Newsletter Vol. 1 # 43 – March 10, 2002

Hello Guitar Players,

How are you doing this week? This is our ezine for March 10, 2002. Motivation is the theme of this week’s newsletter.

I can remember the best advice I ever received about learning guitar. It was given to me a few years before I even thought about taking it up. I was talking with a musician and I said something like “Wow, it must be great to be able to play guitar. I might like to try that, but I’m not sure…” And he said, “It’s all about motivation.”

A few years later I got my first guitar and didn’t have a clue about it or music. Since that day, however, I have carried with me that bit of advice. Motivation is the single most important thing when it comes to learning this wonderful instrument.

Every year countless people prove that learning the guitar is not something that is limited by your age, whether or not you have a disability, or whether you are a gifted musician. If you are motivated you can learn to play. If you can play already, motivation will only take you higher.

This week I have two new articles for you that will help you define and use your motivation further.

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

Our good friends over at Acoustic Guitar Workshop are always putting together helpful stuff for musicians and music fans alike. Here is some of that good stuff:

Burn your own FREE CD’s
You can download literally 1000,000’s of songs for free as mp3 files and play them in your mp3 player. However, a lot of people still like CD’s. So here’s everything you need to make free CD’s that will play on any CD player (not just mp3 players) in 3 easy steps. Includes free download of highly regarded LAME mp3 encoding/decoding software. Everything you need to grow your CD collection for virtually nothing is here.

Guitar and Bass Lessons

This week we have two new lessons that will be inspiring and helpful for both the practicing guitarist as well the wanna be, or not yet decided guitarist. These two articles give you some insight into what it takes.

So You Want To Play Guitar, Huh?
by Alan Horvath (09 Mar 2002)
My desire was so strong that you couldn’t stop me from learning if you tried! What else is there but desire? Can anyone teach you without it? Well, I’m assuming since you’re here, you’re of the same cut … and are here, looking for ways of learning some stuff on your own.

This lesson comes to us courtesy of 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.

A Musician’s Most Important Sklill
by Darrin Koltow (10 Mar 2002)
It’s the one skill you can’t do without. It’s the skill on which every other skill is built. It’s a force that moves mountains, builds skyscrapers, and turns 98-pound weaklings into Arnold Schwarzeneggers. Enough mystery already. What is this skill?

This lesson was submitted by Darrin Koltow of Maximum Musician.

Maximummusician.com shows music makers of all types, abilities and instruments how to build their skills to the maximum. We give musicians methods for getting maximum satisfaction and enjoyment from their playing. We show musicians how to create and achieve their goals. We encourage, inspire and motivate all music makers to be the best they can be, and enjoy the journey to musical excellence.

Guitar Tips

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

How To Examine A Guitar To See If It’s Made Of Solid Wood (not laminated)

The key to the whole thing is using the sound hole…

First and most importantly is the front face or soundboard of the guitar. Look at the inside edge of the sound hole. If the guitar has a natural finish, you should be able to see the grain of the wood wrap all the way around the inside edge to the inside. If you see 2 or more layers, it’s laminated. I’ve seen some that almost look like the edge of a piece of plywood with many layers. This technique cannot be used on some guitars with very dark or painted finishes. The inside edge of the hole is too dark.
Back & Sides – Look at the back of the guitar, then look inside the sound hole at the same spot on the other side of the back. The wood grains should match. If not, it’s laminated. Do the same as best you can with spots on the sides. Again if the guitar has a very dark or painted finish, this technique cannot be done.

Gman ( o )==#

For more tips visit Guitar Man Acoustic Guitar Tips.

CD Reviews

John Wetton – Sinister
For his newest solo effort, John Wetton continues in the tracks of Battle Lines, more than his previous Arkangel. It’s a bit more pop than what we’re used to from Wetton, but, as usual, it is brilliantly executed.

Colie Brice – Chameleon
An aptly titled album for Colie. A mix of various styles of music. An interesting travel into one man’s musical mind. With twists and turns in every direction.

New Sites

This week I have been fine tuning our new Linksmanager system. There are all sorts of new features that we can do with our links and hopefully all the kinks in the links will be ironed out soon.

Here are the sites added this week:

Applause Music Careers – Applause Careers in Music Performance and Careers in Music Production. Make your career in the music industry happen!
Serena Matthews – This is what happens when a woman dreams outloud…

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.

Fingerpicking and Flatpicking
Superb column and site – I’m thoroughly addicted – and learning!

One question has cropped up, and forgive me if it is because I have missed a lesson or overlooked a section:

In your column entitled Tricks of the Trade, guitar column #22, there is a section in the Knocking on Heaven’s Door fill sequence that I am not sure how to play. It is the third line from the bottom of the sequence (a “knock knock knocking on heaven’s door” bit) and there is a fill that consists of a run of five notes that are two strings apart. ie. The TAB is saying to play the D and the B strings, and not the G string. How would you suggest to do this? And if your suggestion is otherwise, can it be done with a plectrum?

David’s Response
Thanks for writing and for your kind words concerning our site! It’s always good to hear from people who are taking the time and making the effort to learn via the internet (which is admittedly not the easiest thing when it comes to guitar!) If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to subscribe to our free newsletter the next time you’re online. It’s a good way to stay informed of all the latest lessons.

Concerning this particular riff on Knocking On Heaven’s Door, there are numerous ways of dealing with it. And no, you didn’t miss any earlier lesson on this! First off, I should say that I tend to fingerpick a lot so when I wrote it out I hadn’t even thought about using a plectrum.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. A lot of players use a technique known as “flatpicking.” This involves holding the plectrum with only your thumb and index finger to play the lower notes while picking the upper notes with your middle and/or ring fingers (I often use both!).

Another popular technique is “string muting.” Here you would finger the frets in such a manner that you can strum across them all but the middle one is muted. It gives of a slight “thunk” sound but this is usually drowned out by the other sounding strings. Jimi Hendrix was great at this. In this case, you could either mute the G string by lightly placing a finger on it directly or mute it by slightly angling the finger that is fretting the D string. These two methods do require some practice.

Finally, just to make your day, you could also play this and simply let the G string ring free. Since the song is in G and the chords that would be formed by playing it this way are also compatible for the key, it will sound fine. The open G serves as a drone and the chords around it help create a good tension that will be resolved once you hit the G chord that starts the following measure. This is another technique that I employ a lot, especially with songs in G, C and their relative minors.

I hope that this helps. Thank you again for the email and I look forward to hearing how things are progressing with you.

Peace

David Hodge

If you missed it the first time around, please take the time to read David’s Tricks of the Trade. This column looks at four basic tricks of the trade: hammer-ons, pick-offs, slides and bends. It goes over some examples and also takes a look at how they can be used as fills. While generally considered the tools of the lead guitarist, this lesson show how these four techniques can add depth to a rhythm guitarists style.

That is all for this week’s issue. If you know anyone who might benefit from this free information please forward your copy to them.

Until next week,

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer