Newsletter Vol. 3 # 108 – February 15, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #108 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

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

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello! And a very Happy Year of the Tiger to you all!

In case you didn’t know, yesterday (February 14, 2010) marked the start of the Chinese New Year. Hopefully you remembered to wear red in order to scare the Nien away.

Or maybe you wore red because yesterday was also Valentine’s Day. Please tell me you didn’t forget that! The Nien might indeed be fearsome and ferocious, what with its propensity to devour anything in sight, be it crops, livestock or the odd villager or two, but the Nien is nothing compared to a loved one who thinks you’ve forgotten Valentine’s Day!

Ah, well, that was all yesterday. Today we welcome you to the February 15, 2010 edition of Guitar Noise News, your twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

I’d like to thank everyone that’s written to me with book recommendations so far. In case you’ve not seen the Home Page in a while, Paul’s been very busy behind the scenes, tweaking this and that and one of the cool things you can find on both the Home Page and the “What’s New” page is a new “recommended by our readers” bookwheel, featuring guitar and music tuition books written by some of Guitar Noise’s wonderful contributors, such as Jamie Andreas and Tom Serb. You’ll also see some new books, such as “The Musician’s Way” by Gerald Klickstein and some books, like “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar,” that will be available on March 2.

As I mentioned last time out, Paul and I hope to work together to update this new feature fairly regularly, adding books that we think Guitar Noise readers will want to have in their personal libraries, such as John Ganapes’ terrific “Blues You Can Use” tutorials. So if you have recommendations, do send them along to me at [email protected] and Paul and I will see about adding them to the Guitar Noise book wheel.

Topic of the Month

“Strumming for Beginners” is our Guitar Noise topic for the month of February. When you visit the home page, you’ll find a link to the Guitar Noise articles that deal with the topic of strumming, including a new one that you’ll read about in a moment.

We’ve got new articles on strumming since last month (one, which is really about strumming although you may think it cleverly disguised as “thinking” piece, you’ll see in our “New Lessons” section and another, about timing, that should be online this coming week).

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Stevie Ray Vaughan is our February 2010 “Guitar Noise Featured Artist.” You can read Paul’s bio about this great guitarist at the Guitar Noise Artist Profiles page.

New Lessons and Articles

Auto Correct In Guitar Practice
by Jamie Andreas

Is it better to practice a piece slowly at first or quickly? Teachers and players usually recommend slowly, but there are instances where fast might work. Jamie explores why both methods work, but more importantly details how to recognize and determine when one method is better than the other.

Pentamodal Idea
by Paul Tauteroff

The pentatonic scale is, without doubt, one of the guitarist’s chief tools. Modes, on the other hand, can be confusing. Paul Tauteroff shows how guitar players who are already familiar with the pentatonic scale can learn and utilize the modes in their lead guitar playing.

The Ears Have It
by David Hodge

As the tutorial resources you have at your beck and call get more and more sophisticated, it gets harder to remember that learning guitar is all about playing guitar. That means if you want to be able to play your instrument, you have to go through all the “grunt work” – that means practicing. And for many players the biggest aspect they need to work on is not using their eyes.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for February 15 – Practicing Modes (Part 24)

Thanks for tuning into another chapter of the Saga of the Modes. We’ve been working through C Phrygian of late, and will continue in that vein as we look at substitute arpeggios for C Phrygian.

A sweet sounding arp sub for C is the G minor 7b5, which you’ll find in the same (major) scale as C phrygian: Ab major. G min 7b5 subs well for C phrygian for a number of reasons: one, it shares 3 notes in common with C phrygian: G, Bb and Db. The one note that differs, F instead of E, sounds great because it’s a suspension note that voice leads nicely to the E in C phrygian.

Let’s do a run with Gm7b5

|-----------------|-4---6--------|
|---------------6-|---8---6-5----|
|-------------6---|--------------|
|-------6-5-8-----|--------------|
|---4-8-----------|--------------|
|-6---------------|--------------|

|-6---4-----------|--------------|
|---8---6---------|--------------|
|---------6-------|--------------|
|-----------8-5-6-|--------------|
|-----------------|-8-4---8-7----|
|-----------------|-----6--------|

We may yet continue with phrygian in the next issue: there are yet more subs for this dramatic sound.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2010 Darrin Koltow

Emails? We Get Emails!

This note was originally sent to our “General Questions” box at Guitar Noise, and Paul passed it along to me. I also used it as a relatively recent blog post (in case it looks a little familiar!) but it’s a topic that we get a lot of questions about, so it makes sense to bring it to the attention of our newsletter readers as well:

If you would please answer my questions about guitar teaching since you’re the expert.

1) Is it frustrating?
2) Do you need a degree from college?
3) If not, would it draw more customers to have a degree?
4) Would a degree help you get better?
5) What do you say the basic level of skill would be to become a teacher?

Thank you for reading my questions. I consider this a possible career.

Hi

Thanks for writing! I’m hardly what I would call an “expert,” but I have been teaching full time for close to ten years now, so I guess I could be called “experienced.” I’ll do my best to answer your questions.

1) Is it frustrating?

It’s tempting to say “not at all,” but every job has its share of frustration. A teacher cannot go home with the student and do his practicing for him or her. The teacher can guide and advise and coach, but ultimately it’s a team effort. One wants his or her students to enjoy music and to have as few frustrations as possible and as long as both student and teacher can be open and communicate freely with each other, the minor frustrations that are just simply a part of any natural learning process can be easily dealt with.

On the other hand, if you yourself look at playing or any aspect of music as a competition, then you are setting yourself up for a lot of frustration. If you are expecting your guitar students to all become Steve Vai or Eric Clapton, you’ve set yourself an impossible task. If you are trying to give them a gift that they can have the rest of their lives, the gift of playing the music that makes them happy, you’ll discover that each of your students has to learn at his or her own pace.

2) Do you need a degree from college?

No, unless you plan to teach “for credit” courses at a school (at any educational level).

3) If not, would it draw more customers to have a degree?

That depends on your customers. Many students (or their parents) simply look for whom they consider the best possible teacher. Sometimes people mistakenly equate “best player” with “best teacher.” Sometimes they think “best educated” means “best teacher.” Neither are true, and neither need be necessary, but being a good player and having a degree can help draw customers. Having a reputation of being a good teacher will draw more.

4) Would a degree help you get better?

That depends, too. Getting a degree for playing the guitar doesn’t prepare you in the least for teaching unless you take courses on teaching. And getting some basic business courses would also help anyone with a goal of making a living at being a teacher.

5) What do you say the basic level of skill would be to become a teacher?

People discuss this all the time. Obviously, you need to have a good command of the basics of playing. You also need to know enough music theory that you can competently discuss the “whys” of music instead of simply telling your students to “just do this.”

If I had to quantify further, I’d say the most important thing you would need as a teacher is the ability to be honest (both with yourself and with your students) about what you know and about what you can teach them. You need to be able to direct them to other sources (teachers, books, tutorials) when they have absorbed all that you are capable of giving them.

In addition to all this, I’d like to add that if you’re truly interested in a career teaching music (whether guitar or any instrument), that you check out two books:

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Teaching Music on Your Own, written by Karen Berger and due out in stores March 2, answers your questions and many more in detail. She not only deals with teacher qualifications, but also the day to day aspects of teaching that you might not even think about (how to set up your studio, getting business, contracts, even making time for yourself in your schedule) until after you set up shop. Karen is a great writer and piano teacher and she also is my partner, so yes, I’m a bit biased in my assessment!

The Musician’s Way is by Gerald Klickstein, another excellent teacher and educator with over thirty years experience, and does an exceptional job of dealing with practicing, performing and creativity from the point of view of both the student and the teacher. I can’t recommend either of these books enough.

Hope this helps and good luck to you!

Peace

Event Horizon

I’ve had the privilege of playing with Sam Weiser, an amazing young violinist (he’s still in high school), at a few FODfest shows the past two years and he is quite a talented and exciting performer. He’s just finished his first CD, “Sam I Am” (available at Amazon, CD Baby and probably also your own music store) and has a short tour this month to promote it. He’s a winner of the Daniel Pearl Memory Violin and he’s donating the profits from his new CD to the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

Sam’s got two more shows this month, one tonight and one next Sunday:

February 15th 7:30pm – Saint Mark Presbyterian Church – Rockville, MD
February 21st 7:30pm – The Rutledge – Nashville, TN

If you can, try to get to a show. You’ll have a great time, hear some great music and help support a great cause.

Random Thoughts

In my group classes for guitar at the Berkshire Community College, I have a running joke, which I call “Rule 28.” Rule 28 states, very simply, “guitarists are lazy.” It’s meant to be funny sometimes, such as explaining that we call the metal wires in the neck “frets” and we also call the spaces between the frets “frets,” the joke being that guitarists couldn’t even come up with a second name.

But it’s also meant to put into the student’s brain that, quite often, the less one has to do in terms of moving fingers around on the fretboard, the better. As many of you know, this is especially true when thinking about changing chords or when playing little fills when strumming. More times than not you don’t want to move your hand too far from the chords when switching off to a riff. Getting the idea of minimal movement and minimal effort can certainly help beginners, who usually start any change of chords by totally lifting all their fingers from the fretboard and placing them in another zip code before bringing them back to the next chord.

Unfortunately, it’s also a bit of a warning. Guitarists can be incredibly lazy, or at the very least misguided or misdirected, when it comes to learning. We rely on charts and diagrams instead of memorizing chords. Then we memorize chords without understanding that knowing how the chords are created can teach us how to make any chord without ever needing a chart again. Many guitarists get shown the basics but not so many manage to use their own brains to put two and two together in order to make leaps in their learning of both their instrument and music in general.

Anyone who’s read any of the lessons here at Guitar Noise knows that we want every guitarist to be a thinking guitarist. Rather than giving you a regular dose of “just do this,” we want you to be able to take what you learn with any given lesson and to understand that you can apply it to just about anything in your playing. Simply put, we want you to be an active learner, someone who participates in your guitar education instead of being a mere spectator.

Any teacher knows that he or she is merely a part in the big, mysterious process of learning. If the student isn’t participating, ultimately no learning takes place. So to all of you who have sent me thank you notes over the past ten-plus years, let me also give you my thanks. We do this together.

And that’s how music is supposed to be made.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace