Newsletter Vol. 3 # 115 – June 1, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #115 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
• Emails? We Get Emails!
• More Emails
• Event Horizon
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello! It’s June1 already! And here to help you welcome in the new month is your latest issue of Guitar Noise News, the twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com).

Following up on some of last month’s announcements, I’m pleased to note that, despite numerous potential setbacks, not to mention the weather making more of a nuisance of itself, Guitar Noise Forum member, JWMartin” and his band Spookhand played a successful benefit show last Firday (May 28th) at The Pond in Franklin (Tennessee). All told, the participating bands raised about $1,000 for the American Red Cross of Williamson County.

You can read all about it here.

Here in the New York / Massachusetts / Connecticut border area, there were three FODfest shows this past weekend as well, each one different and delightful in its own way. Some of the Saturday and Sunday shows can be seen here.

And it’s also time to announce our last five winners for the current giveaway. An autographed copy of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar” will be making its way to the following Guitar Noise followers (listed in alphabetical order by last name):

Randy Bennett of Ontario (Canada)
Alan Fiddament of Ontario (Canada)
Carla Mora of Massachusetts (USA)
Ken Rogers of Florida (USA)
Milly Tan of Singapore (Singapore)

I’d like to thank everyone who has written in and to also let you know that we’ll be running more giveaway contests later on this year. In fact I’m already receiving photos for our second contest, which will officially begin in August. 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 on October 5 (at least according to what my publisher says!). 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!

And please be assured, we’ll be having more giveaways throughout the year (and next year), including a contest in November and December to win a copy of each of the three Complete Idiot’s Guides I’ve written. Stay tuned for details!

Topic Of The Month

In June, the Guitar Noise Topic of the Month is Scales and Modes – we’re highlighting the many articles we have on this fascinating subject, ranging from our beginner’s explanatory lessons, like “Scales within Scales,” to a series like “Turning Scales into Solos,” which puts your knowledge to practical use. So make a visit to the Home Page, be sure to take a look at some of the many fine articles on this topic, authored by a wide range of Guitar Noise contributing writers.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

And if you flip over to the Guitar Noise Artist Profiles page you’ll discover that our Featured Artist for the month of June is none other than Tom Petty, who will be releasing his latest album with the Heartbreakers, “Mojo” on June 15. Paul’s put together a great bio on this artist whose long career is a testimony both to his love of music and his support for the rights of artists.

New Articles and Lessons

We’re running a bit behind here with some of the new articles, but keep an eye out on the home page. We’ll have Part 3 of Jamie Andreas’ series on “The Learning Curve,” a new piece from Tom Hess on how to get more people to come to your live shows and two from my own computer – one on learning to change direction when picking (using a riff from Three Doors Down to demonstrate) as well as a fingerstyle lesson on creating your own blues song, in Drop D. And the next Guitar Noise Podcast, too! All will be out this week and weekend!

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for June 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 31)

We’re exploring the C Dorian mode via the C minor chords today. Last issue was an exploration through C minor chords with melody notes on string 1, the high E string. Today we’ll walk through the melody notes on string 2 (B string) chords.

Substitutions used include G9 (from the C melodic minor scale) and D min 7b5 (from the C harmonic minor scale).

Here’s the run:

|-------------------------------|
|-13--11--10---8--6--4--3--1----|
|-12--10--10---8--5--3--5--0----|
|-13--12---9---8--6--5--3--0----|
|-10--13--10--10--5--3-----3----|
|--------------8--------4-------|

If you have the free Power Tab application, you can load the file from the following link into it. This file contains the run just given.

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.

Emails? We Get Emails!

Let me first say what a great web site and I love the pod casts. My question is I am starting to play from piano song books. Of course the have the chords listed above the treble clef. I keep seeing instead of say just an Am or F chord something like G/B or C/E. What chord exactly am I supposed to play????

Thanks

Hi!

Thanks for writing and my apologies for not getting back to you sooner. I’ve gotten more than a bit behind with my email correspondence and, hopefully, I’ll be able to start catching up on that this upcoming weekend.

To answer your question, chords like G/B or C/E are known as “slash chords.” Usually when playing guitar, we play chords with the root note (the note that shares the same note name as the chord) as the lowest note in the chord. That’s why, for instance, you typically strum a C chord from the A string down, as you’re playing the lowest C note (on the third fret) of that string, instead of strumming all six strings, which makes the chord sound muddy.

Sometimes, though, you want to play a chord with a note other than its root note as your bass note. These are called slash chords and, with your permission, I’m going to quote a bit from the lesson on “Eleanor Rigby” here at Guitar Noise:

A slash chord looks like two chords with a slash (“/”) between them. Something like this:

Em/D

Whenever you see a slash chord, simply remember that the chord is to the left of the slash and the note on the right side of it indicates a new bass note. So in this example, we want to play an Em chord, but we want to have a note in the bass. In other words we want the D note to be the lowest note of our Em chord.

Slash chords can cause confusion. In the above example we are technically creating a new chord, an Em7, when we add the D note to the Em chord. So if we were being sticklers for protocol, we’d call it “Em7/D.” But slash chords don’t always create new chords. Suppose we wanted an Em chord with B as our bass note. B is part of the Em chord, so writing it as “Em/B” is perfectly correct. Many times, these notes are thought of as “passing tones” – they are simply meant to highlight our moving from one chord to another. So don’t
worry too much about what they are called. Worry instead about how to play the original chord and the new bass note.

This lesson goes on to explain how slash chords are used to make the chorus more lively. Even though the tablature and notation isn’t there, you can get a good picture about how they work by reading the text and listening to the MP3 examples. And if you do have questions, just email me again and ask.

I hope this helps and I look forward to chatting with you again sometime.

Peace

More Emails

Hi Dave

First, thank you for the great website and lessons. I’ve been just playing approx a year and a half. I took the challenge to learn “Dust in the Wind“ from your website and have it pretty good control of the song.

I was wondering what might be a good next level finger style song to try (“Time after Time” and “Fields of Gold” are a little too advanced). Any feedback would be appreciated.

Cheers

Hi

Thanks for writing and thank you as well for your kind words concerning both Guitar Noise and my lessons on the site. It’s always good to hear that they are being of help to someone and I appreciate you making the time to write and say so.

Have you tried either the lesson on “Blackbird” or “Scarborough Fair” yet? ”Blackbird” may actually be a “sideways step” for you in terms of difficulty - you may actually find it too easy. “Scarborough Fair” is terrific because it involves switching between several different easy patterns. If you can handle the switches in finger patterns in “Scarborough Fair,” you may find yourself up to taking on either “Time After Time” or “Fields of Gold.”

I hope this helps. Please feel free to write anytime. I look forward to chatting with you again soon.

Peace

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.

Got a note just this weekend from Tom (“tommyguns”) and I definitely want to pass this along to you all:

Hi Dave,

Just a quick note on my next upcoming gig – I’ve just joined the band Slightly Offensive (good friends of mine)and my first gig with them is Saturday, June 12 at Morgan’s, which is at 18700 South Old LaGrange Road in Mokena, Illinois

Here is a little info on Slightly Offensive, which nitelife.org voted as ”Best New Cover Band” in April 2010!!

Slightly Offensive is a high energy band. We play songs that make people want to sing along and dance to. Slightly Offensive simply means we rock songs out! Whether it’s a pop song, rap song, or just regular rock, we play it beefy!!!

We’re a cover band playing radio hits from the past and present, covering artists such as Aerosmith, 4 non-blondes, Violent Femmes, Katy Perry, Don Henley, Kid Rock, Pink, Pat Benetar, Motley Crue, Joan Jett, Georgia Satellites, and many more!!

Anyone who comes to a show will have a great time! So if you weren’t invited to “the” party like us because you’re seen as a little “Offensive” to ”Them,” that’s okay! We’ve decided to throw our own party and you’re invited!!!

So come on out!!! We are Slightly Offensive!! But in a good way!!

….

It certainly sounds like it’s going to be a great time! If you’re in the area, drop in and say hi from me!

Random Thoughts

Kevin Kasper, a musician, teacher and writer for LoveToKnow.com, asked me to do a brief Internet interview a few weeks back. We discussed teaching and writing in general as well as topics specifically geared toward the beginning bass student. It’s just come online this week and if you’re interested in reading it, you’ll find it here.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace