The ‘D’ and ‘U’ notations show how your pick is moving:

D U D U D D U D D U D D U D U
 --------------------------------7-8-
 ---------------------------8-10-----
 --------------------7-9-10----------
 -------------7-9-10-----------------
 ------7-8-10------------------------
 -8-10-------------------------------

Finally, we come to sweep picking. Sweep picking is basically a slow-motion strum, with all downstrokes or upstrokes across the strings. If more than one note is sounded on a string, the second (and any additional) notes are sounded by hammer-ons and pull-offs. The trick to sweeping well is deadening the strings that aren’t needed. As this technique requires a bit more explanation, I’d suggest checking out some of the instruction videos available for it on YouTube and other websites – but I’d hold off until you’ve gotten the above techniques down.

–

Don’t forget to keep up with Tom at his school, the Midwest Music Academy, at their website.

Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group

And you can find all that here on the blog.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun..

Events Horizion

So please feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dat es to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. And remember that Guitar Noise News is (usually) sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. And one needs a few days notice ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of April (that is, after the fifteenth), then write by the tenth or the twelfth.

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Tom Hess is playing with Rhapsody of Fire at a number of festivals in Europe this month. You’ll find him at the Wacken Open Air Festival in Wacken, Germany on Thursday, August 4 and then in Szekesfehervar, Hungary at the Fezen Festival on Saturday, August 6. And the following Friday, August 12, all you lovers of fast metal guitar in England can catch him at Bloodstock, taking place in Derby.

Australian band, The Wishing Well is also starting August with a number of gigs in Germany. They’ll be at the Waschlaus in Potsdam on Tuesday, August 2, and then in Bremen at the Burgerhaus Weserterrassen on Saturday, August 6 for an 8 PM show. From there they go on to the Cafe Live in Alfeld for a show on Sunday, August 7.

And then they, too, are off to England to perform at the Croperdy Folk Festival Fringein Banbury at the Brase Nose Arms on Station Road. That show will be on Friday, August 12.

As mentioned at the start of this newsletter, Lars Kolberg and Flea Market, Norway’s finest punk/bluegrass band, will be making a short summer tour along the East Coast of the United States. And in case you didn’t catch the dates earlier, you can find the band at the following dates, cities and venues:

Friday, August 5 – New York City, NY – Banjo Jim’s
Saturday, August 6 – Brooklyn, NY – Hank’s Saloon
Sunday, August 7 – Baltimore, MD – Free Farm
Monday, August 8 – Philadelphia, PA – The Fire
Tuesday, August 9 – Washington, DC – Black Cat
Wednesday, August 10 – Wilmington, DE – Mojo 13
Thursday, August 11 – Chapel Hill, NC – The Cave
Friday, August 12 – Richmond, VA – The Camel
Saturday, August 13 – Philadelphia, PA – Raven Lounge

I know there are a lot of Guitar Noise folks in the general area of most of these shows so, please, do yourself a favor and get out to one if it’s at all possible. You’ll have a great time and you’ll also get the chance to make some wonderful new friends.

Saturday, August 12 is going to be a busy day as Doug James and his band Southern Roots will be playing a show at the Colonial Heights Moose Lodge (170 Moose Lane in Colonial Heights, VA) starting at 8 PM. They’re always a great live show so catch them if you can.

And Lee Hodge and his band, Doesn’t Madder, will be rocking the houseat the Do Drop In, located at 6224 Highway 421 South in Mountain City, Tennessee this coming Friday and Saturday, August 5th & 6th. Shows start at 9:00pm.

Random Thoughts

And along the lines that opened this newsletter, I’d also like to share an email I got recently:

Hi David,

I think I have probably written you previously along the same lines, in fact, but I believe the work that you do needs to be recognized and lauded, particularly as it applies to some of the messages presented in this month’s newsletter as it pertains to teaching guitar lessons. And let’s face it, there’s an “unwritten” responsibility when taking young, impressionable minds under our wing, and it probably applies even more where music is concerned. Music being that bastion of rebellion and escapism that all of us have felt at one time or another…

David, I do not believe I am speaking out of turn, as I am married to a high school teacher – one of the real good ones, one who will stay up late dreaming of ways of making that difference in one kid’s life, finding a unique way to connect, to reach them, to illuminate the possibilities….and music teachers – even part-timers, knowingly or not – take on this same, critically important responsibility.

Your notes in this month’s edition (from Alan Green) touch on a really big subject that I hope resonates with teachers, students, and potential music teachers alike. Their day is spent not just teaching/learning the notes on the fretboard, but navigating the perils of growing up, and in some cases, a big responsibility, indeed.

Myself, I have had at least three music teachers that have taught me much more than musical theory and practice could provide.

Cheers,

Again it may be the sentimentalist in me, but I can’t help thinking that all of us, whether as guitarists and musicians or as music teachers or simply just as people going through our day to day lives, play a much more active role in the lives of others than we may truly imagine. The smile you happen to give someone who’s not having a good day, the patient acceptance that perhaps you might have to wait longer than you’d planned on, the simple act of truly listening to someone instead of waiting out a chance to speak your opinions on a topic, can mean the world to that person with whom you happen to be sharing that particular time and space. How you act and interact with others is constantly being used, and often repeated, by people you may not even know.

That may seem like a lot of responsibility, but it’s essentially two things – common sense and common courtesy. The sad part of both is that they are the constant joke where the punchline is something along the lines that they are no longer common.

But every little thing you do, pardon the obvious pun, is, or at least can be, magic to someone else. Especially when it comes to teaching and being a role model. Just think about playing guitar. While all of us certainly want to somehow one day be on a playing level remotely close to that of our most revered guitar idols (“remotely close” meaning somewhere in the same general solar system, give or take a couple of several hundreds of thousands of miles), we truly could find ourselves being very happy to reach a level of expertise where we didn’t fret about making mistakes in timing or technique. Achieving the level of someone who’s performing in a band night after night would be huge for most of us.

But all that takes (“all” being quite an understatement) is playing every night. Night after night, day after day, it’s all about showing up and doing whatever it is you’re supposed to do.

Likewise, making the world a better place simply a matter of practice, of showing up every day and doing little beyond treating whomever meet with the same dignity and grace you’d like to be shown. That’s hardly a Herculean task. At least not when one looks at it in these simple terms.

And, for most of us, the world could certainly stand to be a lot simpler.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 7 – July 15, 2011

David Hodge — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:50:31 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #6 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Life is maddeningly wonderful sometimes in that so many things can happen and yet nothing happen to tell about. Hello and welcome to the July 15 edition of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com). It seems like only yesterday that I put together the last newsletter and even though a lot has been happening,some of the major news I was hoping to share with you is still waiting on the “dotted i’s and crossed t’s, as it were.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t news. Last time out I mentioned Tom Serb’s son, Charlie, and his band (Hollywood Nightmares) and their big gig in Chicago.Tom reports on the event:

They did well. Their music (which was all original) is certainly fast and furious – most tunes were in the neighborhood of 240 bpm, fast enough that the hands of the guitarists and drummer start becoming a blur when they’re doing triplets or faster… but they were very tight on every tune. What really impressed me about them musically was their control over tempo: several tunes had one or two sudden tempo changes, and they nailed them all. Even more impressive were the couple of tunes with ritardandos and accelerandos, where all four musicians have to watch each other and follow the changes. They played together at a level that many bands strive for, but don’t quite reach. The fact that they’ve just replaced their bass player, and this was his first gig with the band, made it even more impressive.

They worked their set hard. Their tunes are very short, most around 2 minutes. They didn’t chit chat in between – they finished one tune and launched right into the next. Nearly wall to wall music, which fit well with the image they wanted to project.

The best moment for me personally was their first tune. About one minute into it Charlie took a screaming solo, and he just owned the stage. He projected an attitude of being in total control, but at the same time being completely relaxed and having fun! Made me quite proud of my baby boy (he’s got me by about 8″ in height now, but he’s still my little guy).

The venue’s sound wasn’t the greatest, with the instruments sometimes overpowering the vocals. That was disappointing, as the songs he’s played for me when we get together to jam have very catchy lyrics. But their overall sound was distinctive and different – tight two and three part vocal harmonies (a la Beach Boys) over typical punk rock distorted powerchords (they’re big fans of the Ramones, Queers, etc.) with very quick chord changes in spots – sometimes changing on every beat, which is a real challenge at those tempos.

The venue was smaller than I thought it would be for a touring band, with a capacity of probably about 100. My wife noticed the cameraman was taking advantage of what he had to work with – he was interviewing people outside before the show, so you couldn’t see the venue’s size, and the crowd shots he was getting during the show were filmed into the mirror over the bar, so it’ll look like twice as many folks when it’s played back.

Another band on the roster to watch for is Kudu Fang, which was the opening act. I enjoyed their set (although with a touch of hearing loss – I guess they like setting everything at 11). They’re math rock, but manage to combine time signatures in just about every tune to come out to 8 beat patterns… they’d do a 5/4 and a 3/4 pattern, or a 3+3+2, keeping the tunes danceable but noticeably different. They were also very tight, and the drummer had good dynamic control, making things interesting on another level too. Two talented guitarists who both played lead at times (one of them doubled on keys), and a bass that was always in lock step with the drums. With better sound support they could rival a band like Rush musically – I don’t know how they are lyrically, as the sound issues made it difficult to pick out more than a few words. But it’s a band I’d like to catch again; they had a lot of energy.

In the non musical highlight of the evening, my nephew Peter came out, and I got to meet his girlfriend Nicole, who did a six year stint as Snow White at Disney World. It’s not every day I get a hug from a princess at the end of the night.

We echo Tom’s good wishes to Charlie and hope that we’ll all get to see this performance at some point. Definitely something to look forward to.

And in other terrific news, it seems that Alan Green, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and Forum moderator (not to mention one absolutely terrific guitar teacher) had two of his students participate in the June 2011 London College of Music Exams for Step 1 Guitar.

Results: one Pass and one Distinction.

So, a big “well done” to Tim, who was convinced he’d stuffed up; and another” well done” to Hannah, who scored 97% and becomes my first Distinction student since I started teaching in Essex Schools.

And a huge “well done” to Alan, who should be incredibly pleased with his students’ performances. Can’t wait to hear how things go next June!

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Even though his career as a musician ended over fifty years ago, today’s music and musicians owes a great deal to Buddy Holly. Read about the July Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

Not everybody sings and even those who do sometimes prefer to have their guitars do the singing for them. You can learn an incredible lot about the art of Chord Melody here at Guitar Noise. From lessons that demonstrate this technique in the simplest terms to those that guide you through crafting your own personal chord melody song arrangements, you’ll get all the tools you need to have your guitar become a one-person orchestra. Come visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

How To Create Great Guitar Solos
by Tom Hess

Tom Hess details the most common reasons why guitar players struggle to create great solos and then gives you tips on massively improving your lead playing.

Barre Chords – Part 2 (Shapes)
by David Hodge

Knowing four simple basic chords allows you to play forty-eight barre chords. This article teaches you to play two versions of any basic chord you know.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Let’s get back to Tom Serb’s multi-part series on “Speed Secrets:”

Speed Secrets – Part 3

Breaking the third barrier to speed requires working on the coordination between your hands. It’s useful to break our picking motions down into categories for this, as each will require a different type of motion; efficient speed practice means developing drills that work that specific motion.

Fretting hand motions can be broken down into notes on a single string, notes on strings in order (as in a scale run), and string skipping. Picking hand motions fall into four categories: uni-directional, alternate picking, economy (or ‘directional’) picking, and sweep picking.

All uni-directional picking is technically limiting, because you have to bring the pick back into playing position between each note. Because of this, most players wouldn’t consider it ‘speed picking’. But this type of picking is stylistically demanded for certain genres – punk rock is often all downstrokes, and reggae can make use of all upstrokes for extended periods of time. If that’s the kind of music you play, you’ll want to practice increasing your recovery time – the amount of time it takes you to ‘reset’ your hand for the next note. The key here is slow practice, focusing on moving the pick as little as possible to get through the strings – plural, because in punk it’s two- or three-string power chords, and in reggae it’s typically three-string voicings on the highest strings. On the recovery stroke, focus on brining your hand up or down ONLY as far as you need to for the next attack.

Alternate picking is theoretically twice as fast as uni-directional picking, because you’ll produce an additional note on the recovery stroke. It’s also a prerequisite for economy picking, so you’ll want to spend a fair amount of your speed work on alternate picking drills. To illustrate developing this technique, we’ll combine it with our first fretting hand category, notes on a single string.

Pick any spot on the neck and place your index finger on a fret. You’ll downstroke this note; as soon as you’ve played it, your pick will reverse direction, and you’ll play the same string with an upstroke – but you’ll play the note at the next fret with your second finger. Here I’ve illustrated this drill in fifth position:

-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-

Once you’re comfortable with this approach, you’ll use metronome drills to increase your speed. I’ll cover using a metronome in a future part of this series.

It’s important to develop your speed in all of your fingers, and you’ll want to use it with any combination of fingers that a passage might require. Using two fingers, there are six possibilities: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, and 3-4. Practice each combination on a single string. The hardest ones will be 1-4, 2-4, and 3-4; be sure you stop if your hand starts to cramp up!

One more thing before forging ahead: you’ll want to do these drills two different ways: holding down the first finger, and lifting the first finger as you play the second note. Keeping the original finger down is easy to master, but it can be limiting depending on your melody – there will be plenty of times you’ll need that finger on another string for the next note, and lifting it as soon as you can makes it easier to get that next note in time. In actual performance, you’ll keep the finger down when you return to the same note, and you’ll lift it if you need that finger for the next note. So be sure to prepare yourself by practicing it both ways!

–

Don’t forget to keep up with Tom at his school, the Midwest Music Academy, at their website.

Spotlight On The Sunday Songwriters’ Group

Vic Lewis is taking one the Spotlight on SSG duties this month (and hopefully August as well) and he’s got an interview Chris C. of Australia (the West side!) about one of his songs. Chris always has an interesting take on things and has been a big source of encouragement and advice to those at the SSG for quite some time now. I’m sure you’ll find his thoughts entertaining.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

So please feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dat es to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put ‘gig alert’ in the subject header. And remember that Guitar Noise News is (usually) sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. And one needs a few days notice ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of April (that is, after the fifteenth), then write by the tenth or the twelfth.

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

If you happen to be close to Vizovice in the Czech Republic tonight, you’ll be able to catch Tom Hess playing with Rhapsody of Fire at the Masters of Rock Festival. And Tom will be playing in Germany, Hungary and in Derby, England in the first half of August, so be sure to check in for the dates and venues right here!

If you can’t get to Vizovice tonight, you can go hear Lee Hodge and Doesn’t Madder at Mayo’s Restaurant in Statesville, North Carolina (on 123 North Center Street) beginning at 8:30 PM and going on until midnight.

Tom McLaughlin’s new band, “Life is Drama,”has a show tomorrow, that’s Saturday, July 16th, at Keglers Sports Bar & Grill, which is located at 905 Theodore Street in Crest Hill, IL. Show is from 10:00 PM until 1:30 AM.

And also tomorrow, I’ll be backing up Marilyn Miller at her CD release party for “Nighthawk,” at the Parlor Coffee House at 724 Warren Street in Hudson, New York. We will be playing the CD in its entirety as well as performing a live set in a comfy and cosy intimate setting. Come by and say hello! The show will run from 7 to 9 PM.

Random Thoughts

So I’m practicing for this upcoming gig on Saturday and who knows why or how but the topic of global position systems (GPS) comes up and I have to tell you that I’m still so in the century before last that I have yet to find a reason or desire to own a cell phone. But I’ve heard numerous wonderfully amusing stories from my friends who have GPS in their cars

And for whatever reason I was also thinking about how much technology has changed so many people’s approach to playing (and learning) music. Again, when I say I’m “old school” I don’t mean to sound either disparaging or condescending – but the idea of having music stand at gigs or carrying around a notebook with all our songs in it would never occur to me because when I was younger we were still working out the whole writing thing. It just took way too long to chisel out chord charts on rocks and then you’d have to have a lot of rocks for each song, not to mention some way of getting them to the gig ( you have to remember that the wheel hadn’t been invented by that point).

Anyway, this got me to thinking that perhaps it might be a good idea for some enterprising soul to create a GPS for musicians, a SPS (“Song Position System”) if you will. It could clip to your instrument and give you moment by moment instructions in a pleasant voice of your choosing. Say you’re a rhythm guitarist, you could hear something like, “Play Am in three beats, two, one, play Am now.” Or maybe “Entire band stopping for end of song. You have arrived,”

Of course, things could be more interesting if you’re a lead guitarist. The SPS might advise you to “play an interval of a diminished fifth here” or give you a choice of scales to play.

And we’d even have one for bass players to help them find the root note of whatever chord they’re supposed to be on. You’d be able to tell the bass players’ SPS because it would be continuously saying “Take next available U-turn.”

Who knows, though? They may already have something like this out on the market already. Remember you saw it here first, though, won’t you?

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 6 – July 3, 2011

David Hodge — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 14:48:30 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #6 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the July 1 edition of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com). It’s a bit of a strange time here because it’s sort of being between the last school calendar year schedule and the new schedule of summer. It may be another week or so before things start seeming like a bit more of a routine.

In the meantime, I’d like to make a big announcement on behalf of Tom Serb, long time contributor to Guitar Noise and just one of the nicest and most giving people you could know. Tom’s son Charlie, who’s been gigging for a few years now, and his band have got a big announcement.

Charlie’s latest band, Hollywood Nightmares, has been together for just a few months, but they’re getting tons of gigs and good local recognition. One upcoming gig is kind of a big deal for them, with a lot of potential.

There’s a British band, Capelle, doing their first US tour. Their tour is being filmed for a TV series titled “All Roads Lead to America”. Here’s the band’s website with some info about it.

As part of that tour, they’re playing at a Chicago venue called Memories Bar, 4358 N Cicero, this Sunday, July 3rd. Show starts at 8pm. Hollywood Nightmares, is one of the other acts on the bill (there are five acts, total, for a four-hour show – not a bad deal for $6 general admission!)

The entire show is being filmed, including any backstage stuff between the bands. If it survives the cutting room floor, Charlie might get a few UK fans out of the deal. If nothing else, it’s great publicity. Speaking of which, the following is from the show producer’s release:

“The Hollywood Nightmares play fast and furious pop punk in the vein of Screeching Weasel, The Queers, and Squirtgun. Hailing from Woodridge, Illinois these kids harken back to a time when punk rock meant bubblegum, Chuck Taylors, and leather jackets.”

So if you’re in the area and you get the chance, check it out. Tom is one of the people who makes it a habit to drop in on other Guitar Noise members’ shows when he can (and how he does it while running his music school and handling everything else I can only envy and wish to be more like him!) and we want to help him wish Charlie the best of success with this show and possible film project.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Putting The Rhythm In The Blues
by Nick Minnion

Nick Minnion provides a short video lesson to help beginners add riffs taken from the blues scale into their playing.

Speed Secrets – Part 2
by Tom Serb

Many guitarists will choke up when trying to play fast. Tom Serb shares some advice on keeping your muscles relaxed while practicing speed drills.

Barre Chords – Part 1 (Forming and Playing)
by David Hodge

Learn how to play barre chords by taking them one step at a time. David Hodge walks you through playing your first barre chord making them as easy as possible.

Burning Gums
CD Review by David Hodge

A terrific “debut” CD from Ron Jackson, Norbert Marius and Matsuura Hiroyuki, three talented artists with a wealth of musical styles to draw upon.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Before we return to Tom Serb’s multi-part series on “Speed Secrets,” let’s check in on Alan Green once more for the latest on his first two years as a full-time guitar teacher:

Episode 5 – Two years down the line

Yep, in a few weeks I’ll have been teaching guitar in UK Schools for two full years. The six Schools grew to seven at the start of my second term, and by the end of my first full year I was teaching at 9 Schools (it’s now 10) and two specialist Music Schools.

Music Schools have a very different vibe; one where I teach requires its students to attend Music Theory and
Aural classes as well as their instrument classes and has the option that the students can take part in an ensemble session. The other provides instrument tuition only.

So, what have I learned? Oh yes, this is a much an education for me as for my students, and you’ll find the same thing if you go teaching guitar.

I’ve learned that I should have done it years ago; I guess I just wasn’t ready to make the change before.

I’ve learned that the guy in my local guitar shop who said he filled up with private students within a few weeks of opening his shop was talking bull. I was more than a little surprised to find that I’d almost got to the end of my first full year teaching guitar in Schools, and nobody – repeat, nobody – had asked about private lessons. That’s changed now, of course, because some of my students went up to secondary school last September and suddenly I was getting phone calls about how their new guitar teacher was, what’s the word I’m looking for here…lacking.

I’ve learned that being in the right place at the right time is as important in music as it’s ever been. Being in the right place at the right time got me a week providing music for a local school’s production of the musical “13″ which paid quite nicely thank you very much even after I’d allowed a discount in anticipation of getting first dibs on the next show. And, one week at music school, the drum teacher came up to me and said “We’ve got a Big Band…” and I’ll talk about that in a future article.

And I’ve learned to accept that the only time some of my students take their guitar out of its case is at the start of their lesson with me. It’ll happen to you too. Don’t beat yourself up over it.

Episode 6 – Some things to watch out for

Yes, sadly you have to deal with issues that are nothing to do with playing guitar; and you cannot promise your students that you’ll not say anything about it.

Don’t panic! You’re not required to solve all the world’s problems.

One young chap turned up one week. I asked him how he was (“Morning, dude, how are you?”) and he told me straight that his grandfather had died the previous week. I suggested we play some music and dedicate it to the old guy. “Good idea” he said. So we did.

And there are things which will make you laugh.

“This piece of music is by Anon, who has written more music and poetry than anyone else ever in the history of anything.” I said, introducing a new piece of music to a student. “Anon is a heffalump” she replied. I’m still trying to work out what to do with that gem of information.

And there are some things you cannot keep quiet.

If your student tells you she thinks she might be pregnant but her Dad will kill her so please don’t tell anyone, you have to pass that information on regardless. There is an appointed Child Safeguarding person at each School, and you need to talk to them about such stuff. If you’re teaching in an inner city School with a large immigrant population holding different cultural beliefs, she might be right when she says her Dad will kill her.

And, if a student tells you that they’re being bullied then you dare not keep it quiet. If you don’t pass the information on straight away, then the second it comes out (and it will come out, be in no doubt about that) the student’s parents will make it all your fault because “My kid told the School and they did nothing about it.” You’re not attached to the staff at the School, but the kids don’t really know how the niceties of your contracts work, and the parents don’t care; if you go into that School and teach, then you’re on the staff.

And, finally, enjoy it. I get to spend my entire working life with a guitar in my hand. It’s not work, not really.

–

Don’t forget to keep up with Alan at his website, Rolltop Music and also keep an eye out on the News page of the Guitar Noise Forums, where you can find out about Alan’s latest concerts, like this one.

Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.
By the way, the Sunday Songwriters’ Group has been a part of Guitar Noise for over eight years now. Writing songs is much like playing an instrument in that you won’t get better without practice, so each week a new “assignment” is posted in the hopes that it will both challenge and inspire the readers to create a new song.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

This summer, Tom McLaughlin is sitting in with a new band, “Life is Drama” and they’ve got a big outdoor show on Monday, July 4th at the Channahon Comunity Park (23200 W McClintock Rd, Channahon). You can bring the kids out to this outdoor event! The music goes from 6:30pm-9:30pm and Tom hopes to see you there!

And Marilyn Miller will be playing a solo show tomorrow, Saturday July 2, at the Hyde Park Brewery at 4076 Albany Post Road in Hyde Park, New York from 8:30 ’til 11 PM.

Random Thoughts

Not to be all superstitious or mysterious or anything, but keep your fingers crossed – there’s a good chance we’ll have some very interesting news for you in the July 15 newsletter.

In the meantime, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 5 – June 17, 2011

David Hodge — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:28:33 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #5 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and let me first apologize for this latest issue of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise – www.guitarnoise.com) being a bit late. In fact, I don’t even know what date it’s eventually going to go out, but I’m hoping sometime between now (June 17 as I write this) and June 20.

And while I’d love to regale you with some exciting or exotic tale as to the “whys” of this tardiness, the matter is actually simple – last Thursday, our house got hit by lightning and, lightning being what it is, several things got toasted.

No worries on our behalf, please! Things are fine. Charley and Lily, and all the inhabitants are well and healthy and happy as ever. But our Internet was out until fairly recently. And since it’s been back, there’s been quite a lot to catch up with. So if you’ve sent me an email or a question recently and I’ve not yet replied, my apologies for that and rest assured I will get ’round to answering you in the (hopefully) very near future.

Owing to this lack of Internet access, this will be a relatively brief newsletter. We’ve got a number of new articles and lessons that will be going up online during the next week, so please check either the Guitar Noise homepage, or our Facebook wall for up dates on what’s new.

Two things I can relate to you at the moment:

First is that Paul has taken another couple of huge and positive steps in the ongoing quest for bringing back our Guitar Noise song lessons. It’s been an amazing and educational process going through all this and we’re hoping to have some definitive news to give you very soon.

Second is that I’ve spent a bit of time chatting with Moderator-in-Chief, Nick Torres and he has decided to once again take up his role of mentor and caretaker of the Sunday Songwriters’ Group, or “SSG” as we refer to it on the Guitar Noise Forum boards.

As many of you know, Nick was one of the co-creators / founders of the SSG back in 2002 and I’m very honored to have his back running the show. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have such dedicated and positively-encouraging folks such as Nick and Vic Lewis and Bob Mothers to handle the day-to-day work in running what is probably the Internet’s most helpful songwriting forum. Don’t take my word for it. Come on by the Sunday Songwriters’ Group the next time you can and join in on the fun and creativity.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

It’s hard to believe that it’s going on sixteen years since Jerry Garcia passed away. And it’s hard to believe it’s taken us this long to make him a Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month. Read more about Jerry in Paul’s wonderful bio, which you can find on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic Of The Month

For some reason, the blues and summer just seem to go together! There may be no cure for the summertime blues, but you can certainly kick off your summer getting your blues mojo working! Just pop on by the Guitar Noise home page and visit our latest “Topic of the Month” up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner and start checking out all the great articles full of tips and information we have for you. Before the summer’s out you’ll be playing the blues like you were born to it!

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

We some new material from two of our favorite contributors this time out. Be sure to check out:

Speed Secrets – Part 1
by Tom Serb

In this brief series of lessons, Tom Serb reveals some of the ways guitarists can learn to play much faster in a relatively short period of time.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Tom Serb returns this issue with the second of a multi-part lesson on “Speed Secrets.”

Speed Secrets (Part 2) from Tom Serb

Now that we’ve covered the basic mechanics of distance, and how to practice slowly, we’ll move on to eliminating tension. Many guitarists ‘choke up’ their muscles when they need to play a fast run, and the resulting tension creates fatigue. You might be able to squeeze out a quick burst this way, but you won’t be able to sustain it.

One of the keys to staying relaxed when you’re playing fast is using the correct muscles to drive the pick. Picking strings can be done with three different sets of muscles: the fingers, the wrist, or the forearm.

Picking with the fingers alone involves holding the hand stationary, and moving the pick up and down using only the motion of the thumb going down, and the index finger going up. The muscles used to create this picking motion are largely those in the hand and fingers. This approach is most useful for slow, quiet passages, or for very short runs – I’ll use this technique for things like a quick subdivision, where I’m playing 3-5 notes in the space of a half of a beat.

Picking from the wrist keeps the arm stationary, but moves the hand up and down over the strings. When you pick from the wrist, you’re using the larger muscles of the forearm instead of those of the hand and fingers – and bigger muscles don’t get tired as quickly. Wrist picking probably accounts for 85% or more of the picking I do, and it’s probably where you’ll spend most of your time practicing.

Picking from the forearm transfers the workload even farther up, and uses mostly the bicep and triceps muscles to drive the pick. This is done by ‘locking’ the wrist, and making the motion from the elbow. Since these are the largest muscles you can use in picking, they can handle the most sustained effort. This approach is best for tremolo picking, and it’s also useful for sweep picking.

To practice the various techniques and make them habit, it’s best to isolate the picking hand at first. That means you’ll practice while repeating a single note (which can even be an open string if you’d like). This is where you’ll eventually discover your ultimate top speed, as you’ll never be able to pick a complicated run any faster than you’ll be able to move the pick back and forth across a single string.

After you’ve decided what muscles you’ll use for the exercise, concentrate on staying loose. If you find you’re becoming tense, slow down! A useful exercise for developing your speed by staying loose is one I borrowed from the ‘fartlek’ (speed play) training that runners do: you’ll start picking slowly, build up the speed, back off a bit, and repeat. A typical drill for this sort of practice might look like this:

50% speed for 10 seconds

75% speed for 5 seconds

90% speed for 5 seconds

75% speed for 10 seconds

90% speed for 10 seconds

100% speed for 5 seconds

75% speed for 5 seconds

50% speed for 10 seconds

Notice that the drill takes just one minute. After that, shake out your picking arm, relax for a minute or so, and then repeat it. As with slow practice, you want to be focused on your goal: changing speed without increasing the tension in your muscles.

You’ll also want to devote some practice sessions to eliminating tension in your fretting hand. Many players tend to increase the force of their fingers when they increase the speed, and this creates tension that ultimately limits your top speed. Playing fast requires a light touch; your fingers need to dance across the fretboard, not stomp on the strings. Fartlek type drills can be useful for this; just concentrate on using as light a touch as possible without sacrificing your tone – it’s probably a lot less pressure than you think.

- – - -

Don’t forget to keep up with Tom at his school, the Midwest Music Academy, at their website.

Spotlight On The Sunday Songwriters’ Group

This month we take a swing through Nashville, Tennessee – Music City, USA and home to GN Forum member Jeff Martin and his song “Black Out.” Jeff doesn’t get to contribute regularly to the SSG, owing to spending most of his spare time with his band, Spookhand. But when he does, it’s always a treat. Come on over to the Guitar Noise Blog and have a listen and also get a chance to read about what it’s like being in a punk-style band in Nashville!

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Tom McLaughlin is sitting in with a new band, “Life is Drama” and his first show with them is Saturday, June 18 at the Uptown Tap (24035 W Lockport Street in, Plainfield, Illinois) at 10 PM.

And if you’re in Charlotte, North Carolina on Saturday, June 18, you can catch relatively-new-to-Guitar-Noise member Blakley Leonard be performing at the Tosco Music Party, which will be held at the Knight Theatre of the Levine Center for the Arts. He’Il be one of twenty artists performing for the show which has a Beatles Tribute theme this year. It runs from 7 to 11 PM and there’s only about 200 tickets left, so get them early.

Those of you in England can catch a really fantastic Australian group called The Wishing Well. They will be in Swindon at The Beehive on Sunday, June 19 for an 8 PM show.

And you will find them The Bell in Bath (103 Wolcott Street)on Wednesday, June 22 starting at 9 PM,

Random Thoughts

Earlier I mentioned how lucky we are at Guitar Noise to have so many great teachers and mentors among our contributors and volunteers. It’s always great to hear from people who are out performing and playing and sharing music and both Paul and I are glad to be able to help musicians all over the world in whatever way we can.

It seems like ages ago when Nick helped me run a Guitar Noise “mini-camp” on playing at open mics. We met a lot of terrific people and I’m thrilled to announce that one of the participants, Marilyn Miller, is releasing her first CD in the upcoming weeks. It’s called “Nighthawk” and you can read all about it here.

Both Nick and I (and quite a few other folks) got to play with Marilyn at last summer’s Riverside Jam and I think we’re all quite happy that she has succeeding in achieving her dream of sharing her music with the world.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And stay away from lightning whenever you can!

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 4 – June 1, 2011

David Hodge — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 14:45:56 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #4 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Being the first of June, it’s time for your latest issue of Guitar Noise News, the free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

And while the year is certainly flying by, it’s also turning out to be a fairly dangerous one for far too many people. All of us here at Guitar Noise extend our thoughts and hearts to the people of Joplin, Missouri in the wake of the disastrous tornado strike less than two weeks ago. We have quite a few members of the Guitar Noise community in the area, as well as in other parts of the country that have been hit by tornadoes lately, such as the Oklahoma City region. While it’s obvious that one can’t keep nature from doing what it does, we do wish you all safety, wherever you may live.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Topic of the Month

For some reason, the blues and summer just seem to go together! There may be no cure for the summertime blues, but you can certainly kick off your summer getting your blues mojo working! Just pop on by the Guitar Noise home page and visit our latest ‘Topic of the Month’ up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner and start checking out all the great articles full of tips and information we have for you. Before the summer’s out you’ll be playing the blues like you were born to it!

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

We have some new material from two of our favorite contributors this time out. Be sure to check out:

Why I Don’t Use A Plectrum
by Vic Lewis

Guitar Noise contributor and Forum Moderator Vic Lewis lists his reasons for not playing guitar with a pick, or ‘plectrum,’ if you prefer.

Secrets To Recording Wicked Guitar Parts
by Rob Gravelle

Rob Gravelle, former guitarist of Canada’s Ivory Knight, shares his secrets of making sure your guitar sounds its best when working in the studio.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Tom Serb returns this issue with the first of a multi-part lesson on ‘Speed Secrets.’

Speed Secrets (Part 1) from Tom Serb

For some styles of music, like metal, bebop, and bluegrass, fast guitar runs are an essential element of the genre. And no matter what style you play, a well placed display of speed can often be impressive. As a result, lots of guitarists put speed development on the practice agenda.

In this brief series, I’m going to reveal some of the ways you can make your playing speed faster – in fact, most guitarists will be able to play MUCH faster in a relatively short period of time.

In my teaching, I’ve noticed three barriers to developing speed: excess motion, excess tension, and a lack of coordination between the hands. Excluding virtuosi, we all suffer from one or more of these barriers. We’ll deal with them one at a time.

Excess motion is moving your fingers (or your pick, which I’ll get to in a moment) farther than you have to in executing a series of notes. Distance equals time: the more you lift your fingers, the harder you’ll have to work to achieve the same speed. If you lift your fingers one inch off the strings, your fingers must move EIGHT TIMES faster than a guitarist who only lifts an eighth of an inch!

You’ve probably heard the maxim ‘you learn to play fast by playing slow’. What this really means is rarely explained: playing slowly allows you to focus on your technique. Repeating a technical drill over and over at a very slow speed lets you build a habit, and once you have a habit ingrained, it becomes second nature – it’s what you’ll naturally do every time you play.

As you work through scales and other exercises you’ll find or develop on your own, start by slowing down… WAY down. 30-50% of your top speed is probably about right. Watch your fretting hand, and focus on keeping your fingers as close to the strings as possible. Don’t be impatient; it’s going to take a lot of slow practice sessions to make it habitual, so in the beginning I’d do only slow practice for a week or three before ramping up the tempo.

The picking hand needs the same attention, but in addition there’s a gear factor: the pick you choose. When I started working on developing my speed, I made the same mistake I’ve seen other guitarists make over and over – I switched to a thin pick, thinking it would move more easily through the strings.

As I got faster, I realized the problem with this thinking: thin picks are very flexible. As they pass through the string, they bend… and the point of the pick has to snap back into place before you can pick the next note. You’ll actually reach higher speeds with a stiff pick.

Since heavy picks are harder to force through the string, you’ll probably have to make an adjustment or two in how your pick hits the strings. The more pick you’re using (i.e., the farther your pick extends through the plane of the strings as you play), the more resistance there’s going to be. Devote some of your practice time to focusing on your picking hand, and trying to minimize the amount of pick you use – an eighth of an inch, or even less, is enough to get the string to sound.

Another adjustment you can make is to ‘cock’ your grip – instead of holding the pick parallel to the string, strike at an angle… the edge of the pick should be the surface hitting the string. This lets the rounded point glide across the string, instead of having to forcing the face of the pick through it.

To get the correct grip for this, start by holding the pick flat against a string. Without changing the placement of your hand, tip the point of your thumb either up or down; that will rotate the pick slightly, and you’ll be presenting the edge of the pick to the string. I cock my thumb down, but I know a few guitarists who are more comfortable cocking it up, bending the thumb joint slightly backward. Either way will result in less resistance than striking the string ‘flat’ with the pick.

–

Don’t forget to keep up with Tom at his school, the Midwest Music Academy, at their website.

Spotlight On The Sunday Songwriters’ Group

The Guitar Noise community has a great many gifted songwriters as members and Paul and I want you to get acquainted with them. Each month at the Guitar Noise Blog we’ll be posting a song written by a member of the Sunday Songwriters’ Group (or ‘SSG’ for short). Some will be relatively new songs and some will be from the eight years of archives that we have. Most SSG pieces are modest recordings done on the fly, simply meant to give the listener an idea of what the finished piece will hopefully sound like. And usually the heart that goes into any of these SSG songs more than makes up for the lack of recording it in a professional studio.

This month we take a swing through Nashville, Tennessee – Music City, USA and home to GN Forum member Jeff Martin and his song ‘Black Out.’ Jeff doesn’t get to contribute regularly to the SSG, owing to spending most of his spare time with his band, Spookhand. But when he does, it’s always a treat. Come on over to the Guitar Noise Blog and have a listen and also get a chance to read about what it’s like being in a punk-style band in Nashville!

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

By the way, the Sunday Songwriters’ Group has been a part of Guitar Noise for over eight years now. Writing songs is much like playing an instrument in that you won’t get better without practice, so each week a new ‘assignment’ is posted in the hopes that it will both challenge and inspire the readers to create a new song.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

On Saturday, June 11, Tom McLaughlin and Slightly Offensive return to Jack Desmond’s at 10339 Ridgeland Avenue in Chicago Ridge, Illinois for a for a very fun night of great music. And they’ll also be at the Tilted Kilt in Chicago Ridge the following weekend for a show on Sunday, June 19. Tell Tom ‘hi’ for me if you make either show!

If you’re in Charlotte, North Carolina on Saturday, June 18, you can catch relatively-new-to-Guitar-Noise member Blakley Leonard be performing at the Tosco Music Party, which will be held at the Knight Theatre of the Levine Center for the Arts. He’Il be one of twenty artists performing for the show which has a Beatles Tribute theme this year. It runs from 7 to 11 PM and there’s only about 200 tickets left, so get them early.

And for those of you in England, you’ll be glad to know that The Wishing Well, a really fantastic Australian group will be there all throughout the month of June. They’ll be in Cambridge tonight (June 1) at Man on the Moon, located at 2 Norfolk Street for an 8 PM show.

Catch them at The Chester Arms (19 Chester Street) in Oxford, at 8 PM, Friday June 3 and then at the Brase Nose Arms on Station Road in Cropedy (that’s around Banbury, I think) on Saturday, June 4 at 9 PM.

Then they’ll be in Leeds (also a 9 PM show) on Thursday, June 9 at the Seven Arts Centre, Chapel Allerton (located at 31A Harrogate Road).

On Sunday, June 12, the Wishing Well will play at The Latest Music Bar in Brighton (14-17 Manchester Street). This will be a 9 PM show.

During the last half of June they’ll be in London and Bath, among other places, so catch all the dates and venues right here!

Random Thoughts

Along with a number of local musicians, artists and performers, I was recently asked by one of the (many) local free newspapers to answer two questions I actually get asked a lot. And, with your indulgence, I’d like to share my answer to them with you, and I’m warning you ahead of time it may seem overly indulgent and sentimental! But you already know that’s part of being me, right?

Anyway…

As a guitar teacher, writer and performer, I often get asked questions I truly don’t know how to answer, like ‘What’s it like to live your dream?’ or ‘What keeps you going?’ Both questions make assumptions or seem to look for a starting point that may not exist.

When I was younger and eventually found myself dreaming about being a musician, it was (understandably) more about the fame and perceived lifestyle of being an artist or musician, not about making the music or art. And, of course, the dreams were inevitably big ones, involving concerts with tens of thousands of people in attendance, more if you count those tuning in on the radio or television and me there in the spotlight playing and singing the most incredible songs ever written. Who dreams of playing at a coffee house, book store or farmers’ market?

But at some point while growing up, there came the gradual realization that the music being made was the most important part of the scenario, not the person playing it. The true joy of playing guitar or writing and performing a song you wrote came from the connection with the people who were listening to it. And that interaction between artist and audience, when you can look out and into the eyes of your listeners and feel a tangible connection with them, with the entire world, well, I may have dreamed about it but certainly not with the understanding of what it really is. In the dreams it was about me. In reality it’s about everyone and everything else. When a show is over I want to hear people saying ‘I had a great time and enjoyed it’ rather than ‘you were great.’ If they don’t have a good time experiencing and being part of the music, then I’m not being great at all.

So you can see that it’s impossible to tell people ‘what it’s like to live my dream’ because making music and (even more so) teaching people how to create and take part in this insanely beautiful magic is so far ahead of anything I was ever capable of dreaming. If I was truly living my dreams of old I suspect I wouldn’t be anywhere near as happy as I am now.

And this realization leads directly to the ‘what keeps you going?’ question. There isn’t any question about ‘keeping going’ because it’s not about ‘keeping going.’ It’s about who and what you are. Simply put, I am a teacher, a musician, a songwriter and a writer. Not necessarily in that order and definitely not in any of those terms being a sole description of who I am. The priorities continually shift and often take a back seat to more important priorities – being a friend, a companion, a partner, a listener, a motivator, a mentor and, most important of all, a participant in this incredibly wonderful thing called life.

Simply by living and taking part in the world instead of trying to live apart from it allows me to be who I am. Even when I’m not writing songs or playing, part of me is working on a potential new arrangement or a song lesson for an upcoming class. Another part is trying out and choosing possible harmony lines for the next time I find myself backing up Nick or someone else on vocals. And still another is examining, cataloging and shaping the little bits of every day life into potential lines for songs, listening to how they sound and getting a sense of what feelings they evoke.

It’s never a matter of ‘keeping going.’ To not be ‘going’ is to not be alive.

As I said earlier, this is a more than a little sentimental and my apologies for that. It’s been a very sentimental time of late and I strongly suspect that it’s going to be for a while!

So, until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And may you always be living much more than your dreams and may you never have to even think about what keeps you going!

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 3 – May 15, 2011

David Hodge — Sun, 15 May 2011 10:31:41 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #2 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

A happy middle of May to all! And, once again, welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, the free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

This is starting to sound like a broken record (or a skipping CD?) but we’re still making more progress on the lessons front in regard to dealing with some of the publishers. Still slow, too, as you undoubtedly know! It’s more than a bit maddening because we keep thinking it’s going to happen almost any day now and each time there just seems to be one more issue to deal with. We’re persevering, though and, as always, both Paul and I thank you all for both your support and your patience through all this. One thing all this has made us decide is to not wait until the first or fifteenth to make the announcement when things finally fall into place. As soon as we know, you’ll know!

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Since he’s turning seventy in a matter of days, it seemed a no-brainer to make Bob Dylan our Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month for May. We have yet to repeat an “artist of the month,” but both Paul and I think that this occasion warrants the attention. Find out more about this highly influential guitarist and songwriter on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

Being, first and foremost, a website dedicated to teaching people all over the world the wonders of making music with the guitar, we’re thrilled to inform you that our Guitar Noise “Topic of the Month for May is “Teaching Guitar.”

During your next visit to the Guitar Noise home page, click on the “Topic of the Month” up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner and check out all the great tips and information we have for you.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

In case you missed it last time, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and all around nice guy Nick Minion has launched a new guitar teaching website called www.SecretGuitarTeacher.com. Nick’s first website, www.TeachGuitar.com, was aimed principally at Guitar Teachers while this new site is for anyone wanting to learn or improve their guitar playing.

One top of all that, Nick’s brought us two pieces this month. The first is a video lesson on the CAGED system and the second is a bit of reflection on Bob Dylan, which goes nicely with Dylan being our featured artist this month.

Cracking The CAGED System
by Nick Minnion

Nick Minnion shares his secrets of working out the CAGED system on guitar in these two videos he’s made.

Me and Bob Go Back A Long Ways
by Nick Minnion

In some ways, Bob Dylan taught a lot of us how to play guitar. Here Nick Minnion recounts his early experiences as a young musician playing Bob Dylan covers.

How To Practice Your Musical Instrument
by Tom Serb

Students at Tom’s music school receive a booklet called How to Practice Your Musical Instrument. Here are some practice tips that apply to guitar.

That Looks Familiar!
by David Hodge

There are a lot of websites out there now that simply grab articles from other websites and post them as their own, without giving credit where it’s due. But sometimes people will do the right thing!

Great Advice From Great Teachers

We’re getting some great advice from some of the many great teachers of the the Guitar Noise community to bring you every newsletter, which is especially appropriate since our current “Topic of the Month” is teaching guitar! Longtime Guitar Noise contributor and Forum Moderator Alan Green continues his column about how to go about becoming a guitar teacher. While his narrative deals with the nuances of teaching guitar in England, there is still plenty of help for those of us living outside the British Isles!

Making a living as a guitar teacher by Alan Green – Part 2

Episode 3 – Getting work

If you read the first episodes, you’ll remember that I’d got some work in an Investment Bank, during which time I’d auditioned for the local Education Authority’s Music Services team and we’d agreed to start working together.

Tip number 5 – Getting the Music Services job doesn’t guarantee you any work

That’s an interesting statement; let’s look at how it works.

Some County Music Services teams will phone you and say “Can you do this day at such and such a School?” Either you can, or you can’t, and if you can’t then do say what days and times you can do. Where I’m based, there is a newsletter that comes out just before the end of the School Term, listing the vacancies available for the next term. Luckily, Kathy, my partner, was at home the day the first newsletter came in and she sent it to me at work.

I got a bit excited when I read the vacancies list; three schools local to me all looking for guitar tutors. I replied to Music Services that I’d take them, and when I got a reply with the phone numbers and contact names I started phoning round. By the end of the day I’d filled three mornings so I dropped Music Services a note to let them know.

There was a fourth school, but they were difficult to get hold of and wanted to fill up another morning whilst I wanted to fill some afternoons; I spoke to Music Services and they told me about another guitar tutor they had who wanted that school himself and was looking to drop two smaller schools to fit them in. I called the guy; we arranged a swap – he took the school I was after because it was close to where he lives and I took the two smaller schools he wanted to drop. Fortune favours the brave; five schools. I was still looking…

Let me tell you this – some schools are fairly relaxed about things, and some have ideas. Music Services were very clear about it; the entire syllabus was my choice. The Thursday Morning School’s admin people, on the other hand, had one very specific instruction – “We don’t want students learning pop songs from Tab” they said, but they softened up a lot when I played my ace card; “I have a Distinction at Classical Guitar Grade 8″ I told them. “That’s all right then” they said.

So, it had been a successful few days. There was one other school, but they had already decided they wanted a guitar teacher with “Qualified Teacher Status” – it’s what you need to be allowed to teach curriculum in classrooms here – and my 30-odd years of playing, performing and teaching experience simply wasn’t enough.

I told my boss at the Investment Bank I was going part time at the start of the September term. He didn’t care; he’d just resigned to go travelling in Africa.

Episode 4 – “You must be Eddie”

“Yep,” he replied.

“Come on in, Eddie, and join the party,” I said, and he sat down. “Tell me, Eddie; have you got a guitar?”

“Yep,” he replied.

“Okay,” I said; “where is it?”

“It’s at home,” he said; “I didn’t think I’d need it today.”

Thus went my first conversation with my first student at my first School on my first day as a visiting guitar teacher. The School had some guitars, but they were strung right-handed and Eddie is a left-hander; so that first lesson was a bit of an improvisation.

I went to get my second student. “He’s sick today,” said his class teacher.
A great start to my new career. Luckily, the School had loaded me up with 12 students for 12 lessons each, so I was cautiously optimistic about the place. I survived.

The School for that afternoon was one I’d taken in the swap with the other guy. He said there was about 45 minutes work there; three students.

Tip number 6 – Get friendly with the School Admin team. They put your details on the School Newsletter which is how the kids and their parents pick up on the fact that they can get guitar lessons at the School.

The ladies in the office had done a terrific job; seven students (and by the end of that term I had eight there.)

Tip number 7 – If you take sugar in your coffee, have some sweeteners in your bag. If you’re a man, it’s 90% certain that you’ll be the only man working at that school apart from the caretaker, and 99.99999999% certain you’ll be the only one who takes sugar in your coffee.

What a day.

I got a call from the Music Services people. “We’ve had a tutor drop out, can you take another School?” I called the School and went to see them. Six Schools, tick in the box.

Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group

And it just so happens that when I was plotting this all out ages ago, I’d slated Alan Green to be in the May “Spotlight on SSG” feature at the Guitar Noise Blog. Sometimes things just work out that way. In case you’ve not heard him before, Alan is an excellent classical guitarist. But we’re choosing to highlight his great punk song, “Sold Out” from Year 7 of the SSG. Alan’s also managed to take on the Q & A bit with me. Read all about it, and listen to Alan’s song here.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizons

So please feel free to email me about whatever gigs you’ve got coming up. Send your gig dates to dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put “gig alert” in the subject header. And remember that Guitar Noise News is (usually) sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. And one needs a few days notice ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of April (that is, after the fifteenth), then write by the tenth or the twelfth.

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Tom McLaughlin’s group Slightly Offensive returns to The Tilted Kilt in Chicago Ridge, Illinois this coming Tuesday, May 17 for what should be a very fun night of great music.

And for those of you in England, try to catch The Wishing Well, a terrific Australian group that will be in England the rest of the month of May. This Thursday, May 19, they’ll be at The Dulcimer in Manchester (567 Wilbraham Road) for a 9 PM show.

Then they’ll be at The Black Swan in York (23 Peaseholme Green) on Saturday, May 21 at 9 PM.

The following week they’ll be at The Black Market Venue in Warsop (43 High Street) on Wednesday, May 25 and The Jolly Brewer in Lincoln (27 Broadgate) on Friday, May 27. Both shows are also 9 PM starts.

Saturday, May 28 they’ll be playing at the Off the Tracks Music Festival at the Donington Park Farmhouse in Derby. And then they wrap up the month of May with a show at The Stables in Milton Keynes (Stockwell Lane) on Tuesday, May 31. This show starts at 8 PM.

