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
• Sunday Songwriters Sessions
• Reviews
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

I want to start things out with this note from our Executive Director:

From the desk of Paul
RE: Links

Hello everybody,

Now that Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival is over, I have started in earnest on what can only be described as spring cleaning. Every day this week, I have been going through Guitar Noise looking for all the old things that should either be recycled or thrown away.

It is not very gratifying to see that very few of the 800 sites to which Guitar Noise has links are actually linking back. Furthermore, many of the sites being linked to have disappeared, others haven’t been updated in two or three years, and many have a nauseating amount of pop up. For the next week I want to make sanitizing the links the focus of my spring cleaning.I am sure that most of you visiting Guitar Noise are not here so you can find links to other sites. So it won’t alarm you too much if I say in the coming weeks we are going to switch to a fair link exchange program. That means, sites that don’t offer us a reciprocal link may be in danger of being removed from our list of links. If you have a website related to guitars, music careers or your own band site and you want a link to it from Guitar Noise, please do us the courtesy of linking back. If you already have a site listed on Guitar Noise you might want to send me a quick email this week to let me know you are planning to link back and mention where I can find your link. Send all messages related to links to me. We can also discuss setting up a link exchange with MusicCareers.net if you like.

I am sure it will take me more than a week to get all this done, but I do hope to get the bulk of the work out of the way before March 1st. And finally, if you have visited any sites we link to that you don’t like I’d be interested in hearing more.

Have a great week and thanks.

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer

Okay, let’s go then…

New Lessons And Articles

Some very basic, but very important things this week. Plus the latest chapter from Len! Here’s what’s gone online at Guitar Noise since we last chatted:

Fretboard 101 (or “Where Did I Put My E?”)
by Nick Torres

Some of the most interesting lesson articles start out on the forum pages. Nick outlines some basic steps to get you started on learning where the notes are on your fretboard. Provided you’re in standard tuning, of course. Mr. Torres’ methods are painless and fun.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MINE (part 3 – GIGS!)
by Len Collins

The first gig! The last gig! And the “biggest” gig! These are the things guitarists’ lives are made of! Len Collins, creator of the Guitar Breakthrough software, continues his memoirs here at Guitar Noise with what we could call the “Gigs” chapter. Entertaining as always!

Timing Is Everthing
Reading Musical Notation #2
by David Hodge

You know what notes the note is, now it’s time to learn what else music notation can teach you. Turns out it’s pretty vital information! This is the long awaited (by me, if by no one else) sequel to “Your Very Own Rosetta Stone.”

Sunday Songwriting 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 18

This week, and I’m certain this is no surprise to any of you, we ask you to take any one of the chord progressions, alternate chord voicings or anything at all that caught your fancy from week 17 and to write lyrics for it. Subject matter and style are completely up to you.

If you didn’t participate in week 17, don’t fret. Feel free to come up with some interesting tunings or chords on your own and do both words and music if you wish. No one’s going to ask you about it, so if you only want to write lyrics, then consider this a “free” week! As Nick says, write well.

REVIEWS

Yeah Really
A-J Charron gives us his review of the new CD from Elaine K.

Jellifish
It’s another pick review. Straight from the forum pages to your door, Nick Torres gives us the lowdown on this decidedly funky guitar toy.

Billboard’s Hottest Hot 100 Hits
Ah! To remember the days of listening to Casey Kasem before he became the voice of “Shaggy on those Scooby Doo cartoons… Yes, I was an “American Top 40″ addict. Here’s a book that will remind you what people really listened to back in the good old days.

Thoughts and Feedback

First, always, I want to thank everyone who wrote this past week, whether with questions or suggestions or simply saying hi and offering words of advice and encouragement. Many of you note in your emails that I must get a lot of mail, and that is true, but I cannot begin to relate to you how important your feedback is. It lets us know what’s working, what isn’t, and it also lets us understand how to best bring you what you want. For instance, I know that the time I spend making sure I’ve got a song lesson broken down to the point where all of it is perfectly clear is more important to you than simply turning out the sort of TAB you’d find elsewhere on the Internet. Simply knowing this makes me not want to cut corners!

Which brings up (yet) another point – I’ve personally been worried that with the addition of the MP3 files that I might be tempted to let the music “do the talking,” so to speak (sorry about the really bad pun there). Aside from the things I don’t think I’m going to be able to help, such as slightly different strumming patterns and muffed notes, do you think that the quality of the text of our lessons has been consistent?

While you’re all pondering that, I’d like to take a moment and make a little announcement: last month, with little fanfare, we added Nick Torres to the Guitar Noise staff. He will be assisting Ryan with the moderator chores on a number of our forum pages. Most of you who frequent the forum pages will be familiar with Nick and I think you will all agree that he certainly has the diplomacy, tact and humor to handle this task. Oh! And he’ll be writing stuff… lots of stuff…

If you have a moment, do drop the illustrious Mr. Torres a note of congratulations.

And this all reminds me that I should be introducing all of the staff to you. Well, I guess I now have a project for the next newsletter!I hope that each of you has a great week. I look forward to hearing from you.

As always,

Peace

David