Guitar Noise

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #22 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• News and Announcements
• New Articles and Lessons
• Guitar Noise Staff Picks!
• Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
• Emails? We Get Emails!
• Digging Through The Archives / Forum Findings
• Event Horizon
• Reviews
• Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

If you live in the United States and forgot to wish your mother a Happy Mothers’ Day yesterday, drop everything immediately and do so. We’ll wait for you.

Welcome back! And welcome to the May 15, 2006 edition of Guitar Noise News. For those of you who missed our last newsletter, the big news is that Nick Torres and I are inviting you the chance to attend:

Guitar Noise Mini-Camp 2006

“From Online To Onstage” or “Open Mike 101″

This year we’re going to take Guitar Noise’s logo to heart and prepare our campers to face the bright lights. There’ll be classes and instruction, all geared toward making your first performance at the Guitar Noise (Relatively) Open Mike Night.

And, we have Nick Torres coming as our special guest teacher and vocal coach!

Dates are from Thursday, July 6 to Sunday, July 9, 2006.

Classes and instruction will include:

Choosing your set of songs – what works, what doesn’t, what might

Singing basics – learning to breathe, support and staying in tune, finding and increasing your range

Arranging your songs – picking a key, adding some flair to your playing with simple techniques, ordering your set

Preparing for your performance – how and what to practice, how to mark up your score sheet/lead sheet, dynamics, memorization tricks

Theory and performance – a crash course on the capo, playing with one or two others

How to perform – prep for performance, dealing with and understanding stage fright developing a stage presence, using a microphone

All will culminate with a performance by all participants (both solo and groups) at our “virtual” open mike to be held at Uncommon Grounds Coffee House in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Saturday, July 8 from 5 to 9 PM. We’re calling it “virtual” because the performance will be invitation only. There will be an audience but the only performers will be the Guitar Noise Mini-Campers and staff.

Thursday and Friday evenings will feature a jam and we’re hoping the weather will cooperate and we’ll have a sing-around-the campfire hot dog roast on Friday.

For this particular camp, you want to be comfortable playing first position chords and willing to take a stab at performing. If you’re at the point where you’re playing and singing songs in your home, then you should have no problems. If you’re close, meaning that you can strum along with someone else singing, then you certainly will get a lot out of this Mini-Camp.

The focus will be on performing with the abilities that you have. Obviously, the more you know the more nuanced your playing will be. But, as you’ll learn in camp (not to mention in real life), playing very complicated pieces doesn’t always translate well on stage.

The very first night of camp will be spent brainstorming about what pieces you’ll want to perform solo as well as part of a small group (duet, trio or quartet). If all you decide you’re comfortable with is Horse With No Name, For What It’s Worth and Knocking On Heaven’s Door (or any other two and three chord songs), then you’ve got a set, believe it or not! And we’ll help you put it together to make it as polished as possible.

Cost of the Mini-Camp is $750. This includes lodging at my home and all meals (except for Saturday night). If you’d prefer to stay someplace else other than my home, then cost is $600. If you’d like to bring a spouse, friend, partner who won’t participate in the classes but will attend meals and the evening events, there would be an additional charge of $200.

Owing to the individual nature of instruction and the privacy of the “open mike” night, Guitar Noise Mini-Camp is limited to six participants. Three are already confirmed for this particular camp. If there is enough interest, there will be more camps on this topic in the very near future.

To reserve a spot or to ask any questions, write me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

I look forward to seeing you there.

GUITAR GIVEAWAY

Stadium Arcadium, the new DOUBLE album from Red Hot Chili Peppers, hits stores May 9th. Kiedis, Flea, Frusciante, and Smith team up with Rick Rubin to bring you 28 tracks that will become the soundtrack to your summer. To celebrate the release of the album, John Frusciante wants to give one lucky fan a signed Fender Stratocaster!

And now let’s take a look at what’s new here at Guitar Noise:

New Articles And Lessons

After The Gold Rush
by David Hodge

Here’s a short lesson that uses the chord melody approach to come up with a nice song arrangement that you can play either as a chord melody or as a single guitar accompaniment for a singer (or yourself).

Top 10 Hits Of CD Distribution
by Kevin McCluskey

Seeking a distribution deal for your indie CD? Kevin McCluskey from the Berklee College of Music provides an analysis of the costs versus the potential career benefits.

Guitar Noise Staff Picks!

One of my good friends in Chicago sent me a link to an interview with guitarist/songwriter Richard Thompson.

It’s a very interesting read and I’m hoping that he manages to get out my way sometime in the near future. Always a good show.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Time for the second installment of Darrin’s discussion on ninth chords: The Major Nine , part two

We’ve been exploring a special “addition” to the plain major chord: the Major 9. In the scale of C major, you can have two different major nines:

C major 9: C, E, G, B, D — listed in order of ascending pitch. And F major 9: F, A, C, E, G

(You can also have a G major, add 9.)

Here’s a point about how this works in reality on the guitar. Sometimes, we don’t play the natural seventh. That’s the B in C major 9. In that case, the chord is named as follows: C major, add 9.

We’ll take a look at a couple of different places you can play the major 9 on the fretboard and then go into some applications for this form.

Here’s one pattern: the D major 6/9. Notes: D, F#, B, E. Notice the seven and five are missing. That’s fine: we don’t need them to get the basic major 9 sound.

---
-5-
-4-
-4-
-5-
---

And here’s one with the top note falling on string 1, F major, add 9

-3-
-1-
-2-
-3-
---
---

Play this one with your fingers instead of a pick.

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

Now here’s an excerpt from an actual tune that uses a major 9 chord.

  Q    Q     Q    Q      Q     E     Q.    Q
|-3----0----0---------|-3----0-----0----------|
|-1----1----1----3----|-1----1-----1-----3----|
|-2----2----2----2----|-2----2-----2-----2----|
|-3-------------------|-3----3-----3----------|
|---------------------|-----------------------|
|---------------------|-----------------------|

  Q  Q   Q  Q    Q  E  Q.  Q
|-3-----------|-3--------------|
|-5--5--5--3--|-5--5--5---3----|
|-4--4--4--4--|-4--4--4---4----|
|-3-----------|-3--------------|
|-------------|----------------|
|-3-----------|-3--------------|

The E means eighth note, Q is quarter note, and “Q.” is dotted quarter note.

That’s the Girl from Ipanema.

Also, listen to the intro to Dust in the Wind for a Major, add 9 happening in open position. Very pretty.

When do you use the major 9 and related chords? If you’re accompanying yourself singing, and reading chords to strum from chord charts or other notation, try a major 9 when you see a plain major chord called for.

Thanks for reading.

Darrin

For those of you who might like to know more about Darrin, let me direct you to his website, Maximum Musician and also to his page here at Guitar Noise.

Emails? We Get Emails!

Hi David,

Thank you for providing all those great lessons on GuitarNoise.com. I’m (very much) a beginner guitar player, and though I have an informal teacher, the lessons you’ve written have helped me be really excited about practicing, partially because I can feel myself getting better so easily.

And to be able to play songs that I know and love – Dock of the Bay, Wild World, Bookends – is so fun! I’m still not very good, but having challenging songs is keeping me engaged so much better than strumming pattern exercises or chord progression exercises. It’s really helping my practicing improve and become more frequent.

The short sound clips you provide, too, are so valuable to my practicing. I’ve played other instruments in the past (piano, flute) so know the basics of reading music, but it’s often very hard for me to play something without hearing it, so learning from books has been difficult.

Anyway, I am lucky to have found GuitarNoise.com, and grateful for all the hard work you put into writing these articles and recording the clips. Thank you!

You’re quite welcome. I am truly hoping to spend much more time writing in the upcoming months that I have so far this year. Spare time seems harder and harder to come by these days but I truly enjoy writing and recording the lessons.

And speaking of recording sound files:

Digging Through The Archives / Forum Findings

Hello David,

I’m a Californian who has been living in Germany for the past ten years (my parents were German)

Here, I teach English and guitar. You would be amazed how the German people love American folk songs! They usually don’t understand or know all of the text, but the know the melodies.

My beginners are learning “Corinna, Corinna”, “Kumbaya” “Amazing Grace” and others.

I made a simple CD for them of me singing and playing these songs. My question for you, because the recordings I heard of you playing are very good, how you go about recording your music. What program do you use, what equipment, etc.,

I would be very grateful if you could give me some tips in this direction.

Thanks a lot and greetings from Germany!

Hello and thanks for writing.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I use a Yamaha digital recorder to make the MP3 files you hear on our site. I record directly into the machine, usually using two microphones and an acoustic guitar and that’s about it.

But there are lots of ways of coming up with good recordings. You might want to check out both our Forum page’s section called “In The Studio” as well as the Recording pages on our sister site, Music Careers. You’ll not only find a lot of information, you’ll also get to chat with many folks who are very knowledgeable in this particular area.

Hope this helps and who knows? Maybe one day soon we’ll be able to hear your CD!

Event Horizon

Supporting Guitar Noise and the Guitar Noise community is not always about money or time. 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’d 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 July (that is, after the fifteenth), then let me know by the tenth or the twelfth. If you’ve already got a show in August, let me know, too! It’s never too early to plan for things!

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

I know that a lot of folks are playing out and about this summer (we’ve already gotten some alerts for Fourth of July shows), so be sure to get your gig mentioned. You might get to meet some of the folks you’ve been chatting with on the Forum Pages.

Reviews

Reviews go up almost all the time here at Guitar Noise. But we also know that what we post is, pardon the cliché, the very tip of the iceberg. If you’d like to pass along a review of an album, concert, DVD (tutorial, concert or otherwise), book or even a guitar or guitar/music product, feel free to drop me a line and try to put “proposed review” in the subject.

For those of you who are always thinking about “giving back to the community,” this is certainly a fine way to do so.

In the meantime, let me first add that I truly screwed up big time last time with the reviews. It’s a long story and involves adult content (swearing and violence with a computer) and it’s not worth getting into at the moment. Suffice it to say that you’ll be seeing a host of new reviews in the near future, some that you should have seen about a month ago!

Instead, let’s check out the latest reviews to be posted on our site:

Mambo Sons: Racket of Three
CD Review by Jimmy Caterine

I would highly recommend this CD – it’s good old rock and roll, nicely flavored with many stylish rhythms and influences of guitarist Tom Guerra.

Tempest: The Double Cross
CD Review by Jimmy Caterine

An interesting concept album about Captain Kidd, featuring great musicianship and terrific arrangements in a style you might think of as “Celtic Progressive Rock.”

The Green And Yellow TV: Sinister Barrier
CD Review by Jimmy Caterine

Political statements, ecological stands, social commentary and a very commercial pop sound from a three-piece band. No, it’s not Green Day! You might find this terrific trio a bit more reminiscent of England’s Muse. An exceptional album!

Random Thoughts

Owing to some things we’ll discuss next time out, this is going to have to be one of the less chatty newsletters.

I hope that everyone is having a good spring (or fall for those of you south of the Equator) so far and until we chat again in a few weeks, I hope you all stay safe and play well.

And, as always,

Peace