Random Thoughts

This newsletter is, unfortunately, going to have to be one of our occasional short ones. And hopefully we’ll be able to get into all the reasons why next time!

Untill then, play well and play often.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 2 – May 1, 2011

David Hodge — Sun, 01 May 2011 10:32:20 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #2 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

A happy May first to all of you! And welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, the free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

Before we go any further, I’d like to send out wishes to all our readers who have been affected by the amazing and terrifying spate of tornadoes (as well as the flood waters) that have been hitting the central, south and southeast regions of the United States these past two weeks. Please try to be safe out there!

And I’d also like to remind any of our readers who would like to help any of those who’ve been affected by the many natural disasters of late to check in with their local office of the Red Cross or whichever rescue and relief agency you feel best about. There’s always some way to help.

We’re making more progress on the lessons front in regard to dealing with some of the publishers. As many of you know, Paul has been working on negotiating the return of the music examples (both in notation and guitar tablature) with various publishers since last spring. As mentioned in our last two issues, the final phase of these negotiations has been excruciatingly slow but we’ll let you know the news, one way or the other, as soon as we do. And, as always, both Paul and I thank you all for both your support and your patience through all this.

In other news, I got an email from Nick Minion the other day. He writes:

After fourteen months of slaving over a hot computer, not to mention sweating over a hot guitar in front of hot film studio lights, I am very pleased to welcome you to my brand new guitar teaching website – www.SecretGuitarTeacher.com!

Whereas my first site,TeachGuitar.com, was aimed principally at Guitar Teachers, www.SecretGuitarTeacher.com is for anyone wanting to learn or improve their guitar playing.

If you are a guitar teacher who knows me from TeachGuitar.com or any of my ebooks on guitar teaching, then here’s a chance to see me putting some of what I have been preaching into practice!

Whether a guitar student or teacher, please dive in and help yourself to all the free goodies on offer on SecretGuitarTeacher.com including loads of backing tracks to jam over, printouts of all sorts of musical things and video lessons to meet the needs of all levels and styles of guitar playing.

As always, I am very grateful for your support and look forward to receiving your feedback on the new site and news of how you are all getting on, either with learning or teaching guitar.

Happy Playing!

Nick Minnion
www.secretguitarteacher.com

and
www.teachguitar.com

We want to wish Nick the best of success in this venture. Be sure to check out both his websites when you have the time.

And speaking of Nicks, we want to take a moment to congratulate Nick Torres, Guitar Forums Moderator of Moderators, and to wish him the best on his performing gig this afternoon at The Writers’ Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Nick will be taking part in an open reading of Mark Twain: The Return of Halley’s Comet by Donald Bliss. Nick will be playing four parts, one being Ulysses S, Grant. The show starts at 2 PM if you happen to be in the area. It should be a very enlightening and moving piece.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Since he’s turning seventy in a few weeks, it seemed a no-brainer to make Bob Dylan our Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month for May. We have yet to repeat an “artist of the month,” but both Paul and I think that this occasion warrants the attention. Find out more about this highly influential guitarist and songwriter on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Can I Teach Guitar?
by Jamie Andreas

Many people ask this question for different reasons; some may be looking for fulfillment, some may be looking for a job, and hopefully many are doing both.

Sleutelbos: Inside Outsider
CD Review by David Hodge

Inside Outsider, by longtime Guitar Noise community member and contributor Arjen Schippers, is one of those albums that demands attention but rewards the listener with astonishing depth and layering.

Re-Beginning The Guitar Part 3 – Need To Know
by David Hodge

This one got lost in the April Fool’s Day shuffle! Do you really need to know music theory to play? How about reading music? Although the answer is pretty simple, there’s a lot to consider when making those choices. David discusses these decisions and what they mean, or should mean, to you.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

In our last issue of Guitar Noise News we started this new feature where we get some of the many teachers from the Guitar Noise community to contribute some advice about music, guitars and all sorts of topics. And since our “Topic of the Month” is teaching guitar, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and Forum Moderator Alan Green was kind enough to give us some tips about how to go about becoming a guitar teacher. While his narrative deals with the nuances of teaching guitar in England, there is still plenty of help for those of us living outside the British Isles!

Making a living as a guitar teacher by Alan Green

Episode 1 – making the break

So, there I was. It was March 2009. I’d been made redundant, for the second time, after twenty years in Investment Banking. And at the worst time that had ever been known in the industry too; jobs were being slashed everywhere.

So, there I sat in the study. I’d done some job-hunting online; I’d been doing some every day, registered with loads of agencies, and the outlook was gloomy.

I’d done all the job-hunting I could for the day. I tuned up a guitar, fired up a recording of an orchestra rehearsal on the PC, and started working on some material.

I could always turn pro at this, I thought.

I’d done some guitar teaching before, when I came back from living in Germany. I used to have Saturday afternoons full of students. Why couldn’t I do some more? I hadn’t done any marketing in the two years since we moved house; I dusted off my business cards.

The first time I went looking for students, it took about eight months for the first one to call me up. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to be as casual about getting students this time. I went and spoke to all the local guitar shops – both of them. On the way home, it dawned on me that I might be able to do something through Adult Education; most local colleges had loads of courses, pottery, knitting, languages, why not music? Why not guitar!?!? I dug out e-mail addresses for the County Council’s three adult education offices and wrote telling them all about me.

A couple of days later I got a reply. “We’ve got nothing for guitar in Adult Education,” they said, “why don’t you talk to mainstream?” and they gave me an e-mail address for the local Education Authority’s Music Services team. I wrote, telling them all about me.

Two weeks later, I’d got an interview with an Investment Bank for some temp work. I got the job too. Then I got an e-mail from the Music Services people. “Give us your address,” they said, “we’ll send you an application form.”

Tip number 1: Talk to your local Education Authority’s Music Services people.

Episode 2 – that 90-minute audition

So, it was May 2009. I’d got a job with an Investment Bank, and I’d started working there. I’d sent off the application form to the Music Services people and had more or less assumed they weren’t interested

Tip number 2: Music Services take ages to reply about things.

I got home from work one evening, and there was a letter from Music Services. It was a pretty thin envelope so I assumed it was a “Thanks, but no thanks” letter. Instead it said, “Please come for an audition and interview on this date.”

Now, I’m used to Investment Banking interviews which run for about an hour and probe into every ounce of your capabilities, motivation, leadership and practical experience and then expect you to pledge your soul to working twelve-hour days for little thanks. My interview technique was pretty hot, and I’d never failed an audition so along I went. I played “Capricho Arabe” by Francisco Tarrega, which I’d played at Grade 8, and “Classical Gas” by Mason Williams.

Tip number 3: Play something by a living composer. Examiners and Music Services people love it.

There followed ninety minutes of intense grilling about capabilities, teaching technique, motivation, leadership and practical experience, and safeguarding (including exactly what you can and can’t keep confidential from that conversation with your students.) “Right,” they said at the end, “subject to references and criminal record clearance, we’ll start working with you from September.”

Job done.

Tip number 4: Enhanced Criminal Records Clearance takes two months to come back.

Then it starts to get a bit complicated. I’ll tell you about that next time.

Spotlight On The Sunday Songwriters’ Group

And it just so happens that when I was plotting this all out ages ago, I’d slated Alan Green to be in the May “Spotlight on SSG” feature at the Guitar Noise Blog. Sometimes things just work out that way. In case you’ve not heard him before, Alan is an excellent classical guitarist. But we’re choosing to highligh his great punk song, “Sold Out” from Year 7 of the SSG. Alan’s also managed to take on the Q & A bit with me. Read all about it, and listen to Alan’s song here.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

If you’re anywhere near Norfolk, Connecticut, then you want to get over to Infinity Hall (on Route 44 right in the middle of town) this afternoon for the free FODfest show that starts at 4 PM. Lots of great performers and magical musical moments await you.

Doug James’ group Southern Roots continues to light up Virginia in a big way,. Next Friday, May 6, they’ll be at The Triple, 3306 West Broad Street in Richmond for a 10 PM show. And the following weekend, on Saturday, May 14, they’ll be rocking the house at Rocks River Roadhouse @ Rockahock, 1428 Outpost Road in Lanexa. Show starts at 9 PM.

And the wonderful Australian band, The Wishing Well, embark on a series of stops in Northern Ireland and Ireland beginning today. Tonight at 8 PM they’ll be at the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, held at the Clanmill Arts & Business Centre on Bridge Street in Belfast.

From there, they’re off to Galway where you’ll catch them Wednesday, May 4 at 8pm at Roisin Dubh on Dominick Street.

The next night, Thurday, May 5, you’ll find them in Cork at the 9 PM show at the Crane Lane Theatre on
Pheonix Street.

Or you can catch them on Sunday, May 8 at The Back Room at The Cobblestone, located at 77 North King Street, Smithfield Square in Dublin.

Random Thoughts

Earlier this month I got an email from Javi, who goes by “Nuno” on the Guitar Noise Forums and I meant write about it in our last newsletter. Unfortunately all sorts of other things came up so I apologize for not bringing this to everybody’s attention sooner.

Javi writes:

You know I love all the activities in Guitar Noise (proposed by you and also by the members in the forum). Probably, my favorite is the Sunday Songwriters’ Group. I frequent that forum and I read the posts but I never wrote. I am not good with words and, moreover, English is not my mother tongue. I have tried to write lyrics but it is too hard to me.

Some months ago my girlfriend gave me a box with pencils and charcoal and I started to draw. First, they were exercises and sketches. Then, I tried to draw more complex scenes. You know, just for fun.

And some weeks ago (exactly five weeks) I guessed I could finally participate in the SSG by using the weekly assignments as guidelines for drawing.

I uploaded the drawings on Flickr but I do it on new blog now. The blog allows to write some texts and explanations on the drawings and also to organize the contents. Flickr is good but a blog is better.

The name of the blog is “Vinyl Eraser”and I maintain a special page on the SSG drawings.

And I have to say that this is a very cool idea! If you’re someone who plays or writes music, dabbling in another creative outlet, such as drawing or painting, can help you find inspiration for your songwriting or arranging.

Simply being open to art of any kind, on any level, will often help you find inspiration for your own endeavors. So now I find myself checking up not only on the songs and song lyrics and the critiques that people are posting up on the SSG but also on Javi’s latest sketches. Reading and listening and now seeing all this creativity is definitely inspiring!

If you get the chance, drop in on Javi’s blog and check out his sketchwork. It may inspire you to pick up and pencil and start working out some drawings yourself.

Until our next issue of Guitar Noise News. Until then, play well and play often.

And, as always,

Peace

Newsletter Vol. 4 # 1 – April 15, 2011

David Hodge — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:14:17 +0000

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #1 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
Guitar Noise Featured Artist
Topic of the Month
New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
Great Advice from Great Teachers
Spotlight on the Sunday Songwriters Group
Events Horizon
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News And Announcements

Hello to all! And welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News, the free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com). I hope that you enjoyed our previous April Fool’s Day issue and that you had a relatively easy time separating the real items from the jokes. If not, well, just drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give you a quick run down.

One item that was mentioned, which wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke, bears repeating:

As many of you know, Paul has been working on negotiating the return of the music examples (both in notation and guitar tablature) with various publishers since last spring. The good news is that we are close to making deals and should be able to repost many, but not all, of our “Easy Songs for Beginners” and “Songs for Intermediates” lessons sometime in the (hopefully) very near future.

It seems that the final phase of these negotiations is being excruciatingly slow and our apologies for that. But you will know the news, one way or the other, as soon as we do. And both Paul and I extend our thanks for both your support and your patience through all this.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Pete Townshend is our Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month for April. He may not be someone you first think about when you think “rock guitarist” but his influence is still strong. Find out more about him on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic Of The Month

Our April “Topic of the Month is “Music Theory without Tears.” We at Guitar Noise have prided ourselves over the years on being able to give guitarists and other musicians the theory they need in a painless manner. Sometimes it’s like you’re not even aware that it is music theory at all but rather just stuff you knew but didn’t know how to explain! So if you want to get the easiest introduction possible to music theory or simply just brush up on the theory you already know, go on over to the Guitar Noise home page and click on the “Topic of the Month” up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

Bob Dylan in Ho Chi Minh City
Concert Review by Paul Hackett

On April 10, 2011 Bob Dylan and his band brought their latest tour to this Vietnamese city of nine million people. They played an excellent show, rolling through the excellent selections of their eighteen-song set and offering new arrangements on everything, not just the old songs but the new ones as well.

How To Fix Common Guitar Practice Problems With And Without A Metronome
by Tom Hess

Using a metronome during guitar practice is very helpful but it’s also important to know when not to use it. Tom Hess explores the reasons both for using a metronome and not using a metronome when trying to improve your guitar playing.

Hammer-Ons
Mini-Lesson by David Hodge

Hammer-ons are one of the four basic slurring techniques of playing guitar. While many guitarists think of them as just a technique of the lead guitarist, they are essential to rhythm playing as well.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

We thrilled to announce that, starting this issue, we’re going to have a number of the teachers from the Guitar Noise community contribute some advice about music, guitars and all sorts of topics. First up is Tom (“Noteboat”) Serb, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and founder of the Midwest Music Academy (http://mwmusicacademy.com) in Plainfield, Illinois.

David suggested I write up a little something on practice habits for this issue – it just so happens that students at our music school receive a booklet I put together called “How to Practice Your Musical Instrument”. Since we teach a lot of different instruments, not everything in it applies to the guitar… but I thought I’d pick through it for some tips you might find useful.

Practicing frequently (several times a day for just a few minutes at a time) will produce better results than practicing for a long time every few days.
It’s not how much time you put in; it’s how much you put into your time. Focused practice can accomplish a lot efficiently – but wiggling your fingers around while your mind drifts really isn’t practicing!
If you practice as early as you can – even right after you get up in the morning – you won’t be as likely to miss any practice sessions. And if you feel like it, you can always get in an extra practice session later on in the day.
The ability to play an instrument builds one skill on top of others. Make sure you get the fundamentals right.
Review should be part of your practice routine. When you learned to read, you probably had a favorite book you read hundreds of times – learning to read music takes the same kind of review.
Try to practice for a few minutes right after a lesson – it will help you remember little details.
Muscle memory is developed through repetition. An amateur practices until they get it right; a professional practices until they never get it wrong!
Try to sing what you play. It will help you develop your ear and improve the results you get from practicing.
The first time you play a piece, keep a pencil handy. Mark the spots you have trouble with – those are the ones you should put the most practice time into!
Break complex passages down into smaller bites and work through each one before trying to put the whole thing together.
There’s a difference between practicing and rehearsing, and between practicing and playing. Approach each session understanding what your purpose is.
There is a best time of the day to practice, but it depends on you. Pay attention to the results you get at different times of the day, and try to practice during your most productive times.
Practice slowly enough so you’re not making any mistakes. Practice doesn’t make perfect – practice makes permanent – so don’t waste your time practicing mistakes!

Spotlight On The Sunday Songwriters’ Group

This month, we’re turning the “Spotlight on SSG” feature at the Guitar Noise Blog on John Roche, who goes by the name of “Celt” on the Guitar Noise Forums, and his wonderful song “Going Back to Tupelo,” from Week 3 of the current “SSG Year 9.” John has also done the Q & A bit with me and you’ll find this insightful interview here when it goes up online sometime in the next couple of days.

We hope you enjoy these wonderful songs your fellow Guitar Noise members have put together. And if you’ve got any requests from past years, we’ll try to track them down.

Stop on by the SSG and join in the fun.

Events Horizon

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming shows!

Doug James’ group Southern Roots has got some shows both tonight and tomorrow. They’ll be at the Honey Whytes All American Cafe 2116 E. Main St Richmond, VA 9 PM on both Friday, April 15th and Saturday, April 16th.

And if you’re in the Chicago region, try to check out Slightly Offensive, with GN member Tom (“Tommygunz”) McLaughlin on Guitar at The Tilted Kilt Chicago Ridge (6401 W 95th St, Chicago Ridge IL) this Sunday, April 17 and then at Charleston’s (2101 Calistoga Drive, New Lenox IL) on Saturday, April 30

Random Thoughts

There’s one last bit of news I’m thrilled to pass along to you. I’ve just gotten a contract from String Letter Publishing, the folks who print Acoustic Guitar Magazine, to write a tutorial book for their “Private Lesson Books” series. It will be titled “Rhythm and Strumming Basics” and it should be out in bookstores before the end of the year.

I’m very excited about this new project as it will be focusing on the challenges many beginners have with strumming well and keeping time while playing. It will start with the very basics and gradually work the reader up through syncopation, swing rhythms, using partial chord and single string as part of strumming and more.

As ever, I am grateful to the entire Guitar Noise community, without whom none of the books I’ve written would ever be possible. I can only hope that my writing lives up to your expectations.

And speaking of writing, wait ’til you see some of the lessons coming your way soon! We’ll have lots to chat about in our next issue of Guitar Noise News. Until then, play well and play often.

And, as always,

Peace