Guitar Noise

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #103 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• Topic of the Month
• Guitar Noise Featured Artist
• New Lessons and Articles
• Coming Attractions
• Exploring Music with Darrin Koltow
• Emails? We Get Emails!
• Reviews
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

The calendar says it’s December 1 and it’s snowing out my window – not all that much or that hard, but snow nonetheless – so I’m thinking it must be time for the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

There’s really not all that much in the way of “news.” Paul did a recent upgrade on the Forum page and, aside from one minor glitch, things seem to have gone so well as to be almost unnoticed.

Our Facebook Fan count continues to climb upward. Seems like yesterday we just got our one thousandth fan and now we’re getting close to thirteen hundred. If you’ve not yet visited the Guitar Noise Facebook page, please come by. It’s a great way to keep up on all the latest goings-on.

Topic of the Month

Since the holidays are once again upon us, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to guess that the Guitar Noise “topic of the month” for December is “Holiday Songs for Guitar.” In many ways, this is a bit of an extension of last month’s topic (chord melody) because many of the holiday song lessons on our pages are single-guitar chord melody arrangements.

As with most of our topics, we have holiday song lessons for guitarists at many levels of playing ability, from beginners just getting started to intermediate students. So go to the home page and take a look at all the holiday song lessons. These songs are not only fun to play but will also bring joy to those who get to listen to you play.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

The first of December also means a new face for our featured artist for the month. Jimi Hendrix gets the nod for December. Paul’s written a wonderful tribute to this man whom many consider to be an important influence to anyone who plays electric guitar. You’ll find it on our artist profiles page.

New Lessons and Articles

There’s going to be another slight delay with the upcoming lesson on “Away in a Manger.” No recording problems, simply time issues, so it may not be up online by the time you get the newsletter.

So just take a look at the home page every now and then and you should find it up online for your reading pleasure very, very soon. No later than sometime Wednesday or Thursday. My apologies again for the delay and my thanks, always, for your patience.

Teaching Chords to Beginning Guitar Students
by Tom Hess

In his latest article, Tom explores some of the problems that beginners tend to have making and changing guitar chords. Whether you’re a guitar teacher or just someone starting out on the guitar, you’ll find some very valuable tips here on how to go about practicing chord changes.

Away In A Manger
by David Hodge

We kick off the 2009 holiday song lessons with a simple (and easy!) arrangement of this popular Christmas carol. The object here is to work on your overall tone by letting your fingers bring out the melody in a variety of ways. And we’re using a “slightly alternate” tuning to help let the accompanying notes ring out whenever possible.

Coming Attractions

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 December 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 19)

In the last issue we started exploring the C phyrgian sound around the fifth fret. We’re using chords right now to convey C phyrgian. In case you missed it, here are our C phrygian chords to harmonize the minor scale:

|-8--6--------|-------------|---------|
|-5--6--9--8--|-6--5--------|---------|
|-6--6--7--5--|-7--5--8--6--|-5-------|
|-8--5--6--8--|-6--8--6--6--|-8--8----|
|-------8--7--|-8--7--7--8--|-7--7----|
|-------6-----|-------6--9--|----8----|

Here’s the thing about the minor scale: There’s more than one, and the above exercise exploits that fact (but not fully). The F minor scale can have a natural or flat E, and a natural or flat D. You’ll tweak those two degrees depending on a number of factors, but the essential thing is that you tweak them so they fit the musical situation you’re in. We may explore minor scale degrees six and seven another time. For now, realize that the chords we’re playing in our C phrygian exercise mix and match the Db and D, and the Eb and E notes.

Now, let’s identify each of the chords in the exercise and explain the reasoning behind it.

The first chord is a C7b9, so you’re getting a Db with the usual C, E, G and Bb. The F harmonic minor scale has a Db, and is used a lot in Western popular music. The whole effect of this chord is to say, “we’re going into a minor key center.”

Chord two has all the notes of chord 1, but with an F instead of E. Is C7 without an E okay? Sure — as long as you have enough diatonic harmony to provide tension, and the chord is not the destination key center (F minor). The Bb on top definitely prevents your ear from thinking you’ve arrived at an F minor tonic chord.

The other approach to looking at this chord is simply to call it what it really is: G minor 7 b5, which sounds great coming before C7, but also in place of C7.

Chord three is a Bb7, which is from F melodic minor. A Db major will sound good here, too. Chord four is a plain C7. Bar 2, chord 1 is the guts of Mr. Bb7 again. A Gmin 7b5, played with x-6-6-5-x-6, will sound good here also. (That notation moves from string 1 to 6). Notice how we’re just using the same chords again and again. You could play just C7, C7, C7 over and over, but you’d get bored quickly with that.

Bar 2, chord 2 is an interesting one and you can see it a couple of different ways. Here’s the logic behind it: Our mode, C7 phrygian, comes from the Ab major scale, which has a Bb minor 7 in it. You can play a Bb minor 7 and sound acceptable here, or you can tweak it by flatting its fifth, which will totally transcend “acceptable” and throw you into “ooh: creepy!” But, it’s not too far out, not too creepy.

Bar 2, chord 4 puts us back in C phrygian proper: it’s a Db major. Bar 3 chord 1 is a plain C7, as is chord 2.

To wrap this up and pull it together, don’t freak if you don’t get all this stuff. There’s not a ton of theory behind it, just a couple of basic points: C phrygian is the same as Ab major. F minor is where we’re going. There are two main F minor scales we’re using here–F harmonic and F melodic minor. We could have used a third, F dorian. We’re adding variety by playing chords inside those scales, rather than all C7 chords.

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.

Emails? We Get Emails!

Hi Dave,

I just came upon your analysis of “Sailing to Philadelphia” (the latest song for intermediates lesson) when searching for useable chords (which I wasn’t able to find), and had a quick read through.

I also had to reach for the guitar to check some things out. Your paper with the additional mp3s is brilliant! I could never hope to find a better resource on that song on the entire net, that’s for sure.

I have seen it before; failing to detect something like alternative tunings (as an example) is often fatal for the chances to successfully decode a guitar piece, and as you seem to be hinting at, there’s normally so much going on under the surface in memorable pieces, it takes in the neighborhood of a pro to unravel at least the most significant pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

Again, your analysis/tutorial is top-notch!

Hello

Thank you for writing and thank you as well for your kind words concerning my Guitar Noise lesson on “Sailing to Philadelphia.” These lessons are a lot of fun for me to write because I’m doing a lot of learning, too! As you say, sometimes it’s a lot like a puzzle and I enjoy using both my ears and my brain to work out arrangements.

I’m not much of a “pro” at this, but I do like the challenges.

Thank you again for taking the time to write. Both Paul (Paul Hackett who created and owns and runs Guitar Noise) and I always appreciate it when someone writes to say thanks.

I look forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

Reviews

We’re trying to get back into writing and publishing more reviews at Guitar Noise. Trouble is that we usually get so many things (CDs, books, tutorials, DVDs, picks, capos and just about anything you might imagine) that we usually end up quite backlogged with reviews. Hopefully we’ll find some middle ground that works. If you have something to be reviewed, or (better still) if you’d like to be an occasional Guitar Noise reviewer, please drop me a line at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put “review” or “reviewer” in the subject line.

I’d like to thank all of you who have sent in emails already – you should be hearing back from me before this month is out. And, should all go well, I’m looking forward to working with you all to bring something special to the Guitar Noise community.

Random Thoughts

I had the honor of sharing a stage with Nick Torres (not to mention Dan Lasley, Greg Nease and others) this past weekend and, as always, it was a lot of fun. Without even realizing it, these day-after-Thanksgiving get-togethers have become a bit of a tradition. I think this is the fifth or sixth year in a row now and they’ve been a wonderful way to extend the Thanksgiving holiday a bit before heading back into the workaday routine of things.

Plus, a chance to make music with friends is always something to be thankful for.

I hope that no matter how hectic your December turns out to be, you get the chance to make and share music with your family and friends. It’s not only a great way to bring the year to a close but it’s also one of the best ways to start out the coming new year.

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

And, as always…

Peace