Hi, like clockwork, I’m back with a new free lesson.

This one is by request … Starry Starry Night, the song to Vincent VanGogh that was such a huge hit for Don McLean many years ago. It was interesting picking the tune apart … he certainly is the master of phrasing and twisting a melody around a chord progression. I didn’t have the CD of the original, so I signed up with iTunes and downloaded it, legally, in a few seconds flat. I highly recommend iTunes. Finally, we can buy our music track by track, for less than , and it’s so good knowing that the writers and performers are being rewarded in the way that they should.

I did the verse and chorus … there is one other little section, a sort of modified chorus, that I’m working on right now, so it won’t be long. You may have noticed that the lessons are becoming more complete these days. That’s because we now run or our dedicated server with lots and lots of bandwidth. The forum is growing by the minute, too, so sign up if you haven’t already. There are now close to 80 movie/tab lessons there.

You’ll find them at the new, improved, Guitar for Beginners and Beyond.

There’s still time to order your copy of my book PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book for Christmas. If you’re one of the many many players out there who has all the basics down pat — chords, scales, modes — but you’re still wondering what the trick is to turning all those building blocks into real, spontaneous music, I wrote it for you. We can all hear the difference between playing melody and playing scales/modes. One os music, the other exercises. So how do you get away from that linear way of thinking, from relying on box patterns for your solos, from playing improvisations that are really just scales? You buy, read and digest PlaneTalk!! There are close to 800 PlaneTalkers in the private forum now, all happy twangers. Read all about it at the PlaneTalk site.

Into slide guitar? How couldn’t you be? I’ve been at it since about 1969, so I do know my way around. I, unlike most, play in standard tuning — sometime drop the E down to D — and I’m getting close to finishing off the how-to DVD I’ve been working on for months. If you’d like to join a bunch of sliders online, join the Slide Guitar Forum …

Drop into my Soundclick web page if you like swampy, slidey blues … or ragtimey finger picking … or fusiony rock. I’ve always loved to write and play all kinds of flavors of music. Most are free downloads if any of the tracks take your fancy.

See you next week!

Kirk
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com