Guitar Noise

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #100 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• Topic of the Month
• Guitar Noise Featured Artist
• Coming Attractions
• Exploring Music with Darrin Koltow
• One Last Bit of News

Greetings, News and Announcements

So I woke up today and got more than several hours into planning lessons and writing and editing and then clicked onto the Internet to find that, and this was a total surprise to me, it was October 15. Oops! And then all sorts of things started happening and now here it is, Sunday, October 18 and I’m hoping that everyone will get this sometime on Monday. I’m also hoping that I am not the only one who got caught up in the every day bits of life! But you never know… So please accept my apologies for this newsletter coming much later than planned.

Speaking of Monday, here’s a timely announcement: the Guitar Noise website is going to be offline for a couple of hours on Monday evening, that’s Monday, October 19. Starting around 7pm PST our server is going to be moved to a new location. The whole thing should take about two hours.

We’ll still be around on Twitter and Facebook if you need a fix, but you could also get in some practice time as well!

If you happen to be in the far-off reaches of Taiwan, or in the more local far-off regions of the American Midwest ((Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio), you’ve still got a chance to catch FODfest this month. If you’re not familiar with this event, let me give you a description, straight from Todd Mack, who founded FODfest:

In 2002, the world came to know Daniel Pearl as the Wall St. Journal reporter who was abducted and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan. What happened to him was unconscionable. To film his murder and use the video as a means to propagate the hatred that motivated it…there is no word for that. In response to this heinous act, Todd Mack, a close friend of Pearl’s, started FODfest (Friends of Danny festival) as a way to honor his friend with a legacy that reflects the ideals by which he lived rather than the tragic way in which he died.

In addition to being a journalist, Daniel Pearl was a talented musician who believed in the power of music to bring people together regardless of the differences between them. A classically trained violinist and avid fiddler & mandolin player, music was Danny’s way of connecting with people and learning about the local culture as he traveled the world. In a unique performance experience that is part jam session, part song swap, part concert, FODfest is a living celebration of this ideal. Some of the musicians performing were friends of Danny’s, while others didn’t know him at all. Most are meeting for the first time on stage. They all share Danny’s belief in music as a Universal language.

MISSION
FODfest, Inc. is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote and strengthen community through the universal language of music by producing publicly accessible live music events and multi-media projects.

HISTORY
In just five years, FODfest has grown considerably from its humble beginnings as an informal backyard jam to a full-fledged national tour. To date, FODfest has toured to 20 cities with more than 350 musicians from across the country and across the globe participating. FODfest ‘09 will include a 31 day national tour this October as a featured event of Daniel Pearl World Music Days, which is organized by the Daniel Pearl Foundation. All of the concerts are free and open to the public, with the exception of the two shows at the Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival (October 8 and 9 in Pittsboro, NC).

As mentioned, this year’s shows are going international! Here are the scheduled dates and venues for the remainder of the tour:

Oct 14 – 22 FODfest will be in Taiwan with an appearance at the Taichung Jazz Festival on Saturday October 17
Oct 24 7:00 PM Blue Moon Coffeehouse – Illinois Wesleyan University Bloomington, IL
Oct 25 7:00 PM Legion Arts Cedar Rapids, IA
Oct 26 8:00 PM High Noon Saloon Madison WI
Oct 27 7:00 PM Café Carpe Fort Atkinson WI
Oct 28 7:00 PM Village Players Performing Arts Center Oak Park, IL
Oct 29 7:00 PM Kent Stage Kent, OH
Nov 1 4:00 PM Infinity Music Hall & Bistro Norfolk, CT

More information, including who you can expect to see performing, can be found at the tour page of the FODfest website.

I’ve got my ticket to Chicago, so I will be playing at the October 28 show in Oak Park, IL, along with Guitar Noise member Kathy Reichert. And I am also honoured to have an invitation to play at the final show in Norfolk, CT. Greg Nease, another Guitar Noise Forum member will be playing that show as well.

These concerts are free and open to the public. And they are all about the power of sharing music with the world. If you can, try to see a show near you. And if I’m there, do come by and say hello.

Topic of the Month

This month we’re putting the spotlight on learning to play blues guitar. Beginners may want to start with the easy songs for beginners lessons that will swiftly bring you up to speed on the 12 bar blues, the shuffle and playing lead. We also have many blues lessons from other GN contributors, such as Paul Andrews, Alan Green, Darrin Koltow and others. Just go to our blues page to get yourself started.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Since it’s almost impossible to think about the blues and not think about Eric Clapton, old Slowhand is the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of October. Click on over to our artist profiles page for Paul’s bio on this legendary guitarist as well as links to other articles of interest at Guitar Noise.

Coming Attractions

As I write this, I have three articles that I am waiting to get the author’s okay’s on before we publish them as well as putting the finishing touches on two of my own. So you should have some fun stuff to read this week! Look for two new authors – one with a wonderful chord-melody arrangement of the lullaby “Hush Little Baby” and another with a great article on taking your guitar with you on vacation. Plus, Hank Stupi returns with an accompaniment arrangement of “What a Wonderful World.”

We are constantly working on new lessons of all sorts here at Guitar Noise. Just to keep you updated as to what’s coming along in the pipeline, the following lessons are still on track for being posted up online in the next few months, although not necessarily in the order in which I’ve written them!

Easy Songs for Beginners: Sweet Home Alabama, Both Sides Now, Ziggy Stardust, Mister Bojangles, Banana Pancakes, Peace Train, Just Like Heaven, Yellow

Songs for Intermediates: Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, If I Had A Boat, Homeward Bound, Hello In There, Fire and Rain, Circle Game, I Want You Back

Plus more on the “Turning Scales into Solos” and “Beyond Up and Down” series, not to mention our new “Music Meccas” series, as well as more of our “Chord Melody Song Arrangements,” which will deal with pop and rock songs, like Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” or old standards like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and maybe even a surf tune, such as the Ventures’ classic “Walk Don’t Run.”

EXPLORING MUSIC WITH DARRIN KOLTOW

Tip for October 15 – Practicing Modes (Part 17)

We’ve covered a lot of ground in exploring the C mixolydian (AKA C7) sound, but we’re not quite done with C7 yet. After you’ve communicated the C7 sound through scales, arpeggios, chords, and substitute arpeggios and scales, you can “say” C7 through licks. This is where your creativity, combined with your fluency in C7 arpeggios, scales, and substitutions, comes into play.

Before we dive into writing C7 licks, let me just offer a few bits of my understanding of the topic. A lick is a short melody, and writing melodies is a huge topic. But, if you take the time to study it, the satisfaction you get will far outweigh any frustration.

There are tons of approaches to writing melodies and licks, and exploring them would take us away from our exploration of modes, which we’re not quite ready to do yet. But let me lay out a lick here to give us some music to doodle with. And, in the next issue, we’ll distill a structure from the lick, one that you can use in writing your own licks.

|-8-6-----6-------|--------------|
|-----8-5---8-5-6-|-8-5----------|
|-----------------|-----7---5----|
|-----------------|-------8------|
|-----------------|--------------|
|-----------------|--------------|

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2009 Darrin Koltow

In case you’ve never visited Maximum Musician, hurry on over to Darrin’s website. You can also read his past contributions to Guitar Noise here. And you can also read some of Darrin’s past Guitar Noise News posts over at the Guitar Noise Blog.

One Last Bit of News

I’ve been debating when, or even if to post this and I guess now is as good a time as any. I’ve been offered another book contract. Alpha Books, the folks who publish the “Complete Idiot’s” series were planning on publishing a third edition of their highly successful “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Guitar” next year. But instead of doing so, they’ve asked me to write a totally new book for them, tentatively titled “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar” and scheduled to hit bookstores next October or November.

My editor and I have been going back and forth over the book for quite a while now and I think we’ve the makings of an excellent book designed to take beginners through all the basic first steps of guitar and beyond. Stay tuned for more details!

And until our next newsletter, stay safe. Play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace