Newsletter Vol. 4 # 7 – July 15, 2011

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 4, Issue #6 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • Greetings, News and Announcements
  • Guitar Noise Featured Artist
  • Topic of the Month
  • New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff
  • Great Advice from Great Teachers
  • Events Horizon
  • Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Life is maddeningly wonderful sometimes in that so many things can happen and yet nothing happen to tell about. Hello and welcome to the July 15 edition of Guitar Noise News (your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise). It seems like only yesterday that I put together the last newsletter and even though a lot has been happening,some of the major news I was hoping to share with you is still waiting on the “dotted i’s and crossed t’s, as it were.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t news. Last time out I mentioned Tom Serb’s son, Charlie, and his band (Hollywood Nightmares) and their big gig in Chicago. Tom reports on the event:

They did well. Their music (which was all original) is certainly fast and furious – most tunes were in the neighborhood of 240 bpm, fast enough that the hands of the guitarists and drummer start becoming a blur when they’re doing triplets or faster… but they were very tight on every tune. What really impressed me about them musically was their control over tempo: several tunes had one or two sudden tempo changes, and they nailed them all. Even more impressive were the couple of tunes with ritardandos and accelerandos, where all four musicians have to watch each other and follow the changes. They played together at a level that many bands strive for, but don’t quite reach. The fact that they’ve just replaced their bass player, and this was his first gig with the band, made it even more impressive.

They worked their set hard. Their tunes are very short, most around 2 minutes. They didn’t chit chat in between – they finished one tune and launched right into the next. Nearly wall to wall music, which fit well with the image they wanted to project.

The best moment for me personally was their first tune. About one minute into it Charlie took a screaming solo, and he just owned the stage. He projected an attitude of being in total control, but at the same time being completely relaxed and having fun! Made me quite proud of my baby boy (he’s got me by about 8″ in height now, but he’s still my little guy).

The venue’s sound wasn’t the greatest, with the instruments sometimes overpowering the vocals. That was disappointing, as the songs he’s played for me when we get together to jam have very catchy lyrics. But their overall sound was distinctive and different – tight two and three part vocal harmonies (a la Beach Boys) over typical punk rock distorted powerchords (they’re big fans of the Ramones, Queers, etc.) with very quick chord changes in spots – sometimes changing on every beat, which is a real challenge at those tempos.

The venue was smaller than I thought it would be for a touring band, with a capacity of probably about 100. My wife noticed the cameraman was taking advantage of what he had to work with – he was interviewing people outside before the show, so you couldn’t see the venue’s size, and the crowd shots he was getting during the show were filmed into the mirror over the bar, so it’ll look like twice as many folks when it’s played back.

Another band on the roster to watch for is Kudu Fang, which was the opening act. I enjoyed their set (although with a touch of hearing loss – I guess they like setting everything at 11). They’re math rock, but manage to combine time signatures in just about every tune to come out to 8 beat patterns… they’d do a 5/4 and a 3/4 pattern, or a 3+3+2, keeping the tunes danceable but noticeably different. They were also very tight, and the drummer had good dynamic control, making things interesting on another level too. Two talented guitarists who both played lead at times (one of them doubled on keys), and a bass that was always in lock step with the drums. With better sound support they could rival a band like Rush musically – I don’t know how they are lyrically, as the sound issues made it difficult to pick out more than a few words. But it’s a band I’d like to catch again; they had a lot of energy.

In the non musical highlight of the evening, my nephew Peter came out, and I got to meet his girlfriend Nicole, who did a six year stint as Snow White at Disney World. It’s not every day I get a hug from a princess at the end of the night.

We echo Tom’s good wishes to Charlie and hope that we’ll all get to see this performance at some point. Definitely something to look forward to.

And in other terrific news, it seems that Alan Green, longtime Guitar Noise contributor and Forum moderator (not to mention one absolutely terrific guitar teacher) had two of his students participate in the June 2011 London College of Music Exams for Step 1 Guitar.

Results: one Pass and one Distinction.

So, a big “well done” to Tim, who was convinced he’d stuffed up; and another” well done” to Hannah, who scored 97% and becomes my first Distinction student since I started teaching in Essex Schools.

And a huge “well done” to Alan, who should be incredibly pleased with his students’ performances. Can’t wait to hear how things go next June!

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Even though his career as a musician ended over fifty years ago, today’s music and musicians owes a great deal to Buddy Holly. Read about the July Guitar Noise Featured Artist of the Month on the Guitar Noise Profile Page.

Topic of the Month

Not everybody sings and even those who do sometimes prefer to have their guitars do the singing for them. You can learn an incredible lot about the art of Chord Melody here at Guitar Noise. From lessons that demonstrate this technique in the simplest terms to those that guide you through crafting your own personal chord melody song arrangements, you’ll get all the tools you need to have your guitar become a one-person orchestra. Come visit the Guitar Noise home page and check out all the lessons and articles you’ll find by clicking on the latest “Topic of the Month” up in the top left corner, just below the blue banner.

New Articles, Lessons, Reviews and Stuff

How To Create Great Guitar Solos
by Tom Hess

Tom Hess details the most common reasons why guitar players struggle to create great solos and then gives you tips on massively improving your lead playing.

Barre Chords – Part 2 (Shapes)
by David Hodge

Knowing four simple basic chords allows you to play forty-eight barre chords. This article teaches you to play two versions of any basic chord you know.

Great Advice From Great Teachers

Let’s get back to Tom Serb’s multi-part series on “Speed Secrets:”

Speed Secrets – Part 3

Breaking the third barrier to speed requires working on the coordination between your hands. It’s useful to break our picking motions down into categories for this, as each will require a different type of motion; efficient speed practice means developing drills that work that specific motion.

Fretting hand motions can be broken down into notes on a single string, notes on strings in order (as in a scale run), and string skipping. Picking hand motions fall into four categories: uni-directional, alternate picking, economy (or ‘directional’) picking, and sweep picking.

All uni-directional picking is technically limiting, because you have to bring the pick back into playing position between each note. Because of this, most players wouldn’t consider it ‘speed picking’. But this type of picking is stylistically demanded for certain genres – punk rock is often all downstrokes, and reggae can make use of all upstrokes for extended periods of time. If that’s the kind of music you play, you’ll want to practice increasing your recovery time – the amount of time it takes you to ‘reset’ your hand for the next note. The key here is slow practice, focusing on moving the pick as little as possible to get through the strings – plural, because in punk it’s two- or three-string power chords, and in reggae it’s typically three-string voicings on the highest strings. On the recovery stroke, focus on brining your hand up or down ONLY as far as you need to for the next attack.

Alternate picking is theoretically twice as fast as uni-directional picking, because you’ll produce an additional note on the recovery stroke. It’s also a prerequisite for economy picking, so you’ll want to spend a fair amount of your speed work on alternate picking drills. To illustrate developing this technique, we’ll combine it with our first fretting hand category, notes on a single string.

Pick any spot on the neck and place your index finger on a fret. You’ll downstroke this note; as soon as you’ve played it, your pick will reverse direction, and you’ll play the same string with an upstroke – but you’ll play the note at the next fret with your second finger. Here I’ve illustrated this drill in fifth position:

-5-6-5-6-5-6-5-6-

Once you’re comfortable with this approach, you’ll use metronome drills to increase your speed. I’ll cover using a metronome in a future part of this series.

It’s important to develop your speed in all of your fingers, and you’ll want to use it with any combination of fingers that a passage might require. Using two fingers, there are six possibilities: 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-3, 2-4, and 3-4. Practice each combination on a single string. The hardest ones will be 1-4, 2-4, and 3-4; be sure you stop if your hand starts to cramp up!

One more thing before forging ahead: you’ll want to do these drills two different ways: holding down the first finger, and lifting the first finger as you play the second note. Keeping the original finger down is easy to master, but it can be limiting depending on your melody – there will be plenty of times you’ll need that finger on another string for the next note, and lifting it as soon as you can makes it easier to get that next note in time. In actual performance, you’ll keep the finger down when you return to the same note, and you’ll lift it if you need that finger for the next note. So be sure to prepare yourself by practicing it both ways!

Events Horizon

If you happen to be close to Vizovice in the Czech Republic tonight, you’ll be able to catch Tom Hess playing with Rhapsody of Fire at the Masters of Rock Festival. And Tom will be playing in Germany, Hungary and in Derby, England in the first half of August, so be sure to check in for the dates and venues right here!

If you can’t get to Vizovice tonight, you can go hear Lee Hodge and Doesn’t Madder at Mayo’s Restaurant in Statesville, North Carolina (on 123 North Center Street) beginning at 8:30 PM and going on until midnight.

Tom McLaughlin’s new band, “Life is Drama,”has a show tomorrow, that’s Saturday, July 16th, at Keglers Sports Bar & Grill, which is located at 905 Theodore Street in Crest Hill, IL. Show is from 10:00 PM until 1:30 AM.

And also tomorrow, I’ll be backing up Marilyn Miller at her CD release party for “Nighthawk,” at the Parlor Coffee House at 724 Warren Street in Hudson, New York. We will be playing the CD in its entirety as well as performing a live set in a comfy and cosy intimate setting. Come by and say hello! The show will run from 7 to 9 PM.

Random Thoughts

So I’m practicing for this upcoming gig on Saturday and who knows why or how but the topic of global position systems (GPS) comes up and I have to tell you that I’m still so in the century before last that I have yet to find a reason or desire to own a cell phone. But I’ve heard numerous wonderfully amusing stories from my friends who have GPS in their cars

And for whatever reason I was also thinking about how much technology has changed so many people’s approach to playing (and learning) music. Again, when I say I’m “old school” I don’t mean to sound either disparaging or condescending – but the idea of having music stand at gigs or carrying around a notebook with all our songs in it would never occur to me because when I was younger we were still working out the whole writing thing. It just took way too long to chisel out chord charts on rocks and then you’d have to have a lot of rocks for each song, not to mention some way of getting them to the gig ( you have to remember that the wheel hadn’t been invented by that point).

Anyway, this got me to thinking that perhaps it might be a good idea for some enterprising soul to create a GPS for musicians, a SPS (“Song Position System”) if you will. It could clip to your instrument and give you moment by moment instructions in a pleasant voice of your choosing. Say you’re a rhythm guitarist, you could hear something like, “Play Am in three beats, two, one, play Am now.” Or maybe “Entire band stopping for end of song. You have arrived,”

Of course, things could be more interesting if you’re a lead guitarist. The SPS might advise you to “play an interval of a diminished fifth here” or give you a choice of scales to play.

And we’d even have one for bass players to help them find the root note of whatever chord they’re supposed to be on. You’d be able to tell the bass players’ SPS because it would be continuously saying “Take next available U-turn.”

Who knows, though? They may already have something like this out on the market already. Remember you saw it here first, though, won’t you?

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often. And for those of you going out and about, my best wishes for safe travel.

And, as always,

Peace