Newsletter Vol. 2 # 68 – January 25, 2004
Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.
In This Issue
- News and Announcements
- New Lessons and Articles
- Worth a Look
- Email of the Week
- Sunday Songwriters Group / Sunday Composers
- Thoughts and Feedback
News And Announcements
Greetings!
Welcome to Guitar Noise News!
Those of you who’ve been with us a while know that Paul Hackett, the gentleman who created, runs and maintains Guitar Noise, lives in Beijing, China. You probably also know that I try to make it a point to wish him and all of our Chinese readers a Happy New Year as well. Paul is, after all, more than kind enough to remind me it’s time to start writing “Year Of The Monkey” on all my checks!
Speaking of ol’ Fearless Leader, here’s a bit of news from Paul himself:
We need a catchy new slogan for the site in order to etch ourselves in people’s minds and sum up the spirit of what we do. It should be short and snappy and ready for worldwide consumption. Needless to say it will be seen by millions of viewers on the site, but it will also be appearing on T-shirts and other GN stuff. Make you own suggestions or vote for your favorite on the Guitar Noise Forums.
So what are you waiting for? Go on and give us some ideas or pick out the ones you like best!
Now might also be a good time to bring up that Guitar Noise Contributing Writer Tom Hess has a new CD out. HESS ~ Opus 2 is now available through his website, www.guitar9.com and many other distributors around the world. You can also find out more about it here: http://hess.4t.com
And speaking of Mr. Hess, you might be interested to read that he has another new article for us this week! Let’s take a look at all this week’s goings-on at Guitar Noise.
New Lessons And Articles
Understanding Your Work
by A-J Charron
Sometimes you write down something that sounds good and later (often much later) you figure out why. Here’s an interesting look at this from A-J, concerning one of his songs, Jasmine Scents.
Why Aren’t You A Good Guitarist
by Tom Hess
Everyone seems to ask oneself this question at some point. Tom Hess takes the time to list out twenty-five different answers that might help you move your playing in a more positive direction. Plus, as a bonus, he throws in five tips that you might want to think about avoiding!
It’s Too Late
Easy Songs for Beginners #26
by David Hodge
Who says you need a piano to play a song? Many guitarists avoid certain pieces, labeling them as “piano music.” This doesn’t have to be you! Let’s look at taking a typical piano song and arranging it so that you can play it on a single guitar. Plus, we’ll have a look at seventh chords and using rhythms to make hooks.
Worth A Look
A-J’s latest article reminded me how, about a year ago, I had this idea that how songwriters could help one another by describing what the creative process they went through, using a single song as an example. Thus our “Songcrafters” page was created and almost as quickly forgotten! Call me stubborn, but maybe now’s a good time to look at it again! Here are the articles currently on it:
Email Of The Week
Some of my friends tell me that, at some point, I’m bound to get bored, or worse, jaded, with all the posiive email I get concerning Guitar Noise. “Ho-hum! Another fan letter…” But somehow, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. This is mostly because everyone has a personal story to tell. I’d like to share this one I received over the weekend with you
David:
Very infrequently do I take the time to thank the wealth of contributors to the rich internet pool of resources. I have four sons and guitar is not my primary instrument – your articles and the site have been great. I’ve saved them, thinking the site would vanish – but keep coming back again and again.
You guys are really doing great work and contributing to my children’s music education. We play and sing together as family and friends to share the joy. The children study other instruments as well, and significant formal training on too many instruments would be prohibitive. Your material has certainly helped me work with these guys and have a blast.
Thanks for your effort!!
You’re certainly welcome! It’s funny, I often think of people using this site as individuals – but it’s great to know that we can help out entire families. We’ll chat more on this subject in “Thoughts and Feedback.”
Sunday Songwriters Group / Sunday Composers
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.
Now in our second year (!), Nick and Bob are continuing to put us all through our paces, giving us weekly assignments to help everyone sharpen their abilities.
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.
The Sunday Composers page is the newly created musical extension of the Sunday Songwriters Group. On this forum page the emphasis is on music writing rather than lyrics. Join us for exercises and discussion on the other half of “lyrics and music”.
And now that you all know what’s going on…
Sunday Songwriters Group – the Second Year!
Week 13
Aptly for those students for numerology this is week 13 of the SSG and I thought it appropriate we do the following assignment.
This week you can write about anything you want. Any Topic, any style, any form. There is, of course, one stipulation – we’d like you to use a number in the title. It can be the whole title (as in “One” or “409″) or be part of the title (”96 Tears,” “A Murder of One”).
Fractions will count, no pun intended (thanks Nick)!!
Good writing
Bob
Thoughts & Feedback
In some ways, the success of Guitar Noise is a little daunting to me. Last time I checked (and I haev to admit that this was maybe last September, so I have probably got the numbers lower than they should be!), we were receiving fifteen million hits a month, representing about six hundred thousand individual users!
So imagine you’re a teacher and you walk into your classroom, stand up at the desk or dais, and look out and see more than a half-million people, all waiting to hear what you have to say…
How do you make your lesson interesting to each one of them? Well, the obvious (and only) answer is that you can’t. Believe it or not, I know this. I do not expect any one article on our site to be read by each reader. We actually have stats and can tell you what articles people are reading. Just check out the “Guitar Noise 100″ list, which you can link to from the home page.
This is why we have a lot of different articles and a lot of different writers here. We try to give you as much variety as possible and let each writer go with his or her own personality and strength. And we’re constantly looking at material from new writers who would like to contribute to the community.
We also try to spend some of our time revisiting older pieces. Speaking strictly for myself, I know that there are many times I’ve gotten something wrong and someone, thankfully, was kind enough to point out my error to me. I’d double check it, and then get Paul to correct it onsite. Bottom line is, we’ve still got pieces with mistakes in them and, between all the other things we’re trying to do, we don’t always get to those as quickly as we should.
So if you see something that you think is wrong, write me. It may take me a bit to get back to you and it may take even longer to correct our error, but we’ll do our best to do so.
Likewise, if you ever read a piece and then think that you can do a better job, by all means go ahead and write me about doing so. A lot of things about music are personal and, as I’ve gone way out of my way to tell you in almost all of my lessons and columns, there are numerous ways of doing things. We’ve a number of ariticles delving into a particular subject. Why? Well, obviously for the same reason that two people can explain something to you and you’ll find that you’ll completely understand one person while the other leaves you scratching your head! You’re bound to find all sorts of contradictory information on the Internet. Here as well as anyplace else. Whom you decide to listen to is up to you.
Rereading that, I realize that this is starting to sound very much like an election year! Not quite what I had in mind!
Instead of division, let me offer you the chance to write and contribute. I have to apologize to some folks who sent me some things last summer – in all the craziness in my own life at the time I ended up losing some great pieces. Hopefully, most of that is all behind me now and we can move on with making Guitar Noise a place for as many people who’d like to come join.
I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe. Write me!
And, as always,
Peace
David
