Newsletter Vol. 3 # 93 – July 1, 2009

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #93 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • Greetings, News and Announcements
  • Guitar Noise Featured Artist
  • Topic of the Month
  • Coming Attractions
  • Exploring Music with Darrin Koltow
  • This Day (or Approximately) In (GN) History

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to a (or “another”) brief issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com). Things are going fast and furious with the writing of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar,” so much so, in fact, that there’s a good chance I can finish it this month if I sit at my computer long enough!

There is some terrific news from Tom Serb (“Noteboat” on the GN Forum pages). Some of you may remember that he opened a music school last September in Plainfield, Illinois (not that far south and slightly west of Chicago). On Friday, June 19, the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce awarded Tom’s Midwest Music Academy as Plainfield’s “New Business of the Year.” They also received a nomination for the “Best Small Business” Award. We’d like to extend Tom a hearty round of congratulations as well as our wishes for outstanding new school year this coming fall.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

The music world has lost a number of icons these past few months, from Dan Seals to Koko Taylor to Bob Bogle, lead guitarists of that seminal surf band, The Ventures. But the news of Michael Jackson’s death was quite a shock to almost the entire world. When Paul asked if I’d write up a bio on the “King of Pop,” I wasn’t quite sure I was up to the task.

As human beings, we’re all incredibly layered (and you can decide yourself if you’d prefer to be thought of as layered like an onion or layered like a cake) and, as human beings, it’s incredibly easy (not to mention, for a lot of people, desirable), to place a life under one convenient category and totally neglect other aspects. And with this bio, I certainly did that – focusing solely on Michael’s musical achievements and contributions.

But whatever you thought, or still think, of Michael Jackson, I hope that you will join us at Guitar Noise as we remember the man as a musical force.

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

“Music Theory” is the Topic of the Month for July. Did you know that there are over thirty-five articles on various aspects of music theory here at Guitar Noise? They range from basic introductory overviews, such as “The Musical Genome Theory” trilogy of lessons to articles on specific topics, such as extended and altered chords.

So if you’d like to delve more into the wild and wonderful world of Music Theory, bop on over to the home page and click on the “Theory Without Tears” box up at the top left (just under the banner) and help yourself to the contributions many talented writers and teachers have made to Guitar Noise over the years.

And feel free to post an email to me if there’s a particular topic you’d like to see given “Topic of the Month” status at some point in the future.

New Lessons and Articles

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

In this second installment of her video lessons on the Guitar Noise arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” guitar teacher extraordinaire Jamie Andreas (of www.guitarprinciples.com) guides you through the verses of the song with very clear and detailed step-by-step instruction, designed to help you with the fingering involved in the tricky chord changes.

Five Big Mistakes You Should Avoid When Teaching Beginning Guitar Students
by Tom Hess

Teaching beginners is tricky at best and can be, for some guitar teachers, downright frustrating. Guitar teaching guru Tom Hess outlines five basic mistakes that many guitar teachers make when teaching beginner students and details way to avoid them in the first place.

Coming Attractions

My apologies that the book is taking precedence over the lessons at this point, but new material will be coming online at Guitar Noise before you know it.

And in honor of the finches flocking to the birdfeeder here at my home, we’ll also have a lesson on Coldplay’s “Yellow” and, just to show I learned something from June’s “Topic of the Month” (Alternate and Open Tunings), I’ve come up with an arrangement for Mark Knopfler’s “Sailing to Philadelphia” in EADGBD tuning that I think you’ll enjoy.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for July 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 11)

We’ve been taking an extended journey through the C Ionian sound, most recently, over the harmonic landscape: C major chords, essentially. In the last few issues, we played a C major/Ionian chord, or one complementary to it, on each fret on string one. That is, the chord’s melody note, or top note, fell on a particular fret, from F, fret 13, down to open E, fret “zero.”

I then explained a bit how I came up with chords for the melody notes that seems to be at odds with the C major sound. For example, where am I getting D min 7b5 for melody note F on frets 13 and 1? The Dmin 7b5 is nowhere near being a C major chord.

But it _sounds_ like it belongs with C major. Let’s use this issue to explore the main idea of coming up with chords for those non-diatonic –non-C-Major — melody notes.

Let’s take the melody note Ab, just for example. Does Ab show up in C major? No: C major has C E G, and optionally B or A. So, how do we find a chord that somehow fits with C major, but that has Ab as its melody note?

One approach is to think in terms of key centers. The line of thought goes like this: The C major scale has zero accidentals; every other key center has accidentals, (eg.: Bb in the F major scale). The fewer accidentals a key center has, the more harmonious it will sound with chords and melodies from the C major scale. For example, try playing the F major or G major scale over a C major chord. Since both of these key centers have just once accidental (Bb in F and F# in G major) — they’ll both sound pretty sweet, once you work out how to (not) play the notes that sound a bit weird.

Now, try to play the B major scale over a C chord — train wreck, right? Now, let’s use this idea to rephrase our original problem/challenge. Instead of asking “what C major-related chord has Ab as its melody note?” we now ask “What scale containing Ab has the fewest accidentals (i.e., is closest to the C major scale)? I’ll leave you with this cliffhanger, and answer the question in the next issue. See if you can figure out what possible scale(s) might work.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2009 Darrin Koltow

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

Here’s something I couldn’t believe – Apparently it was only four years ago (July 1, 2005 to be precise) we started “Volume 3” of the Guitar Noise News. It was the start of the “bi-monthly” newsletter format that we currently have today, and it was certainly a bit ambitious. Even Nick had his own little dedicated soapbox.

But since July 1 is also Canada Day, we were fortunate enough to get a nice mini-piece from Guitar Noise’s creator / owner Paul Hackett. It’s certainly worth a second look as we celebrate Canada Day here in 2009.

Random Thoughts

And with that, we’ll see you again in two weeks.

Until then, stay safe. Play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace