Newsletter Vol. 1 # 15 – May 03, 2001
Dear Guitar Player,
Welcome to Guitar Noise News, the weekly update for Guitar Noise. We have just added two new ways for you to search our site. A new search index has been added that allows you to search through the hundreds of messages in our popular guitar forum. If you are looking for a particular message or topic you can find it in seconds by using our new search in the Guitar Forums.
Also our advanced search option has just been greatly improved. Now you can define your search to get results only from the departments of our site that you want to search. The new advanced search is available here.
Last week some of our forums were unavailable due to a server problem. The Guitar Players Forum and Beginners Forum have both been repaired and are now working fine. The General Discussion Forum and Sound Engineering Forum both remain offline at the moment. They will be repaired later this week.
New Lessons
Minor Progress – Guitar Column # 50
by David Hodge (03 May 2001)
Songs written in minor keys can be sad, mysterious, ominous even. To the listener, they deliver an incredible variety of emotional ranges. And to the fledgling songwriter, as well as the experienced music theorist, songs in minor keys can cause no end of emotional impact as well, usually frustration and bewilderment. But hopefully today we can dispel some of the mysteries and anxieties that surround these wondrous sounding songs.
Changing Chords – Guitar Principles# 7 by Jamie Andreas (01 May 2001)
Many people begin to play the guitar by learning a few chord changes to their favorite song. In fact, I learned this way. There are many things to be aware of while doing this. There are things to know and do that can make it easier, and guarantee you will have success. There are also many things that can go wrong, and guarantee trouble.
Best-Kept Secret – Songwriting and Copyrights
by A-J Charron (01 May 2001)
Following the last column, this week we’ll be looking at our last option of what to do with your songs. This option applies to both performers and non-performers alike. The best-kept secret in the music business is The Publisher.
Email of the Week
Many of our visitors probably don’t realize the wide international reach of the Guitar Noise website. We face it daily and often find it rewarding that only about half of our regular visitors live in the United States. Not only do we have the opportunity to make a lot of friends from all over the world but we often get challenging and interesting email as a result. This week our “Email of the Week” comes from India may give you some idea of what I am talking about.
I am a new Guitar learner. I would like to know that “How the indian notes like ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni’ are matched with the Western note like ‘A B C D E F G'”? I mean what is the analogy between them?
After a bit of research here is the answer David provided:
Thank you for writing! What part of India are you from?
First, I have to tell you that I am not absolutely positive about this, but I will do my best to check it out to make sure. In most cultures, when a basic scale is sung out in notes it is generally taken to mean that it is the simplest scale possible, which in this case would be the C major scale. I am making this judgment solely upon the similarities I encountered in Greece when a musician would tell me that a song was in “Re” or “La minor.” I have also run into this when playing with some people here in Chicago who play South American (Peruvian, in this case) music and we need to find our common knowledge in terms of keys.
I was able to do some research this morning and, based upon what I’ve learned so far, I think that this line of thinking should be correct. According to what I have learned, there are twelve tones (swara) in the Indian music system (although I think I should say the North Indian, correct?) and when they are arranged from end to end, from Sa to Sa, the flats and sharps do indeed correspond to those on a C major scale.
So, as far as I can tell, ‘Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni’ would be matched with ‘Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti’ which in turn would be matched to the notes ‘C D E F G A B’
I really hope this helps. I also really hope that I am right about this but I think that I am. Thank you again for your email and I look forward to hearing from you again.
At Guitar Noise we all love getting letters like this. It forces our teachers to continue learning in order to provide good answers. Even our experts (those humble creatures) need help with questions from time to time.
New Sites
- ezFolk.com – The ezFolk website is an instructional website for guitar and banjo, mostly geared towards beginners.
This week the update certainly seems to put us back on track. There is more than enough for any musician with a reasonable amount of time on their hands here. Take your time and work through as much as you want, or can. We will be back next week with more original lessons.
To let you know what is coming soon: beginners beware! We already have two more Easy Songs for Beginners in the pipe.
Peace,
Paul Hackett
Executive Producer