Newsletter Vol. 3 # 107 – February 1, 2010

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #107 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • Greetings, News and Announcements
  • Topic of the Month
  • Guitar Noise Featured Artist
  • New Lessons and Articles
  • Exploring Guitar with Darrin Koltow
  • Event Horizon
  • Random Thoughts

Greetings, News and Announcements

Hello! And welcome to the February 1, 2010 edition of Guitar Noise News, your twice-a-month newsletter from Guitar Noise.

Paul’s been very busy behind the scenes, making improvements to the website and also putting in some cool new features. If you visit the “What’s New” page you’ll find the new “recommended by our readers” bookwheel, featuring guitar and music tuition books written by some of Guitar Noise’s wonderful contributors, such as Jamie Andreas and Tom Serb. You’ll also see some new books, such as “The Musician’s Way” by Gerald Klickstein and some books, like “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Rock Guitar,” that will be available on March 2.

I’m very excited about this new feature and I will be working with Paul to update it regularly with books that we think Guitar Noise readers will want to have in their personal libraries, such as John Ganapes’ terrific “Blues You Can Use” tutorials.

If you have recommendations, do send them along to me at [email protected] and Paul and I will see about adding them to the Guitar Noise book wheel.

You also may have noticed, at the top of some of our Guitar Noise Song lessons (such as this one: Seven Nation Army) a little icon labeled “Online Tab Player.” Clicking on that icon will send you to Songsterr.com, where you can hear the tab played out as written. It’s a nice addition to the lessons, especially if you want to hear the original music as well as the arrangements we create here at Guitar Noise. Check it out the next time you visit a song lesson.

Finally, I’d like to get in an early wish for a “Happy Chinese New Year” to you all! The Year of the Tiger starts February 14, which is not only Valentines’ Day, but also the day before our next newsletter. And a lot of things can happen between now and then, so please take note of both holidays and make them special for the special people in your lives.

Speaking of a lot of things happening, let’s check out all the other new stuff going on at Guitar Noise since we last chatted.

Topic of the Month

We’re beginning a new month, so we need both a new “topic of the month” as well as a new “Guitar Noise Featured Artist.” We’re revisiting “Strumming” as our topic for the month of February. When you visit the home page, you’ll find a link to the Guitar Noise articles that deal with the topic of strumming, including a new one that you’ll read about in a moment.

While we don’t have as many articles on strumming as we do on other topics, we do have more than two dozen Guitar Noise Podcasts devoted to this topic. If you’ve never had the chance to check these out, it’s a perfect time to do so!

Guitar Noise Featured Artist

Stevie Ray Vaughan is our February 2010 “Guitar Noise Featured Artist.” You can read Paul’s bio about this great guitarist at the Guitar Noise Artist Profiles page.

New Lessons and Articles

How To Practice For Maximum Guitar Speed
by Tom Hess

How many times have you done something absolutely fast in practice only to flub it in a “real” situation, like playing with your band or just jamming with your friends? Tom outlines and explains seven simple steps to help you work on developing your speed on the fretboard straight away and also to be able to keep that speed you perfect in practice when you perform.

Respecting Others While You Practice
by Mark Mills

Practicing the electric guitar can be problematic in the best of situations, and downright hard when you have to worry about your volume levels. Mark Mills returns to the pages of Guitar Noise with a very cool solution that lets you practice at a more than reasonable volume while not disturbing either your family or your neighbors.

Getting Past “Up And Down” – Part 2:
Turning Notes into Strokes
by David Hodge

If you know how to read notation, specifically the rhythm values of notation, you never have to worry about figuring out strumming patterns because everything is spelled out for you. In this lesson, we’ll use the main guitar parts from Jack Johnson’s song “Taylor” to demonstrate how easy strumming can be.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip for February 1 – Practicing Modes (Part 23)

Welcome back to more modal musings–thoughts on C Phrygian, in particular. As you know, C Phrygian is the sound that makes us think we’re going to F minor. And we also know that C Phrygian is taken from the Ab major scale. With that in mind, let’s use another arpeggio from Ab to create a substitute, or musical synonym, for C Phrygian. The arpeggio we’ll use is Eb7. Compare the notes in Eb7 with C7:

Eb7: Eb, G, Bb, Db
C7: E, G, Bb, C and Db, for an extension note.

You can see the C7 and Eb7 are close. Now let’s hear it. Try out this ascending run:

|-----------------|-6-9-6-8-(8)----|
|---------------8-|----------------|
|---------6-9-8---|----------------|
|-----5-8---------|----------------|
|---7-------------|----------------|
|-8---------------|----------------|

And this descending run.

|-9-6-------------|--------------|
|-----8-5---------|--------------|
|---------5-6-----|--------------|
|-------------8-5-|--------------|
|-----------------|-6-8-4--------|
|-----------------|-------6-8----|

These are just two ideas out of many possible ones. Experiment and come up with your own.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2010 Darrin Koltow

Event Horizon

In fact, I just got an email as I was finishing off this edition of Guitar Noise News from a band in Scotland called General. They’ve got a gig on Thursday, February 11 as SoundHaus in Glasgow. You can get more info on this gig, and also give the band a listen at their MySpace page, which can be found here.

General has a UK summer tour coming up, and thinking ahead to summer now seems like a good idea!

I’d also like to pass along dates for Sam Weiser’s “Sam I Am” CD release tour. I’ve had the privilege of playing with this amazing young violinist (he’s still in high school) at a few FODfest shows the past two years and he is quite a talented and exciting performer. He’s just finished his first CD (available at Amazon, CD Baby and probably also your own music store) and has a short tour this month to promote it. He’s a winner of the Daniel Pearl Memory Violin and he’s donating the profits from his new CD to the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

You’ll find him playing at these venues and dates in February:
February 10th 7:00pm – Fairfield Theatre Company – Fairfield, CT
February 12th 7:00pm – Unity Church of God – Somerville, MA
February 13th 3:00pm – Rockwood Music Hall – New York City, NY
February 15th 7:30pm – Saint Mark Presbyterian Church – Rockville, MD
February 21st 7:30pm – The Rutledge – Nashville, TN
If you’re in the area, try to get to a show. You’ll have a great time, hear some great music and help support a great cause.

Random Thoughts

As I mentioned in our last newsletter, I’ve been thinking that it’s long past time that we’ve had a Guitar Noise Seminar of some sort. So I’m thinking that it might be good to start scheduling maybe one or two for this spring, say possibly early May or early June.

Since a lot of our readers have been asking about it, I thought a good topic for this year’s seminars might be “playing with others in small groups.” That title definitely needs work! Anyway, the idea would be to have the people attending the seminar learn about how to arrange pieces for two guitars. We would take specific songs (brought by the participants) and explore how best to work up a second guitar part that would best befit the second player’s skills and abilities.

This would be held at my home in western Massachusetts (about two-and-a-half hours from New York City and two-and-a-half hours from Boston) and probably be on a Saturday, starting around nine-thirty in the morning and lasting until four-thirty and I will be providing lunch for all. If it’s possible (and if the participants are interested), I can try to arrange for a public performance at a local venue for that evening. I’m also still working out the cost, but I’m hoping to have it be around $125 for the day, and that would include lunch and beverages.

If this appeals to you, drop me an email and let me know. I’d prefer to keep the groups small, between five to eight people. If there is enough interest and we can work out when people would like to come, then it’s possible to hold them on several weekends so that we can accommodate as many folks as possible. And if there is enough interest we could also see about having them in the late summer and throughout the fall months.

Until our next newsletter, play well and play often.

And, as always…

Peace