Newsletter Vol. 2 # 93 – October 03, 2004
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.
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