Guitar Noise

Creating chord melody arrangements can be addictive! And you can start out as easy or as complicated as you’d like. Brandon Carrasco takes us step by step through his first time out, turning this timeless lullaby into a wonderful single guitar piece.

Here is Hank’s second Guitar Noise lesson, an accompaniment to “What a Wonderful World” as performed by Louis Armstrong. He draws on some of the ideas used in his first arrangement, “Smile”, and provides some nice movement in the bass line. Since this is an accompaniment arrangement designed to support vocals, most of the chord voicings will incorporate the melody note on the upper strings.

Here is my very first arrangement, a finger style chord melody of the beautiful Charlie Chaplin tune “Smile.” Walking through the process step by step, you’ll see how an initial “busy” arrangement consisting mainly of eighth notes and arpeggios was pared down to make it easier to play and to allow room for some nice movement in the bass line.

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!

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 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.

Guitar Noise bids a heartfelt “welcome back” to Jamie Andreas of Guitar Prinicples (www.guitarprinciples.com). 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.

Peter Simms has written a little ditty that shows us how to make your single guitar sound like a small combo band. We’re going to focus on fingerstyle with a melody, bassline and chords.

Here’s a song arrangement that no one has to sing! Take aspects of “chord melody” arranging and mix them in with fingerstyle playing and you’ve got yourself a version of one of George Harrison’s terrific songs to perform. It’s not all that hard to learn and you can easily adapt it with your own embellishments and style.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a Celtic arrangement of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “All I Can Do Is Write About It” done in DADGAD tuning. A wonderful way to remember your home, whether home is in Alabama or Caledonia.

Here’s a catchy little number written for you especially by Peter Simms, integrating a funky rhythm with some tasty blues lines. Enjoy!

In this this lesson we’ll learn a Drop D tuning arrangement of the perennial New Year’s Eve standard, Auld Lang Syne.

It all started with being in Double Drop D tuning! Here’s a very easy chord melody arrangement of this popular Christmas carol.

This is a traditional French carol, arranged so we can review some of our recent lessons on bass lines and Travis style finger picking.

This lesson is a simple DADGAD arrangement of a very well-known, traditional French Christmas Carol titled Il Est Né, which translates to He Is Born.

Here is another chord melody arrangement of a Christmas classic that most beginners should be able to get a handle on fairly quickly. As a bonus, it’s arranged so that you can play it either finger style or with a pick.

Not so much a lesson as a nice chord melody arrangement of this beautiful Christmas song, courtesy of Peter. Never too early to get started on your holiday material.

This an intermediate level lesson for those of you who use only a guitar pick and would rather not work on finger-style playing, but would still like to play a complete song arrangement on your instrument. So here is the classic jazz standard, “Autumn Leaves,” from Peter to you.

Guitar Noise welcomes the long-awaited return of Peter Simms to our pages! Peter’s been very busy with performing and teaching this past year but wanted us to know he’s still thinking of the Guitar Noise readers. So much, in fact, that he wrote this song (and the accompanying lesson) just for us!

This is more of a mini-lesson, taking a song you know with fairly easy chords and coming up with an arrangement that will work for the single guitar. And with a simple strumming pattern and the strategic use of a capo, even beginners can have some fun with it.

Our arrangement for this moody piece uses many of the ideas from our O Tannenbaum! lesson. You’ll find yourself having a lot of fun even though you’re supposed to be blue!