Newsletter Vol. 3 # 1 – July 01, 2005

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #1 of Guitar Noise News!

It’s the first of July and, as promised, here’s the very first issue of our new newsletter. I hope you’ll find the expanded Guitar Noise News to be worth the hoopla!

In This Issue:

  • News and Announcements
  • New Articles and Lessons
  • Top Choices – Guitar Noise Staff Picks!
  • Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
  • Notes From Nick
  • Buried Treasure Of The Internet
  • Forum Findings
  • Email Of The Moment
  • Emails? We Get Emails!
  • Tutorial Tips
  • It’s A FAQ
  • Digging Through The Archives
  • Event Horizon
  • Reviews
  • Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

Today, the first of July, is also Canada Day, so we’d like to salute all of our readers from the Great White North! And we’ve even cooked up something very special for you a little further on.

Speaking of special people, apparently so many Guitar Noise readers signed up for the B. B. King – The Ultimate Collection contest that three of you won! Our congratulations go out to Jenell Kinslow, James Farris and Craig Weber, who, if they haven’t already, will be receiving a copy of this new album out in celebration of BB King’s approaching 80th Birthday.

And since Guitar Noise was such a big part of this contest, we’re expecting to be asked to participate in more giveaways in the near future.

This month we’re giving away 2 copies of TONY IOMMI’s new solo album, Fused, which hits stores July 12th on Sanctuary Records. Joining the legendary Black Sabbath guitarist is former Deep Purple vocalist/bassist Glenn Hughes and former John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff, who has also played sessions with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd and countless others. The trio will hit the road to promote Fused later this year after Black Sabbath finishes headlining the 10th anniversary Ozzfest tour.

All you have to do to enter is send an email to us and include your name and email address. Winners will be announced on July 25. Good luck.

I’m also pleased to announce that the folks at Acoustic Guitar Magazine have run a new lesson from me in their August issue, which should be on newsstands any day now. I’ll tell you more about it later on down the page. For right now, though, let’s find out what’s new one the site and also dig into the many new features of Guitar Noise News:

New Articles And Lessons

Chord Melodies – Finding A Latin Groove
By Peter Simms

Guitar Noise is pleased to welcome Peter Simms back to our pages. Peter’s got a new chord melody for you with a distinctive Latin feel to it. Get ready to provide both the bass and chordal rhythm/melody and to give your fingers (and thumb!) a workout.

Building Your Own Song Book
By Simone Perandini

Guitar Noise welcomes Simone Perandini to our pages. Simone is a guitar teacher in Italy and he shares with us some ideas of creating and maintaining a songbook – the essential item for any successful jam!

Top Choices: Guitar Noise Staff Picks

Alright, I will admit that I totally stole this idea from the many bookstores I’ve been going in and out of for the past couple of years. It’s a wonderfully simple thing: when you walk into a bookstore and you haven’t a clue as to what you’d like to read, there is a shelf (or even a whole bookcase) of books that have been read and are recommended by the store’s staff.

Our own staff, being young, old and multinational, listens and reads and learns from a lot of different sources. So I’ll be asking them from time to time to let the rest of us in on what is going on, music-wise, in their little corners of the world.

And since today, as we’ve noted, is Canada Day, what better way to kick off this new section than to let Paul Hackett, Guitar Noise’s Founder and Executive Producer, tell us about some of his favorite bands and artists from his native land.

Take it away, Paul!

Canada Rocks

By Paul Hackett

July 1 is Canada Day, Canada’s national holiday. It celebrates the creation of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867. It is a day generally marked by patriotic celebrations featuring fireworks and entertainment with a Canadian theme. Today being July 1 has got me thinking about some of the more notable rock bands to come out of Canada throughout the years.

Since the emergence of Canada’s first major pop star, Paul Anka in the 1950s, many types of Canadian music have flourished, reflecting the diverse tastes of Canadians. Distinctly Canadian styles of music include French-Canadian music, Maritime music, Native American and Inuit music as well as homegrown folk and country. Some of the more notable singer/songwriters from Canada include Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Bruce Cockburn.

