Newsletter Vol. 1 # 33 – December 01, 2001

Dear Guitar Player,

Welcome to Guitar Noise News for December 01, 2001.

Today I have the sad job of reporting on the death of George Harrison on November 29. Harrison was the youngest member of the Beatles and died at the age of 58 on Thursday. As people around the world spend time this weekend reflecting on the life and achievements of this great musician, I have put together a page with links to many George Harrison resources to help you find out more about the music he has given us. For many of our younger readers or those not familiar with Harrison’s work, among other things he taught John Lennon how to play guitar. His public image was summed up in the first Beatles song he wrote, Don’t Bother Me. He preferred being a musician to being a star.

I encourage you to take some time to reflect on and find out more about the wonderful work left behind by George Harrison. Visit Guitar Noise’s George Harrison profile page.

Also in this newsletter:

  • News
  • Topic of the Month
  • Guitar & Bass Lessons
  • Recommended Books
  • CD Reviews
  • New Links
  • Email of the Week

You can recycle this newsletter by passing it on to a friend you think might benefit from Guitar Noise.

This newsletter is available online.

Site News

This week I have two items of site news. First is an exciting announcement for all Canadian visitors to Guitar Noise. As a special treat to our visitors from Canada we are proud to launch a Canadian version of our website called Guitar Noise Canada. As well as special links and contest information for Canadians it will also contain articles all written in Canadian-English. Check out the details below.

Guitar Noise Canada
Each month more than 100,000 visitors from Canada visit Guitar Noise. That makes Canada the second most popular home for our visitors. To make you feel more welcome we have put together a few pages that will certainly qualify as Canadian Content. We are not just making this addition to kiss up to all the visitors from The Great White North. Guitar Noise was actually started in Canada at Carleton University, and two of our writers are Canadians. So don’t tell us to take off, eh?

In other news here is a suggested tip by one of our regular visitors.

User suggested tip:
This useful tip was posted by a regular guitar fanatic on our Guitar Players forum.

I hope this will help all those beginners like me,or anyone else who might want to print David’s (or anybody else’s) lessons. Surf using the explorer version that’s bundled into win’98 or better. Once you’ve opened a lesson,save it as a complete webpage – you’ll see that save option in a dialog box that appears when you click “SAVE AS” in explorer. After that,you can open the file in ms-word and edit it as you like before printing. It shouldn’t be a problem.

Visit the complete What’s New page at Guitar Noise.

Performance – Topic of the Month

Now that November is over we are wrapping up our performance topic, although I do expect to sneak in a few more articles on this topic in the coming weeks. This week Dan shares another Sound Engineering piece.

Battle of the Bands
Sound Engineering Q&A # 8
by Dan Lasley (26 Nov 2001)
Have you ever wondered how they run those multi-act “Lallapalooza” type shows? Well, first a large corporate sponsor is found, and they hire a bunch of experienced professionals. Let me give you a couple of ideas, because once you see how easy it can be, you can try it out for yourself.

Visit the complete Performance page at Guitar Noise.

Recommended Reading

George Harrison
While George Harrison will be best remembered through his music, many people may be interested to find out more about his personal life. Rather than recommend a book that sifts through all the personal details of his life, I have selected Harrison’s autobiography I, Me, Mine.

What is special about this book is that it is light on biographical information and focuses more on Harrison’s songs. Included in the book are handwritten lyrics for his songs, accompanied by discussion of his inspiration and methods for writing them. This book may be equally interesting for songwriters as well as Harrison and Beatles fans.

CD Reviews

Steve Hackett – Live Archive
Never one to sit back and relax, Steve Hackett releases a new box set containing four live albums.

New Sites

It was a busy week for new sites this week. In fact there are too many to list here, so I will just give you a selection. First, here are sites for three Canadian guitar players that were added this week. Please check out their work and drop them a note. They’ll be thrilled to hear that you found their site through Guitar Noise.

  • Reed Kotler – Makers of cool transcribing aids for musicians learn to play by ear from your favorite recordings.

Email of the Week

I thought that before the performance topic wraps up we could deal with a performance specific question.

How To Play Standing Up
I have been playing Guitar for about 3-4 months now. Because I already have knowledge of music(I have been playing piano for a few years), I picked it up quite well and I can pretty much play all the songs I want to play; to the speed of the CD. My friends and I are just starting a band, and all this time I have been playing the guitar sitting down. I try to play standing (because I will need to come the gigs) and find it very hard, especially when I have to do chords right down the fingerboard at about the 9th fret onwards. Please could you help me out!

David’s Response
Thanks for writing. The first thing that I would ask is where is the guitar (should I assume it’s an electric?) in relationship to your body? Most people tend to play their guitars really low because that how they see it in videos and I guess it’s really cool but it’s harder than anything to play well like that. Worse, you can develop serious wrist problems by doing that for long periods of time.

If you will watch the really good guitarists (those more interested in playing well rather than showing off) you will notice that they tend to have their guitars strapped higher on their bodies. Ideally you want your hand that’s fretting the neck to be about the same height as your chest.

Secondly, if you’re playing and singing at the same time, don’t be surprised if you find yourself taking a look every now and then to see where your fingers are. EVERYONE does this and if you carefully watch people playing on stage you will catch them doing it. This is especially true the higher up on the fretboard you go. I hope this helps.

Thank you again for the email. Maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to have the pleasure of hearing you perform.

Peace

David Hodge

That’s all for this newsletter. December is now upon us. I am sure you know what that means: holiday lessons, articles, newsletters, books, jokes and maybe even gifts.

Have a nice week.

Peace,
(I mean it)

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer