Newsletter Vol. 3 # 91 – June 1, 2009

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #91 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • Greetings, News and Announcements
  • Guitar Noise Featured Artist
  • Topic of the Month
  • New Lessons and Articles
  • Coming Attractions
  • Exploring Music with Darrin Koltow
  • Podcast Postings
  • This Day (or Approximately) In (GN) History
  • Emails? We Get Emails!
  • Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

It may be a Monday, but it’s also the first day of June, so that means it’s time once again to bid you welcome to Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise.

As I mentioned last time out, one of our latest articles, a chord melody / finger style arrangement of George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps, has generated a lot of interest. I’ve already told you about GN Forum member Dylan Barrett’s inspiring series of videos, detailing his personal process of learning this song arrangement. In case you’ve forgotten, it’s called “How Long Does It Take to Learn and Play a Song?” and you can find this Guitar Noise Forum thread, as well as a link to his video here.

I also mentioned that we got an email from Jamie Andreas, the founder of Guitar Principles, asking if she might put together a few video lessons about how best to make finger placement transitions for this song arrangement. The first one went up online earlier this past week and you can read all about that in our “New Lessons and Articles” section, a little further on down in the newsletter.

This may not be as big as news as all that, but I’ve recently put a hummingbird feeder at my window, right next to my “office,” which is actually just a corner of the main floor of my home, and Charley, Lily and I have been visited by seemingly dozens of the peppy little things. It’s amazing and fascinating how small and speedy they are. Three have come by for a drink just in the course of writing these first few paragraphs of this newsletter.

As speaking of newsletters, I want to let you all know that the next issue of Guitar Noise News, which comes out on Monday, June 15, also falls on one of my book deadline dates. Don’t worry, there will definitely be a newsletter! But it may be a little on the brief side!

Anyway, here in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring is pushing its way into becoming Summer. It seems like the grass needs to be cut every other day. And, as one month turns into the next, it’s also time for us to move on to new things as well, such as…

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Since the start of 2009, Paul has been running a “Featured Artist” section each month. You can usually find a link to a bio, plus links to Guitar Noise song lessons of that particular artist’s work, on the home page, as well as most of the “main” pages of Guitar Noise.

Our Guitar Noise Featured Artist for the month of June is that pop / rock group, Coldplay. And if you’d like to go straight to our Featured Artist page, look no further than here.

As always, if you’ve suggestions of bands or musicians you’d like to see added as a Guitar Noise Featured Artist, please feel free to drop me a line with your ideas. I’m always willing to get more ideas!

Topic Of The Month

Since we recently had two lessons involving both alternate tuing (the DADGAD arrangement of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s All I Can Do Is Write About It) and open tuning (see the next section for more on the recent lesson on Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan), it kind of made sense to highlight the many articles here at Guitar Noise on this particular subject. So the “Topic of the Month” for June is going to be Alternate and Open Tunings.

As usual, if you go to the top left hand corner of the Home Page, you’ll find links to some great articles here at Guitar Noise on that particular topic, including some wonderful song lessons featuring music from the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Rolling Stones and (surprise!), Guitar Noise’s Featured Artists, Coldplay.

And there will also be links to other articles, particularly the old Guitar Columns, which not only do a wonderful job of exploring the many aspects of alternate and open tunings, but also contain some “hidden gems,” such as a terrific arrangement of the Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” played in open D tuning. Alternate and open tunings are a great way to explore more of the potential of your guitar, so why not give it a try?

New Lessons and Articles

While My Guitar Gently Weeps – Performance Notes
Video Lesson by Jamie Andreas

Guitar Noise bids a heartfelt “welcome back” to Jamie Andreas of Guitar Principles. Jamie has honored us by putting together a series of video lessons of performance notes for our Guitar Noise arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” She has a wonderful way of explaining the hows and whys of finger positioning and you’re in for a treat. Enjoy this first lesson and rest assured more are on the way.

Buckets of Rain
Songs for Intermediates #27
by David Hodge

Here is a rather faithful arrangement of the closing song from Bob Dylan’s immortal album, “Blood on the Tracks.” Using open D (or open E) tuning, as well as a steady (and incredibly easy) bass part, it’s easy to make this song sound really good. And, it’s excellent practice both for honing your finger picking technique as well as for developing a good sense of syncopation.

Lay Lady Lay
Easy Songs for Beginners #40
by David Hodge

Some of you may agree with the “Easy” label, but our arrangement of this Bob Dylan favorite (from the album, “Nashville Skyline”) can be played very easily with the use of a capo, plus a very simple picking pattern. More important, though, is that is can be used as a great lesson to help you get used to switching between open position chords and basic barre chords. With some practice and patience, you should find yourself playing it well in no time.

Coming Attractions

We are constantly working on new lessons of all sorts here at Guitar Noise. Just to keep you updated as to what’s coming along in the pipeline, the following lessons are still on track for being posted up online in the next few months, although not necessarily in the order in which I’ve written them!

Easy Songs for Beginners: Sweet Home Alabama, Ziggy Stardust, Mister Bojangles, Banana Pancakes, Peace Train, Just Like Heaven

Songs for Intermediates: Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, If I Had A Boat, Homeward Bound, Hello In There, Fire and Rain

Plus more on the “Turning Scales into Solos” and “Beyond Up and Down” series, not to mention our new “Music Meccas” series, as well as more of our “Chord Melody Song Arrangements,” which will deal with pop and rock songs, like Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” or old standards like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and maybe even a surf tune, such as the Ventures’ classic “Walk Don’t Run.”

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for June 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 9)

We’re going to continue our exploration of modes by playing C ionian chords whose melody notes lie outside the C major scale. We’ve done the C diatonic (in the key) chords, and now it’s time to “color outside the edges.” The following chords all have their melody notes on string 1. They are not the last word in chords you might choose; they represent what I thought sounded smooth and musical.

   Q   Q   Q   Q     Q  Q   Q  Q    Q  Q  Q  Q    Q  Q
 |-13--12--11--10--|-9---8--7--6--|-5--4--3--2--|-1--0----|
 |-13--12---9--10--|-8---8--6--6--|-5--3--5--1--|-1--1----|
 |-13--12---9--10--|-7---9--7--7--|-5--5--4--2--|-1--0----|
 |-12--10--10---9--|-9--10--5--6--|-5--3--5--0--|-0--2----|
 |-----------------|----10-----8--|-------3-----|----3----|
 |-----------------|-----8-----6--|-------------|---------|

Understand that we’re really stretching the idea of C ionian. The chords with the notes that fall outside the C major scale aren’t true C ionian sounds; they are complementary to the C io sound. Next time out we might delve into the reasons for the chord choices in this issue.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2009 Darrin Koltow

Podcast Postings

If all goes according to plan, Guitar Noise Podcast #27 should be up online sometime today, June 1. It’s a continuation of our last lesson, and it also goes into totally new territory – exploring what to do when you get together with a second guitar player. I hope that you’ll have a lot of fun with it.

And, as I mentioned last time out, owing to my book deadlines, not to mention keeping up with my private students and all the other little things that have to get done as part of the course of life, it’s been a little tough of late putting together enough spare time to do everything. So, for a little while at least, I’m trying to keep the Guitar Noise Podcasts going on a once-a-month basis. If all works well, there will be a new one up online the first Monday of each month. So our next GN Podcast will (hopefully) be online on Monday, July 6.

This Day (or Approximately) in (Guitar Noise) History

Sometimes it’s amazing when I think of how much material that there is here on Guitar Noise, and how most of it has come about in the last ten years. So, to celebrate our longevity, how about we look back from time to time at things that have happened?

For instance, going back just three years, to June 1, 2006, you would have found these two new lessons at Guitar Noise:

Irish Flatpicking Guitar – “The Humours of Tulla”
by Doug Sparling

Doug takes a break from finger-style guitar to bring us a few lessons in flatpicking. In addition to a terrific arrangement of a Celtic reel, you’ll learn a little more about timing and ornamentation, specifically the “staccato triplet.”

Friend of the Devil
by David Hodge

Sometimes the simplest things, such as a descending scale line, make all the difference between a song that is just strummed chords and one that sounds like you put a little work into it. Here’s an easy and very recognizable arrangement of this classic tune from the Grateful Dead.

Obviously, I’ve been into this whole descending bass lines for quite some time! The new lesson on “Lay Lady Lay” is just the latest example of how much time we’ve spent using this technique in our song lessons. Pretty wild, eh?

I wonder what year we’ll visit next time?

Emails? We Get Emails!

Hi

I’ve been following your excellent website for a while now and was wondering if you were going to continue with your blues lessons. They’ve been extremely valuable in getting me started in a genre which I very recently started listening to and enjoy playing immensely and from your description in “Roll Over Beethoven,” the second lesson (“Before You Accuse Me” being the first), the third lesson sounds like it was going to be very informative.

I realize that you must be under immense pressure to maintain a website which I can imagine gets thousands of hits a day and so it’s not possible to continue every set of lessons. If you aren’t going to continue with your blues lessons then I suppose I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Thank you for this amazing resource.

Hello

Thank you for writing. The third part of those blues lessons is actually up online and has been for quite some time. It’s the “Easy Songs for Beginners” lesson called “(Going To) Kansas City” and it teaches about turnarounds as well as tosses in some very simple blues riffs.

And, just this week in fact, I managed to have enough spare time in the schedule to put together sound files for MP3 examples for this lesson.

I hope this helps. There is no end of blues lessons out there on the Internet and you should definitely take advantage of all of them. I’m hoping that if my schedule permits that we’ll be doing more on Guitar Noise as well, probably starting in the fall.

Please feel free to write anytime. Thank you once more for the email and I look forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

Random Thoughts

My “significant other” or whatever one calls the person one is sharing one’s life with these days (“sharing one’s life” meaning sharing most of the same time and (relatively) same space with, as I guess we can say we’re technically sharing our lives all the time with someone or something) (whatever) celebrated a “big” birthday this past week. As part of the celebration, I took her to see Marcia Ball in concert last Friday, at the Infinity Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut. Lovely place by the way – seats maybe two hundred or so people in a very old fashioned opera house type of setting. Great restaurant / bar in the building as well, so you can eat or drink before or even after the show (there’s local talent playing in the bar after the shows on Fridays and Saturdays).

Marcia Ball has been performing for more than thirty-five years now (can she really be turning sixty? You’d never think so to hear her pound out those keys like Professor Longhair’s long lost daughter!), and it’s rather safe to say that if you were to stop a dozen people the next time you were out and asked if they knew her, you’d be lucky to get one or two affirmative responses. Unless you happened to do so in New Orleans or other places she plays quite often. She’s a very talented pianist / singer / songwriter whose music would probably be categorized as “Cajun blues” or some such nice little box that would also contain maybe the Neville Brothers or Doctor
John. And she does a lot to help folks in New Orleans and the surrounding area through charity work and donations.

She had, and I suspect she always has, a terrific band. Dan Bennett (who’s been with her for ages) and Corey Keller (who has been playing with her for at least five years now) handled bass and drums, respectively, plus the occasional backing vocal here and there.

But it’s the two “new” lads, tenor saxophone player Thad Scott and (left handed!) guitarist Andrew Nafziger, who occasionally stole the show, trading solos and often acting as a single horn section, with Andrew and Thad sharing rhythm and riff lines as well as big smiles.

One of the things mentioned so often on the Guitar Noise Forums is how much fun it is to be at a concert, whether in a large arena or in the pub down the street from your home, where the band is having such a great, happy time that it’s positively infectious. And that was certainly the case with these folks.

And I couldn’t help thinking that here’s a guitarist that fewer people have heard of than have heard of Marcia Ball, yet he will certainly be one I’ll be thinking about for ages because he played so well and made so many people enjoy themselves.

If you get the chance, be on the lookout for Marcia and her band this summer. You can find the schedule here.

And those of you in the Chicago area who don’t manage to see them at Fitzgeralds in Berwyn, IL on either July 3rd or 4th are depriving yourself of the chance of a lifetime!

Spring is indeed making itself over as Summer, which means an incredible number of chances to catch some wonderful music. So start making plans to get away from the computer and the cell phones and the house and go out and have some real fun.

Until our next newsletter, stay safe. Play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace