Newsletter Vol. 1 # 42 – March 02, 2002

Hi Guitar Slingers,

How’s everyone doing this week? Isn’t it hard to believe that February is over already? This week’s newsletter, our seventh issue of the year, is going out on March 2, 2002. Hello, to everyone who has signed up in the past week. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Thank you to all the corespondents who took the time to send me a note or report card last week. I still have all your letters and will be responding to you all personally soon if I haven’t already.

I realize that Guitar Noise News can be heavy reading at times as there are always so many goings on to report. But can you imagine how packed this ezine would be if I only sent it out once a month?

In this newsletter:

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

Why not help a fellow musician? You can do them a favor by forwarding them this newsletter.

News and Announcements

Guitar Noise International
As Guitar Noise grows we become more and more international. The double effect of this is the localization our site for different regions, while at the same time giving those regions greater exposure to the rest of the world.

This week saw the launch of a new site:

Guitar Noise China is a completely bilingual website. Learn about guitar playing, writing songs, and traditional Chinese instruments. You can also read interviews with famous bands and take lessons, all for free!

Prior to launching Guitar Noise China we received a lot of positive feedback about our other local site Guitar Noise Canada.

Globalization
We will be expanding to include a European content site in the near future. If you would like to partner with Guitar Noise over a specialized site for your country please contact the webmaster.

New Transcription: “Porgy’s Blues”
From Rick Payne’s highly acclaimed CD, “Blue River Blues”. It’s a chilled version of Gershwin’s immortal Summertime. Find the tab, notes and mp3 audio link at the Acoustic Guitar Workshop.

Guitar and Bass Lessons

As promised last issue, we have a new author on board this week. Hans Fahling joins us from Berlin helping to further increase Guitar Noise on the international scene. Currently we already have writers from Germany, England, the US, Canada and China. Please join me in welcoming Hans to GuitarNoise.com. I am sure he will feel as welcome here as all the other writers thanks to your enthusiasm and interest. I expect that many of you will enjoy Hans’ debut article Chromaticism.

Chromaticism
by Hans Fahling (02 Mar 2002)
If you’ve heard of arpeggios, you have probably wondered how they could possibly be used for improvising on the guitar?! This column talks about the use of chord tone structures as a grid for progressively adding the in-between elements, such as passing tones, bebop sequences and many more important musical building blocks of improv.

Stay tuned for more Jazz Guitar Lessons like this.

David Hodge has been so busy with his popular Easy Songs for Beginners and Intermediates Songs recently that most of you probably hadn’t noticed how much time has elapsed since his last regular guitar column. This week David returns with a real fireball of a column. It is one of the best he has ever done and I am sure its importance and relevance will make it one of the most popular lessons on Guitar Noise.

Moving On Up
Guitar Column # 56
by David Hodge (02 Mar 2002)
Let’s get serious and take a long look at a question we get asked a lot how to take the next step in becoming a better guitarist. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or an intermediate or even an experienced player, we all want to improve on the skills that we have. And as I’ve said before, sometimes the quickest way to improve is to simply be aware of what you already know.

Guitar Tip

While editing this week’s Acoustic Guitar Tip I was reminded of David Hodge’s lesson The Little Things. In it he said “Anyone who doesn’t need strings never plays.” In case you are ever in need of strings you can buy them through our affiliate Sheetmusic Plus and save up to 60% off what you would pay in a music shop.

This week our tip comes to us courtesy of Guitar Man Acoustic Guitar Tips.

How Often Should You Replace Your Strings?

It really does depend on the individual. I have relatively dry hands and my strings seem to last a long time. My son has sweaty hands and his strings wear out very fast.

The best way to determine when you need to change strings is by examining them…

When they turn dark and start to sound dead,
When they get hard to tune and stay in tune,
If one breaks after a long time, it’s usually best to replace the whole set,
If the intonation gets worse,
Make sure you have a fresh set of strings installed before doing any type of adjustments for intonation or playability.

Gman ( o )==#

For more tips visit Guitar Man Acoustic Guitar Tips.

CD Reviews

Saxon – Killing Grround
Legendary Metal band Saxon are at it again. The music has not aged. Judging by the photo in the middle of the booklet, the guys have, but not the music… This is a nice reminder of what Heavy Metal is really about.

Randy Moore & the Fabulous Deltones
Randy Moore has associated with a roster of impressive people throughout his career: Pat Brunch, Lonestar, Ricochet and Carl Perkins. Here he is showing what he does best.

Artesguitars – Devices in Popmusic
The first impression while listening to this album is that Artesguitars must be a very fun guy. This is a very fun album. This sentiment of fun is not only present in the music, but also in the song titles.

Neil Schon – Voice
Legendary guitarist Neil Schon (Journey) is back with a new solo album. Here is one man who’s guitar work is always appreciated. He first came to notice on Carlos Santana’s debut album (there are two great guitarists on that album: Santana and Neil Schon).

New Sites

There are no new links to report of in this week’s issue. The reason is I have spent the past week migrating all of our current links to the Linksmanager service. This is a really powerful tool that I only wish I discovered sooner. It makes it possible for webmasters to automatically submit and edit their own links on Guitar Noise and choose which categories to place them in. The greatest part is that it will automatically check for broken links everyday and not display any on the site. I have tried to make the changes as seamless as possible. The main menu is modeled somewhat on the familiar and easy to use Yahoo directory. One thing we are sacrificing is the ability to include stars for each website, but the flexibility and over all improvement of the links system is well worth it.

Email of the Week

We get a lot of email at Guitar Noise. We love reading it and always take the time to reply. If you ask us a question and we know the answer we will certainly send it to you. If we don’t know the answer to your question we will try and find out and let you know either way. It is the personal touches like this that make our website stand out from the rest.

How to Write a Chord Progression Using Power Chords
How would I write a chord progression using power chords? My solo was used from the E Major Pentatonic Scale. How would I write a chord progression using power chords to go with it?

David’s Response
Okay, first let’s look at two things. Power chords, as we know, are simply the root and its fifth. By this definition, they are neither major nor minor. An E power chord (or E5), for example, is E and B.

Now the major pentatonic scale is the root, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th of the scale. So an E pentatonic scale is E, F#, G#, B and C#. Are you with me so far?

Looking at this scale, I can make out four power chords. Check it out:

E – E and B
F# – F# and C#
B – B and F#
C# – C# and G#

So I could write out a chord progression using combinations of these chords. And depending on the order I use I could come up with very different sounds. Check these out (and remember we’re only using power chords):

E, B, C#, F#, B
E, F#, B, E
C#, F#, B, E
F#, E, B, C#, F#

And these are just a few ideas. Now, if you wanted to you could also throw other chords into the mix. An A power chord would work because it’s just A and E and you already have two thirds of an A major chord in your scale (C# and E). You also have two thirds of the G#m chord (G# and B) so a G# power chord would fit in nicely, too.

Now here’s the fun thing – look at what we’ve “cleared” to use (again, all power chords):

E, F#, G#, A, B, C#

That’s almost the entire E major scale! We could also, depending on what your solo sounds like, try to throw a D power chord (NOT D#!!!!!) since we have two thirds of the D major chord. So now we have the following power chords at our disposal:

E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D

In other words, when we have a solo using the E major pentatonic scale, we can use power chords using any of the notes from this scale, which is the E mixolydian (or A major, if you will).

How will it sound? Well, that really depends on the solo. The trick is to try to match the power chords to the natural resting points in your solo. Even though you can use all these power chords, it’s a good idea to keep the progression pretty simple in order to give the solo ample space and breathing room.

Anyway, I hope this helps. We’ll be doing some in-depth analysis of leads and progressions during the winter at Guitar Noise – I also hope that these articles will answer more of your questions. Please feel free to write me if you have more questions in the meantime.

David Hodge

That is all for this week’s issue. If you know of anyone who might benefit from this free information please send them a copy.

Until next week,

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer