Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

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, Volume 2, Issue 42!

Forty-two, as all good intergalactic hitchhikers know, is the answer, as in the answer to life, the universe, everything. How many seas must a white dove sail, before she can sleep in the sand? Forty-two. Do you want fries with that? Forty-two. Will you please put down that guitar and help me put out this grease fire in the kitchen? Forty-two.

You’ll be astonished at the serenity knowing this answer will give you…

Okay, seriously…

CALLING COMPUTER GRAPHIC ARTISTS!!!

Paul is looking for a hand on a small project. He’s got a great idea on how to make the site even cooler, but needs a bit of creative know-how. If you’d like to help out with your skills, please contact our fearless leader. It’s a great way to help make Guitar Noise even better. And millions of people will see your work!

New Lessons And Articles

Three terrific new lessons this week – covering time signatures, banjo rolls and working the melody into your strumming patterns. Here are the latest that have gone online at Guitar Noise since our last newsletter:

Time Signatures
by Dan Lasley (with Paul Ortiz)

Mr. Lasley has guts, I’ll tell you. I’m not even certain I’d like to try to tackle writing about the sticky subject of time signatures, but Dan has done just that. Here’s a great piece for beginners trying to get a handle on this confusing subject. And Paul Ortiz has gone above and beyond, providing some truly excellent MP3s to illustrate Dan’s lesson. Kudos to both of these guys!

Banjo Basics
by Russ Sprouse

He’s baaaaack! In his second lesson, Russ introduces us to TAB for the banjo and guides us through some basic finger picking patterns (”rolls,” I’m learning to call them!). He also pays particular attention to the dynamics of picking, which is a topic many a guitarist could use advice on!

Like A Hurricane – Songs For Intermediates #11
by David Hodge

After spending the past few lessons developing bass lines, let’s turn our attention to the melody. This Neil Young classic lends itself nicely to learning how to integrate a song’s melody into your strumming. Plus we’ll continue our work with arpeggio and partial chord picking.

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 36

We’ve got titles. We’ve got plots. We’ve got story lines. We even have the first verse.

Now we need a chorus.

But in order to do that, we really need to know how the song progresses. All we have is a basic story idea from last week. Let’s fix that first.

(By the way, anyone can join in. We have plenty of titles to go around.)

Assignment #1

Pick a first verse that you didn’t write. Ideally it shouldn’t have your title either, but if the first verse writer came up with something so completely different than anything you’d have come up with, we’ll let that slide. I’m trusting you here…

Describe the flow and build of the song, based on the plot and verse you pick. One sentence per verse will do (and remember the first verse is done already).

For instance:

1. He storms out of the house angry.

2. He drives to the local bar to have a few.

3. Changes his mind and goes back home to forgive and forget.

4. Sees his girlfriend’s car in an accident on the way.

There you have the build for four verses. And 4 verses is the limit. Try to have a total of three or four for the song (and again that includes the already written first verse!).

STOP THERE!!!! Do not write any additional verses.

Assignment #2

Write the chorus for your unwritten verses.

Think carefully about what you have decided for the song’s verses.

Make sure that you are using the chorus as a chorus.

You should not be using the chorus to explain anything about the song. Try to use it like you are exposing an inner thought that sums everything up.

One more thing, if you see your chorus is wordy, roughly the same length as the verses, pare it down. This week strip the chorus to its essence. Choose your words carefully. Hint hint, if you picked a one word title, well that could be an entire line in your chorus.

No more than 4-8 carefully chosen lines please.

Good luck and good writing

Reviews

Katy Pfaffl
Wonderful debut CD from a talented singer/songwriter. Great tunes, great vocals, great arrangements.

Clarelynn Rose: Elegant Tern
Freshly original acoustic guitar music highlights Clarelynn’s sophomore effort. Thoughtful and enchanting.

Thoughts and Feedback

Last week I went on a bit of a rant about MP3s, lessons, copyrights and fairness. While I (kind of) apologize for that, I realize that there was another point concerning “full” MP3s that I didn’t bring up. It’s a bit silly but it means a bit to me, as you’ll no doubt understand. So bear with me a moment…

I’ve made mention in some of my columns of my love of silent films. I also think that a lot of you can also infer from my writing that I admire people that can craft a great pop song. Many people may not think so, but sometimes, having strict guidelines to work within can bring about greater creativity than having none.

I may be wrong about this, but I think that not having sound files on the Guitar Noise site made me a better writer. The challenge was to describe, often with just words, no charts, no tab, things that were much easier to teach someone that could see and hear you. People write to us about the quality of the lessons and the articles and I think that everyone who writes for Guitar Noise is rightfully proud of that.

So imagine if you will, what happens when you get an email about a lesson asking you to explain something that is already explained in the lesson, such as how to finger a certain chord or whatever. The only explanation that makes sense is that the reader is not reading, but rather “looking at the pictures.” In this case, “pictures” would be tab or charts or MP3s.

I don’t know how many of you use sources outside of the internet – books, videos, CDs, teachers – but I have to tell you that many “lessons” I find both on the internet and off consist of a bit of tab and someone saying, “just play this.” To me, obviously, this isn’t much of a lesson.

Any learning, by definition, is the result of study and experience. That means that you have to put in the required brainpower. As I’ve said over and over (and over) in my lessons, I’m much more interested in showing you “how” and “why” than “what.” And part of me does worry that it would be so easy to just throw up an MP3 and say, “just do that.”

So I want you to make a deal with me. Don’t let me do that. Make it a point to see if you are actually learning something or merely repeating it. Let me know what is and what isn’t working and we can discuss how to make it better for everyone.

Why? Well, aside from the obvious reasons, there’s one we’ll discuss next Sunday…

I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace

David