Newsletter Vol. 1 # 57 – June 21, 2002

Hello Guitar Players,

Welcome to the June 21, 2002 issue of Guitar Noise News.

After clicking on one of the banner ads on our site this week I was transported to a site I’d never seen before and that begin a voyage of discovery. The site I visited was Song Meanings, which, as you can guess from the title, is about interpreting song lyrics. It is a lot like a song lyric website with one difference. It allows you to discuss your interpretation and idea of the lyrics for any song listed.

Well, I started browsing around and settled on reading the discussion about the Phil Collins song In The Air Tonight. The popular consensus seemed to hold that Phil Collins wrote the song after witnessing an incident in which a man refused to come to the aid of a drowning man. I had heard this story many times before (long before Eminem used it in Stan) and I thought it might be true. However, one of the comments on this site referred me to another website dealing with urban myths. This site had a page detailing both the facts and the fiction behind the writing of this particular song.

Citing various sources as evidence, the author concluded that:

In the Air Tonight (as well as most of Collins’ 1981 Face Value album) deals with his bitterness and frustration over the end of his marriage to his first wife, Andrea. As Collins has repeatedly explained, the lyrics are not based on any specific real-life event.

The drowning man story is not true, but rather an urban myth. You can read the full story itself at http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/someair.htm

Next time you have a disagreement with someone over the meaning of song lyrics why not check out Song Meanings first, and then Snopes for verification. Both websites have interesting stuff and I recommend you have a look around both before you need them.

In this newsletter:

News
New Guitar 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

Welcome to the new Guitar Noise Online Forums

This week Guitar Noise got a whole new set of forums. Now our new message boards look sharper and they have all kinds of special features under the hood making them far superior to the old message boards we used. Rather than list all the new features here, I’d like you to head over to the forums page and see for yourself. It is not necessary to register to start a new topic or post a response. But if you choose to register you can build a personal profile page and begin benefiting from the features our new forum offers.

What happened to the old forums?

By June of 2002 our old Discussion Forum consisted of seven different messages boards and had received more than 10,000 messages. Given that the forum was never set up with that kind of success in mind, the limitations for both the user and the administrator became clear.

In early 2002 I started looking for a way to run a bigger and better community message board. I wanted something that would be easier to maintain and more fun for the user. I finally settled on the popular Yet Another Bulletin Board because of its power and flexibility.

Unfortunately, the messages from our old system could not be integrated into the new message boards. And since there was so much great stuff posted there I couldn’t simply throw it all away. Especially difficult to part with was all the material in the Songwriting Forum. Members had been sending in their own original songs and the feedback they received from the community was astounding. I couldn’t bring myself to throw away all that art. So I have saved as many of the old discussions as I could. But nothing lasts forever and I am sure that in time some, if not all of the old messages, will be deleted forever.

The new message board at https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/ replaces the old one. You can no longer post any messages to the old board, so don’t even try. Please enjoy the new message board and feel free to send feedback to the webmaster.

More News

This item of news I scooped from the Acoustic Guitar Review Newsletter.

Gilbert Isbin in the studio

The great Belgian guitarist, Gilbert Isbin is a tireles composer, recording artist and performer. He’s recently been commissioned to write a composition for the Quartetto Chitarristico Italiano, a classical guitar quartet who perform works by people like Leo Brouwer and Toreba. They will include it in their program and record it next year.

It’s a big treat to listen to some new Isbin! Gone is a new piece that lovers of contemporary fingerstyle will love. Gone has gorgeously angular melody lines and Drakesque chord clusters and rhythms that are truly beguiling to the ear.

Guitar and Bass Lessons

Five Questions With LT
By David Hodge (21 June 2002)
“LT” is Linda Taylor, guitarist, producer, songwriter. If she looks familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve seen her providing the wild music for the improvisational comedy show, Whose Line Is It Anyway? LT’s playing has taken her all over the world, playing with standout jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum, Japan’s pop superstar Namie Amuro and Tracy Chapman, just to name a few.

I have lost track of how many lessons are on Guitar Noise. I plan to try and work out how much stuff we have someday, but that will have to wait for another day. Over the past few years the content here has evolved such that lessons more or less have been divided into three different levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced.

In future newsletters I’d like to draw your attention to some of the older lessons that are worth revisiting. This week I’ll give you three lessons that have been around for a while and are still worth checking out.

Beginner Lesson

Back in early 2000, David wrote a lesson dealing with strumming, a common beginner problem. Not only does this lesson help you strum along with others, but it gives you some direction to come up with your own interesting strumming patterns.

Keeping Up With The Times
By David Hodge (28 Feb 2000)
This column tackles strumming patterns, how to learn them and get them down pat. Strumming is supposed to be easy but many wanna-be guitarists fun into trouble because they don’t learn to do it right.

Intermediate Lesson

An important step for the intermediate is to start figuring out songs by yourself, without relying on tab. Let’s face, a lot of the tab on the Internet is wrong. Here is the first part of David’s series of lessons on Ear Training.

Happy New Ear
By David Hodge (03 Jan 2000)
Wouldn’t it be great if you could figure out any song by ear without the help of tab? David Hodge reveals the secrets involved in his latest series of inspiring columns.

Advanced Lesson

When we all first got serious about working on Guitar Noise, I doubt anyone expected that our readers would follow us long enough and progress far enough that they would need some advanced direction. Nevertheless that is what has happened. To keep the purpose of this site focussed, earlier this year we launched a new website called Music Careers. Like Guitar Noise, the purpose of our new site is educational and the help we offer is friendly and free. If you have made it to the advanced level and you want to learn s thing or two about performing you might want to read over some of Dan’s columns on Sound Engineering.

Your First Gig
By Dan Lasley (12 Nov 2001)
In honor of our Performance month, a frequent visitor to Guitar Noise decided to make that grand leap of faith and get a gig for his band. Of course, as most of us end up doing, this first gig is going to be right in his own backyard. I am going to use this gig as an example, but I’m going to modify the facts a little to fit my column.

Stay tuned for some more new lessons next week.

Acoustic Guitar Tip

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

C# Tuning

For all the men out there who can’t sing like a four-octave tenor, I’ve found this to be a very useful idea.

I bought a flat top with incredibly good intonation, adjusted the truss rod for higher action, and installed heavier gauge strings (mediums), then tuned the guitar to C# F# B E G# C# low to high tuning. With this tuning, I can put the capo on the 3rd fret and play with anyone else tuned up to pitch or adjust lower or remove the capo completely and sing anything from Blackbird to The Needle and the Damage Done and still preserve the original hand positions used by the composers.

Gman ( o )==#

For more tips visit Guitar Man Acoustic Guitar Tips.

We want to print your guitar tips here. Please send your tips to Guitar Noise with “Guitar Tips” as the subject of your message.

CD Reviews

Linda Taylor – Pulse
I have to say that if you want to take a magical, musical tour into a funky, jazzy wonderland, you couldn’t have a better guide than LT. Pulse, her first CD as a solo performer, draws you in and dazzles you with its power.

G-Force – Code Red
G-Force is a powerful instrumental band. All songs are based on the guitar and are delivered kicking and screaming.

New Links

Adirondack Guitar Left-Handed Guitar and Bass Menu – I went to Anaheim NAMM 2002 and will go to Nashville NAMM with one mission in mind, to pick up more Left-handed Guitars and Basses. Mission accomplished. Adirondack Guitar has now added many more models to our lefty inventory. It has always been our policy not to punish the pocket books Southpaw Guitar Players. All of our left-handed guitars and basses are deeply discounted.
Song Meanings – We allow users to post their comments about their favorite (and not so favorite) songs and even submit their own lyrics.
World Music Supply – Top Brand Guitars, Amps, Drums, Pro Audio & More! – We offer top brand savings on guitars, amplifiers, effects, accessories, drum sets, congas, latin percussion, bass guitars, pro audio, microphones, recording, wireless systems, dj equipment, lighting and more. Toll free 7 day support, fast same day shipping on in stock orders placed prior to 2:00. Freindly return policy.

Email of the Week

Pentatonic Scales
I need to move my pentatonic scales from the key of “E” to the key of “D”. The first note (on e string) on the scales in “E” are

Pos 1- 0 open
Pos 2- 3 fret
Pos 3- 5 fret
Pos 4- 7 fret
Pos 5- 10 fret

What would the positions be in the key of “D”?

David’s Response
Thanks for writing. This is something we’re going to be covering in an upcoming article tentatively entitled “CAGED Match.” What you want to do is to look at your scale positions that you already know and figure out two things: the note on the 6th string and its relationship to your pentatonic scale. Since you are using an Em pentatonic scale (and we know that the notes are E G A B D E, let’s look at what you already know:

Pos 1- 0 open E (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 3 fret G (3rd)
;Pos 3- 5 fret A (4th)
Pos 4- 7 fret B (5th)
Pos 5- 10 fret D (7th)

Now since we know that a Dm pentatonic scale is D F G A C D, then we can just look at where these notes fall into place on the sixth string and our patterns will remain the same (unless we have open strings to deal with):

Pos 1- 10th fret D (root) on sixth string
Pos 2- 1st or 13th fret F (3rd) – on 1st fret watch for open strings
Pos 3- 3rd fret G (4th)
Pos 4- 5th fret A (5th)
Pos 5- 8th fret C (7th)

See how easy it is?

I hope this helps. Thank you once more for the email and please feel free to write again if you want to discuss this (or anything else) in further detail.

Peace

David Hodge 2002-06-21

All the best,

Paul Hackett
Executive Producer