Newsletter Vol. 3 # 111 – April 3, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #111 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

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

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the first of your April issues of Guitar Noise News, your twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com) Notice that I didn’t date this issue. Originally I was going to make an “April Fool” edition but there are some important things to discuss and I didn’t want anyone to mistake an important bit of news as an April Fools joke.

I also thought about asking Charley to write this issue, but he insisted that if he was going to do that then he had to be the Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month. It then took several days (and a lot of cat treats) to persuade him that this probably wasn’t a great idea since people would probably think his being the Artist of the Month was yet another April Fools joke. Being a serious artist, he did eventually see the point in that. But, being a serious artist, he did have some concerts to prepare for, so that left him no time to help me by writing this newsletter.

So you will probably receive this somewhere between April 3 and April 5, if all goes well. Sorry about the delay. Rest assured the next Guitar Noise News will be arriving back on schedule on April 15. Just in time to remind some of you to make sure your taxes are filed!

As you read last time, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar” is now out in bookstores and online booksellers everywhere. And we’re celebrating the release by giving away fifteen copies of it between now and the end of May – five copies each month.

At midnight, March 31, we held a drawing for the first five contest winners and we’re pleased to announce that the following Guitar Noise followers (listed in alphabetical order by last name) will be receiving an autographed copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar” before the month of April is over:

Jeffery Bosserman of Pennsylvania (USA)
Ellen Krauss of New York (USA)
Roy Parker of North Carolina (USA)
Allison Stokes of New South Wales (Australia)
David Watts of Merseyside (England)

Guitar Noise offers congratulations to our first five winners and wishes all of contestants the best of luck for the remainder of this contest. In case you’ve not yet entered and would like to do so, you need to send me an email with the following information:

1. your name
2. your email address
3. your mailing address (and it doesn’t matter where in the world you are)
4. the title of your favorite article at Guitar Noise
5. the name of your favorite rock guitarist

Please send only one email per person to me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and put “CIG ROCK GUITAR” in the subject line.

The next group of winners will be announced here and on the Forum pages on May 1 and June 1. The best of luck to you all!

I’m also starting to receive photos for our second contest. This one is for a seventeen-month long giveaway of autographed copies of the all new “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar,” which will be out this fall (figure late October or November). We’re calling it “Complete Idiot’s Rock in the Free World,” and here’s how it works:

If you do buy a copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar,” take a picture of yourself with it someplace. You don’t have to have the Eiffel Tower or Mount Rushmore in the background, but be creative. Paul and I will select two photos a month, starting in August and running through all of 2011 and will send an autographed copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar” to those whose pictures we select.

So please send your photos to me at dhodgeguitar@aol.com and be sure to include an email address where you can be reached, as well as a mailing address. And please put “Picture Book” in the subject line of the email. We’re looking forward to seeing where in the world the books end up! Best of luck to you on both contests!

Topic of the Month

With the changing of the seasons, and the inevitable getting ready for either spring, fall, dry or wet (depending on where you live), few people have got practicing on their minds. In fact, you could probably say that about any time of the year! Bearing that in mind, we feel that it’s important to make “Practicing” the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month for April. Given the importance of practice, we could easily make it the topic of the month every month!

So the next time you mosey over to the Home Page, be sure to take a look at some of the many fine articles on practicing, brought to you by a great group of writers and teachers like Tom Hess, Jamie Andreas, Tom Serb, Nick Minnion and more.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Paul Simon is the Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of April, 2010. And our bio about this artist, named by Time Magazine as one of their “100 People Who Shaped the World” will soon be up on the Guitar Noise Artist Profiles page.

New Articles and Lessons

The Learning Curve of Various Styles of Guitar (Part 1)
by Jamie Andreas

Even though the basics of guitar are the same for everyone, the skill set needed for various musical styles (blues, rock, jazz, folk, etc.,) can be markedly different. In this series of articles, Jamie Andreas will explore the various techniques necessary to become proficient in any specific style. Here, in Part 1, you get a good overview of the basic mindset you need to prepare for getting good at your favorite guitar style.

Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems (Part 2)
Towards Developing a Feel for Rhythm
by Nick Minnion

While everyone will agree that using a metronome can help you develop and improve your rhythm, it is far more important for any musician to learn how to internalize the rhythm of a song or musical piece. Nick Minnion examines ways to help you do just that in Part 2 of “Solving Timing and Rhythm Problems.”

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for April 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 27)

Welcome back to our group exploration of the sweet C phrygian feeling (AKA mode). Last time we did a three-note run spanning all twelve frets. This time, we run with four notes. The specific arpeggio we’re using to substitute for C phrygian is G min 7b5. It’s a great-sounding sub for a number of reasons. One, you’re not hammering the root note (C). In fact, you don’t play C at all. We take out C because it’s the most static note in the arpeggio, and because you want to let your audience’s ear work a bit to discover the implicit C. Poetry does the same basic thing: it gives you a million different ways of saying “I love you,” so that you never get bored of that statement.

Before I get too sidetracked, here’s the exercise:

|-----------------|--------9-13-9------|-----------------|------|
|-----------------|-6-8-11--------11-8-|-6---------------|------|
|---------------6-|--------------------|---6-------------|------|
|---------3-5-8---|--------------------|-----8-5-3-------|------|
|-------4---------|--------------------|-----------4-----|------|
|-1-3-6-----------|--------------------|-------------6-3-|-1----|

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.

Word is that Doug James (“Moonrider” on the GN Forums) is in a new band called “Southern Roots” and you can check them out Saturday, April 10: 8:00 PM at Namaw’s Country Diner

16121 Goodes Bridge Road in Amelia Courthouse, Virginia. The following Saturday, April 17, you’ll find them at the Chester Moose Lodge, located at 9500 Jefferson Davis Highway in Chester, Virginia.

Marilyn Miller will be the opener for the Jack Stafford Foundation at a house concert on Saturday, April 17 at 204 South Undermountain Road in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Show is from 7:00 until 10:00 PM.

And if you’re in New York City you should take in Sheryl Bailey, who’s playing a free show with the Sheryl Bailey 3 this Wednesday, April 7 from 7 to 9 PM at the 55 Bar, 55 Christopher Street. This outstanding jazz guitarist will be doing another free show, with Jack Pezzanelli, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Outpost 186, located at 186 1/2 Hampshire Street. Show starts at 7.

Random Thoughts

Two weeks ago by the calendar, although it seems both like a million years ago and less than an hour passed, I was honored with a visit from Nick Torres, who’d come up to Massachusetts to do some recording with me for the upcoming “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar.” The book will have an audio CD with it and many of the examples are traditional Public Domain songs that I have arranged to reflect the many varied styles of guitar playing a beginner might like to try.

Most of these songs, along with their histories, were found by Leslie Ann Maxwell (GN Forum Moderator “Elecktrablue” ) and some were also suggestions from many GN forum members. And I’m hoping you’ll not only find these arrangements worthy of playing, I’m also interesting in hearing whether or not some folks get the musical inspirations the arrangements sprang from.

But back to Nick, who had the unenviable task of learning a song, singing in a key determined by my lessons needs (as opposed to working within Nick’s range) and then delivering an interesting, entertaining and highly musical rendition of that song, usually within however many takes it took me to get the guitar part down. To say he was magnificent is a bit of an understatement. But he truly did a fantastic job and his singing alone is going to make the book worth buying.

Immediately after the second of two ten-hour studio sessions, we also played a five (six? – I can’t believe I can’t remember) song set at a fund raiser for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. So Nick got to wow some locals as well. Good times like these always seem to flit by.

The weird part about it is that I feel like I’ve known Nick all my life. But we’ve only known each other for seven or eight years. We first met in person when he came to the Riverside Jam in Chicago in 2003, the summer before I moved to Massachusetts. Paul, too, I’ve only known since very late 1999 and we’ve only met in person twice. But it’s hard to remember a time in my life where I’ve not known him. And the first of the two times I’ve met both GN Forum Moderators Alan Green and Tim (“Musenfreund”) Bennett (totally separate occasions) it seemed like meeting a friend I’d not seen since high school more than meeting a stranger.

(And a quick congratulations to Alan for conducting his first student recital about a week ago! It also seems like just yesterday that he was starting to teach more on a full time basis.)

The friendships you make through music can last a lifetime. But friendships, like all relationships (and like learning and playing music) require effort and work. Don’t just let them slide by if you can. Sometimes you can’t and that’s part of life, too, but I think the last thing anyone needs in life is one less friend.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace