Newsletter Vol. 1 # 23 – August 20, 2001

Dear Guitar Player,

Welcome to Guitar Noise News, the weekly update for Guitar Noise. This newsletter will keep you up to date with the latest news and developments on our site, including all our new lessons, advice, and links added within the past week. Subscribers to this newsletter are warmly invited to be active in our growing guitar community.

Music Genres – August Topic of the Month

August has been declared “Musical Genres” month here at Guitar Noise. What does this mean? Well, Webster’s defines “genre” as ” a kind or type.” Music is, as you are all well aware, incredibly diverse. There are more kinds and types of music than we realize. And new ones are being created (or simply brought to the publics attention) all the time. We will spend the month celebrating and exploring some of the world’s various styles of music (because we couldn’t obviously cover them all!). This should be a lot of fun because it will involve history and theory and lessons and we’ll even throw in some “Easy Songs for Beginners” and “Songs for Intermediates” at you as well. And who knows? If you like this approach, maybe we’ll devote an upcoming month to one genre in particular. Let us know.

Look for new articles throughout the month.

Easy Songs for Beginners

I Shot The Sheriff
by David Hodge (13 Aug 2001)
Today’s song is Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff, which will not only serve as a delightful introduction to reggae rhythms, but I’ve also managed to get very sneaky and throw in some transposing as well.

New Article

A Brief History Of The Guitar
by A-J Charron (15 Aug 2001)
In many history books you will read that the guitar was invented by the classical-era Greeks. This is due to a simple mistake. If you look at ancient paintings you will see many musical instruments which could easily be mistaken for a guitar. Even by those of us who have been playing the instrument for twenty years.

Indie Music Reviews

Silent Exile – Live
Silent Exile are from the Montreal region, but their album is already known around the world. Four years ago they decided to perform their own material in the form of music that they would enjoy. So their first album was four years in the making.

Threshold – Hypothetical

An overall well-balanced album. Between melody and hard-driven riffs, Hypothetical is bound to please people of various musical likings.

Sarah Pillow – Nuove Musiche
This CD is a mix of Baroque, Jazz and Progressive Rock. My hat goes off to Sarah Pillow! And to Buckyball Records for sensing the enormous potential in this lady and this genre.

New Links

  • ChordMaker: chordsheet word processor – Easy to use software creates chordsheet style guitar tablature, and songbooks complete with table of contents and alphabetized index. Powerful editing tools allow you to format the page how you like, with the fonts and colors you want, and transpose the songs into the keys you want.
  • Chuck’s Home Page – Check out my hobby luthier work. Pages include lots of pics of the electric arch top I finished Fall 2001…construction, internal and finished work. Also see a page with pics from other projects I did over the past 20 years. Some unique and very classic work I think!
  • Guitar Secrets Revealed – GuitarAlliance.com is a comprehensive training program in the best and most effective popular guitar techniques, styles, fundamentals and progressive topics. Whether you’re interested in blues, rock or pop, you will find the most useful information on the Web right here.
  • Kangaroo Covers – The amp cover with exterior pockets for the new millennium… “the next best thing to having your own roadie”
  • Shifter – The online home of SHIFTER – harmony laden guitar pop from Australia.

Recommended Reading

Joe Satriani : Guitar Secrets by Joe Satriani
This book offers many excellent exercises that reveal the foundation of Joe’s guitar prowess. The exercises are not fun and most of them are not easy, so you have been warned. The book is a compilation of articles that Joe wrote for the magazine “Guitar For The Practicing Musician”. It consist of 41 lessons that cover everything from chords and scales to theory and whammy bar technique. If you have the time and dedication this book will help you develop some great guitar playing techniques.

Email of the Week

This week our email is about the “Ultimate Article On Guitar Noise”

Hi David,
My name is Arun. I’m from India. Recently I got very much interested in Guitar and I’m going for classes for the past few months. I browse a lot for guitar sites on the web. Whenever I found one good-to-read site, it always explained how to play chords. But never explained how these chords came out. For the past 5 months I’ve been trying find this. I found lots of site which explained how chords are constructed, but unfortunately I couldn’t understand a bit. May be they were not explained properly. Maximum, they taught how a C Major is constructed, that’s it.

I came across your article Theory without Tears yesterday. At first I thought it would be just another site. Well, it turned out to be different. :) You do not know how much jumped and shouted with joy after reading your article. My room mate thought I have gone crazy or something. It was the best article I’ve ever read on the web. So small, well planed, and excellently laid out introduction. It is a theory without tears, indeed!

Now, I do not get confused or stopped wondering when I see some chord like Bsus7, ‘coz I know how it is constructed. Thanks to your article. :)

-Arun

David’s lesson Theory Without Tears is still available and you can check it out here. It really is great stuff and should be required reading for all of our beginning students.

We actually do get a lot of positive email from our readers and it is really nice to receive positive and encouraging feedback like this. If you would like to send comments to us check out the contact information below.

Peace,

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer