Guitar Noise

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
• Forum News
• Sunday Songwriters Group / Sunday Composers
• Reviews
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

And welcome to February, everyone! Time just keeps moving on, doesn’t it? A good number of folks have written asking for more info on our Guitar Noise seminars and what, exactly, will be taught. So allow me to give you a brief synopsis of the first three:

Seminar 1: Strumming and Basic Theory

Day-long Group lesson will focus on the often-forgotten strumming hand! Learn to hear and copy rhythms as well as create your own. Class will touch upon many techniques from muting and percussive strokes to partial chord playing and alternate bass lines.

As a bonus, there will be a short seminar on basic theory, and how it applies to the guitar. Notes, scales and chord formation will be covered as well as basic fretboard study.

Attendees are encouraged to stick around and jam after the formal sessions.

Seminar 2: Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar and Introduction to Chord Voicing

Learn to fingerpick! We’ll start with very easy arpeggios and work up to simple two and three finger patterns that can be used in a wide variety of genres. From there we’ll add in bass lines and melody and harmony parts.

And to give you some more fun reasons to practice your fingerstyle lessons, there will be a short discussion on chord voicings. We’ll take the basic open position chords and learn how to use them all up and down the neck to come up with some cool chords that sound terrific, especially when used in a fingerstyle pattern.

Attendees, as always, are encouraged to stick around and jam after the formal sessions.

Seminar 3: Beginning Blues Guitar (parts 1 and 2)

A day of the blues! In the morning we’ll walk through the basics: structure, rhythm and (a very little) theory, by the end of which you’ll be able to play along with almost any blues song you know.

In the afternoon, we’ll build upon the morning lesson and learn some variations and some basic soloing theory and technique. By the end of the afternoon we’ll (hopefully!) be working on single-guitar instrumental blues songs where you’ll be playing both rhythm and lead!

Attendees, as always, are encouraged to stick around and jam after the formal sessions.

I hope that this gives you all a better idea of what’s in store for you. Please feel free to write me with any questions you might have.

I want to add that these are general outlines. We might get into a class where everyone shares a desire to work on one particular aspect of the seminar and so we’ll consequently devote a lot of time to that topic. By keeping the class size down, I hope we can give each participant exactly what he or she is looking for.

Both of the first two seminars, by the way, are almost completely booked! So if you want to reserve a place, please write soon!

Speaking of writing, owing to the “my Doom” virus, I’ve been a little (or a lot) late with getting back to some of my emails. Some of them, particularly if you didn’t put in a “subject” line or put something like “Hi” or Hello” there, I may not have gotten at all. So please feel free to write me again if you haven’t already received a reply. I won’t freak out about getting the same email twice!

Also, because of the incredible amount of junk I’ve received via the Internet, I had to close down my Compuserve account this week. So anything that anyone sent to “Dhodge8888@cs.com” these past two weeks is irretrievably lost. Please send it again to “dhodge@guitarnoise.com” and, again, my apologies for the inconvenience.

Well, now that that’s out of the way, shall we take a look at the latest offerings here at Guitar Noise?

New Lessons And Articles

A La Modal
by David Hodge

We’ve got a lot of material here at Guitar Noise on both scales and modes. In this column is to (very briefly) show you how to put together any modal scale yourself. Also, we’ll explore a few of the practical applications when it comes to modes. And if you’re not careful, you may learn two easy songs – Green Day’s Warning and that old Desmond Dekker reggae classic, The Israelites.

Worth A Look

As I mention in the New Articles section, we’ve a wealth of material on scales and modes on our site – there’s even a whole topic page devoted to them, which you can find here;

But I’d especially like to point out the one by Peter Simms: The Mystery of The Modal Scale

I think you’ll find it a great read.

Also, in this week’s new column, you’ll find references to this article: Scaling The Heights

As you’ll read in a moment, it might be a good idea to read that one again ni the relatively near future.

Email Of The Week

I have been playing guitar for years but for some reason when it comes to soloing and theory my brain goes numb. The funny thing is I can pump out solos on a particular song that suits the mood and feel, etc. The problem is that in reality I don’t know what I am doing. I’ll be jumping around the fretboard (usually in the key of E) and it seems to work. I’ll add chromatics and that works but I don’t know why.

To be honest, I have know idea what I am doing

What I do is to stay on the pentatonic scale of the key the song is and hope for the best. People talk about all these different modes and scales and I can’t figure out what it all means. Why would some guy use a harmonic minor scale when someone else uses pentatonic scale over the same chord sequence? How does that work? Do they contain the same notes? And how do you fit stuff to chords and riffs? How does it work?

Please could you help because I am stuck.

Well, this certainly isn’t something that I can answer with a single email. I think our latest new article this week might give you a good place to start! Also, check further down in our “Thoughts and Feedback” section for a little more news on this and other coming attractions! I think that you’ll find we’ll have a lot of new articles that should help you out throughout this winter and spring.

Forum News

Imagine my surprise when I looked on the main forum page last Sunday and found a whole new section! Why am I the last to know about these things, anyway?

Avid Guitar Noise Forum members Pet and Dave C. managed to coax Nick into creating our latest page:

Check it out. Since this is an area I’m pretty green in, I’ll certainly be dropping in to get some tips!

Also, I finally got a chance to check out the Guitar Noise Chatroom that Nick created. I have to say I had a blast “meeting” a number of our Forum members from all over. Get to know some of you comrades as people as well as GN posters! Drop in when you get a chance.

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 14

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

Reviews

Absolute Zero – Leigh Williams
Leigh Williams is a technically brilliant guitarist. His debut solo CD, Absolute Zero, is an instrumental tour de force. If you love fast and flashy guitar playing, then you’ll definitely love this album.

Martin Barre: Stage Left
If you like fantastic guitar, played by one of the top guitarists, with emotional accents and a skill born only from experience, then you’ll enjoy Martin Barre’s Stage Left.

Thoughts & Feedback

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

I used to write a weekly column for this place called Guitar Noise: the Online Guitar College. With all the absolutely incredibly wonderful feedback I get from the devotees of the Guitar Noise Song Lessons (both the Easy Songs for Beginners and the Songs for Intermediates), I still find myself missing writing about the “nuts and bolts” (no to be confused with the “fruits and nuts”) of teaching.

Since my move, I’ve tried to make it a point to get back into a schedule that allows me to write something, anything really, on a weekly basis. So far so good! And I think this is the way that I’ve envisioned things for a long time: each month produces a Beginners’ Lesson, an Intermediates’ Lesson, a lesson on a requested topic (this month’s being “Arranging Things,” that little introduction to chord melodies and arranging simple songs for the single guitar) and a column in the spirit of those long lost days of, what? two or three years ago?

Not to mention that I do want to make sure that there are plenty of articles from our other staff writers, contributing writers and contributing readers. January, I think, has been pretty successful in this way. But I wonder whether or not I can keep this up. I certainly think that it’s do-able. Time will tell, I guess.

In the meantime, I’d like to give you some kind of idea as to what’s coming down the pike. Our next Intermediate Lesson will build upon the ideas of this month’s Beginners’ Lesson (Carole King’s It’s Too Late) – we’ll put together a wonderful single-guitar arrangement of Elton John’s (and Bernie Taupin’s) Your Song. Then I’m thinking it’s high time that Neil Young showed his face around here again, so let’s do Old Man in the Beginners’ and take care of who knows how many requests by having an Intermediates’ Lesson on The Needle and The Damage Done. Heading into the springtime, I’d like to see a little bit of the Beatles, with Nowhere Man and You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away in the Beginners and Julia along with Here Comes The Sun gracing the Intermediates’ pages.

We’ll also follow up on our “Arrangements” series with a look at Brahms’ Lullaby in our next lesson and Greensleeves immediately following that. That, too, should take care of a lot of requests!

With the columns, I’d really like to get back where I left off (way too long ago) – looking at the basics of soloing. I’m also hoping that we can delve back into chord theory for a little bit, if for no other reason than I’ve got this title, Augmented Diminished Dementia that’s been rolling around in my head for three years now!

Anyway, that’s what’s currently going on in my head at the moment. As the joke goes, it never takes long for me to tell you everything that’s in my head!

But what about those things in yours? Since we’re at a bit of a crossroads in that I can, for the first time in a long, long time, sit down and plot some things out, drop me an email and let me know what you want to see here at Guitar Noise. I can’t promise I’ll be able to get you everything, but we might as well try, right?

I hope you all have a grand week. Stay safe. Write me!

And, as always,

Peace

David