Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

In This Issue

• News and Announcements
• New Lessons and Articles
• Email of the week
• Guitar Tip
• Sunday Songwriters Sessions
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

Maybe I should make that “welcome back!” Hello to all. In case you hadn’t heard, we did end up taking a bit of a hiatus while Paul and I were both busy on projects. His were, of course, much more interesting than mine. I think that I can comfortably say that given the choice between working on a huge audit and directing a movie that most people would chose the latter.

Okay, I did do other things besides the audit. I also got to host the 2003 Riverside Jam here in Chicago over the first weekend of August. For those of you unfamiliar with this event, it was started in 2000 by Dan and Laura Lasley and has grown way beyond all control. You can read about the very first one on our Performance page.

RJ2K3 was an interesting event, a lot of fun (hopefully) for all involved. I’d do it all again, if only for the reason that I got to meet Nick Torres in person for the first time. I can now tell you all without reservation that he’s as cool in person as he is in print.

I also decided, rather selfishly I may add, to take a ten day vacation during which I didn’t even see a computer. Perhaps I should say my guitar made me take it!

And now we’re back and there’s lots to do! To all of you who’ve sent me articles and proposals, not to mention questions and email (which I went and mentioned anyway!), rest assured you will hear from me shortly. Just not immediately.

What we have for you immediately is as follows:

New Lessons And Articles

Perfect Intention
by Jamie Andreas

There is a magical moment when playing that the music actually seems to be playing itself and you are just part of your instrument. I know it sounds pretty Zen, but it’s true. Jamie’s latest article for Guitar Noise explores what it takes to achieve this incredible state in your own performance.

Wild World
Easy Songs for Beginners #23
by David Hodge

We’re going to hit the ground running here. This may be the most involved beginners’ song that we’ve done yet but don’t let that deter you! While the focus of this lesson is on switching chords smoothly, you’ll also learn some cool flourishes and riffs and strumming patterns and even find a good practical use for that pesky C major scale!

Email Of The Week

This week’s email and response comes courtesy of Laura Lasley, who’s got some very interesting articles coming our way in September. This query concerns her article, How Young Is Too Young To Play?

I read your article about age and playing the guitar, I became interested in playing guitar about a year ago. I am 17 and was wondering if I have left it a bit too late. I have been playing constantly and it is second nature to me to have a guitar in hand now. What are your thoughts?

Thanks for writing Guitar Noise! Glad you enjoyed the article on age and playing guitar. I wrote that article in response to people wondering how young was too young to play. However I believe that you are never too old to learn an instrument. I didn’t pick up the guitar until my late 30’s and have enjoyed every minute of learning. I’ve many more stories from readers who didn’t learn until their 40’s. I really don’t think you’ve left it a bit late at all. I’m glad to hear that it’s second nature to have a guitar in hand; that is a wonderful way to live. Keep working on it and you will find that you pick up all kinds of new things as time goes on. If, for any reason, you have to put down the guitar for a while, you will find that it’s quite easy to come back to.

The guitar is a never ending source of learning and enjoyment.

Guitar Tip – Beginners’ Lessons Discussion

A while back, a reader posted an intriguing idea on the Beginners’ Q & A Forum. The idea was to start a “discussion page” for specific beginners’ lessons in order to generate more of a classroom type discussion on specific topics that people would work on together.

Knowing (or thinking that I knew) what the summer was going to be like I felt like this might be a good thing to develop this fall, but you know beginners! They’ve gone and started without me!

The past two Fridays (I don’t know about this week yet!) a discussion on specific lessons on the “Easy Songs for Beginners” page has sprouted up and it has been informative, challenging and a lot of fun. It’s very cool to read how everyone is helping each other out.

Check out the Beginners’ Q & A and see!

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 45

Since I’ve been spending a lot of the week catching up on things, I have absolutely no idea as to what Nick’s got planned for this week!

But I would like to take this moment to thank him and Ryan for starting this whole thing up almost a year ago. I don’t know what’s been more beneficial – getting to actually spend more time on my own songwriting or getting to read all the incredible things that other folks have written.

Now that I’m getting back into the swing of things, I plan to spend a lot more time both writing and doing critiques.

And remember, whatever this week’s topic happens to be….

Good luck and good writing.

Reviews

The Principles Of Correct Practice For Guitar

Forum member Jazzarati has been incredibly kind enough to provide Guitar Noise readers with this review of Jamie Andreas’ book. For all of you who’ve asked about this on the forum pages, here’s a great answer.

Thoughts and Feedback

There’s going to be a lot going on at Guitar Noise this fall, both on the site and behind the scenes. So be sure to keep an eye out for all sorts of announcements and surprises.

As many of you know, I’ve been trying to work on our first Guitar Noise tutorial CD and the good news is that I think it will be ready to meet the public later this fall. But before we can do this, I do need some help.

For those of you not familiar with this project, our first CD is about “Strumming.” Here is the working outline of the CD:

Intro
Tuning (getting in tune with CD)
Time Signature
4/4
Notes – whole, half, quarter and eighth
Strumming quarter notes
Strumming eighth notes
Basic 4/4 strumming patterns
3/4
Basic 3/4 strumming patterns
Speed – How strumming affects perception part 1
Bass note/strum – using root of chord
Bass note/strum – using alternating bassline
Bass note/strum – using walking bassline
Arpeggio strumming (think “house of the rising sun”)
Triplets
6/8 and 12/8
Arpeggios with triplets, 6/8 and 12/8
Basic blues shuffle
Palm muting
Blues shuffle with palm muting
Anticipations – How strumming affects perception part 2
Partial chords
Partial chords with palm muting (think any Neil Young)
General genres (rock, reggae, folk, ballad, etc.)
Examples of all types and combos

Now, what I need to know is how much interest there actually is in this. I’d like to find out whether or not I should produce these individually or en masse (and this will naturally affect the asking price of the CD).

So, suppose that we were asking between $12 and $15 (including shipping) for this tutorial CD – would you want one? Here’s your chance to preorder and let me know. You can also let me know if there’s a topic I’ve missed!

I am hoping that you will find this CD to be of the same educational caliber as my lessons and columns here at Guitar Noise. After all, we do not want to put our name on a product that doesn’t live up to the standards we’ve already set here on our site!

Let me know what you think. Also, let me know whether or not you’d be interested in CDs on other topics. We’re currently exploring the following topics: Intro to Fingerstyle, Intermediate Fingerstyle, Basic Theory, Intro to Electric Guitar, Beginning Electric Rhythm Guitar, Beginning Lead Guitar, Beginning Bass Guitar, Chord Voicing, Intro to Alternate and Open Tunings, Intro to the 12 String Guitar and Basic Songwriting.

Next Sunday, look for news about the site’s new design. We’ll be looking for a lot of feedback on that!

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

And, as always,

Peace

David