Newsletter Vol. 3 # 38 – February 15, 2007

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #38 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • News and Announcements
  • New Articles and Lessons
  • Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
  • Tutorial Tips
  • Digging Through The Archives
  • Event Horizon
  • Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

Okay, big announcement for our male readers: yesterday was Valentine’s Day. If this is your first clue to that fact, then you’ve blown it big time.

You can make up for it, though! Sunday, February 18 marks the beginning of the celebration of Chinese New Year. So pledge your love for the entire Year of the Pig and not just for a single day. No, this probably won’t really work, but anything’s worth a try at this point, no?

More news that not news: Some of the MP3 links are still not working (the Horse With No Name lesson especially) and we’re still working on it. And we still appreciate your patience in this matter. Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully it will all get sorted out.

In the meantime, though, let’s see what’s new since we last chatted…

New Articles And Lessons

Bassist Doug Wimbish On Playing Well With Others
by Helena Bouchez

Helena caught up with Living Colour’s bass player, Doug Wimbish, last fall in Chicago. Here, he shares his thoughts about the bassist’s role in a band and how to approach playing with different drummers and other musicians.

Folsom Prsion Blues / Your Cheatin’ Heart
Easy Songs for Beginners #33
by David Hodge

Work on your chord changes and strumming with not one, but two great country classics!

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Scale practice overhaul

Okay, that title is a bit of over kill. We’re not going to revolutionize scale practice with this tip…probably. But we may shed some light on your scale practice. To start with, practicing scale does not have to involve monotonously long strings of ascents and descents; it does not have to put your ear to sleep. Here’s a pattern that takes us up a common major scale form in F. Study the pattern and you’ll see how to write the descent. Here’s the pattern:

|-------------------|-----------------|
||o-----------------|-----------------|
||------------------|-----------------|
||------------------|---------------5-|
||o-------4-------4-|-5-7-8-7-5-7-8---|
||--5-6-8---8-6-8---|-----------------|

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

|---------5-6-8-6-|-5-6-5---|
|-6-5-6-8---------|--------o|
|-----------------|---------|
|-----------------|---------|
|-----------------|--------o|
|-----------------|---------|

These are all eighth notes except for the end note, which has two eighths and a dotted quarter. We’ll go into details about this pattern in the next issue.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

I’d like to thank Darrin especially for his patience with my trying to sort out all the newsletter craziness since December. I hope I got all the tips in the right order!

Tutorial Tips

David,

Thank you for the wonderful job you do with songs for beginners on the web page. I turn all my friends onto it and they all love it.

I was wondering if you ever play The Weight by the Band. I’ve been trying to find a good tab version to learn to play, but none of them seem right, especially the intro. Can you offer me any help? It is one of my all time favorite songs (as well as my kids!)

Thank you for writing!

The Weight gets played a lot here – it’s a staple of both jams and performances we have. In fact, one of the last three shows I did we used it as a soundcheck as well as played it during the show.

Because the piano is so dominant in the intro, it’s easy for the guitar part to get lost. There are two main things going on – first there’s the descending bass line and then there’s the chords. On the album. this song is in the key of A. That means the bass line is going A, G#, F#, E and D. The chords, meanwhile, are going A, C#m, F#m, E and D. So you’ll want to go A, C#m/G# (446654), F#m (244222), E and D. Some people will substitute D/F# (200232) or F#m7 (242222 or 202222) for F#m and A/E for E and usually that’s fine. It’s going by pretty fast and because the bass line is so prominent you can usually miss a chord or two and not even hear it.

For whatever it’s worth, I like the sound of this better (and also avoid most of the barre chords) by playing in the key of G with a capo on the second fret. So my chords are G, Bm/F#, Em , D and C. I often substitute D/F# for the Bm simply because I like the sound of it. If someone else plays a full Bm, together we’ve got a Bm7 going on and that sounds terrific.

One other thing that I know a lot of people do (and I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions) is to simply hold on to a G chord during the first three changes and letting the bass note do the work of changing the chord. I don’t like this as much as the previous method I used, but it is very striking.

I hope this helps. Don’t be afraid of experimenting around and seeing what you like best. After all, if you’re playing the song, your audience is going to want to hear your ideas.

Digging Through The Archives

Our latest Easy Song for Beginners’ Lesson builds on the ideas we went over in the lesson on Margaritaville.

As I’m looking out at the twenty inches of snow that’s fallen (so far) today, I’m thinking that Margaritaville would be a nice place to be this evening.

Event Horizon

Twist of Fate, Guitar Noise Moderator Wes Inman’s band, will be playing tomorrow, Friday, February 16, at Dee-Man’s Lounge in Nagatuck, Connecticut.

And I got a note from Millard, who writes:

Minnesota 13 and its smokin’ hot lady vocalists will be performing at Martini Blues on Thursday, March 8 at 9PM and The Marlin Bar on Saturday March 10 at 11PM, both in Huntington Beach, California. More info (and video) at www.Minnesota13TheBand.com.

Random Thoughts

Even though I opened this by telling you Valentine’s Day was yesterday, it’s actually today as I write this. So I have to leave you a little early for two reasons: First, we’ve gotten a lot of snow today and I have to do some shoveling and making sure folks will be able to get up here tomorrow for lessons.

Second, I’ve a candlelight dinner to prepare.

A Happy Chinese New Year to you all and we’ll be chatting again very soon.

Until next time, stay safe. And play as often as you can.

And, as always,

Peace