Newsletter Vol. 3 # 69 – July 01, 2008

Greetings,

Welcome to Volume 3, Issue #69 of Guitar Noise News!

In This Issue:

Greetings, News and Announcements
New Articles and Lessons
Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow
Forum Findings
Tutorial Tip
Podcast Postings
Reviews
Random Thoughts

Greetings, News And Announcements

And a happy First of July to everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of Guitar Noise News.

As you might remember from our June 15 newsletter, a small group of us Guitar Noise folks played a gig on Saturday, June 21, at the Monterey General Store in neighboring Monterey, Massachusetts. There was a good crowd of all ages, from six to seventy-six and, hopefully, everyone had a great time.

Now, some of you might think that folks like me and others who’ve been playing for ages don’t make mistakes when performing. Let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth! One of the unintentionally hilarious highlights of the evening came with our performance of “Whiter Shade of Pale.” I started the piece solo, playing the famous organ lines on guitar. Then the rest of the band was to join in on the second pass of the introduction. Now I don’t mind telling you that I always sweat this one out, thinking that I’m going to make a mistake on every other note. But as I was playing I was getting everything right and smooth and I was thinking that I might actually get through the solo part of the intro unscathed! Just a few notes to go…

And I had done it! Made it through the entire thing without a hitch! Not a goof on a note or chord or the rhythm. To say I was elated is an understatement.

And then the rest of the band joined in and I very quickly realized that I had neglected to take off my capo from the previous song and, consequently, had started the song and played my flawless introduction in the wrong key!

Sigh…

Needless to say, I called the song to a halt, had a great laugh with the audience (and the band) and then started all over again.

If there’s a point to this story, it’s something that everyone already knows – the only way to not make mistakes is to not play or practice or perform. Not playing isn’t why we’ve taken up the guitar or any musical instrument. We should work and practice (not to mention practice intelligently) to keep our mistakes to a minimum, but we should let the mistakes become the end of the world. And we should never let our fear of making mistakes keep us from playing.

Anyway, if you want to see what some of the show last Saturday was like (mistakes and all – watch me lose my pick about three-quarters of the way through “Sultans of Swing!”), Nick has kindly posted some videos from the show.

If I remember correctly, there are five songs, all covers: the aforementioned “Sultans,” “Babylon,” “Alison,” “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” and “The Weight.” I hope you enjoy them or at least I hope they make you sing along and smile.

And in the meantime, let’s check out what’s new since our last 15 newsletter…

New Articles And Lessons

Into The Blue
Rhythm (part 1)
by Paul Andrews

Welcome to the first of a new series of articles entitled ‘Into the Blue’, which will explore the style, sound and key players within the Blues genre. This series will be pitched at an intermediate level and will build on techniques and practices that many players will be well aware of. But, of course, we’ll still start off slowly, making sure we leave nothing to chance.

Choosing Colors
Turning Scales into Solos (Part 1)
by David Hodge

Putting together solos is not easy for a lot of people, and the conventional teaching (just use your scales) doesn’t always make sense when you’re just starting out. In this, the first of a series of articles, we take a listen to the differences in tonal color between the major scale and the major pentatonic.

One Note At A Time
Turning Scales into Solos (Part 2)
by David Hodge

After spending our last lesson looking at all the notes in a scale, this time we’re going to just look at a few. One of the best things you can do to get going as a soloist is to minimize the number of notes you use in a solo. Focusing on one, two, three or four notes will help you on both rhythm and phrasing, which make a solo a lot more interesting than just stringing as many notes together as fast as you can.

Exploring Music With Darrin Koltow

Tip: Building Blocks

This tip has to do with a key aspect of learning, enjoying and understanding guitar that I think is mostly absent from both schools and private studios. Here’s a parable to illustrate that missing aspect.

A child brings a drawing he’s made to his mom.

“That’s lovely, honey,” she says.

“Mom, that’s what you said about the last eight drawings I brought to you, even though they all look the same! I’m bored with drawing because I don’tknow what else to draw.”

Well, it turns out that Mom knows a little something about drawing. She can memory sketch a Taj Mahal so real it makes you take off your shoes. But some of the walls of her house still have holes she punched, in her frustration over drawing a simple drinking glass.

“Son of mine, try this,” she says. “Here’s a cube, and here’s a simple man made with a cube. Here’s a house made with a cube. Sure beats stick figures, doesn’t it?”

“Cool!” says the boy.

“It’s cool, it’s fun and it’s easy. But, with a little time, you’ll learn to render any subject you want from cubes like this. What can you make with it?”

And off the boy goes, depicting the family’s Lhasa Apso, the philodendron, and the ’68 VW Beetle in cubes. Mom actually recognizes some of what he’s cubing together, but that misses the point, which is this:

The kid digs drawing again *and* has a great approach to understand how drawing works. And, the more he understands, the more he digs drawing. If this isn’t a positive feedback loop, nothing is.

You might be wondering at this point if you’ve mistakenly opened up the “Drawing.com” newsletter, so let’s bring this point home. If you want to enjoy and understand how to play guitar, start with “cubes” — building blocks. Arrange those blocks in a way *you* think is cool, and keep doing that. A great way to apply this idea is to learn the notes of the major scale just on one string and create your own melodies with them. Read a bit about how melodies work and make some more of your own.

Who do you think will understand and enjoy playing more — the gal or guy who plays nothing but the major scale, or the one who creates a new melody per day?

Thanks for reading.

Forum Findings

In case you missed it last time, we’ve given the Sunday Composers’ Workshop (SCW) on the Guitar Noise Forum pages a brand new start. GN Forum regulars Tom (“Noteboat”) and David (“Kingpatzer”) have put together the equivalent of a course in music composition for us. Let me put it in their own words:

Course in theme and variations

Overview

Welcome to a series of planned lessons on developing a melody, and then exploring that melody through the concepts of theme and variations. This is a set of short assignments that are structured along the same lines as any college course on the subject would be. But fear not, it’s not hard! In fact, we’re working diligently to make sure that each week’s assignments will be simple to understand, come with examples, and most of all, not take long to complete.

Whether your interest lies in learning to compose instrumental pieces, or improving your melody writing skills for songs, learning the Theme and Variations form gives you insight into how to improve your melodies in general – a basic skill that all composers and songwriters need.

We’ll be taking this project in three sections: the first several weeks will explore how melodies are created… and you’ll create your own original theme. Then we’ll spend some time looking at ways composers create changes (variations) based on an original theme; by week 20 you’ll have constructed a complete original theme and variations of your own. We’ll wrap up by exploring the role of harmony, and doing a number of exercises to harmonize your work in different ways.

Our goal is to provide not only a set of fun projects to work on in terms of compositions, but also to develop each other as composers. Even the simplest of exercises here will contain important concepts that are used by every composer our there, from someone writing their first tune, to Mozart.

Feel free to apply these tools to both your own melodies and those contributed by others. Many famous compositions were actually created by applying these tools to someone else’s starting point!

This past, Sunday, June 29, was the third assignment, but you should feel free to start out wherever you’d like. Come on over to the SCW and settle in to have some fun!

Looking forward to hearing your compositions on the boards!

Tutorial Tip

Recently I received this email concerning our lesson on the Introduction Solo from “Wish You Were Here” and thought it was worth sharing:

Hi David

On phrases 3 and 4 we have a bend on the G string, which when I play it sounds very weak – the B sounds ok, but the G….

How far do you bend it? I’ve even tried using two fingers to bend but it still sounds weak.

I’m not using a pick, just my fingers – maybe I’m not getting enough ‘twang’ from the strings?

Cheers

Thanks for writing.

Bending on the G string on an acoustic, especially that close to the nut, takes some getting used to. I hate to tell you something you already know, but this is going to be a matter of practice and repetition.

But you can help yourself speed the process by moving slightly up the fretboard (try the eighth fret for starters) and doing the bend. You’re going to want to do both half-bends (raising the pitch the equivalent of one fret higher) and full bends (raising the pitch the equivalent of two frets higher) on these phrases so just get the bends into your fingers. Everyone uses extra fingers to start (and I’m a bit jealous – I needed three fingers when I was starting out) so don’t worry about that.

Once you’ve gotten comfortable on the eighth fret, try out the seventh. Then the sixth. And so on. If you put in fifteen to thirty minutes a day, you should be able to do this on the fourth fret within a week.

But you’ll also need to keep doing it from time to time so that you don’t end up having to start the whole process from scratch in the future!

Hope this helps. Thank you once again for the email and I look forward to hearing how things progress with you.

Peace

Podcast Postings

Guitar Noise Podcast #11 – Adding String Muting

We continue with our examination of percussive rhythmic strumming techniques and move from palm muting to string muting. Just as with our last GN Podcast, our eleventh one takes us from the basic elements of string muting and then works on integrating this new technique into the strumming patterns and techniques we’ve covered thus far.

For the most part, we focus on the G chord, throwing in a short G to C to D progression as we gain more confidence in our string muting abilities.

Paul and I try to post a new Guitar Noise Podcast every other Monday, so look for the next one on Monday, July 7, 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].

Reviews

Andre Marins – Internal Dive
CD Review by Alan Green

Andre Marins began studying classical guitar at eleven, and went on to study Jazz improvisation. This album is a fusion.

Natasha Borizilova – Cheap Escape
CD Review by Alan Green

Natasha Borzilova, formerly of Grammy-nominated Bering Strait, originally from Russia and now living in Nashville. This is her first solo outing.

Random Thoughts

In case I haven’t bored you enough with this already, I had some friends over the other weekend and we played a show. But as much fun as it was rehearsing and playing and simply playing new things for the sake of playing, we also spent a fair amount of time not playing music. Or even discussing it.

As much as music is a huge part of life, it is still a part. There’s a lot of life out there and while one can relate music to almost all of it, there are also quiet moments. Times when music takes a back seat to something else.

And this is as it should be. Friendships and relationships often start with one common point – liking the same band, having the same favorite book, movie, radio station or television show, working in the same office or profession, enjoying the same sport – but in order to grow, they need to be able to branch out. When relationships, no matter how intense, stay in the same spot, they eventually lose their spark.

Life is continually moving, growing, evolving. People, being part of life, can do no less. Relationships, even music, are also part of life and need to grow.

Strange as it may seem, even considering how wonderful it is to live a life around music and sharing it, I think it’s far more important to me to be thought of a human being than as a musician. Granted, the music certainly helps with that. Many of the musician friends I have are excellent listeners, which is definitely a great trait for both friends and musicians to have.

And it’s kind of funny, when I think about it, but the people I enjoy playing music with most also have the qualities I find essential for friends. As I mentioned, there’s the listening, and there’s also an awareness of others, a willingness to share or to give away the limelight, an ability to take turns communicating ideas that doesn’t involve one-up-man-ship.

Good musicians, any musicians are great to know and fun to be with. Good friends are even more vital. It’s become a pet saying of mine but I think it’s an essential truth – the last thing anyone in this world needs is one less friend.

So when you’re out there being a musician, don’t forget to be a human being first. And if you need a selfish reason to do so, then remember that being a good human being can only help make you a great musician.

Thanks for letting me ramble. Until our next newsletter, play well. Play often. Stay safe.

And, as always…

Peace