Newsletter Vol. 2 # 47 – July 27, 2003
Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.
In This Issue
- News and Announcements
- New Lessons and Articles
- Guitar Tip
- Sunday Songwriters Sessions
- Thoughts and Feedback
News And Announcements
Greetings!
Welcome to Guitar Noise News!
On a purely personal note, a happy birthday to my brother, Tom! No, he doesn’t play guitar, but he does listen to me play (and practice!).
Okay, now it’s time for a VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE!!!
We’re (Paul and I) are going to have to take the next few weeks off. Chalk it up to trying too hard, or simply file it under “When it rains, it pours…” but between his schedule and mine we are not going to be able to put up any more updates for a bit. His movie is proving to be a logistical nightmare and little did I dream that I was going to have to all the events that have turned up in my life at present.
Even though there won’t be any new articles or newsletters for a few weeks (the next newsletter will be on August 24th), there are literally hundreds of articles here that you can go over and the forum will still be its old active self.
And when we come back, one of the first things we’ll be talking about is our new “step by step” beginners’ lesson series, complete with its own dedicated forum page and (hopefully) a mentor program! One of the things I am doing in my “off” time is meeting with Nick to plan this all out. Amazing what everyone gets for free here, isn’t it?
Finally, my deepest thanks to everyone for not inundating me with requests for video files! Let’s get right into the rest of this week’s news, shall we?
New Lessons And Articles
A Short Q & A With Bobby Borg
by David Hodge
Bobby Borg is a musician and an author with a vast experience in the music business. His recent book, The Musician’s Handbook, covers virtually all the business aspects of the industry. It’s truly an essential read for anyone interested in getting into music as a career. In his first interview for Guitar Noise, he tells us where to get educated on the business of music, and how to go about getting gigs. This article is for you, whether you’re a musician, engineer, producer, or manager.
Guitar Tip
Somehow, Nick managed to also take time to go to the Kennedy center this past week, which made me think of a tip for this week’s newsletter. Have you been to this site? Kennedy Center: Millennium Stage
You can watch past performances from a number of groups or soloists including: Nickel Creek, David Hamburger, Don Mclean, Patti Smith, Norah Jones, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy etc. There are 683 entries under the heading: “Folk, Blues, Bluegrass”
So here’s yet another way to get to enjoy some music. Have fun!
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 41
As Terrible Ted Nugent says: “It’s a free for all”
Well, not exactly, but close. This week let’s see how all of this writing practice is helping. We are going to take the paint-by-numbers approach to songwriting. You can pick any topic you want to paint. Then go through this list step by step, in order, and post the whole shebang.
- Think up a working title.
- Identify your internal “hidden meaning”
- Write yourself a brief plot/timeline
- Write your chorus, short, stripped down. An internal thought. Use the title line if you can.
- Pick some imagery source and write down about 10-15 words that belong to your imagery choice. Don’t worry; you don’t have to use them all.
- Write a 1 or 2 liner to tell yourself what is happening in each verse.
- Write those verses and keep it down to about 4 or 5 verses, max. Make sure these verses are based on personal experience. Even if you haven’t experienced what you are writing about, approach it from some common angle.
- Tell us what you think about writing this way. Does it help or hinder? Do you think you write better this way or is it too confining? Compare this to some of your pre-SSG stuff. What do you think?
Good luck and good writing.
Reviews
The Musician’s Handbook
A Practical Guide to Understanding the Music Business
Talk with people about getting into music and almost all will tell you it’s all about who you know. And with Bobby Borg’s new book, you, too, can have a valuable friend in the business that can let you know what he’s learned through his twenty-five-plus years in the industry.
Thoughts and Feedback
I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time answering when someone asks me about my favorite anything. There are all sorts of reasons for this – obviously whatever mood I’m in will have an affect on my choice of a song or a movie or even a particular guitar. But the biggest reason is that I am wary of superlatives.
This is why it’s rare to find me participating in any forum post dealing with “this band vs. that band” or “guitar duels” (and could there possibly be a stupider name for that?) or anything of that nature.
But I do enjoy reading these things and finding out both how other people think about things and, much more interesting, their perceptions of the world.
For instance, it is extremely interesting that, when you look through a lot of the posts, if someone doesn’t like something, it’s because that particular something, in the words of our ever present language enhancer, “sux.”
Well, it’s interesting to me…
Think about it. Everyone has likes and dislikes. It’s called personal taste. It’s called personality. And personally, I’m not sure that it ever says anything about the object because it says so much more about ourselves.
We even get into long before music. Why does one person eat beets why another won’t touch them? It is the beets’ fault? We’d laugh at such an explanation.
But when it comes to music, sports, cars, favorite colors, we essentially say, “I don’t like it because it (they) is (are) not what I like.” True rocket science, that.
And the truly amusing thing about this way of looking at things is that we find it offensive when other people use the same logic! My parents “hate” rock and roll. Their parents “hated” swing. For all I know their parents’ parents’ parents’ parents’ “hated” Gregorian chants…
I don’t know if it’s just my personality or perhaps a gift acquired by aging or what, but I am so tired of “hate.” My first reaction, when seeing that word, is a literal roll of the eyes.
Hatred and anger, as emotions (and they are emotions and should be acknowledged as such), burn out quickly. Unless you artificially sustain them, they will come and go. Unless you take something personally, usually something that isn’t personal in the least, the anger will pass before you know it.
And hatred takes even more artificial sustenance that anger…
No one can be expected to like every type of music that is out there. This certainly can’t be anymore surprising than me finding out one of my best friends will not eat Brussels sprouts (one of my favorite vegetables). But what could be surprising, and certainly educational, would be to look into the whys of not liking a certain type of music. And taking the time to think of why someone might find something you don’t like to be totally involving.
That is, if you want to think about it. Again, it’s simply my opinion, but when you get to thinking about it is where all the truly interesting things happen. And you also find that most people, regardless of what they like and don’t, tend to be very much the same when you get to that level.
I know that most of you already know this and I’m glad to see that many of you don’t opt for the easy solution of saying “I don’t like this and that’s that.” After all, being musicians (being people!) we know better than to trust the easy solution.
I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe.
And, as always,
Peace
David
