Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

In This Issue

• News and Announcements
• New Articles and Lessons
• Sunday Songwriter’s Group
• Reviews
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

Paul tells me that we’ve recently had a big jump in the number of subscribers to our newsletter. Usually each week twenty or so new people sign up to receive Guitar Noise News, but we’ve seen the subscriptions jump by almost three hundred just in the past three weeks.

So a big welcome to all of our new readers as well! And perhaps this is as good a time as any to make introductions. I’m David and I’m the Managing Editor of our site. Content-wise, anything that you read on Guitar Noise usually has to get through me first, so if you’ve any suggestions or questions or concerns in that area, I’m the one to write to.

In addition to going through all the articles and such, I have a secret life as a writer of lessons for Guitar Noise. You may have read some of them… And, of course, I also write our weekly newsletters.

But contrary to what you may think, and although I do have the advantage of seniority over the other Staff Members (second only to Paul, if I recall correctly), I am merely a bit player in the Guitar Noise community. Allow me to tell you a bit about some of our staff:

First and foremost, there’s Paul Hackett, who created and runs Guitar Noise. None of this would exist if not for him. It’s very easy (for me, anyway!) to get sentimental about it, but the community spirit that you find at our site is very much a mirror of Paul’s personality. He’s the one who does most of the “behind the scenes” stuff and he keeps us up and running.

A-J Charron joined up fairly shortly after I did. And like myself, A-J’s got a fair number of hats. In addition to handling maybe ninety-five percent of our reviews and interviews, he also is the main contributor to our Songwriting area.

Dan Lasley and Laura Lasley, respectively, head up our Bass For Beginners and “The Other Side,” Guitar Noise’s page that focuses on the female perspective of guitar and performance. Dan also doubles as point man on our Sound and Engineering section.

And speaking of doubling, sometimes it seems like Nick Torres is everywhere! And that’s probably a good thing as Nick is the “Moderator In Chief” of our forum pages. And not simply because he has more posts than anyone else! If you ever wonder why the Guitar Noise Forum is such a friendly and civil place, you can chalk that up to Nick taking his job very seriously.

But Nick doesn’t work alone in that regard. We have an incredible staff of volunteer Forum Moderators, people from all over the world who give of their time and energy to keep the Forum Pages running as smoothly and friendly as possible. And while all of the staff you’ve “met” so far also serve as moderators, at some point in the near future, and with their permission, I’d like to introduce you to all of our Moderators as individuals.

The key word in all this is that Guitar Noise is the work of volunteers. All of our writers and staff are here because we want to contribute to the community, to share what skills and knowledge we can in a way that is both educational and inspirational. Articles at Guitar Noise come from the staff, from Regular Contributing Writers, many of them noted musicians and teachers from all over the world, and also from Readers Like You. If you ever feel like contributing, please check out our Submissions Guidelines. Not every piece that gets submitted to me makes it online. Sometimes they simply take a lot of time, mostly because I occasionally have to totally rewrite articles or convert all the notation examples to the software we use or record material and, especially with my schedule of late, it’s not easy to make time for all of this. So, on top of everything else, I appreciate your patience with me!

And speaking of patience, let’s get on with noting what’s new here at Guitar Noise since last week’s newsletter:

New Articles And Lessons

A Tribute To Gary Moore
by Todd Seely

You’ve read his names on our Reviews Page many times, now find out a bit about this venerated guitarist, courtesy of Todd Seely, writer for The Fuze.

From Math To Music
A Mathematical Approach To Learning The Fretboard
by Bruce Cyburt

One of the more difficult tasks to learning the guitar is mastering the fretboard. Bruce presents us with one method, which employs simple memorization and your ability to quickly add small integers in your head. The first part of this article will present this method, and the second part will provide additional information to reinforce your learning of the fret board.

Guitar Playing By Numbers
by Graham Merry

Here’s Graham’s take on using a mathematical approach to learning the fretboard. And while he’ll be the first to say that this is not a replacement for theory and it won’t teach you the names of notes in scales or chords, but it does offers you a way of using theory without too much thought.

Sunday Songwriters Group

The Sunday Songwriters Group is a Guitar Noise exclusive. Conceived by Ryan Spencer and Nick Torres, the idea is to give songwriters a weekly exercise in order to help develop their lyric-writing skills.

Now in our third year (!), Bob continues to put us all through our paces, giving us weekly assignments to help everyone sharpen their abilities.

It’s open to everyone. Got an itch to write? Jump on in! Even if you don’t write, you should feel free to critique. After all, you probably have experience listening to songs, no?

For more info, visit the SSG FAQ.

Year Three, Week 25

It’s All Elemental (part 4)

It’s still all in the imagery, but now we’ve got a little twist. In the first year of the SSG, we had a week where we used the four “basic elements,” as they were called – Earth, Air, Fire and Water. In SSG Year 3, we’re going to give each element its own week!

Continuing with the elemental theme this week, our song should contain imagery based around earth – for example: solid as a rock, etc. Of all the elemental things we’ve had going here, I reckon this is probably the most difficult one to deal with but have a go.

Good writing

Bob

Reviews

Give Us More (Gary Moore Tribute)
CD Review by A-J Charron

A terrific tribute to the great Gary Moore, brought to you by Lion Music and featuring artists such as Joop Walters and Mark McGee.

Jez Lowe And The Bad Pennies – Honesty Box
CD Review by A-J Charron

Amazing songwriting on a CD which also showcases a very good bunch of musicians. Never going overboard or being too technical, they just do what they do incredibly well with great results.

Emerson, Lake And Palmer – Live At Montreux 1997
DVD Review by A-J Charron

This DVD, a nice offering from Eagle Vision, is a tribute to one of the seventies’ biggest rock band, featuring Emerson, Lake and Palmer recorded in one of their last live performances together at the legendary Montreux.

Guyatone VT-3 Vintage Tremolo
Product Review by A-J Charron

The VT-3 is a really cool stomp box from Guyatone. The tremolo effect is amazingly powerful from such a little device. It sounds big, but it also sounds clean and clear, just as if it were coming straight from a vintage amp!

Thoughts & Feedback

Owing to all sorts of factors, we don’t always have a lot going on in the newsletter. But we usually make up for it the following week! Next time out we’ll print some of the responses we got about how to find time to practice as well as touch on a few more interesting projects going on with the Guitar Noise community.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace

David