Newsletter Vol. 1 # 39 – February 09, 2002

Dear Guitar Player,

Welcome to Guitar Noise News for February 9, 2002.

After the last newsletter a few people wrote to find out more about our Songs for Intermediates page. Since we have a new Intermediates song this week I will post the information here. You can find our Songs for intermediates page here.

It isn’t directly linked to from our home page yet as there are only three songs there, including this week’s lesson. But you can always find anything on our site by looking at the Site Map. A link to the sitemap appears at the bottom of each page.

You can always send your guitar questions and comments to us and we’ll do our best to reply.

In this newsletter:

News
Guitar Tip
Guitar and Bass Lessons
Recommended Books
CD Reviews
New Links
Email of the Week

You can recycle this newsletter by passing it on to a friend you think might benefit from Guitar Noise.

News and Announcements

Happy New Year – all over again
February 12 is New Years Day again according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Coming up is the year of the Horse. The following message is for all of our Chinese friends in cities around the world:

Happy New Year in Chinese

Tip of the Week

This week our tip comes to us courtesy of Alan Horvath.

Less Fret About It

A thread on the Fingerstyle-L newsgroup inspired this note about the amount of pressure you apply when fretting strings. The discussion was spurred by someone who had a question about 12-string guitars, but my response (copied and edited below) applies to playing any stringed, fretted instrument.

If the action is setup by someone who actually knows what he’s doing with an acoustic 12-string in his hands (many do not) … and if you use light gauge strings … and if you learn to play with a gentle attack … 12-string fingerstyle guitar playing could be a dream come true. The 12-string is not favored by many guitarists, perhaps because it’s a bit too distinctive a sound and can tire the ears when it’s the only sound heard for a full performance … and many, I think, are just afraid of it!

One thing I would strongly suggest is to check that you aren’t playing head games with yourself when you pick up a 12-string (or
any other fretted instrument) … squeezing the neck more than you need to … fretting strings with 300% more G-force than needed — all because you THINK you are driving a bigger team of horses and need a bigger whip — you know?

It’s important that you are not tense when you play your instruments … all movements should be occurring with grace, comfort, and confidence.

Take a minute to check your guitar’s action by placing your finger over one of the strings, at the 3rd fret … don’t fret the string, just touch / mute it while picking a steady and continuous 1,2,3,4 plucking … now, very slowly, begin depressing the string … gradually … listen closely as it changes from a muted thwap … into a dull note … into a buzzy note … and finally, into a clear note … STOP right there! … notice how much pressure is actually required to get to the clear note … and notice how much less pressure you are applying, compared to when you are normally practicing or playing.

Learn how little pressure *your* guitar requires and try to adjust your playing to that.

Oh, and by the way … your accuracy will double in the process, too.

For more lessons and tips like this visit AlanHorvath.com.

Alan plays acoustic 6-string guitar, uses “open” tunings, and sings his songs with raw sincerity. He has recently added dulcimers, autoharp, and octave mandolin to his show, and via his site’s “JAM!” link, Alan offers a host of cool resources and links for guitarists, dulcimerists, Autoharpists, and songwriters.

Guitar and Bass Lessons

Moondance
Songs for Intermediates #3
by David Hodge (09 Feb 2002)
Quite often, the next step is nothing more than relearning things you already know. To illustrate this, let’s look at the song Moondance by Van Morrison. It’s an intriguing piece in that while it is very easy to play (chord-wise), it does take a little thought to make it sound good.

Recording on a Budget
Part 1: The Equipment
by Scott Hysell (02 Feb 2002)
So, you’ve written and perfected a bunch of original songs and you’re ready to lay them down in a permanent form. The problem is, you’re probably worried or maybe even a little discouraged by the potential costs involved. It can be incredibly expensive, but have
no fear; it doesn’t have to be that way.

Also worth reading for anyone who is interested in recording their own music are two columns by A-J Charron.

Recording Part 1: Why Do It?
Songwriting # 10
by A-J Charron (30 May 2000)
Now that you have written some songs what do you do with them? The next step is the Demo. This week A-J explains how to go about making a demo, what to do with it, who to send it to and how to present it. Don’t find out the hard way what could go wrong. Get it right the first time.

Recording Part 2: Building a digital studio
Songwriting # 11
by A-J Charron (06 Jun 2000)
The digital recording environment, although not the best, offers some cheap solutions for musicians. Digital is the conversion of naturally occurring phenomena into a series of electrical pulses, i.e. 0’s and 1’s. In this article A-J shows you how to use your PC as a home digital studio. Topics include what you need to do and how much it will cost.

CD Reviews

Transatlantic – Bridge Across Forever
What happens when you take four guys from popular bands and throw them into the studio together? This one is just an incredible effort.

New Sites

Frank Axtell – South Florida jazz/Fusion guitarist Frank Axtell’s new website

Email of the Week

Where to begin
Whats the best way to start learning to play my 6 string guitar? Online? A book? A video? This site? Where do I begin?

Paul’s Response
In many of his articles, David Hodge has said you should use everything that is available to you when learning the guitar. Whatever you can get your hands on that will be of use to you is worth trying. There are many helpful books, videos and websites. The thing to always bear in mind is: no pain no gain. Or perhaps, worded a little nicer: there is no royal road to success. It is not that difficult to learn some of the basics of guitar, but it takes a lot of hard work and practice to become good at it.

Confronted with so many choices deciding where to begin can be a difficult decision.

Every journey begins with a single step, and while this may seem like a carefully planned plug, you had best spend your first day of guitar study familiarizing yourself with www.guitarnoise.com. There is no reason to disbelieve the statement “The Best Things In Life are Free.”

On your very first day you’ll need to tune your guitar. From their you’ll probably want to learn some chords, figure out how to read tab and perhaps get an understanding of standard musical notation. It is really up to you where you go from there. You might want to learn a little music theory but I doubt it. At this point you’ll probably be ready to jump in and start learning your first song if you haven’t already.

A lot of music books start you off with some simple strumming patterns on some rather old songs. Well, we have a section entitled Easy Songs for Beginners that takes a few easy and well known songs and presents them in the form of a lesson. Not only do you learn to play the song so you can impress other people, you also learn a bit of theory and technique that will come in useful later. The series begins with some very basic two chord songs so you don’t have to learn a lot of chords first. Some of our easy songs for beginners include Riders On the Storm, I Shot the Sheriff, Before You Accuse Me, House of the Rising Sun and more. When you have mastered all the songs in this section you may be ready to graduate up to our Songs for Intermediates page. These lessons are great examples, not only because they get you playing recognizable songs right away, but because they teach you all sorts of techniques you can apply to other songs you learn by yourself.

After working hard through these lessons you probably won’t need to learn specific songs from us anymore. You can either follow our lessons on Ear Training so you can figure out your own favorite songs by yourself, or you can settle in a read a different column each week.

I haven’t counted recently but I guess we have hundreds of lessons. It can be easy to let yourself become overwhelmed by all this free information. My advice is set up a practice routine. Then choose an area of interest and do one lesson each week. To do it properly you need to practice all the exercises and absorb all the principles. It is best to do one lesson and week so everything is made permanent..

To keep up to date and stay informed you should subscribe to our weekly e-zine. This will let you know about new lessons as well as give you regulat tips and advice.

After you have been here for a while we have a lot of other resources to keep you interested and busy. You can also learn about Bass, Amps and Songwriting. We have a section entitled The Other Side especially for girls and women who want to learn. We also have discussion forums where you can ask questions and receive answers. If you are really stuck we have an Ask the Expert feature where you can email one of our teachers with a problem and be sure of getting an answer. We also have links to hundreds of guitar tab sites with our own star rating to let you know which ones are good. We have reviews of CDs, software and products too. We also have some interviews with various artists to help you further if you wish to start a career in music.

As you can see, Guitar Noise lives up to its mission statement. We want Guitar Noise to be a better resource for guitarists of all levels than others already available.

Really, your success with the guitar depends entirely on what you put into it. Don’t believe that because you spend $30 on a book you will get anywhere faster or easier than if you lock yourself in your room with your guitar and computer for 2 hours a day.

We have been doing pretty good on all our promises for the past 5 years or so. If you are ready to start, give us a try. You have nothing to lose and a world of music to gain.

All the best,

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer