Newsletter Vol. 3 # 102 – November 16, 2009

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #102 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • Greetings, News and Announcements
  • Topic of the Month
  • Guitar Noise Featured Artist
  • New Lessons and Articles
  • Exploring Music with Darrin Koltow
  • Emails? We Get Emails!
  • Reviews
  • Event Horizon
  • Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello and welcome to the middle of November!

I’d like to open this latest issue of Guitar Noise News, your free twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com) with a last note about FODfest 2009, namely that it’s not too early to be thinking about FODfest 2010! The 2009 tour had more than forty shows over thirty days and that takes a lot of planning and commitment. If you went (or performed) this year and had a great time and would like to do it again, or if you missed out on things this year and want to try to get to or play at a show next year (or to help find new places and venues to play at), this is the time to be thinking about it. You can drop the FODfest staff a note at their website (www.fodfest.org) and chat with Todd and all the FODfest organizers. They’d love to hear from you.

And for those of you who’d like to see (and hear) what you missed out on, you can find videos of the final show by clicking here.

When you do, it will tell you that you need to be connected to Facebook in order for the videos to run. Click “connect with Facebook” in the popup box and you’re good to go. Down on the lower right hand side of the page will be an area labeled “more from limerockcodger” with short snippets of the live video feed from FODfest. They are in reverse chronological order. The first one, “DMLWeb live cam 11/01/09 01:13PM” is on page 19. As of now when I’m writing this, that is. You might have to go a page or two further.

The cutting of the show is slightly problematic. You’ll be in the middle of a song and the vid will end and the next one start up not quite on time. Kind of like a video version of the old eight track players. But it will give you a pretty good idea of what it was like.

Also, currently on page 20, is a video of entire October 3 show at the Mahaiwe Theatre.

If nothing else, I hope that watching some of this video will bring a smile to your face. The idea of FODfest is to use music as a tool for promoting understanding and harmony among all people, certainly a goal we all tend to think about this time of year!

Topic of the Month

“Chord Melody” is the “topic of the month” here at Guitar Noise for November. As with most of our topics, Guitar Noise has lessons at almost all levels, from beginners just getting started to intermediate and advanced students who want to try out creating their own chord melodies. So go to the home page and take a look at all the lessons. It will hopefully get you psyched to try out this style of playing.

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

And our featured artist for the month of November is Mark Knopfler, a master of tasteful playing and phrasing both in his early days of leading Dire Straits and in his equally prolific solo career. Click on over to our artist profiles page for a bio on the incomparable Mr. Knopfler as well as links to other articles of interest at Guitar Noise.

New Lessons and Articles

Just to let you know that I ran into some problems with the MP3 files for the upcoming lesson on “Sailing to Philadelphia” that meant doing some revision and re-recording. I’m hoping to have the lesson ready for Paul on Sunday (the same day most of you will get this newsletter), but we may not have it up online by the time you get the newsletter.

So just take a look at the home page every now and then and you should find it up online for your reading pleasure very, very soon, if it’s not there already. My apologies for the delay and my thanks for your patience.

Practicing Performance
by Gerald Klickstein

Many guitarists consider practice and performance to be being distinct activities. Gerald Klickstein, author of the new book The Musician’s Way, shows how they can be combined into an inclusive creative process.

How to Make A Great Guitar Solo
by Tom Hess

Quite often, guitarists solo as if they are paid by the note, totally ignoring phrasing and melody, two key aspects of soloing. Tom Hess gives us a terrific lesson on phrasing, complete with video!

Sailing to Philadelphia
Songs for Intermediates
by David Hodge

Sometimes a simple sounding fingerstyle acoustic guitar part takes a bit of thought and tinkering to create. David looks at how to go beyond the chords offered up on a typical Internet tab sheet in order to get more of the flavor of the original recording of this great Mark Knopler song.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for November 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 19)

We’re continuing our mode exploration in this issue. The last issue wrapped up the C7 sound. Let’s dig into the C Phyrgian sound this time. I’m sorry we didn’t get to C Phyrgian before Halloween, which is the best time of year for this sound. That’s okay: by next Halloween, your C Phrygian will be super spooky after a year of practicing it.

Here’s a run down of what we’ll cover:

  • On position V:
    • diatonic chords
    • chromatic chords
    • basic arpeggios and scales
    • substitute arpeggios and scales
    • possibly, licks
  • compass work (length of the fretboard)
    • arpeggios with 3, 4 and 5 notes
    • chords, diatonic and chromatic

Working through that list will give you a solid foundation for your solo playing and all your playing. Let’s get to some music: C Phrygian chords

|-8--6--------|-------------|---------|
|-5--6--9--8--|-6--5--------|---------|
|-6--6--7--5--|-7--5--8--6--|-5-------|
|-8--5--6--8--|-6--8--6--6--|-8--8----|
|-------8--7--|-8--7--7--8--|-7--7----|
|-------6-----|-------6--9--|----8----|

I’ll explain these choices in the next issue. For now, just dig the spooky C Phrygian.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright 2009 Darrin Koltow

Emails? We Get Emails!

Hello!

I always have a problem trying to learn to play a new, simple song as I am a beginner. What I have a problem with is most of the songs have the chords posted, but there is not a suggestion at all for what might be a strum pattern that would work. Any suggestions?

Hi!

Thanks for writing. As a beginner, there are all sorts of things to worry about, but one total trap you want to avoid is that of “strum patterns.” Strumming is all about rhythm and you can give any song literally any number of strum patterns you’d like. Trouble is that most beginners don’t want to count out rhythms, preferring to think in terms of “up and down” and that’s a big mistake.

If you check our “Easy Songs for Beginners” lessons at Guitar Noise, you will find that the majority of them give you ideas for strumming the chords for the songs in question. And if you take the time to listen to our Guitar Noise Podcasts (and all of this is free, by the way), you might (hopefully) learn enough about strumming so that you can create your own strumming patterns.

I know this probably isn’t the answer you’d like, but I hope it helps nonetheless. Please feel free to write again if you want more details.

Looking forward to chatting with you again.

Peace

Reviews

In the meantime, I’d like to do is apologize again for missing out on the latest new review, which Guitar Noise Forum Chief (or “UberMod” if you will) Nick Torres wrote for us at the end of October. Nick has tested out the “Easy Roll Guitar Method” by George Pittaway, and written a very fair (and fascinating) review of it, which you can find here.

Not only does Nick give this DVD a thumbs up, but so do a number of Guitar Noise Forum members who have also tested it out. I’m planning on buying a copy to give myself for Christmas!

Event Horizon

If you’re somewhere in the middle of New Jersey and find yourself needing a break on Thanksgiving weekend, come on over to Grover’s Mill Coffee Saturday night, November 28. I’ll be playing music with some friends starting around 7:30. This is a great little coffee house in West Windsor, New Jersey, fairly close to Princeton and practically right off of Exit 8 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Check out their news page for the exact address and phone.

Random Thoughts

It’s been especially nice to play out these two months as I’ve not been doing practically any performing at all most of 2009, owing to both teaching and writing schedules. Constant performing has never been a personal goal, but performing, playing for the entertainment and enjoyment of others, is a big part of my life.

Jerry Klickstein’s piece of practicing performances (as well as his new book, “The Musician’s Way,” which we’ll be reviewing here at Guitar Noise in the very near future) has been a great reminder to me of how all the little nuances of performing need to get as much attention as playing and general technique.

Sometimes things aren’t all that cut and dried. For instance, since the two FODfest shows I played at were totally unrehearsed, basically a “song leader” would step up to the front of the stage and start in on a song, often an original song that no one else on stage had heard before, and not every performer was kind enough to announce the key or the chord changes! So how does one prepare for that?

Knowing the performance format was a big help. Most of the participants were “singer / songwriter” types, so my personal practice consisted of putting a number of CDs by similar-styled artists on random rotation on our CD player. I even went as far to borrow CDs from friends of artists I’d never heard before. Then I’d hit the play button and pretend it was the actual show, doing my best to find the key and figure out a lot of the progression as the song went on. I learned that some songs I could easily pick up and play along with very quickly. More importantly, I learned that sitting out a song was occasionally the best choice to make!

Practicing for FODfest in this manner certainly did make me more comfortable playing backup on instruments like the dobro and ukulele. And being able to provide some backing ukulele on Bryan Gruley’s cover of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” at the FODfest show in Oak Park will certainly be one of my personal musical highlights of this past year!

And until our next newsletter, stay safe. Play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace