Newsletter Vol. 3 # 48 – August 01, 2007

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #48 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • News and Announcements
  • New Articles and Lessons
  • Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
  • Emails? We Get Emails!
  • Event Horizon
  • Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

It’s frightening how summer is flying past. Here it is the first of August already and it won’t be all that long before we’re looking at September again.

But before we rush this month out the door, let’s take a little time to see what’s new at Guitar Noise since we last chatted.

New Articles And Lessons

Frere Jacques
by Doug Sparling

Also known as Are You Sleeping Brother John, this has to be one of the best known children’s songs in the world. Doug brings up a fun and thoughtful arrangement of this favorite song.

Listen Up
Examining the overlooked skill of ear training
by Josh Urban

Guitar Noise is pleased to welcome Josh Urban as a contributing writer to our website. Josh’s first piece examines what many musicians refer to as the most important skill one can develop – listening. And, as with most everything about the guitar, listening has many different aspects and each must be practiced in order to become a better musician.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

We’re continuing the series of lessons that get us started playing guitar by ear. We’re going to begin looking at playing melodies first.

Before we learn a melody by ear, you’ll want to make an observation for yourself about playing by ear on the guitar. As much as I love the guitar, I realize that it is not the best instrument to begin learning to play by ear. The reason is that notes are laid out on the guitar in a way that invites confusion for the player.

Even after you pass the beginner’s stage, you might find yourself spending a lot of time figuring out where to play something on the fretboard, or asking why a chord shape doesn’t look like it logically follows another chord shape, even though it sounds terrific.

If you don’t already know how to play another instrument by ear, learning this skill with the guitar is not your best choice. Learning to play by ear on the guitar is like learning to draw like this: tape the drawing paper to your back; look at mirrors to see what you’re doing; and reach your arm uncomfortably back behind yourself to stab out a couple of hopeful strokes.

I’m not kidding: learning how music works, and how to play by ear is actually pretty easy and super fun – but not if you’re learning how to play the guitar at the same time. If you’ve already moved past the beginner’s stage, you will be able to pick out melodies on the guitar, but you might learn even quicker if you used a piano keyboard to do it – even if you’ve never even had a piano lesson. That’s how intuitive playing the piano is.

Emails? We Get Emails

Last time out, I posted an email from a reader asking about having complete TAB transcriptions of the songs in our lessons here at Guitar Noise. I answered by stating why I’ve chosen not to, but decided to leave it open to debate. And it’s interesting to see, at least so far, that the responses are fairly evenly divided, as evidenced by these two examples:

If you go back to providing a full version at the end, you’ll go back to having a hundred questions a week about it. No good deed goes unpunished — don’t make it worse (I’m sure you still get plenty of questions as it is).

Now, what you might do, is to try not repeating sections in the lesson. In this way, someone interested in creating the full song from your lesson can simply open their word processor, right-click on each of your bits, copy it to their clipboard, then paste it into their word processor. In this way they can easily create their own full copy (which will probably have better pagination than one printed from the Internet). They can probably do this with your lessons the way they are, but it could be easier if you wanted to make it so.

If you are so inclined, you might even gear your lesson that way. Create the finished TAB, then copy sections of it into your lesson and build the lesson around that section.

But, folks can already just print it out and use scissors and tape to create a single version of the TAB. I think you showed “right thinking” in changing your approach and it is worth sticking to.

Hey David,

Just a response to your question, I would like to have the complete song in one spot. Having said that, when I pick one of your lessons to work on, I copy it into a Word document and I can edit it to put the music all together, as well as keep the lesson whole. You quite often give options on how to play the song so I can edit and print the song in any version I want. It isn’t much extra work to do the editing.

I am another person with a short attention span and will often get part way through a lesson and I stop and just start playing the music. I usually come back later and finish the lesson. Often it is beyond my skill level and I get frustrated and revert to playing the simpler version. Days, weeks, months later I come back and work on the more difficult points and find they are no longer so difficult.

Thanks for all your help.

So what do you think? Weigh in on the discussion and send me an email and try to remember to put “lesson tab question” in the header. A “thank you” to all of you who’ve written up to this point. It’s been great hearing your opinions on this.

Event Horizon

This weekend marks the eighth anniversary of the “Riverside Jam,” a semi-formal get-together of musicians and friends from all over the place. And I’m playing host this year! While we may never match the magic of the third Riverside Jam (held in New Jersey in 2002), which was highlighted by the appearance of Paul Hackett himself, we’re hoping to have a lot of fun. The schedule is as follows:

Thursday night will be a “singer / songwriter” focus with a performance at the Uncommon Grounds Coffee House in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. SSG regulars Kathy “Katreich” Reichert and John “The Celt” Roche are among the schedule performers.

Saturday will feature a free concert at the Gazebo / Bandstand behind the Great Barrington Town Hall, which will run from two until about eight. GN Forum Moderators Wes Inman and Dan and Laura Lasley, as well as GN Forum member Greg “gnease” Nease are planning to attend along with many others.

The band will also feature a number of people who’ve attended the Guitar Noise Seminars and Mini-Camps, as well as some of my private and group-class students. So if you’re in the area, come on by. Bring a picnic lunch and make a day of it.

Random Thoughts

I truly hate to make this newsletter as brief as it is but, as you’ve just read, I’ve got a houseful of guests arriving very, very shortly and a lot that still needs to be done. We’ll chat a lot more next time out.

So, until then, play well. Play often. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace