Newsletter Vol. 3 # 61 – February 15, 2008

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #61 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

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

News And Announcements

Welcome to the middle of February and it’s my sad duty to inform you that, yes, Valentine’s Day was yesterday, so if you didn’t do something nice for someone special, you’d better be making a really big deal of it tonight or it’s going to be a very, very long weekend…

As I write this, though (and “writing” is more in the lines of “finishing up”), it’s Wednesday and Valentine’s Day is still hours away. So I’m sending out good vibes to all our readers in the hope that they help you remember.

Also, and quite selfishly on my part, the good vibes are also to ward off the fact that it’s raining like crazy here, and that’s after snowing all day yesterday. Needless to say, travel conditions (not to mention merely walking around) are very hazardous and I’m hoping that folks around here are driving cautiously if they can’t stay at home. Since temperatures are supposed to dip into the teens this evening, we’re looking at a lot of ice and very slippery conditions. Getting through Valentine’s Day without falling head over heels (love or not) is going to be a big challenge.

Yet, even in the middle of all this winter there are bright bursts of light. I received a note from Doug Sparling (he of many Celtic and other traditional song lessons here at Guitar Noise), which read:

Hi David,

Here’s some CD news:

I have a tune on a recently released compilation CD, Celtic Shores 2.and a brand new tune (“Mother and Child Reel”) that will be on a CD to accompany the book, Heart of a Mother, by Sheryl Roush.

I hope you’ll all join with me to wish Doug heartfelt congratulations! And, speaking for myself, now I’ve got a great Saint Patrick’s Day gift for my brother!

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

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!

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.

Guitar Noise Staff Picks

For some people, it seems too easy to forget that music involves more than guitars (and no points for “Yes! There’s bass guitars, too!). Listening to the radio the other day, I heard a song that I initially took to be renowned violinist Stephane Grappelli only to find myself being introduced to Stuff Smith, a brilliant jazz violinist who played from the 1920s until his death in 1967. Luckily, my local CD shop had a copy of Storyville’s “Masters of Jazz” series featuring Stuff Smith in stock and it’s been getting a lot of play here at home. Whether gracefully interpreting standards like “Caravan,” “Take the A Train,” “Oh Lady Be Good,” or Count Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump,” or performing his own original songs such as “Only Time Will Tell,” “Skip It” or “Late Woman Blues,” Smith is a mesmerizing performer. Ballads or swing, he lets the melody dictate the improvisation and has a lot of fun playing.

So if you’re in the mood to broaden your horizons a bit, remember you can learn a lot about the guitar by listening to instruments other than the guitar!

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

One Finger Guitar Chord Primer, Lesson 7

Welcome back to the One Finger Guitar Chord Primer. In this lesson we’ll learn another two-finger chord shape, and use it to play along with the classic Greensleeves.

Here’s an important note about the media files in the One Finger lessons: many are “zipped” and must be unzipped before you can access them. If you’re a Windows user, you can unzip them with reliable, free programs like Izarc or FreeZip. Windows Vista users can use Windows Explorer to unzip. Mac users can use Zipeg, another free program.

Let’s return to the lesson. Here’s the new two-finger shape.

Play this on strings 1 to 3, on any fret. In fact, you can use most of the shapes in the One Finger series on any starting fret.

Form the new shape by first making the one-finger foundation shape on strings 1-3, then bringing in finger two directly onto string 2, one fret up from the first finger. Don’t let finger two touch strings 1 or 3.

You might be tempted to focus all your attention and efforts on your fingers, but be sure your thumb is in the proper position: pointed up, at right angles to the guitar neck. Use this picture for help.

Once you’ve made the shape with your left hand, pluck strings 1 to 3 with your right hand. If you’re not getting all the strings to sound, don’t worry. Fiddle with the shape and give it time. It will come.

Before trying the playalong, listen to its strumming pattern as described in this sound file.

Here’s the playalong.

After you download and unzip this file, you can play it in Windows Media Player or the free and lightweight VideoLan player (from VideoLan.org).

Practice playing along with the video until the complete arrangement sounds smooth. Then turn off the video and play the song solo while singing the melody.

Review the other songs you know: Cielito Lindo and Aura Lee.

Remember to take the time to try out different rhythms, related chord shapes, and other ideas that you come up with. Refer to this lesson for help in developing those ideas.

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

Thanks for reading.

Copyright © 2008 Darrin Koltow

Emails? We Get Emails!

Hi David,

Just wanted to drop you a quick note thanking you for the great articles. I’m 36, and although I’ve played sax and a little bass for a long while, I just picked up a guitar for the first time a few months ago.

Although there are a few good resources around (about.com has a decent beginner’s series, although the forty ads per page are a little over the top), few provide the useful details that you do. In particular, I *love* your articles on songs for beginners. Trying to do justice to changes on sites like chordie.com is tough without the thought process that you lay out so well … how might one strum a song, how can you change it up in the 1,000 different ways you suggest, and, in general, how do you think about approaching something new.

So, thanks again. I hope you’re getting lots of notes like mine, but good work deserves lots of good praise ;-)

Thanks for writing and thank you as well for your kind words concerning my lessons at Guitar Noise. I’m glad that you enjoy them and that they are being helpful to you as you get going on the guitar.

To me, it’s important for students to be able to think and to realize that the little details are often things that can be used from song to song. It’s too easy, when it comes to music, to learn how to do something without looking at why and the “why,” and how one utilizes the various “whys” is ultimately responsible for giving a player his or her own style.

Thank you once more for the email. Please feel free to write anytime, whether with questions or comments or suggestions.

I look forward to hearing how things are going with you.

Peace

Forum Findings

We had a couple of what I might jokingly call “big ticket” items in our last newsletter. One will be coming up in a few sections, so I’d like to take the liberty of repeating myself in this section. As mentioned, Nick Torres (who does a stellar job of overseeing the moderation of the Guitar Noise Forums, has done a bit of what he terms “slimming down” of our Guitar Noise Forum pages.

And, as part of a kind of “meet the Guitar Noise Community” project I’ve taken on, we’ll be starting up with a series of brief Q & A’s with many of our Guitar Noise Forum members, beginning with the March 1 edition of Guitar Noise News. It’ll be called “Community Close-Up” and I’m hoping you’re going to find some interesting reading from some of your many Guitar Noise Forum members.

Emails Of The Moment

I’ve actually gotten a lot of emails of this sort in the past two weeks, so…

David:

I listened to and played along with the podcast on strumming, very good. My question is about playing it with the fingers. Maybe you said this, but I missed it. Did you say to do the downstrum with the thumb and index fingers together (as though holding a pick with no pick) or doing the downstrum with the hand “open” (with the thumb side-pad by itself) then catching the highest strings with the index finger? I have seen other tips saying hold the thumb and index finger together, catching the strings on the “down” more with the nail of the first finger then catching strings on the “up” with the side of the thumb.

Thanks,

Thanks for writing and thanks for listening to the podcast.

There are any number of ways of strumming with just the fingers (not using a pick) and they each give you a variety of sounds and attacks when strumming.

In the podcast you’ll hear three different ways. First, using just the thumb, down and up. When you hear this, you’ll hear the thumbnail on the upstroke fairly easily.

Most of the time, I use my thumb (the pad/side) on the downstroke and the index finger on the upstroke.

In the last examples, with the “bass / strum” patterns, I use the thumb only to pick the bass note and then use the index finger for both the down and upstroke. I kind of flick it out and use the nail on the downstroke and then a regular upstroke.

I can’t stress enough that there are all sorts of ways to strum. None of them are “right” or “wrong” as much as they are just different and give you different sounds. It’s important to experiment and to listen and to find out which ways you like and which ways you feel comfortable with playing.

I hope that helps. Please feel free to write if you’ve more questions. Just drop a line at [email protected]

I look forward to chatting with you again. And thanks once more for listening to the Guitar Noise Podcast.

Peace

Podcast Postings

If you’re scratching your head over the last item, you must have missed the big news in the last edition of Guitar Noise News, Paul and I are thrilled to announce that we’ve launched a series of Guitar Noise Podcasts. These are thirty-minute lessons with me, that you can download and listen to on your computer at home or even your iPod!.

Our second GN Podcast picks up where the first left off – we’ll take a “basic” strumming pattern from the first podcast and then spice it up by means of adding simple hammer-ons to the chord being strummed. By changing the timing of the hammer-on or by using it on different notes of the chord, you multiply the number of strumming patterns you can create. We’ll be working with both Em and Am chords for this task.

We’ll also discuss a few practice tips concerning muscle memory and speed (not to mention magic and life!) as well as try out a new strumming pattern that is used in more songs than you can imagine. In fact, you can use it with many of the Easy Songs for Beginners lessons at Guitar Noise, such as Nowhere Man.

As I mentioned last time out, 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. And I’ll try to do my best to walk you through things step by step, just as we do in the many song lessons at Guitar Noise.

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 25, 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 at [email protected]

Coming Attractions

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…

Getting Past “Up And Down”
by David Hodge

Way too many guitarists get caught up in visuals. And one of the easiest visual traps to fall into is to think of strumming in terms of “up” and “down.” Fortunately, there is an even simpler way to avoid this snare and it’s as easy as “one, two, three…”

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

As mentioned earlier, we’re getting a lot of rain today, which means that I’ve a road to attend to! We’ll get back into the swing of things next time out. However, don’t let that stop you from doing something sweet for your significant other tonight!

So until our next newsletter, play well. Play often. Stay safe.

And, as always,

Peace