Newsletter Vol. 3 # 60 – February 01, 2008

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #60 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

  • News and Announcements
  • New Articles and Lessons
  • Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
  • Emails? We Get Emails!
  • Forum Findings
  • Guitar Noise Staff Picks
  • Coming Attractions
  • Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

Quite a bit to get through today, so let’s get right down to it! First off, welcome to Guitar Noise News, the free newsletter of Guitar Noise (www.guitarnoise.com), in case you were wondering who this was from…

The first part of February is always busy as far as the calendar is concerned. Tomorrow is Ground Hog’s Day, an American holiday when, if a groundhog comes out and sees his shadow, it means we have sixteen more weeks of basketball. Sunday is the Super Bowl, which is an American celebration of advertising. Actually every television program is a celebration of advertising, but this one’s on a more cosmic scale. It’s one of the few programs that people will record and then only watch the commercials…

Next Thursday, February 7, marks the Chinese New Year. That’s right, it’s the start of year 4706. I’ll have to remember to ask Paul if they write 4706 on their checks. This upcoming New Year is the “Year of the Rat,” so if you are going to be born in this upcoming year, or if your 12th, 24th, 36th, 48th, 60th, 72nd or 84th birthday is between February 7, 2008 and January 25, 2009, you also share the same Chinese horoscope as Shakespeare, Princes Charles and Andrew, and Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

The following Thursday is February 14, also known as Valentine’s Day. I mention this now because I won’t be able to remind you about it in our next newsletter, which will come on February 15. So do yourself a favor and make a big mental note about it now. You know you’re going to forget to do something nice for someone on Valentine’s Day and then get mad at me for not reminding you about it..

And while all of this is certainly important, we’d also like to turn your attention to a new item here at Guitar Noise. We have, just this past Monday, launched our first Guitar Noise Podcast, a thirty-minute, one-on-one lesson with me, David Hodge. This first podcast is also the first in a series on strumming, covering the very basics of strumming – using fingers as well as a pick. We’ll be working with the basic techniques of downstrums and upstrums, covering a number of simple strumming patterns, as well as playing the “boom-chuck” or “bass / strum” technique of strumming, which is the first step toward more complex patterns. Oh, and we’ll also discuss important concepts such as the root notes of chords and sock puppets…

Our first series of Guitar Noise Podcasts will cover strumming – moving step by step from the very basics to alternate bass picking, to adding hammer-ons and pull-offs to spice up simple patterns to crosspicking and partial chord playing to incorporating other playing techniques, such as palm muting and choking, to bring even more excitement to our strumming. Plus we’ll look at how to listen to patterns so that you can readily replicate complicated patterns you hear on recordings.

I’ll do my best to walk you through things step by step, just as we do in the many song lessons at Guitar Noise. So pull up a chair and let’s have some fun!

You can listen to these lessons directly on your computer by clicking on the “Play” icon at the Guitar Noise Blog. You can also download them directly onto your computer or even onto devices such as iPods. In fact, we’d prefer that you do download the lessons in order to help us save some bandwidth!

If you are an iTunes user check this out: From the “Advanced” menu click “Subscribe to Podcast.” Paste the following link https://www.guitarnoise.com/podcasts/feed/ into the box and click “OK”. iTunes should automatically download the latest podcast when it’s published.

For everyone else: You don’t need an iPod or iTunes to listen to the lessons. Below the play button is a link that says “Download.” Right-click and “Save as”. You can listen to it on your computer or transfer it to any music player you have.

You can find the first Podcast up online at the Guitar Noise Blog.

Paul and I are hoping, schedule-wise, to post a new Guitar Noise Podcast every other Monday, so look for the next one on Monday, February 11, 2008.

And, as always, feel free to give us your feedback. You can post your thoughts here, at the Blog, or even PM or write me directly.

Now let’s shift our focus to the rest of the Guitar Noise website and see what’s new since our last newsletter…

New Articles And Lessons

From Junky to Funky (Part 1)
My DIY Low-Budget Bass Makeover
By Mitch (“slejhammer”) Schlesinger

Mitch has most graciously taken the time to give us a fairly detailed account of one of his latest DIY projects – a Johnson manufactured bass guitar! Follow as he transforms this $80 eBay bass into an instrument worthy of gigging.

Songwriting Part 2
By Tom Hess

Picking right up from Songwriting – Part 1, Tom takes a look at the ways you can start your songwriting from either working with the melody first or the chord progression first.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

One Finger Guitar Chord Primer, Lesson 6

Welcome back to the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer. We’re going to learn a new tune in this lesson, Aura Lee, which is much better known as Love Me Tender. Aura Lee is going to teach us a new chord form. It’s our first that uses two fingers. Here it is.

This is played on strings 1 to 3 — or, 1 to 4 for a fuller sound. As with our other chord shapes, this one can slide to any fret. In fact, the Aura Lee arrangement in this lesson uses this shape in two different positions: frets 2 and 4.

Before we get to the playalong, which shows you which frets to move your left hand to, listen to this sound file. It tells you the order in which to pluck the strings. This is a zip-compressed mp3 file.

Don’t worry about playing exactly what’s played in this sound file. You can play the chords any way you want: one string at a time, or pluck them all at once. Just let your right hand do what sounds good to your ear.

Here’s the playalong for the left hand.

You can play this in Windows Media Player, and also the free and lightweight VideoLan player.

What to practice: Practice playing along with the video until you can play the complete arrangement. Then, turn off the video and play the song solo while singing the melody.

Review the other songs you know, including Cielito Lindo. You can review that here.

Remember to take the time to play around, to color outside the lines, as a kid with a coloring book does. Music is resilient, and it always gives you another chance to sound good. To help you recall ideas for different ways of playing a song, go to this lesson.

In the next One-Finger lesson, we’ll learn another two-finger shape.

Send your comments to [email protected]. Remove the no spam bit.

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2008 Darrin Koltow

Forum Findings

UberMod Nick Torres has gotten an early start on his spring cleaning! He’s taken it upon himself to “slim down” the Guitar Noise Forums. In case you didn’t read about it in the “News” section of the Forum Page, here is Nick’s post concerning the project:

You may have noticed that the number of sub forums has decreased. In order to make navigation easier, and figuring out where to post things more obvious I’ve combined several “underperforming” forums into larger forums

Music Careers into Guitar Players.

Songwriting Club and Songwriting and Copyrights, the latter doesn’t get used much and any info that should be a sticky can still be a sticky in Songwriting Club.

Live Sound and Amplification

Combined Gigs and Jams into News

“I’m looking for a new” into Opinions and Polls

Indie Music and Outta site

And removed seminars until it’s needed again

Let me know what you think.

And, since this seems an opportune moment, I’d like to extend a big thank you to Nick and all the Guitar Noise forum moderators for the work they do, making our Forum community a wonderful place to learn and to develop friendships as well as guitar skills and knowledge. A lot of praise and acknowledgements should go out to the entire Guitar Noise forum community.

And stick around – starting next newsletter, you’ll get to meet more and more of the community one on one!

Coming Attractions

Songwriting Part 3
By Tom Hess

Tom Hess returns to Guitar Noise to continue his discussion on songwriting, this time focusing on using rhythm as a writing tool. We also get a great example of “Destructive Creation” (first mentioned in Tom’s articles on “Creativity and Expression”) in action.

Take A Breath, Listen To The Spaces
By Chris Standring

Guitar Noise welcomes the long-awaited return of Chris Standring to this website. And, with this short piece, he remind us of the importance of breathing when it comes to guitar solos. Not your breathing, but the solo’s!

Cinnamon Girl
A Guitar Noise “Songs for Intermediates” Lesson
By David Hodge

It’s been ages it seems since we’ve had an intermediate song lesson. It also seems like it’s been ages since we’ve done something with an alternate tuning. And when was the last time we did a Neil Young song? And don’t let the “intermediate” label put you off – even beginners (with some practice, of course!) can make this song sound sweet…

And Don’t Forget

Guitar Noise is a community and it’s our sense of community that sets this website apart from other guitar sites on the Internet. People from all over the world, people who speak and read all sorts of languages and listen to all sorts of music, come here to help each other create music in their lives and to share that music with the rest of the world.

And I’m always amazed at how many people are willing to offer ideas, to share their musical knowledge and expertise. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t take part as well. If you’ve some thought about sharing what you can with your family of Guitar Noise readers, take a look at our submissions guide.

You don’t have to have a huge article. Don’t forget that we also now have the Guitar Noise blog, which nicely accommodates small pieces. So, why not make a New Year’s Resolution to become a bigger part of the Guitar Noise community? Feel free to send along an email to me and try to put “proposal” in the subject line. I’ll be more than happy to chat with you about your ideas and to see whether we can bring them out to the rest of the Guitar Noise community.

Random Thoughts

Since I’m not shoveling snow today, I have time to let my mind wander (and wonder) a bit more than usual. And I don’t know if it’s because it’s an election year here in the US (feel free to make your own “Year of the Rat” joke here) or because of many other conversations I’ve had with people lately, but I’d like to make a bit of an observation. With luck, I may even be able to steer it onto the topic of guitars and music…

When it comes to many things that we might be lucky to have a choice in, quite a number of people (or at least, seemingly many, many more than I’d imagine) base their choices on what they don’t like. For instance, and using my old home town of Chicago as an excellent example, there are any number of folks who are Cubs fans and those who are White Sox fans because these people like to support their baseball teams. But there are even more people who belong in one camp or the other because they don’t like the other team!

In politics, making a choice on not wanting something has become a way of life. We don’t vote “for” anybody anymore as much as we vote “against” someone else.

Even in music, it’s a lot easier to say we don’t like this artist or that style or this record company (or any record company!) than it is to explain reasons why we like any particular group or song.

This blanket dislike also often keeps us from learning more about music, or films or art or books because we’ve already conditioned ourselves to avoid dealing with things we don’t like.

But when we want change in our lives, even if it’s something like losing a few pounds, the best way to work toward our goal is to have a reason for doing it. Someone who chooses to lose weight in order to feel better is going to have an easier time of it than someone who diets because “he has to.”

As a teacher, I find this especially true with students and practice habits. Even if two students spend an equal amount of time practicing in any given week, the one who wants to practice, who has a positive reason for doing so usually fares much better than the one who practices because he has to.

It may sound naïve and it may sound simple, but having positive reasons for doing things will not only make it easier to get something done, but it will also make you happier doing it.

So have some fun and make some music.

Until our next newsletter, play well. Play often. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace