Guitar Noise

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #97 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

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

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello to all and welcome to the September 1, 2009 issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com). I hope that this newsletter finds everyone well and in good spirits.

For a change, there’s a lot of news to tell you. Right off the bat, I got an email from Tom Hess with the schedule for his free guitar clinics that will be taking place all over the Eastern and “Near West” US in September. If you happen to be in (or in driving distance of) Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, New York or Pennsylvania, then you definitely want to check this out:

September 14, 2009 Guitar Center – Algonquin, Illinois, 7 pm
September 15, 2009 Guitar Center – Grand Rapids, Michigan, 6 pm
September 16, 2009 Guitar Center – Toledo, Ohio, 6 pm
September 17, 2009 Guitar Center – Cleveland, Ohio, 7 pm
September 18, 2009 House of Guitars – Rochester, New York, 7 pm
September 19, 2009 McNeil Music – Vestal, New York, 6:30 pm
September 20, 2009 To be announced
September 21, 2009 To be announced
September 22, 2009 To be announced
September 23, 2009 Guitar Center – Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 6 pm
September 24, 2009 Guitar Center – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 7 pm
September 25, 2009 Sam Ash Music – Columbus, Ohio, 6 pm
September 26, 2009 Guitar Center – Cincinnati, Ohio, 7 pm
September 27, 2009 Guitar Center – Indianapolis, Indiana, 3 pm

Tom is a great guy, not to mention an excellent guitarist and teacher, and if this year’s clinics are as good as last year (and you can get Tom ”Noteboat” Serb’s take on last year’s clinic, you’re bound to learn a lot and also have a good time.

In addition to Tom, Guitar Noise contributor Mike Philippov will be there, as well as Zack Uidl, Nick Layton, Randy Johnson and Paul Kleff.

For details and FREE guitar lesson videos from the previous clinic tour, check out Tom Hess Music Corporation.

And be sure to tell Tom “hello” from me!

We at Guitar Noise would also like to congratulate the aforementioned Tom Serb on the first anniversary of the opening of his school, the Midwest Music Academy in Plainfield, Illinois. They’re closing in on having more than two hundred students and that’s very exciting news! Feel free to drop Tom a line of good wishes for the upcoming school year at this thread.

And speaking of teachers, Guitar Noise Moderator Alan Green is hitting the teaching circuit big time starting this month, working with the Essex Music Services in England. Check out our interview with Alan in the “New Articles and Lessons” section and be sure to send him an email of congratulations and encouragement as well.

Topic of the Month

And with all these announcements concerning guitar teachers, not to mention the new lessons we have about them (and from them), it only seems appropriate to make our Topic of the Month of September be about “Teaching. ” As always, on our Guitar Noise Home page you’ll find links to the many articles here at Guitar Noise that discuss teaching and the various things that go along with it. And you should also be sure to look up the articles, both here and on our sister website, www.musiccareers.net, written by some great teachers who are also GN contributors, such as Darrin Koltow, Tom Hess, Tom Serb, Alan Green, Nick Torres and many more.

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.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Because it’s the first of the month we’ve got a new Guitar Noise Featured Artist. During the month of September, we’ll be putting a spotlight on the Beatles, as well as on all the various Beatles’ song lessons available here at Guitar Noise. Click on over to our artist profiles page for more reading and lesson links.

New Lessons and Articles

Alan Green Interview
by David Hodge

All of us at Guitar Noise want to congratulate Alan as he starts off teaching guitar and music pretty close to full time! Get to know one of our Guitar Noise Moderators a little better – you might see him on television one day!

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – Performance Notes For The Bridge
by Jamie Andreas

In the final installment of her video lessons on the Guitar Noise arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” guitar teacher extraordinaire Jamie Andreas takes you step by step through the bridge section of the song with very clear and detailed instruction. I learned quite a bit from Jamie’s videos and I hope you do, too!

Need Help Starting A Successful Career In Music?
by Tom Hess

Tom details four very important steps that anyone seriously thinking about starting a career in the music business as a performing artist truly needs to think about and develop. If you take Tom’s advice to heart, you’ll giving yourself a big step forward.

Seven Nation Army
Easy Songs for Beginners #41
by David Hodge

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to turn a song into a single guitar arrangement and the first part of the answer is that you have to learn the song! In this lesson we break down this White Stripes’ song into its component parts – bass, rhythm and lead (learning them on the electric guitar) – so that we can later create a single acoustic guitar arrangement of this song.

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, Yellow

Songs for Intermediates: Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, If I Had A Boat, Homeward Bound, Hello In There, Fire and Rain, Sailing to Philadelphia, Both Sides Now, I Want You Back

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 August 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 14)

We continue our exploration of modes in this issue. Specifically, let’s move into C7 arpeggios as a natural follow-up to our study of C7 chords. As we did last week, we’ll work with position V, give or a take a fret.

Here’s our initial C7 garden-variety arpeggio:

|-8-6-------------|-----------------|---6-8---------|
|-----8-5---------|---------------5-|-8-------------|
|---------5-------|-------------5---|---------------|
|-----------8-5---|---------5-8-----|---------------|
|---------------7-|-------7---------|---------------|
|-----------------|-8-6-8-----------|---------------|

To add just a bit more variety to this pattern, repeat it–but with the beat shifted to the notes that got the off beat on the first run. Maybe the full tab will better explain what I mean:

|-8-6-------------|-----------------|---6-8-8-6-------|
|-----8-5---------|---------------5-|-8---------8-5---|
|---------5-------|-------------5---|---------------5-|
|-----------8-5---|---------5-8-----|-----------------|
|---------------7-|-------7---------|-----------------|
|-----------------|-8-6-8-----------|-----------------|

|-----------------|---------6-8-8----|
|-----------------|-----5-8----------|
|-----------------|---5--------------|
|-8-5-----------5-|-8----------------|
|-----7-------7---|------------------|
|-------8-6-8-----|------------------|

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2009 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.

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

As I mentioned earlier, Tom “Noteboat” Serb is celebrating the first year of his music school, the Midwest Music Academy. One year ago today we ran a short interview with Tom and this would certainly be a great time to post it once again:

Tom, as most of you already know, hails from the far southwestern suburbs of Chicago. To get things started, we begin with a few basic questions and then move onto the “real interview:”

GN: Occupation?

TS: I define myself as a musician. Since I’m not a “star”, that means I have to do a whole lot of things to pay the mortgage, but they’re all music related: I’m a guitarist, guitar teacher, composer, arranger, I do transcriptions, I buy and sell gear, I write lessons for magazines, I own a music school, etc. I guess I’m a musical entrepreneur by default.

GN: Playing music since?

TS: I honestly don’t remember. I’ve always been drawn to music, and remember playing instruments (or at least playing “at” playing instruments) since I was 4. Since I don’t remember anything before that, I guess I’ve always been doing it.

GN: Playing guitar since?

TS: Since the early 1970s. It’s hard to fix an exact date… partly because those were the 1970s! I’ve been performing as a guitarist since 1976, and teaching professionally since 1978.

GN: If possible, can you remember what first brought you to Guitar Noise and why you continue to hang around?

TS: I stumbled across Guitar Noise while surfing for guitar websites. I’ve stayed because it’s a friendly place to hang out!

GN: Can you give us a brief history of your musical life?

TS: Wow! No way I can be brief about that without missing a lot…

I’m the oldest child, and my parents weren’t very musical. But even though I didn’t have any musical role models, I was always drawn to music. My mother tells me as an infant I’d wiggle around to the music whenever she played a Louis Armstrong record.

I was always messing around with musical things. On Sundays we’d go to my grandparent’s house for dinner, and my grandmother had a piano. I remember a book she had called “Songs Children Love to Play”, which had a diagram of the keyboard on the inside cover, with dotted lines showing the notes on the staff. I’d flip back and forth between that and pieces in the book, and basically taught myself how to read music – I was probably 6 or 7 then.

My first real music lessons were on drums – I bought myself a drum set with money I’d saved from my paper route. I played percussion all the way through high school and college, performing in the HS marching and concert bands, and in the college jazz band. I don’t really keep it up today, but every once in a while I’ll play tympani with a local community orchestra. I messed around with every instrument I could get my hands on. My first guitar was one my mother bought for my father… he never learned to play, and gave it to my sister… who never learned to play, so I swiped it and learned. I still have that guitar, too – a 1962 Harmony!

In college I had some awesome teachers. My favorite was Dr. Hans Gross, my theory teacher – he really got me into the structural beauty of music, and had a way of presenting music history that was just fascinating. Anyway, at that point I decided music was it for me, career-wise. While I was still in school I got a job teaching percussion at Morse Avenue Music in Chicago, and quickly became their only guitar teacher as well – because even though I considered the guitar my “second” instrument at that point, it turned out I was a lot better at it than the guy they had teaching. In less than a year I had a full load of guitar students, and I stopped teaching
percussion.

In the late 70s I did only performing and teaching. But the disco era killed off the venues; I went from performing six nights a week to just one or two - so I started doing other things: film scoring, record production, owning a music store, etc. From then to now, I’ve done whatever I’ve had to that kept me in music – the most recent stuff is in the “occupation” question above! I try to keep learning, too. I recently spent about five years studying classical piano with Joe Cech. I’m in awe of him – he taught me more about score reading and musical interpretation than I’d learned from anyone, ever.

GN: Of course, the big news is the opening of your music school, the Midwest Music Academy in Plainfield, Illinois. How did you come about making this decision and what have been the highs and lows about getting things together for opening this fall?

TS: I realized pretty early on that you can’t make it in the music business until you approach it as a business! Some years ago I took a hard look at the business strategy I was using as a guitar teacher, and I decided to diversify geographically. In my experience it’s pretty easy to go from 10 to 20 students, but really hard to go from 50 to 60 – so I decided I’d try teaching from three locations, and see what happened. Initially I chose Woodridge (where I live), Naperville about 15 miles to the NW, and Western
Springs about the same distance to the East. Western Springs didn’t pan out as well as I’d hoped, so about three years ago I tried going South to Plainfield.

My Plainfield roster grew rapidly. I ended up dropping Woodridge to spend more time there, and had a solid waiting list – so I started to look at the demographic projections, and they looked really strong for growth. I did a lot of soul searching, and spent a lot of time talking things over with my family and friends, and decided this is probably the place for me to be.

First I tried buying a place… and I came really close to making a deal on one. But when the seller backed out, I decided I’d better just start my own. The highs and lows have been pretty incredible. The lowest spots have been realizing just how much money it’s taking to do it right – and the red tape! For example, Plainfield is in the process of re-numbering their streets… and every government agency I’ve talked to seems to have a different idea of what my address should be! (I’ve actually gotten FIVE different opinions!)

The high spot is definitely the reaction of the students and parents. I think everybody who’s walked through the door has told me how nice the place looks, how nice the gear is, how much they like the way I’m doing things, even how nice the place smells!

GN: After all the years you’ve spent as a teacher, what are some of the biggest challenges of your new position? And what have you looked for in choosing teachers to work at your school?

TS: I think the biggest challenge for me is moving from teaching directly to teaching through others. Because I’ve spent so much time in the teacher’s chair, I know what’s important to the teachers, and I’m trying to provide everything they need to excel. But I’ve also got more years teaching than almost any of my staff – and I know what works.

But right there is the crux of it – I know what works for me in communicating with students, but I’m not the other teachers. They have things that work for them. So the real puzzle is figuring out what I should coach, and what I shouldn’t. I want things to be consistently excellent for our students, but it’s not “best practice” just because I do it. Ideally I’ll be learning as much from them as they learn from me, and we’ll be the best in the business because of it.

So that’s driving how I’m choosing teachers. When I grew up, the corner barbershop had two barbers. My father told me to always pick the barber with the worst haircut. Why? “Because they probably cut each other’s hair.” And that’s been in the back of my mind since I started recruiting: I don’t care how well they play; I don’t care how well they communicate with me; I want to hear their students play – that’ll tell me what kind of “haircut” they can give!

Just yesterday a teacher came up to me and told me he wasn’t sure about the vocal teacher I’ve got starting next week – he doesn’t think he’s a very good singer. I sort of agree – and I think the teacher making the comment (who’s a guitar teacher) is a better singer than the vocal teacher. But I’ve heard some of the vocal teacher’s long-time students sing, and I know he’s top-notch.

GN: Many Guitar Noise readers regard you as the “guru of music theory.” And your first book, Music Theory for Guitarists, certainly bears that out. Any plans for more writing in the near future?

TS: I’ve got a few writing projects in the works right now, but for the last several months my writing has been on hold – starting the school has taken too much time! But I hope to get back to it sometime next year. There’s a sequel on harmony in the works, a second edition of the theory book, and a couple of projects to be revealed later!

GN: You’ve certainly worn a lot of musical hats. And you’ve certainly gotten this question hundreds of times, but I have to ask anyway! What advice do you have for someone wanting to make a life’s career in music? Not necessarily as an “A List” performer, but simply to have a life doing something one loves?

TS: A month ago I had breakfast with a pretty successful songwriter. He told me that his musical success really started once he realized everybody was a commodity – you can replace a guitar player (or songwriter, or anybody else) with one or two phone calls if you need to.

Once you face up to that fact, you realize that the music business – or any business, really – is about building and maintaining relationships. So if you want to succeed, you don’t have to be the “best” – sure you have to be ”good enough”, and you have to get your foot in the door for your first opportunity, but after that… you have to be the one they’re not looking to replace.

That means paying attention to the little details, the non-musical stuff. It’s important: show up on time. Do what you say you’ll do. Be friendly. Smile. Remember people’s names. Don’t argue. Be confident – but don’t be a prima donna. Follow up – but don’t be a pest. Treat everybody with respect. It really boils down to the golden rule.

None of it is hard to do, but for some reason many musicians don’t do them, or don’t do them enough of the time. But I’ve found that if you do them as much as you possibly can, and meet as many people as you possibly can, success will find you.

Random Thoughts

Not that this should come as any kind of surprise, but teaching, and teaching music, is always a topic of discussion at my home. There’s no end of subjects when it comes to thinking about how to bring knowledge of any kind, whether it’s about creating music or understanding mathematics or even instilling the idea that most things in life never have the wonderfully simplistic single answers that the much of the world would have us believe.

One of the biggest challenges, and I suspect also one of the biggest frustrations, is knowing that regardless of how good a teacher one might be, teaching itself is one small piece of the whole process of learning. Not everyone who goes to the same teacher learns the same things or even gets the same grades. That seems ridiculously obvious.

It’s also very obvious that everyone learns in different ways. But one thing that holds constant, at least as far as I can see, is that without some practical application of the learning, the process itself will be a slow one. Reading music, or even learning what notes make up a particular chord is a great example of this. A G chord consists of the notes G, B and D. People know the win-loss statistics of their favorite teams or any of the many PIN or passwords they use everyday, but something as simple as
remembering three notes requires more of a superhuman effort for some.

So a good part of teaching is not just giving knowledge, it’s giving, and more importantly, demonstrating and inspiring a student’s individual need for that knowledge. That’s not always easy.

If you’re having trouble with learning something in particular, go to your teacher and discuss ways to make that knowledge something you want to and need to learn. Without a student’s participation, there’s not all that much learning that can be done.

If you’re trying to learn something without a teacher, say through the Internet, then be certain to visit chat rooms and post questions. But also go one step further and look for answers yourself. Answers that you have to dig for will stay in your head longer than those you are simply given.

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

And, as always…

Peace