Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Newsletter - March 7, 2007
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Weekly Lessons
I have a couple of new lessons, aimed at beginners. For all you 'beyond' players, I haven't forgotten you, I'll be doing some more advanced finger style lessons soon. I'm just trying to add more beginners lessons to the archive as I spent the best part of two years making intermediate/advanced lessons ... I think I'd forgotten what it's like to just start out. I was jolted into remembering by playing left handed for 5 or 6 seconds a few weeks back!
The first lesson is a very stripped back, easy to handle 'Happy Birthday' ... I figured it will come in handy and it's a good one to develop some finger coordination with. It never uses more than two at a time, so it should be suitable even if you've just started. You will, of course, need to convince your fingers of that, concentrate, focus ... all of that. There's nothing easy about playing guitar and one way or the other, you're going to need to apply yourself to the task. I think a lot of beginners think "Oh, playing guitar looks cool, I think I'll do that too" without realizing that it takes dedication and focus. If you don't have those qualities ... find them, learn them, seek them out, because without them you'll never play guitar, or any other instrument for that matter. It's not easy!
Happy Birthday Lesson:
Happy Birthday
The next lesson is a biggie if you're just starting to look into the theory side of things. It's not necessary to know anything about theory to play guitar -- if you're just dabbling you can simply learn and memorize some chord shapes and strum away -- but if you're at all serious about becoming a better player, then you should know some basics about how Music hinges together ... it's easier than you think. The word 'Theory' sure sounds scary, and also implies there's something theoretical about music ... there isn't. It's all fact.
The most important aspect of music, to me anyway, is the concept of 'keys'. Like real keys, they unlock things, in the case of music, a lot of relevant facts, like what chords you can expect to encounter and how they're going to relate to each other. This lesson also uses 'Happy Birthday', mainly because it's such a simple and well known tune.
Keys, Related Chords and Changing Keys:
Related chords, the key and changing keys
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Other New Lessons
Member 'solidwalnut', aka Steve Cass, has generously devoted a lot of time and knowledge to our great forum. He's put together over a dozen articles and lessons, many about recording and getting your music out. I know I'll be learning a lot about mixing and the finer points of recording when I get the time to read them. Thanks so much, Steve! I won't name all the lessons here, just go to his own dedicated forum where you'll see them all listed:
Solidwalnut's Lessons:
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/fo...splay.php?f=91
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Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Community
GfB&B continues to grow ...close to 32,000 members now. Imagine what a sound it would be if we could all get together in a huge arena and play a great big E chord! That I'd like to hear, and I think we'd make the news.
There's a huge amount of information there now. I can't imagine there are any questions about any aspect of playing guitar that haven't been answered at least twice! If you are trying to track down a particular topic or question, don't forget the 'Search' function. The link is in the top-most nav bar on each page and make sure you click 'Advanced Search'. You can refine your search there and zero right in on whatever it is you're looking for.
Thanks to everyone -- members, moderators, contributors, Clancy -- for making it all possible.
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PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book >
http://www.thatllteachyou.com
I'm doing a 'Month of March Special' ... throwing in a free copy of the 'Chord Tone Blues' CD lesson, a 5 movie, multi graphics, animated fretboard look at applying the PlaneTalk mindset to a slow blues. So you'll be getting the book, which explains and describes it; the
slide-rule, which graphically displays it; the DVD, which demonstrates it; the CD lesson, which will show you how it applies to the blues. This movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh3orNb2n5s shows me playing along to the same backing track as I use in the lesson.
So, if you think you're ready for the PlaneTalk lesson, order this month!
PlaneTalk site:
http://www.thatllteachyou.com
PlaneTalker and GfB&B member 'macaroni' wrote a very nice endorsement at the private forum the other day:
"I finally got my copy of PlaneTalk (+ DVD) on Saturday.
No light bulbs went off as I began reading PlaneTalk - it was more like the 4th of July with each successive page!!! Like many of you here, I clearly knew about all of these elements, but I just didn't see how it all fit together and what it really meant. I am so blown away, I can hardly think about anything else.
This knowledge has breathed new life into my guitar playing like no other other musical information I've come across. I've been stuck at a minor Pentatonic plateau for years, trying to break through the Blues box shapes that have guided (and limited) my playing since the mid 60s.
Now I finally feel that I can begin improvising melodically from my heart/soul, instead of just patching together a sequence of safe riffs, and not really knowing what I was doing musically.
Kirk, I can't thank you enough for sharing this with all of us. I am forever in your debt. You will definitely be getting a credit on my CD, whenever it finally comes out (now I really feel inspired to finish it!)."
Thanks for that, macaroni, glad you're enjoying it!
Check it all out at
http://www.thatllteachyou.com
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The Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D tunings DVD
I'm all blurbed out! Suffice it to say: standard and dropped D are great tuning for slide guitar, I've been doing it for close to 30 years now, and I reveal all in my DVD.
I recently loaded some videos of some slide playing up on YouTube ... check 'em out:
The Yuppy Blues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMkcE87CzCg
Blue Groove (from the DVD):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJdRNYUA0o
Walkin with Kirk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmFIVWIYNgw
Check it out at
http://www.bottleneckguitar.com
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Donations
Thanks to those who donate ... we'd be up the creek without you. For those who haven't yet, we sure would appreciate it. The site now chomps through 8 to 10 Gigabytes of bandwidth per DAY, so you can certainly help out if you feel that you're benefiting from the site. We've made it dead easy for you ... just go to this link
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/fo...llspaypal.php? You don't need to be a member of Paypal anymore. You'll get a nice shiny star next to your name when you do :-)
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That's it for this week, enjoy the lessons, enjoy the site!
Kirk
