Newsletter Vol. 3 # 67 – May 15, 2008

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #67 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

News and Announcements
Email of the Moment
Coming Attractions
Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
Forum Findings
Event Horizon
Another Email of the Moment
Podcast Postings
Random Thoughts

News And Announcements

It’s a big wonderful world out there. But, as the song says, it’s a wild world, too. In light of the number of natural disasters that have occurred in the past weeks, we at Guitar Noise would like to remind our readers that it doesn’t take a lot to be part of a helping hand. There are any number of charitable organizations to which one can make donations (and donations don’t have to involve money – food, clothing and time as volunteers are equally important) and, as John (the Celt) Roche recently pointed out on the Guitar Noise Forum, blood donations are certainly a timeless and priceless way for you to help out those in need.

Most of us are here at Guitar Noise because of our love of music, of teaching, creating and sharing the joy of music with each other. Musicians are, by the needs of their nature, a sharing group. We hope, through our gifts of music, to make the world a better place – whether your world is small (just yourself or you and your family and friends) or large (as the Guitar Noise community itself). Don’t forget that this sharing ultimately includes more than music.

Email Of The Moment

Dear David Hodge:

Thank you so much for your wonderful website. I just discovered it tonight, and I am already in bliss.

Although I have usually had a guitar in my life since the mid-1960’s, I really didn’t start studying the guitar and music until about six years ago. By now, I have quite a few books and instructional videos and DVDs, and have explored a good number of websites, etc.

The main obstruction to progress is time. I am a family man with three children, and I own two businesses, so time is precious and I rarely get more than a few minutes here and there to study or play.

Anyhow, my main point is that I very much appreciate your website and the knowledge you share so freely with others. I can only assume that you must love music and the joy that comes from helping other people improve their skills.

Thank you so very much… I intend to read everything I can on your site, and hope to put it to good use.

Best wishes to you and yours,

Thank you for writing and thank you as well for your kind words concerning Guitar Noise. I’d love to take credit for the website, but all that should go to Paul Hackett, who created and still owns and runs Guitar Noise.

I totally appreciate the challenge that adult students have with scheduling time for practice, let alone for learning. We all have lives and it’s not always possible to find a balance that works. Sometimes it takes time to find time, if that makes sense.

But that is why Guitar Noise exists, to give one a place to study once one has the time. Many people write to tell us they’ve put together “books” of the lessons by printing them out and by creating their own audio files for study by downloading the MP3s onto their computers and then transferring them to their choice of play.

As you already know, the whole reason for playing is to have something you can smile with for your entire life. Pick up the few minutes you can here and there. On occasion, you’ll surprise yourself by finding a whole half-hour someplace. The good thing is that it all carries forward.

Please feel free to write anytime. I look forward to hearing how things are progressing with you.

Coming Attractions

It’s been one of those “in-between” times when there are a lot of articles in the works that are still in the “needs a bit of final tweaking before we feel good about putting it up online” stage. Some will hopefully even be up on the Guitar Noise site before the end of the weekend.

Look for new Easy Songs for Beginners lessons on Help by the Beatles, Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, which nicely ties in with the last Guitar Noise Podcast (Combining Strumming and Crosspicking) by the way, the Who classic Behind Blue Eyes and the rest of Dust in the Wind, just to name a few.

Over on the Songs for Intermediates lesson page, we’ll continue looking at single guitar song arrangements, including some “chord melody” style arrangements of songs like While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

And, keeping my fingers crossed and holding my breath, we’ll also be starting a look at solos from songs – not only how to play them, but also looking at how they’re constructed. In other words, we’ll approach these solos in much the same way that we do our song lessons – with an eye toward learning a thing or two about music!

One of the biggest challenges, for me as a writer for Guitar Noise, is in maintaining the quality of lessons that we’ve established here. It can be so tempting to take the easy route – copying some tablature from another source and explaining it by saying “just play this.” And, in this day and age when the art of learning as well as the art of teaching is in danger of taking so many short cuts that the end result is almost worthless, the temptation to cut corners is huge.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Lesson Nine in the One Finger Chord Method: Two finger minor chord

Let’s return to the one-finger lesson series. The chord we’re learning today actually uses two fingers. It’s a minor chord, which means it feels kind of sad or final.

Here’s how to form the chord: we make our one-finger foundation shape and bar it across strings 1 to 3 or 1 to 4, whichever is more comfortable. We can do this on any fret, but I recommend fret 5. Finger 3 goes two frets up from your first finger, and sits on string 4. Pluck strings 2 through 4 with your right hand and debug any strings that don’t sound.

Let’s put this chord to use. We’ll play just a simple two five one progression. Here’s how we do it:

On fret five, form the chord just described. Then, play strings 2 through 4 on fret 7 with the one finger shape. Lastly, play this shape on fret 3, strings 1 to 3: the one-finger bar with finger 2 added onto fret 4.

Play those three chords together. Take the time to try different rhythms as you explore this progression. You’ll find this mini progression in countless songs.

In coming lessons, we may get into seeing the many shapes for playing one chord. This will be a great help in understanding how chord progressions work.

Thanks for reading.

Forum Findings

We had a spot of trouble with the Guitar Noise Forum pages last week – the whole thing went down for a while and when Paul brought it back up online (a big thanks to Leslie for that!), there were a couple of glitches that took a while to straighten out. For a while there it was interesting to see whether not being able to cut and paste or to post a smiley face was more trouble than not having a forum at all, but I think we’re all sorted out again.

In case you missed it in the last newsletter, GN Forum member Blueline has come up the idea of having a Guitar Noise “Battle of the Bands.” There’s still time to join and you can read all about it here on his post.

So if you would like to team up with some of your Guitar Noise community to play a song, or help out by judging or even by producing a band, drop Blueline a note.

Another Email Of The Moment

Just got this one a moment ago…

Hello David,

I just wanted to let you know how much fun I had with your 8th Podcast – “Combining Strumming and Crosspicking.” I was able to play along in a relatively short amount of time and had a real sense of accomplishment. (Plus it was just plain FUN to play along with someone else – even if it was a taped recording!!)

I have been taking private guitar lessons for two years now and get very frustrated trying to remember everything we discuss in a lesson. I usually leave a lesson with the chords and lyrics to a song…and a vague memory of how the strumming pattern should sound. (Which I usually forget by the time I get home!) But using an MP3 recording of a lesson is a GREAT idea! Now I can review the sections I don’t understand, and play them until I get it right. I usually learn a song posted on Guitar Noise in a fraction of the time. Plus you share several techniques that give a song that extra special sound. And that makes playing the guitar FUN again!

Thank you, thank you!

Thanks for writing and it’s great to hear that the Guitar Noise Podcasts are being so helpful. It’s even better to hear that they’re fun! You’re obviously aware of the fact that when playing is fun, you tend to do more playing (and learning) and that enthusiasm tends to be contagious. Very cool!

I hope that you’ll find our future GN Podcasts as useful, and as fun. Thanks again for the email and I look forward to hearing how things are progressing with you.

And speaking of the latest Guitar Noise Podcast…

Podcast Postings

The eighth (can you believe we’ve done eight already?) GN Podcast, called “Combining Strumming and Crosspicking” is up online! As you might guess from its title, this GN Podcast combines elements that we’ve been working on since our series of podcasts began. We’ll take one of our earliest strumming patterns and add a bit of crosspicking to it, giving us even more choices of variations and embellishments to the original strumming pattern.

Most of the work in the first two-thirds of this lesson involves a chord progression of G to Bm to C and back to G. In the final third of the podcast, we’ll add a second progression of C to G to A7 to D (or D7) to the first – making the whole thing sound a lot more like a typical song (not to mention a bit like “Puff the Magic Dragon”).

Paul and I try to post a new Guitar Noise Podcast every other Monday, so look for the next one on Monday, May 26, 2008. And, as I’ve mentioned before, our first series of Guitar Noise Podcasts has been covering various techniques on 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. I 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. I hope that you find them as educational (and as fun!) as our online lessons here at our website.

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].

Event Horizon

Summer is just around the corner for those of us living north of the Equator. It’s a time when a lot of musicians get to play out and bring their music to the rest of the world. One thing we’d really like to do is to help promote your shows, whether it’s in a stadium or at a ten-seat coffee house. Or at a summer festival, no matter how larger or small. Not to mention little town (or big city) and neighborhood fests. Not only is it a great way to help support each other, it’s also a terrific way to meet more musicians!

Got an email from Kathy Reichert letting me know she’ll be playing at the Oak Park Festival in (where else?) Oak Park, Illinois on Sunday, June 1. I’ll hopefully have more details before next time and maybe we can post it in the “News” section of the Guitar Noise Forum.

Random Thoughts

One of our guides in Parma was (still is) an English woman (meaning she was originally from England) who had moved to Italy many, many years ago and obviously had a great love for the area, not to mention an impressive amount of knowledge about many subjects.

During the first tour, we visited the old palace in Parma, which contained a huge theater, much in the style of the theaters we know nowadays, with a stage on one end and tiered seating in a “U” shape around it. Probably could hold five thousand people.

Our guide used a very interesting word to describe what went on. She would talk of the audience “assisting” in the performance. Not “attending.” Assisting.

So, and this should give you an idea of the exciting life I lead, the first thing I did when I got home from Italy was to look up the word “assistance” in our Oxford English Dictionary. Sure enough, there in the second definition of “assistance” was:

“2. collect (rarely pl) Persons present, bystanders, audience. Obs. exc. as recently re-adopted from French.

Wild, huh?

It’s very easy for performers to forget what a vital part any audience plays in a performance. Good bands will alter their set lists according to the mood of a crowd. If you’ve got people up on the floor and dancing and having fun, the object is to give them more, right? Likewise, if your listeners are enjoying a thoughtful, quiet song, it doesn’t hurt to give them another before launching into a more uptempo piece.

Performers and audiences ideally feed off of one another. A musician playing to an apathetic group is getting no “assistance” and tends to turn in a lackluster performance. One who is receiving great vibes from his listeners rides those emotions as a surfer rides a wave, taking both performer and participant as far as the ride will carry them.

But it’s a bit of a “chicken and egg” thing, no? You can give the performance of your life and feel like the proverbial tree that falls in the middle of the forest with no one around to hear you.

In some ways, it’s a matter of the perception of control (and I say “perception of control” because I tend to believe that there’s very little that one has any sort of control of) as well as a bit of what Kurt Vonnegut described as “bargaining in good faith with destiny.” More times than not, if you give you best – and “best” meaning being “emotionally involved and including your listeners in that emotion” as opposed to “flawless” – your audience will respond in kind.

And, as an audience member, you also want to go in ready to take the ride. Let yourself be carried away by the performer and nailed down by any thoughts that might keep you from enjoying yourself.

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

And, as always…

Peace

David