Guitar Noise

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

In This Issue

• News and Announcements
• News Lessons and Articles
• Worth a Look
• Email of the Week
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

For whatever reason, we got a lot of updates last week from various Guitar Noise staff and contributors. Must have been the full moon…

First off, Tom Hess, who’s written some terrific articles for us these past two years, says:

Hi Everyone,

My band, HESS, will be in concert Thursday, October 14th 12:15 PM (yes, during the day!) at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, in the new Performing Arts Center, there also will be some classical piano compositions written by Tom Hess performed.

We’ve also gotten a new endorsement deal: Hess is now officially endorsed by Randall Amplifiers and we are now using several Randall amplification systems.

And finally, a bit of personal news: Tom’s wife gave birth to their second child, a boy, Sebastian Ryszard Hess on September 23, 2004!

Our heartfelt congratulations to Tom and his wife and family! And if you happen to be out in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, do try to catch his show next week.

From Chicago, we move across the Atlantic Ocean over to England, where Len Collins, creator of the Guitar Breakthrough tutorial software and frequent contributor to Guitar Noise writes:

Hi Paul

I am now the official Guinness World Record holder for the world largest music lesson!

Please let your readers know that they can now download a fully working demo (except printing) version of the Guitar Breakthrough tutorial program. It will run for six goes and then stop. The link is here. It’s 46.2MB and takes thirty minutes on broadband (thirty years by modem!)

Let’s take a moment and give Len a hand. For those of you who might have missed it last May, Len’s “World Largest Guitar Lesson” raised a lot of money for Diabetes UK and judging from the emails and the photos, it looked like a lot of fun!

Coming back to North America, songwriting guru A-J Charron forwarded me the latest update from the International Songwriting Competition. While I’m pretty sure I did put this in a newsletter a while back, it certainly can’t hurt to repeat this information, especially since the deadline is less than two weeks away:

For Immediate Release…Sept 30, 2004

2004 International Songwriting Competition Deadline Approaching In Two Weeks

The October 15 deadline for the third annual International Songwriting Competition (ISC) is only two weeks away. If you are an artist, songwriter or band member looking to gain exposure in the music industry, ISC is the perfect opportunity for you.

“In addition to great prizes, ISC offers the unique opportunity to have your music heard by the most impressive group of judges from a variety of industry backgrounds in any songwriting competition. This makes ISC the songwriting competition to take note of.” – Robbie Woliver, New York Times

ISC’s 2004 panel of judges include top celebrities and record label executives:

Monte Lipman (President, Universal Records); Sean “P. Diddy” Combs; Aaron Lewis (Staind); John Ondrasik (Five For Fighting); Bo Diddley; Clint Black; David Hidalgo (Los Lobos); Branford Marsalis; Darryl McDaniels (Run D.M.C.); Peter Furler (Newsboys); Taj Mahal; Sully Erna (Godsmack); Macy Gray; Stacey Earle; Scott Kirkland (The Crystal Method); Michael Gudinski (Chairman, Mushroom Group of Companies); Alan Meltzer (CEO, Wind-Up Records); Tara Griggs-Magee (Executive VP Gospel/Urban Music, Sony Records); Michael McDonald (President, ATO Records); Tracy Gershon (Sr. Director A&R/Artist Dev, Sony Records Nashville); Chris Parr (VP of Music Programming & Talent Relations, CMT); Peter Asher (Co-President, Sanctuary Artist Management); Kim Stephens (VP A&R, Lava Records); Barbara Sedun (VP Creative, EMI Music Publishing Canada) and Leib Ostrow (CEO, Music For Little People)

More than $100,000 in cash and prizes will be awarded to 50 winners, including $10,000 in cash and $30,000 in merchandise/services to the 2004 Overall Grand Prize winner.

Visit http://www.songwritingcompetition.com for an entry form, or to upload your songs. ISC accepts entries via mail and online. All entries submitted by mail have to be postmarked on or before October 15, 2004. Online entries have to be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST, October 15, 2004.

Entries are accepted in the following categories: AAA/Roots/Americana, Dance/Electronica, Jazz, R&B/Hip-Hop, Blues, Folk/Singer-Songwriter, Lyrics Only, Rock, Children’s Music, Gospel/Christian, Performance, Teen, Country, Instrumental, Pop/Top 40, and World Music

International Songwriting Competition
211 Seventh Avenue North, Suite LL-20
Nashville, TN 37219
Phone: 615.251.4441
Fax: 615.251.4442
songwritingcompetition.com

My best wishes of luck to any of our readers who participate in this contest. Having heard some of your songs (or at least read lyrics of some), I do hope that a few of you try your hand at it.

I did hear from one more person recently, but, to be honest, it wasn’t within the last week. So, let’s find out a bit about that, shall we?

New Lessons And Articles

And finally, bringing things back to New England, I’d like to extend a big “welcome back” to our original classical guitar columnist, Logan Gabriel, who’s once again gracing our pages. Logan wrote me a few weeks back and I was thrilled to hear from him again, not to mention delighted at the fact that he wanted to contribute some more lessons. In addition, he’ll also be sending information in the very near future concerning a new CD of his. I can’t wait!

The Metronome – A Love / Hate Relationship
By Logan Gabriel

Logan Gabriel reintroduces us to the metronome – friend and foe of all guitarists. Logan has some wonderful advice on how to make the most of using this essential piece of equipment and make the most of our practicing.

Worth A Look

It occurs to me that you might not even know that we have a Classical Guitar section here at Guitar Noise! We do, we do! If you look on the left hand side of the Home Page, you’ll find a whole list of pages available to you on our web site. And if you go to this one you’ll find all of Logan’s earlier pieces. Now might be a great time to get reacquainted.

Email Of The Week

And speaking of our left hand side of the Home Page…

Hi David!

I started playing guitar a year and a half ago. I feel that I have improved a lot and learned a lot of what I know from your lessons on Guitar Noise. Thanks. The reason I write is I feel that my skill is stuck on a rut, so to say. Don’t see a lot of improvement and it is sort of getting discouraging. I practice everyday from twenty minutes to two hours (when I have the free time). Like I said I worked on many of your lessons, and started working on the blues. Do you have any advice that would help my practice time, or make my improvement more noticeable?

Playing any instrument, much like a lot of life, is not so much a series of peaks and valleys as it is a long gentle climb. It’s often hard for any of us, being involved in getting to a particular destination, to appreciate what we’ve managed to accomplish along the way. If you think back about when you first started playing the guitar, without having the slightest idea of what you were doing, then you might catch on to what I’m talking about. You weren’t born knowing how to play a C7 chord!

The most important thing about practicing is to have goals, some measurable way of gauging your progress. How you then set about practicing will very much depend upon your own personal goals.

On the left hand side of Guitar Noise’s Home Page, you’ll find “Practice” under the heading of topics. Clicking on that icon will take you to this page.

Here you’ll find a great number of articles, ranging from older ones by Dan Lasley, Jimmy Hudson, Logan Gabriel and me, to pretty recent ones by Len Collins, Mike Walsh and Jon Doucette. Probably even Logan’s latest piece will be there (Paul does a great job of cross-referencing things, don’t you know!).

But I’d strongly suggest that you first read a wonderful article by Darrin Koltow, called, A Musician’s Most Important Skill.

I very much agree with Darrin that setting up some goals ahead of time is an essential (and often overlooked) step to putting together a practice plan. If your immediate goal is to learn some songs to perform live, then time spent practicing scales, while very useful to you in the big picture, will not push you toward this particular goal.

In the column, A Question of Balance, I stress that you have to get into honest detail with yourself about your desires. Simply saying “I want to be a better guitarist” is great, but giving yourself a task such as “I want to be able to play a lead for any blues song” is a better defined goal. Be aware, though, that even that goal will first need to be broken down into more manageable parts, such as “I want to know my blues scale, with the root on the sixth string, in every key.” From these little steps, you can’t help but improve. More importantly, you’ll be able to chart your improvement.

Thoughts & Feedback

I’m already incredibly late in getting this newsletter off to Paul so that he can get it out to all of you at his scheduled time. So please, if you’re worried about Guitar Noise News coming out fairly erratically of late, lay the blame with me.

I hope that each of you has a wonderful week. Stay safe. And we’ll chat more soon.

And, as always,

Peace

David