Newsletter Vol. 2 # 100 – November 21, 2004

Welcome to the latest issue of Guitar Noise News.

In This Issue

• News and Announcements
• New Articles and Lessons
• Worth a Look
• Email of the Week
• Forum News
• Sunday Songwriter’s Group
• Thoughts and Feedback

News And Announcements

Greetings!

Welcome to Guitar Noise News!

You may not have even noticed it in your haste to get to the “good part” of the newsletter, but this is the one hundredth issue of Guitar Noise News that I have written since taking over this chore from Paul. I’ve been debating whether or not to start in on “Volume Three,” but perhaps that distinction should go to whoever takes over the newsletter tasks from me.

Somehow, when compared to the other milestones occurring on this site (on an almost regular basis these days!), that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. And then I think about what goes into getting even the smallest and least informative newsletter from my brain to the site. And usually on a weekly basis at that!

Still, I’d like to try to make the newsletters a bit more of an event themselves instead of simply just an announcement of things going on at the site during any given week. I remember always looking forward to Darrin Koltow’s weekly note from The Maximum Musician because there’d almost always be a short column on some subject in there. Some weeks it was like one of Guitar Noise’s featured columns, only in a newsletter!

So maybe since I’m trying to figure out a way to write more full columns, perhaps using the newsletters for “mini-columns” or even a column “in series” might be worth thinking about. What’s your opinion on this?

In the meantime, though, let’s look at what’s new here at Guitar Noise since Guitar Noise News, Volume 2, Issue #99:

New Articles And Lessons

7 Strings Good, 6 Strings Bad
by Guy Pople

Don’t think this instrument is only for metal and grunge bands! Jazz players have been using them for ages and even many a classicist will tell you that they have a lot of unused potential. Here’s a great introduction to the world of the seven-string guitar, brought to us by first-time contributor, Guy Pople. Guy offers a discussion of the pros and cons of the instrument as well as some tips for getting started.

Worth A Look

Did you know that Tom Serb has written a terrific book on music theory? If not, you certainly should. Take a look at Nick Torres’ review of it here: Music Theory for Guitarists.

And I’d like to take a moment to thank Tom for all the work he’s done in contributing to the many forum pages he frequents. They don’t make people much nicer than this!

Email Of The Week

Even after one hundred newsletters, I have a hard time believing how many of our readers have an incredible sense of timing, and “timing” in this case refers not to rhythm or tempo, but rather to anticipating things that are either coming up or in the works. To whit:

Hello,

I don’t know if I should send this to you or not but I have a question: Do you have online lessons for playing Christmas Carols?

My ten-year-old daughter and I are learning to play together; she plays better than I do. Anyway, we love your site. Thanks for the lessons!!

Also is there a song that we should begin on? And how do we know which song to go to next to progress through the lessons?

Finally: We would like to contribute, is there an address we can mail a check to?

Thanks again!

Hi and thanks for writing!

Let me try to answer your questions in order:

Today we’ve put up the first of this year’s carols, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas. And I’m hoping to put up one new lesson a week between now and New Year’s. Paul intends to have a whole page devoted to our many Christmas lessons and articles concerning the holidays, as well as our popular Joy of Music pieces. Be on the lookout or it! There will be a big link on the Home Page to get you there.

As far as an “order” for the song lessons, After you get through the first five or six, then it becomes a matter of which songs you know or which songs you’d like to learn. If you write me directly with a description of what you currently are playing and how you’d like to improve, I’ll be happy to suggest a short “syllabus” for you.

And finally, in regard to contributions, I don’t know if we’re going to do a Donations Page or not this year. If you would seriously like to make a donation, then write to Paul Hackett, Guitar Noise’s creator and executive director. He’ll be able to direct you to the easiest way to make a contribution.

And Happy Holidays to you!

Forum News

Forum Master Nick Torres has added yet another Forum page to our ever expanding website. I have to say that I’ll be interested in hearing how this one works out. The concept is kind of incredible!

Live Audio Jams

Are you looking for someone to jam? Do you have AIM or MSN or YIM? Why not hook up for a real time audio jam? Leave your service name, handle and an approximate time and time zone when you’d be up to play.

And a quick word to a select few of our Forum members – don’t forget that the Guitar Noise website is visited by people of all ages and nationalities. Use your common sense when posting! If you’ve any question as to whether or not something is appropriate to post, write to one ofour moderators (or to me) and we’ll gladly assist you.

Sunday Songwriters Group

Year Three, Week 3

As previously mentioned, in the first weeks of SSG III we’re going to look at inspiration. We’ll try to find it in the strangest places. Places you’d never think of looking.

The Writing Is on The Wall: Well not quite on the walls but in all sorts of places. This week, be inspired by a piece of writing a nursery rhyme/poem/story/graffiti anything. Make sure to quote the source in your submission in case anyone knows it or in case anyone feels inspired to read your source. One thing, please don’t find a clever way of telling the story remember the rules of the SSG – use the story as a jumping off point or a frame of reference.

Good Writing

Bob

Thoughts & Feedback

A few weeks back I started to answer a group of questions sent to me by one of our readers. With your permission, I’d like to get back to responding to one more of them.

Which chords should I begin learning (I already know quite a few) and how should I practice switching from chord to chord?

Like most topics, there’s a lot of discussion about this, not only among both teachers and students, but most guitarists are willing to give you an opinion on it as well.

Before we delve into chords, though, I’d like to make a quick point that learning chords is not always the best way to start out, particularly for younger children. Many teachers advocate learning the notes within the first five frets on each of the strings before moving on to chords. There is some merit to this. For starters, it helps someone who’s not played a single note on the guitar before a chance to develop a little dexterity and also proper fretting technique. I think we’re all agreed that it’s usually easier to fret and sound a single note than a whole chord. For someone starting out, the inability to get a full sounding chord can lead to much frustration which, in turn, can lead to deciding that maybe the guitar is just too much trouble and not worth learning. For younger students, and also for some adults, the confidence gained by playing some single notes on various strings is all they need to make the next “step” into chord playing. We’ll be touching on this a little next time out.

If you use this technique with younger students, the next logical bit of progress is to introduce what many people call “cheater” chords. G, for instance, can be played with only one finger if you don’t play the fifth and sixth strings (fingering: XX0003). Likewise you can do a “half C” chord by only playing the notes on the first three strings (fingering: XXX010). This again is simply a matter of building up both confidence and good finger positioning. Believe it or not, I find that teaching the C and G major scales to be very helpful in the forming of chords. Once someone is used to using his or her fingers on certain frets to play the scales smoothly, it’s a small transition to learn to leave the fingers in place, thereby forming C, G and “middle of the neck F” chords.

But when it comes to teaching chords in a more “traditional” sense, I tend to start out pretty much the way I describe in Guitar Noise’s Absolute Beginners article. E minor is first chord we learn, followed by E major, A minor (which is the same fingering as E major), then A and then we stop for a bit. D major and B minor come next and then we’ll finish up with C major and G major. I know a lot of teachers prefer to use “two finger” chords first, E minor, E7, A7 and Am7, and, depending on the student, I may indeed stick with those at first, particularly as they lend themselves very nicely to learning to change between chords.

And speaking of which, it’s kind of silly, to me anyway, to teach chords without going over transitions. That’s why I’ll usually teach Horse With No Name right at the start. I want a student to get used to the idea that chords are supposed to have movement and that movement should be, for the most part, rhythmic and regular. So switching between the Em (022000) and the “horse chord” (200200) is just another way to get a beginning guitarist started in a friendly and easy manner. We will also work on changing from E minor to E major and, if things are going well, from E major to A minor.

When working on transitions, I find the best thing to do is to start by giving each chord eight beats, usually all downstrokes, and then changing to our new chord for another eight beats and then changing back. It’s important to do this in a steady rhythm since most chord changes occur in a song setting (which, to no one’s surprise I’m sure, is rhythmic). For me, I’d rather have the student miss getting all the notes right but keep the rhythm steady than to stop the rhythm in order to reset their fingers. That’s why I don’t care how slow we start out, tempo-wise. Chord changing, like most things about the guitar (and so many other things) is truly a matter of repetition and practice. It will come with time and patience. Good rhythm skills, though, are hard for a lot of people to come by and that’s why I stress them so much in learning to change chords.

If a student has gotten to the point where the “eight beat chord change” is comfortable, then we’ll move to changing the chords every four beats, then two, and finally changing on each beat. This may take the student a while, but there are all sorts of other things to be learning in the meantime.

Usually, I’ll group the chord changing exercises by pairs, E minor and E major, E major and A minor, A minor and A major, E minor and A major, E major and A major. As I’ve mentioned, the seventh chords are easier for some students when starting out. Then we’ll try to switch back and forth between three different chords. There are so many songs that involve only the E, A and D chords that most people know. Wild Thing comes immediately to mind for some reason. And any blues song in A is now playable to most beginners.

There are two things (three really, but the third is part of the second) I’d like to quickly add to this discussion. First, chord changing is something that can be done quite easily during a person’s “free time.” By this I mean why watch a football game without your guitar? You don’t even have to strum it (although I recommend you do) to work on changing between the chords. If it’s too noisy, then do it during the commercials. That’ll give you easily ten minutes practice out of every thirty of a program.

Second, I almost always start teaching beginners about the roots of chords as we learn them. This way we cannot only learn what strings to strum or not to strum (like the low E (sixth) string of the D major chord), but we can also learn what I call the “bass/strum” technique. This is simply hitting the root note of the chord on the first beat followed by the full chord on the next three beats of the measure. Because I teach the E, A and D chords first, this is a fairly easy concept for most students to get. It’s also a little sneaky because hitting the open-stringed root note first gives the student a little extra time to get the rest of the chord in place.

My other reason for teaching the “bass/strum” is that when we get to the C and G chords, as well as others where the root note isn’t an open string, the student is conscious of the need to get the bass strings in place first. This isn’t as easy a thing to teach. If a guitarist learns to make a G chord by placing his or her fingers on the high E (first) string first, then that is often how he or she will try to switch the chord in transition. And because most of the time you switch a chord on a downstroke, this can lead to all sorts of rhythmic hiccups.

By the way, there’s a very interesting thread going on right now in the forum pages about this.

Next time out (I hope, anyway!) we’ll chat about the use of songs as learning tools. In the meantime, I hope that you all have a grand week. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace

David