In celebration of Canada Day I want to share my picks for some of the more enduring Canadian rock acts. Rock music in Canada owes a great debt of gratitude to The Guess Who, whose best-known songs (American Woman, These Eyes, No Sugar Tonight, etc.) are among Canada’s most enduring classic rock anthems. Initially the band wanted radio stations and record buyers to believe they were a British Merseybeat band in disguise. So when they released their debut album, it didn’t bear their own name — instead, it was labeled “Guess Who?” The ruse worked, and within a few years The Guess Who were one of Canada’s biggest musical names.

In 1970, the Canadian government introduced Canadian content regulations, requiring radio stations to devote 30 per cent of their musical selections to Canadian content. The most immediate effect of these new regulations was the sudden rise to fame of Anne Murray, whose 1970 Snowbird was a multi-million selling record. The rest of the decade proved to be a golden age for Canadian music with the emergence of internationally renowned acts such as Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Rush, Bruce Cockburn, April Wine and Neil Young. Another of this period’s most influential and popular rock bands, Heart, resulted from the collaboration of two sisters from Seattle with a supporting band from Vancouver.

The 1980s produced many mainstream pop-rockers such as Bryan Adams, Tom Cochrane, Platinum Blonde, Honeymoon Suite, Helix, and Corey Hart. This era also produced the country cowpunk of k.d. Lang, who eventually become one of pop music’s biggest names. The late 1980s saw even more popular acts such as Alannah Myles and Jeff Healey (the blind blues guitarist extraordinaire who appeared the film Roadhouse). Alternative rock also emerged as an influential genre, with artists such as 54-40, Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip, Sarah McLachlan, Cowboy Junkies, The Tea Party, and Our Lady Peace all gaining widespread attention during this time.

An unassuming demo tape by the Barenaked Ladies became the hottest item in Canadian record stores in the fall of 1991. Alanis Morissette, who began as a dance-pop artist before transforming into an alternative rocker in 1995, launched an era in which Canadian women ruled the pop charts worldwide. In the late 1990s, Morissette, Shania Twain, Céline Dion and Sarah McLachlan were arguably the four most popular and influential recording artists in the world during this decade.

With such diversity in styles, Canadian rock and pop music has a real staying power. And with a new album by Paul Anka in stores now, there seems to be no end in sight. Hopefully you’ll find some of this music enjoyable, and have a happy Canada Day, eh!

Most information for this article came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_music

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

You may have already caught on to one new feature about Volume Three of Guitar Noise News – I’m not the sole writer! Guitar Noise is a community and I want to better reflect this than we (read “I”) have of late. And something I am very excited about is that two stalwarts of the Internet Guitar Community, Darrin Koltow of Maximum Musician and Guitar Noise’s own Nick Torres, have enthusiastically agreed to be regular contributors to the newsletter.

For those of you who might not know Darrin, let me direct you to his website, Maximum Musician and also to his page here at Guitar Noise. Mr. Koltow’s weekly newsletter used to brighten up my Wednesdays and also served as my inspiration when I first started penning Guitar Noise News. It is an honor to bring him back to you, our readers:

This tip is about the Big Picture of making music. What is that? It’s the mental model that helps you understand how music works. Without that, then scales, chords and maybe even songs will make no sense to you. So let’s answer some fundamental questions about the Big Picture of music and see if it helps you untie some mental knots you’ve made for yourself.

All you need to do to see the Big Picture of music is to understand this: key centers. If you understand how key centers are made, moved into and out of, and how chords work within key centers, then you can fit anything new you learn — chords, scales, songs, fruitcake recipes — into your brain, and it will be a joy to learn.

So what is a key center? Get out your guitar. Play a Dm, followed by a G7, followed by C major. You just established a key center of C. If you sing or play the note C, it sounds like the most restful note, doesn’t it?

The next question is how do those three chords work to create a key center? Let me defer that question for now, and offer instead an encouraging statement: there are only three actual chords in any key center. Say what? Three chords? “I was told there are 7,” you say: you know, one for each note in the scale. Yes, that’s true. But for the purposes of establishing a key center, there are only three chords — or actually, three types of chords.

Watch out now: when I write, “type of chord” I’m not talking about a chord’s quality: major, minor, diminished, polka-dot, etc. No, “type” refers to one of these: tonic, subdominant, and dominant. Let’s explain these, and relate them to some actual chords.

The tonic type of chord is the one that represents the key center itself. It sounds more or less restful and says, “We can just hang here. No need to go anywhere else.” It’s important to note that you will have a true “Tonic,” which is the key center, and other “tonics” that can serve as representatives, or substitutes for the true key center. The true Tonic (note the capital “T”) is the first degree of the major scale. But tonic chords (note the little “t”) in any major key are found on degrees One, Three and Six.

Translate these to C major. The C major chord is the Tonic chord. But the Three and Six, Em and Am, are also tonic. This leads us to the next Big Observation about key centers:

You can often swap out one chord for another if the chords perform the same function (tonic, subdominant, dominant). That means in C major, the chords C major, A minor, and E minor are interchangeable.

“Objection!” someone yells. “I’ve tried that before and it sounded worse than fingernails on chalkboards.” So to that we say this: this stuff about tonic, subdominant and dominant is a part of music theory. And you did notice the word “often” back in the sentence starting with “You can often…” Often doesn’t means always.

Back to the point, and how to apply it. The next time you’re playing a tune in C major, try swapping around the Em, Am and C.

Am has two of the same notes as the C chord, C and E. In essence you’ve created a C6 chord, which is C, E, G and A, but without the G. This is why Am7 (made up of A, C, E and G) is an even better substitute tonic than just plain old Am.

But what about Em? While it also has two of the notes of the C chord (E and G), it doesn’t have the C and missing the root can sometimes seem a little jarring. But when you’re playing in a band, you often have a bassist or keyboard player who’s playing the root. And when we add the root C to the rest of the Em chord, we get C, E, G and B, which is Cmaj7.

C6 and Cmaj7 have jazzier flavors than your normal C chord, which is why they don’t “always” fit in with the mood of a particular song. But quite “often” they will. When? Well, that’s a matter of both personal taste and experimentation.

So take some time and experiment with tonic substitutions and next time out we’ll discuss the subdominant.

Notes From Nick

As I mentioned before, Darrin is going to be one of two new regular contributors to the newsletter.

I’m also truly pleased to announce that Nick Torres, whom many of you know as our Head Moderator and Administrator of the Forum Pages, has agreed to write a regular section for our new newsletter. In upcoming issues you will find all sorts of information, ranging from tips about playing and maintenance and minor repairs to, as you’ll see, cool places on the Internet worthy of your attention.

And, since Nick is the “Grand Poobah” of the Guitar Noise forums, it’s only appropriate to provide him a place to highlight anything new or special that’s going on. In case you’ve never visited the Guitar Noise Forum pages, you are in for a treat. Our forum members pretty much define all that is great about the Internet community. They are helpful and informative and, from what I understand after chatting with people who’ve frequented other guitar sites, uncommonly civil.

Another thing that we’ll be trying to do in this section is to spotlight our Forum Moderators. They are an exceptional crew and worthy of note, both as a group and as individuals. And I think that you’ll enjoy the chance to get to know them as people as well as Moderators.

So let me put this all back in Nick’s able hands. Without further adieu, I give you “Notes From Nick,” “Buried Treasure Of The Internet” and “Forum Findings:”

Notes from Nick

A funny thing happened on the way from the forum…

When I heard from David about all of his exciting new projects and the new direction of the Newsletter, I offered my help. Little did I know that he’d accept. But accept he did and here I am.

You know, things are like that here at Guitar Noise. It’s one of the things I treasure about the place. You may think that you don’t have anything to offer, but you do.

So with that in mind, I’d like to suggest that we make this July the official “get out and do something guitar related” month.

Just to get you started, here are some ideas:

  1. Wear guitar-related t-shirts, hats, buttons every day. When someone asks the inevitable question, “Do you play?” arrange a jam. If you only have one guitar related shirt, you may skip every other day to wash it.
  2. Find an open mic and play. If you feel worried about being ridiculed, play somewhere where nobody knows you.
  3. Teach somebody something.
  4. Play at the local retirement community, picnic, pool party. Nothing flashy, just take your guitar and play.
  5. Put up an ad at the local community college for jamming partners

The important thing is to take that risk. Music is for sharing.

I remember a while back we did a couple of articles about playing with others. Now in reading that it seemed to me the most common reason we don’t get out and play with others is that none of us felt we were good enough. What do we have to offer?

It’s time to put a stop to this inner demon of self-doubt. If I can help moderate one of the biggest guitar forums on the Internet, if I can teach guitar, if I can contribute to the newsletter, if I can use my talents, gifts and other things, then so can you.

Get out there and share your talents this week. Don’t judge yourself, don’t doubt, just make that first step. You never know, someone may just be waiting to accept your offer.

Email me and let me know how this works out for you.

With sharing music in mind, let me segue into what I hope to make a regular feature:

Buried Treasure Of The Internet

There is so much guitar stuff out there on the Internet that some just gets lost in the shuffle. This section of the newsletter will be dedicated to uncovering the lost treasures. You might find a guitar theory site, guitar related application, video, free mp3s, special sales or who knows what here.

So, here are a couple of my favorite sites I think you should know about.

Michael Johnathon’s Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour.

For you acoustic players this is a must see. Check out Tommy Emmanuel, Muriel Anderson, Crash Test Dummies, Michelle Shocked and more. This is a fantastic collection of videos. Check out their licks and stage moves.

This next one is the Kennedy Center’s Millennium stage archive of videos. If you are lucky enough to live in the Washington DC area you can go to these shows for free. If you aren’t they’ve recorded them for you. You can search by artist or genre.

If you have a site you’d like to recommend for this new section of our newsletter, shoot me an email.

Forum Findings

What’s hot on the forum tonight?

Two of my favorite songs in the Easy Song Database, that’s what. Vic Lewis and Wes Inman have put up their versions of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Norwegian Wood”.

Do you have any helpful hints for new guitarists? Do you need some? Check out the “What you’ve learned” thread. Started by corbind, this thing has taken on a life of it’s own. It’s full of helpful hints and observations.

And, as always, we look forward to seeing you on the Forum!

Email Of The Moment

A day doesn’t go by without getting emails from our readers. And just to squash some interesting rumors, I’m not the only member of the Guitar Noise staff who gets emails. Even if I go on and on and on about how many I get, our other writers and even most of the Forum Moderators get scads of emails. Here’s a recent one addressed to and answered by Laura Lasley:

Hi Laura,

I read a few of your articles at Guitar Noise. I’m really glad that you decided to write those articles because they are very inspiring. You see, I’m just beginning to learn to play the guitar this summer. I’m going to be a senior in college in the coming fall. I felt like I was getting into something really late, plus I never really listened to American music, having limited myself to listening to Japanese pop and rock music as well as original soundtracks. So sometimes I have some self-doubt as to whether or not I should get into this at all.

I’m learning using a copy of the Wolf Marshall guitar method basics book that my friend gave me, but I don’t think I’m improving that well. I’m thinking of signing up for lessons because I would like to have someone show me play, but I’m not really sure if that’s the right step to take. I’ve talked to a few people who say they learned by themselves or with friends, but unfortunately I don’t have any friends right now who play or can teach me, and when I’m by myself it’s hard for me to find direction as to how to improve. What do you think?

Well, your advice will be gladly appreciated! Take care…

Thanks for writing in to Guitar Noise! I’m glad you enjoy the articles; they are meant to inspire people of all ages to pick up the guitar and learn. You’re never too old to learn something new, and the guitar remains fun and challenging for a long time.

I’m a fan of lessons with a teacher. Everyone learns differently, and some can learn from a book, or from the lessons on our site. You’re right, I’ve known people who have taught themselves, or have picked it the guitar by playing with friends. Personally, I learn better with someone showing me how, and then reinforcing that knowledge at future lessons. Plus, they can give you a direction in learning new skills. One thing I’ve found helpful is to pick a few songs that you really like, whether Japanese pop or something from a soundtrack, and most guitar teachers will be able to help you figure out how to play them. In learning songs you enjoy, you will pick up chords and techniques. I find it much easier to learn songs that I’ve heard so many times that I know them well. That way you know when you’re playing the music well, plus you get the pleasure of learning songs you enjoy.

Is there a music department at your college? Or if you are home for the summer, is there a music school near by? Either place should have someone who can teach you lessons. I find that the discipline of music lessons forces you to practice and then you progress a bit faster on the instrument.

Good luck. Let me know how it goes, and write again if you have any other questions.

Best regards,

Laura Lasley

Emails? We Get Emails!

Now that’s self-explanatory, no? Again, since Guitar Noise is a community affair, it’s only proper to highlight what you all think of what’s going on here. So one of the big new features of Guitar Noise News is that we will have two or three sections devoted to our emails and messages. And do please feel free to write me (or any of the staff) anytime!

Hi David,

I’m from Wylie TX and I’ve been on the mailing list a couple of years now. I really enjoy the weekly newsletter, and especially the songs. I am nearly fifty years old, and have been attempting to learn to play on my own. I have learned more from your site than from any other online source. Mostly from the tabs and mpeg songs. I do hope that the site will continue to give access to these and more of the same sort of direct application training.

I will begin official lessons next week with a local teacher for a more personal, and “specific to my needs” type of instructions. We will start with the basics or course and move up. I am looking very much forward to expanding on the great start you have helped me gain.

Thanks again,

A friend in quest of the wonder of guitar.

Fifty seems to be a magic number this week, as you’ll see in the following email. I’m glad that we’ve been able to help you get a good footing into playing the guitar and I’m also overjoyed that you’ve taken the step of getting yourself a teacher. I’m looking forward to hearing how this adds to your enjoyment of learning.

As far as the site is concerned, I think you’ll find that we plan to continue on as before, with lessons as good as they can possibly be. We’ll even talk a little more about that towards the end of this newsletter.

Thank you again for the kudos and please feel free to write anytime.

As an absolute newbie…at fifty!!! I must commend you on such a helpful site and newsletter. I am learning so much at such a quick rate. I wish I had started years ago!! Thank you for your attention to us “new” folks. I am hooked.

Thanks again

Paying attention to “new” folk is pretty easy here at Guitar Noise. We all remember what it’s like to be new to the guitar or even to music in general. Not only on our various and sundry Lessons pages, but also on the Forums pages as well. As I’ve said to many others in the past, I hope that our site continues to be a source of both education and inspiration to you for a long, long, time!

Tutorial Tips

And speaking of beginners, some of our emails deal with questions like this one:

First of all, people cannot progress beyond a point that they don’t understand. Secondly, music teachers don’t understand things from a beginner’s perspective. Specifically, in reading the Absolute Beginner’s section, I got hung up on beats and measures. You don’t say that a measure lasts two seconds or whatever. I have no clue what a measure is. Nor do I have a clue what a beat is. If a measure lasts two seconds, does a quarter note last a half-second? You never mention time and yet you are discussing timing. I understand that this is my problem, but I just want you to see that some of don’t see things through your eyes. Otherwise, thanks for the site! I’m not giving up, but it is very frustrating.

Thanks for writing and thank you very much for the question. Timing in music is a tricky subject to try to explain simply with words (which is one reason why having a teacher, someone you can talk to one on one, is so important) and I obviously didn’t do a good job on this explanation as far as you’re concerned.

So let’s try again. If I were to ask you how many seconds are in a minute, you’d say sixty. Now say I ask you how many times you breathed or how many times your heart beat during the same time period. Can you answer that? Not really. You’d guess or you’d have a range.

Music is living. It’s not mechanical, although it has mechanical aspects. Timing is one of music’s intangibles yet not intangibles. And before you think that that answer is even worse, let’s talk about TEMPO.

Tempo is the speed of a given piece of music. When measured by a device like a metronome, it is usually written in terms of beats per minute, or “BPMs.” So if a song is played at a tempo of 120 BPM, that means each beat lasts a half a second. If you decide to play the same song at a much slower speed, say 60 BPM, then every beat is the duration of a second. And if you play faster then the beats will occur in a shorter time span.

But that’s only part of what you have to worry about. Let’s not forget the time signature. In 4/4 time (which you’ll remember means four beats per measure), a measure of a song at 120 BPM lasts two seconds. But if you were playing a song in 3/4 time at the same tempo, each measure would be one and a half seconds long.

You can already begin to see why we don’t get into this sort of explanation with beginners. And, quite frankly, it’s not important to. Timing is better taught as “counting,” such as counting out loud, “One, two, three, four” at a steady and even tempo. It doesn’t matter if one beat is a nanosecond or two out of sync with the others, in fact, it usually can’t be helped. But the overall tempo and timing with be seemingly equal. And unless you want to play like a machine, this is the way to go.

Tapping your foot with the beat of a song is a very natural way to try to understand this better. When you tap your foot along with the song, you usually are marking quarter notes. You should already intuit that you don’t tap your foot at the same pace with each song.

I hope that this helps. Timing gets a lot of people hung up, but usually because they cannot keep a steady beat, not because they need to know the beat is so many seconds or fractions of a second long.

And please write me back if you’d like an even better explanation. I’ll try to come up with one!

It’s A FAQ

Many of the questions we get already have answers. You can find them on our FAQ page! You didn’t know we had one? We do and it’s right here.

And well, to tell the truth, I seem to forget that quite often myself! And, truth be told, there’s a lot of very valuable information there.

In future issues of Guitar Noise News, we will highlight a particular FAQ of interest. Not only because we can (and because we should), but also as a way to get you to think about these questions (and answers) as well. Why? Well, without going into too much detail (mostly because I’m not quite certain I understand it all yet!), let’s just say that you can expect our FAQs to undergo a huge change in the upcoming months. And that we’re going to be doing so in a way that means the whole community will be getting involved in maintaining our FAQ files.

“Stay tuned” seems to be appropriate to say here, but so does “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it!”

Digging Through The Archives

In addition to our FAQ page(s), there seems to be no end to the wealth of information here at Guitar Noise. Sometimes a question or a comment will make me think of an old article and, me being me, I often will share that thought along with a link or two. For instance, since Darrin has brought up the subject of chords and key centers, it might be a good idea to pull up Five To One or “Home Home Again) and to give it a read.

It’s always good to remember that Guitar Noise has been around a while and that there are already a lot of articles on many topics you might find of interest. If you’re having trouble in your search for a particular subject, drop me a line or even post an inquiry on the Forum pages. Someone will be all too glad to help you out!

Event Horizon

Supporting Guitar Noise and the Guitar Noise community is not always about money or time. Sometimes it’s about being there. Literally. As musicians, it’s always good to support each other simply by being at a gig if it’s at all possible.

One thing we’d really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

So please feel free to write me if you’ve got some gigs coming up. Remember that Guitar Noise News is sent out on the first and fifteenth of each month. Usually I will have it ready to be sent out a few days ahead of time, so plan accordingly. For instance, if you’ve got something coming up in the last two weeks of July (that is, after the fifteenth), then let me know by the tenth or the twelfth.

If you’ve already got a show in August, let me know, too! It’s never too early to plan for things!

Send your gig dates to me at [email protected] and try to put “gig alert” in the subject header.

In the meantime, let’s remind our readers in England that a very special weekend starts very soon. We’re talking about the L’esprit Manouche Festival being held at Moseley Private Park, In Moseley, which is about two miles from Birmingham (in England, not Atlanta) on July 9 th and 10 th .

Have you made sure that you’ve got your tickets?

Go to http://www.lespritmanouche.com/ for all of the details.

The fabulous line up this year includes:

  • Dotschy Reinhardt
  • The Rosenberg Trio
  • Moreno
  • Lollo Meier
  • Les Doigts de l’Homme
  • Dominique Pierard & Benjamin Clement
  • Trio Gitano
  • Graham Clark Trio
  • Swing 2005
  • Fret and Fiddle
  • Le QuecumBar All Stars
  • The Hepbir Cosimini Trio
  • Joe Townsend Quartet
  • Fred ‘Theolonius’ Baker

Awe inspiring musicians all of them!

Live music starts at around 12.30 and goes on until around 23.00 on both days!

Master Classes covering the tricks and techniques used in this style are available from Jonny Hepbir (Guitar) and Tim Kliphuis (Violin) over the festival weekend – they are only charging £25 for these, so book soon to reserve a place.

Mouth watering catering this year from Cobbett & Keen – charcoal & applewood roasted Duroc pig; Tandoori style chicken; mint and coriander marinated lamb; coconut and chilli prawns; braised tofu & smoked tomato plus a huge selection of tapas & sushi and a further blackboard menu! Gastronomic delights to match the weekend!

Reviews

Patrick Moraz: Resonance
CD Review by A-J Charron

An album of beautiful and colorful music from veteran keyboardist Patrick Moraz, one time member of Yes, the Moody Blues and Refugee.

Steve Howe: Spectrum
CD Review by A-J Charron

Steve Howe’s latest effort is a great combination of musicians, including Tony Levin, Rick Wakeman’s son Oliver and Steve’s two sons Dylan and Virgil, playing extremely well-composed music.

String Swing Guitar/Mandolin Hanger
Product Review by A-J Charron

Let your guitars hang around! The String Swing is a light, yet sturdy wall hanger designed for your guitar or mandolin. David says it’s also perfect for banjos and bouzoukis!

Random Thoughts

One thing that’s not going to change with the new Guitar Noise News – I still get the last word. Here I’ll try to keep you updated with things I’m doing (or not doing) and try not to bore you with too many unnecessary details. But yes, I still will go on the occasional rant or wax pseudo-philosophically/poetically on the odd (or not so odd) topic. After all, that’s kind of what I do.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails in the past few weeks about my writing some new lessons. One person even said, and I quote, “When are we going to get another song lesson? I’m dying here!”

As I mentioned at the start of the newsletter, I do have a new lesson out, but it is in the pages of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. For those of you who are interested, it’s called “Embellishing Cowboy Chords” (“cowboy chords” is a silly way of saying “open position chords”) and it deals with creating those little fills you hear people doing when they’re strumming. The lesson features the traditional cowboy (big irony there, right?) ballad, “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie” and concentrates on riffs centered around two chords, G and Am. All the riffs are relatively easy and involve simple hammer-ons based on the open position E minor pentatonic scale.

Speaking of irony, Acoustic Guitar Magazine has just dramatically changed their format and I think you’ll find it a much better magazine than it was. And when you consider that it was one of the better ones out there to begin with (and that was long before I started writing for them), that’s saying something!

A similar article of mine will be in the next issue of Play Guitar! magazine. I’m not sure what title the editors are going to give it, but the lesson deals with embellishing open position chords by means of strumming. In other words playing rhythmic fills, usually created by the use of slight changes to the chord (like suspended chords or major sevenths, add nines and things like that).

I’m also in the process of writing a “Crosspicking Basics” article for the November issue of Acoustic Guitar, which will include an original arrangement of the Counting Crows’ song, “Rain King,” as well as new lessons for the following two issues of Play Guitar!

And then, of course, there’s the bass book I’ve told you about.

So, what then about Guitar Noise?

Guitar Noise will be seeing more new lessons from me, but probably not until the middle of July or so. I am hoping that I will have managed to get all my writing assignments into a working and workable) schedule and that I will be able to pen and record a lot of the lessons I’ve been planning to do for some time now.

In the meantime, don’t forget that new things go up online here at the site several times a week. You don’t have to wait for the next newsletter just to have an excuse to drop by.

And speaking of the next newsletter, I guess I’ll be seeing you again in two weeks, July 15.

Until then I hope you all have a grand couple of summer (or winter if you’re south of the Equator) weeks. Stay safe and we’ll chat again very soon.

And, as always,

Peace

David