Guitar Noise

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #70 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

• Greetings, News and Announcements
• New Articles and Lessons
• Coming Attractions
• Forum Findings
• Tutorial Tip
• Reviews
• Random Thoughts

Greetings, News And Announcements

Hello and welcome to the July 15, 2008 edition of Guitar Noise News.

Paul Hackett has, as usual, been hard at work behind the scenes here at Guitar Noise, as you can see by visiting the home page. It’s a lot cleaner and easier to navigate, not to mention that you can access just about everything in the Guitar Noise universe, from our lessons to our Blog to the Guitar Noise Podcasts to the Forum and reviews and artist profiles, all from one place.

Besides being handier to the reader, it’s also much handier for the folks behind the scene. It will be easier, for example, to make quick changes to all those pesky typos and mistakes for which I’m certainly known to write on occasion. The occasion being every single lesson I write…

So if you’re going through some of the old stuff (not to mention the latest ones, too!) and happen to see something amiss, please write me at the usual place (dhodgeguitar@aol.com) and let me know and we should be able to take care of it rather quickly.

And, speaking of the latest lessons, let’s see what’s new since we last chatted…

New Articles And Lessons

How To Play Simple Chords On Keyboard And Guitar
by Bruce Fleming

One of the best ways to cement what you learn on guitar, believe it or not, is to learn some of the basics of a different instrument. Guitar Noise extends a hearty “welcome back” to Bruce Fleming, who takes some of the rudiments of music theory and shows how to apply it to the keyboard, enabling you to get started with making chords.

Practicing Guitar: Self-Discipline Or Fun?
by Tom Hess

The attitude with which you approach practicing can often affect just how effective your practicing is likely to be. Tom Hess explores these attitudes and gives some recommendations that will hopefully make your practice time both enjoyable and productive.

Coming Attractions

Minor Over Major
Turning Scales into Solos (Part 3)
by David Hodge

While it’s vital to use a chord progression to help you decide on a scale, knowing the style or feel of both a song and a scale is just as important. This lesson focuses on the minor pentatonic scale and why it is used so much for blues (and other genres) in major keys.

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
Songs for Intermediates #24
by David Hodge

We’re going to combine a very simple walking bass with some of our Travis picking and create a light, lilting arrangement of this Simon and Garfunkel song. Even beginners can tag along as we’ll be using chord shapes that involve only one or two fingers of the fretting hand!

Forum Findings

All sorts of interesting things happen on the Guitar Noise Forum pages. Just recently, Uber-Moderator Nick Torres posted the following on the “Online Jams and Collaborations” Page:

Help me finish my song – collaboration

Is it a contest? No, not really. Is it just because I’m lazy? Perhaps. Is it because I can’t solo worth a darn? Well…there is that. Will it benefit a good cause? Yep, a little.

What am I talking about? I just put up a first cut of my latest song called “Lost Summer Days” on my Myspace page. Be warned…I haven’t put in harmonies, I did the vocals in one take and most importantly,(for the purposes of this post anyway), I haven’t put in a solo.

So here is the deal: Record a solo that goes over the two verses after the chorus. You’ll hear where they go in the recording. You can either go ahead and record your own and just post the snipped portion with your solo, or send it to me and I’ll mix every one I get with a vocal free track and post it back here so we all can listen. I’ll insert the winning* entry into my song. I’ll give you credit in the liner notes, my eternal thanks, room on the tour bus when it goes platinum and I’ll make a donation in your name to the Music Rising Foundation.

*winning is defined by some arbitrary, undefined and perhaps random criteria.

By the way, just in case you were worried this one is strictly PG-13. If it helps, think Steely Dan.

Oh, and remember, whatever you send it will be better than what I can do.

So if you’d like to help Nick out here, bop on over to this thread.

Since I’ve got a hunch I’m going to be playing this song publicly in a couple of weeks, I’m personally looking forward to everyone’s ideas!

Podcast Postings

Guitar Noise Podcast #12 – A Slightly Different Strum

We’re going to try something a little different with our twelfth Guitar Noise Podcast. I’m not even sure it’s got a “technical” name! Basically, and for lack of a better way of putting it, we’ll be “stretching out” our downstrum – turning it from a typcial downstroke to something that’s more of a musical punctuation mark. It’s easy to do and allows us to vary a typical strumming pattern in an interesting way while practically changing nothing in what we’re doing.

As before, we’ll examine this technique and then combine it with different patterns as well as with other techniques learned from our previous Guitar Noise Podcasts.

As has been mentioned numerous times before, our first series of Guitar Noise Podcasts has been covering various techniques on strumming – moving step by step from the very basics to alternate bass picking, to adding hammer-ons and pull-offs to spice up simple patterns to crosspicking and partial chord playing to incorporating other playing techniques, such as palm muting and choking, to bring even more excitement to our strumming. I try to do my best to walk you through things step by step, just as we do in the many song lessons at Guitar Noise. I hope that you find them as educational (and as fun!) as our online lessons here at our website.

Paul and I try to post a new Guitar Noise Podcast every other Monday, so look for the next one next Monday, July 21, 2008.

And, as always, feel free to give us your feedback. You can post your thoughts here, at the Blog, or even PM or write me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com

Reviews

Starpics
Product Review by Vic Lewis

Starpics are plectrums or guitar picks handcrafted in Australia from semi-precious and precious stones. Guitar Noise stalwart Vic Lewis gives us this thoughtful look at these stone beauties.

Random Thoughts

One of the things we’re always going on about at Guitar Noise, and one of the fun things about playing guitar is playing music with other people. Playing with others is not only fun, it’s one of the best ways to learn about music – you get to pick up tips and techniques from everyone and to learn about the importance of listening and arranging as you turn a bunch of notes and chords into a fully realized song.

But it can be frustrating for people as well, especially when everyone else plays guitar!

As mentioned in the blurb for the Bruce Fleming article, it never hurts to learn a second instrument. Picking up the fundamentals of bass, banjo, mandolin (these three being closest to the guitar in applied knowledge) doesn’t take all that long and while you may not feel as confident in your playing as you might with the guitar, you will certainly notice a big change in the overall sound of your group work.

So let me add another maxim to our “don’t ever turn down a chance to…” list. In addition to “don’t ever turn down the chance to see a show” and “don’t ever turn down a chance to play,” I’d like to suggest “don’t ever turn down a chance to try out another instrument.” Even if you end up only playing it well enough to handle the very basics, that may one day be just the right touch to add in your next musical get together.

Thanks for letting me ramble. Until our next newsletter, play well. Play often. Stay safe.

And, as always…

Peace