Guitar Noise

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #105 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• Topic of the Month
• Guitar Noise Featured Artist
• Soon-To-Be New Lessons and Articles
• Exploring Guitar with Darrin Koltow
• Event Horizon
• Reviews
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the first day of 2010! And here to help you get started on this wonderful New Year is the latest edition of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com in case you’ve forgotten!)

I’m actually writing this newsletter up on Christmas Day, so I’d like to take a moment to wish everyone a “Happy Christmas,” although it will be a belated one by the time you read this. My wishes to you all for a very Happy New Year, though, should be precisely on time!

Topic of the Month

We’re starting out the New Year with a bit of a flashback – the Guitar Noise “topic of the month” for January 2010 is “Singing in the New Year” and that makes a lot of sense as so many people pick up the guitar in order to play and sing songs with others.

So if you go to the home page, you’ll find a link to many, many Guitar Noise articles, all dealing with the topic of singing and playing at the same time, not to mention just singing in general. And, as with most of our topics, there are articles from a number of folks who’ve contributed to our website over the past years. You should definitely find a few good tips to help you get your voice in shape.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

We also have a new “Guitar Noise Featured Artist” to kick in 2010, someone who needs no introduction to those who love rock music and the electric guitar – Saul Hudson! Hmmm, maybe he does need an introduction! How about if we call him by his stage name – Slash!

Check out the great bio Paul’s written on this iconic guitarist. You’ll find it on our artist profiles page.

New Lessons and Articles

In case you’ve not been to the home page in the past few weeks, you may have missed two Christmas song lessons that we posted up online right before Christmas: ”Away in a Manger” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas“.

I was hoping to also manage a lesson on “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” but things just didn’t pan out in terms of timing. My apologies for that, but it’ll be ready and waiting for you in about eleven months!

In the meantime, we do have two new pieces that should be up online by the time you receive this newsletter, and they are:

How To Prepare For Gigs And Make Your Live Shows Better
by Tom Hess

Creating memorable live performances can help you get more gigs and can bring more people to those gigs. Here are some great tips from Tom Hess on how to rehearse for all the aspects of performing live.

Banana Pancakes
Easy Songs for Beginners # 42
by David Hodge

This is kind of a “two in one” lesson with a look at rhythms and string muting as well as some work on simple barre chords and the importance of good positioning when it comes to playing riffs, even very simple ones like those used in this song! And I’ve also included a “barre chord free” arrangement for those whose barre chords still need practice.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for December 15 – Practicing Modes (Part 21)

Welcome back to our exploration of modes and our continued look at the C phrygian mode in particular. Today we’re going to communicate the C phrygian sound with an arpeggio. Without further ado, here’s C7(#5) around position V.

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

Let’s have a bit of theory with that. What are the notes in C7(#5)? What makes it C phrygian? Plain C7 has C, E, G, and Bb. Sharp the five and you’ll have G# instead of G. What makes this chord so dark is that G#.

What’s dark about G#? Well, think about the fact that G# is the enharmonic equivalent of Ab. Then remember that Ab is the minor third of the key center that C7 is pointing to, F minor. The Ab telegraphs the F minor feeling before we actually get to F minor.

We’ll look at another darkly sweet C phrygian arpeggio next time out.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2010 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.

Event Horizon

Just as it’s important to support each other when it comes to CDs, it’s also important (probably more so) to support live music. Sometimes it’s about being there. Literally. As musicians, it’s always good to support each other simply by being at a gig if it’s at all possible.

One thing we at Guitar Noise would really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

So please feel free to write me if you’ve got some gigs coming up. Remember that Guitar Noise News is sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. Usually I will have it ready to be sent out a few days ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of January (that is, after the fifteenth), then let me know by the tenth or the twelfth. If you’ve already got a show in August, 2010, let me know, too! It’s never too early to plan for things!

Maybe you’ll get to meet some of your Guitar Noise friends at upcoming holiday shows!

Send your gig dates to me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and try to put “gig alert” in the subject header.

Not So Random Thoughts

Back in the long, long ago when I considered myself a wise person (much in the way that all teenagers know that they alone in the universe know the answers to everything), I somewhere picked up a habit that ended up being a bit of a New Year’s tradition – the week between Christmas and New Year’s I would try to write down my thoughts about just about everything that had happened that past year. It could be world events but more often than not it was all about me, my friends at school, my worries and meanderings about life and love and the future. You know, the typical stuff that usually fills journals or songs of songwriters who haven’t learned the valuable skill of getting out of oneself.

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, I’d usually have to drive my mom to work for the night shift (she didn’t drive and she worked eleven to seven) and I’d get home around eleven-twenty or so and start a fire in the fireplace. Then around eleven-thirty or so I’d read all the stuff I wrote and then at the stroke of midnight, I’d throw it into the fire and watch the old year literally go up in smoke in the first moments of the new year. Sentimental and very clichéd. I know, but I was (and still can be) very sentimental and certainly clichéd.

And as symbolic as this might have tried to be, I think it’s much more interesting to watch what bits of the past people carry around with them in their everyday life. We all do, to an extent. Some folks can go a bit overboard and actually try to live in the past while being here in the present, comparing any and everything to their own lives long ago and not even all that long ago. One of my young students made my day by longing for the “good old days” when he was seven (all of eighteen months ago!).

As you go into the New Year of 2010, try to make a point of living occasionally in the here and now. Go see a new band. Learn a new song (whether new to you or an old song you’ve not learned before) or come up with a totally new arrangement of something you’ve been doing the same way for ages.

In this digital era, it’s easy to confuse reading something on the computer with actual first-hand experience and knowledge. Actually, it’s been that way a long, long, time as anyone who works in either advertising or politics can readily tell you! Get out and participate. Play at an open mic. Start up a band so you’ll be ready to play at summer picnics! Start writing those songs you’ve been meaning to write since the “good old day!”

I hope this newsletter finds you safe, in good health, and full of good hope and cheer with these first days of a New Year, and a new decade, to boot!

And until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace