Newsletter Vol. 2 # 92 – September 26, 2004
Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.
In This Issue
- News and Announcements
- Email of the Week
- Reviews
- Thoughts and Feedback
News And Announcements
Greetings!
Welcome to Guitar Noise News!
I might take to calling this newsletter “Best of Intentions” or even “All Apologies!” Every time I turn around, some new event in my life seems to cry out for attention and before I can even put together a few coherent thoughts, it’s time to cobble together another round of material for the site.
Some of the craziness is of my own doing. I could have stayed in Chicago, working a job that allowed me enough free time to work on the newsletter and all the articles and lessons here at Guitar Noise, which I either edit or write (or both, in the case of some pieces!) instead of moving and making the attempt to teach for a living.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that most of the craziness is of my own doing. After all, if I were worse at teaching, I wouldn’t worry about spending my time preparing for lessons. And if I were worse at writing and editing, maybe Guitar Noise wouldn’t get between fifteen and twenty million hits each month. Or maybe it would and we’d simply become a website consisting of forum pages.
Like it as not, the more popular Guitar Noise gets, the more that there is to maintain. Paul has had to pretty much give up on writing to come up with time to work on the physical upkeep of the site. Nick finds it close to impossible to write as he’s almost always moderating and guiding the moderators on the forum pages.
There are lots of little things that can be done to help. We are getting more and more submissions of lessons from our readers, and while this is indeed helpful, it can also unintentionally create even more work. And I’m not talking about spending six and a half hours correcting spelling and grammatical errors, which I truly had to do recently on behalf of a new article!
Paul has written some guidelines about this, which I’d like to share with you now. These will also be posted on our submissions page:
Technical Requirements
Sometimes it is easier to show something with a chart or example of musical notation rather than explain it in words. We are happy to help you include charts, tables or musical notation in your articles. Since we can’t change the layout of the site to make your article look good, you may have to make some changes to your work. Here are some guidelines to help you get started.
Spacing
If you are including examples of guitar tablature you should be aware that the spacing of fonts will make the lines look uneven when published on our site. This makes them difficult to read and unpleasant to look at. It is preferable that you use software like MusEdit to create you tab, or send your tablature example as an image file.
If you are making charts or tables in a word processor such as Microsoft Word you should be aware that most of your formatting will look different on the web. Things may not line up as you planned. If spacing is important in your charts, try making them in tables or use graphic design software.
Music Notation Software
We use the software MusEdit when creating examples using standard notation or tablature. If you use another editor such as Score or Power Tab we may not be able to view or edit your work. It would be best if you take screen shots of your work.
Using Graphics
Please send us original copies of all graphics you use in your article. Links to graphics on another website are not acceptable.
We can only use graphics in gif or jpeg format. Please optimize your graphics using a high resolution. Scanning printed material may not be acceptable.
To make sure your graphics fit on our pages, please limit the dimensions to a maximum width of 500 pixels and maximum height of 300 pixels. Graphics taller than 300 pixels can be split into separate files that can be stacked on top of each other.
Submitting files
Preferred formats are Microsoft Word or RTF (Rich Text Format). If necessary you may send us your work in html format. Please make sure you include any graphics or additional files.
It may be necessary to request changes to your work. The idea is to make your work look as good as possible on our site. We want to see your work published on Guitar Noise without creating a lot of extra work for our editors. Following these guidelines will help get your article online sooner and have it looking the way you expect it to. Of course, we are here to help you if you need it.
We’re currently working on several pieces we’ve gotten this month that are requiring a lot of additional work on our end. For me, personally, this gets frustrating on a number of levels. First off, there’s the writer who’s wondering why it’s taking so long to get his or her work posted on Guitar Noise. Then there’s Paul who’s doing his best to make things look great on the page and I’m not helping him out a whit. And finally, I’m spending my time which I’d truly rather use for writing my own articles! I’ve gotten about a dozen notes in the last week and a half wondering if I’ve dropped off the face of the earth!
It all makes me seriously reconsider taking up the offer one reader made me a year or so ago – the use of a cabin on his property where I could do nothing but sit at the computer and write up lessons!
But there are reasons why Paul and I and all the other writers and moderators go through this juggling act, the main one being that we are committed to making Guitar Noise the best possible website that it can be, given our time, our abilities and the equipment we have at hand.
That’s pretty much the philosophy Paul had when he started this site, and I think it will be more than enough to guide us on our way through the future.
Email Of The Week
One thing that I’m still trying to learn, even after almost four full years of writing no the Internet, is that you never know who you’re going to “meet.” I got this letter last week:
David,
Thanks for putting Hurt in the guitarnoise.com page.
I was looking for simple songs to teach my granddaughter and surprise… I run into Hurt. Your version helped me out with that song; I was making it too difficult.
Mike Reznor
(Trent’s dad)
Seeing as I’ve been thinking a lot about parents this month, Mike’s email came as a very pleasant surprise. And the best part is not his taking the time (and trouble) to write me, but that he’s taking the time and energy to teach his granddaughter to play. That’s wonderfully cool.
Reviews
*Teevo at the Colchester Arts Centre, August 19, 2004
Apparently, the Arts Centre isn’t considered a cool place to be seen in. Well, I personally think it’s a very cool venue indeed- a good-sized stage, bar, crowd space, and good sound. Read the complete review by Becky Squire.
Thoughts & Feedback
Around the fifteenth of September, the director of one of the music schools in our county asked if I’d be able to give a little presentation about the guitar to about twenty people. I immediately said yes. I figured I could give a little history on the instrument and then, using the school’s ten rental instruments plus a number of my own, give everyone a quick lesson on how to play.
Well, last Monday (September 20), my group turned out to be forty-three people! They were all senior citizens taking part in a series of “lifelong learning” classes and I had the fortune of being the first speaker they’d have (tomorrow, September 27, they’ll be hearing all about the trombone!). Needless to say, a lot of the planning I’d done went right out the window, but we still had a great time learning all sorts of things about the guitar and after the “lecture” section of the class, people were invited to hang around and try out an instrument or two. Kind of like a musical petting zoo!
What I found to be fascinating is that out of the forty-three attendees, only four had ever held a guitar before! I expected that number to be a bit, if not a lot, higher. It just goes to show that as much as we think of the guitar as an “everyman’s instrument,” not everyone gets to have one, let alone even play one.
I mentioned that the school has rental instruments. This is because there are a number of students who cannot afford their own guitar (or clarinet or cello or whatever) and the school does its best to help the students (old as well as young) to get the materials they need in order to pursue their dreams of playing music. One new student of mine started out with one of my guitars because she is left-handed and the school didn’t have any lefty guitars on hand as rentals. Now they have one.
I guess I bring this up because I often hear people asking about the value of this or that guitar as if one were discussing a financial investment like a stock or a piece of land. And while I do understand that this is very much the way we’ve been conditioned to think about almost everything these days, I still can’t help but wonder if we take things a little too far.
In the Author’s Note of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Blackbeard, a fictional “autobiography” of a fictional painter of the Abstract Expressionists’ Movement, Vonnegut (as himself) writes:
May I say, too, that much of what I put in this book was inspired by the grotesque prices paid for works of art during this past century. Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children’s games as well – running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.
I think it’s safe to assume that most people who play the guitar do so for either their own immediate enjoyment or to bring some of that same wonder and enchantment into the lives of their families and friends and loved ones. May that ever be so.
And if you’re ever wondering what you might do with some of those old guitars (or clarinets or trumpets or what have you), you can’t ever go wrong by helping to get someone else started done the same path you love to walk and play on.
I hope that each of you has a wonderful week. Stay safe.
And, as always,
Peace
David