Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

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In This Issue

• News and Announcements
• New Lessons and Articles
• Email of the Week
• Sunday Songwriters Sessions
• Reviews
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

I hope this finds everyone in good health and spirits. Let’s get right into things.

New Lessons And Articles

I’ve been waiting for a while to announce this one! Here’s what’s new at Guitar Noise since we last chatted:

When I Woke Up This Morning
by Alan Green

Even if he didn’t use words like “quaver” and “crochet,” Alan would still be an incredibly interesting person. His first online lesson for Guitar Noise is an introduction to finger-style blues guitar, which includes “A Study in Blue,” an exercise he’s written. Complete with MP3 files, this lesson will make certain that you can sound impressive should Alan’s Auntie Lisa and Uncle Darren drop in on you!

Simple Twist Of Fate
Songs for Intermediates #9
by David Hodge

It’s a lesson on descending bass lines! It’s teachings about chord progressions and chord substitutions! It’s a lesson on figuring out chords in open E and open D tunings! And it’s all wrapped up in “A Simple Twist of Fate…”

Email Of The Week

Why tune other than standard?

For as long as there’s been the guitar, there’s been different ways of tuning it. What we think of as “standard” tuning has evolved over time. Our modern guitar came from the lute and lutes were tuned to fifths instead of fourths (I’m not the greatest historian, so please don’t take me to task).

Anyway, nowadays people use alternate tunings for all sorts of reasons. The most obvious ones are open tunings. This is tuning your guitar in such a way that you get a major or minor chord when you strum the open strings. We cover this in our open tuning columns on the Guitar Columns page, as well as in the Easy Songs for Beginners’ Lesson Happy and in the new Intermediates’ Lesson Simple Twist of Fate.

Other alternate tunings are as numerous as one’s imagination. As to “why” one might use them, this can range from having a bass note that might not otherwise be available (Drop D, for instance, where the low E is tuned down to D) to creating a fingering arpeggio that would be physically impossible in standard tuning (such as David Crosby’s Guineviere)(and I’m sure I spelled that wrong!). You can check out some of these ideas in our “Alternate tuning” articles on the Guitar Columns page – On The Tuning Awry, Cover Story and Alternate Writing Styles. The latter article discussed the use of alternate tuning as a way to get around writer’s block.

You might also want to check out the column A Celtic Air which discusses the use of DADGAD tuning in Celtic guitar playing.

If you have a question for us please remember that many questions have been asked in different ways, and the answer may already appear somewhere on Guitar Noise. If you have a question please check out the help pages.

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.

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.

And now that you all know what’s going on…

SSG – Week 17

This week, we’d like you to spend more time getting familiar with your guitar, and to make certain you don’t get interrupted, we’re even going to get rid of those pesky lyrics for a week!

Let’s concentrate on the MUSIC of a song. This week, your mission is to come up with three different chord progressions. And, yes, there is a catch: we want you to use an open or alternate tuning. And by “alternate” tuning, we don’t mean simply tuning down. OR you can use standard tuning, but non-standard chord voicings. These shouldn’t be phenomenally long or complicated.

Examples:

Progression #1:

Tuning: DADF#AD

D (000000) – G (020120) – Em9 (222020) – D (000000)

Progression #2

Tuning: STANDARD

Dmaj7 (10,0,0,11,10,9) – Gmaj7/D (XX0777) – Aadd9 (X07600) – Dmaj9 (X57670)

Feel free to add any of your thoughts about your particular strumming, picking, etc.

If you want more on alternate tuning, let me recommend the (ahem) very well written articles “Look Ma, No Hands” and “On The Tuning Awry,” both of which have charts of many different tunings. In addition, Nick has found some interesting sites that might be of help to you. Check out the Week 17 posting on the SSG Forum page.

As Nick says, write well.

Reviews

REFUGE
A-J Charron gives us his review of the latest release from George Robinson, an exception acoustic guitarist.

Third Hand Capo
Continuing with our unintended “theme” this week, here’s a truly fun little gadget that will open up worlds for you if you’re into alternate tunings!!

Thoughts and Feedback

One must always watch what one says…A week ago Friday, I received and email from a reader who had written me last fall. He had asked about a possible lesson on Hotel California by the Eagles and at the time, it happened to be on my short list of upcoming lessons (”short list” meaning that it was (is) a definite choice and simply a matter of time). So I told him that I did plan on making it a lesson and (again at the time) I hoped to have it up in January. And here was this email, telling me in no uncertain terms that here it was, January 31, and hey, no lesson to be seen.

But as much as I bring this up for your amusement, I have to tell you something more astonishing. I do feel quite guilty sometimes. Guilty is not the right word; I’m not certain what is.

Let me put it this way: There’s so much I want to teach you.

When we put up the first MP3 (the lesson on Losing My Religion), a group of us on the forum pages had a good laugh at the idea of me quitting my job and pretty much doing nothing but writing and recording lessons. One reader, bless his heart, offered me a place on his property where I could, presumably, live and use electricity in return for lessons. I may, one day, realize that I should have taken him up on his offer.

The old joke among my friends is best summed up by my official motto: “David – Gradually he catches on!!!” In my desire to show that I can maintain the standards that Paul has set for Guitar Noise, in the heady rush of bringing in new writers and putting together MP3s for the lessons, I have unintentionally neglected some things. Yes, there’s so much I want to teach, but I am only one person.

I am going to try, in the next month, to take a few steps backwards. This will actually be a good thing, I think. There are articles that need follow-ups. Let’s start with the second part of the “Rosetta Stone” and then follow that up with the second “Absolute Beginners” piece.

In the meantime, there will still be new articles from other writers and (hopefully) a new Beginners’ and a new Intermediate piece for each month. I need to give myself a little focus for the time being. I hope that each of you has a great week. I look forward to hearing from you.

As always,

Peace

David