Hi all, me again!

Weekly Lesson

I’m afraid that this week’s lesson will be a couple of days late. Yesterday, while packing up some DVDs, I sliced my finger tip rather badly on one of those big sticky-tape dispensers. They have a serrated edge to them with little Piranha-sharp teeth that had me bleeding all over the merchandise I was sending out. I’ll be doing the frequently requested tune “Freight Train” as soon as it’s healed up, though, so check the site out in a couple of days.

You will find when you go to the home page of the forum that I’ve installed a neat little player which lets you listen to all the lessons there with a quick click of the mouse, so while you’re waiting for Freight Train, do check out all the others. There are well over 100 there now.

That, and a beehive of a forum with over 16,000 members, can be found at Guitar for Beginners and Beyond.

PlaneTalk

Here is a very nice testimonial a customer wrote about my book ‘PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book’ last week:

[quote]“elegant (adj.):

Combining simplicity, power, and a certain ineffable grace of design.

In a word, the theory described in PlaneTalk is “elegant”. Once absorbed, it gives you a perspective of the guitar which is at its core incredibly simple, but at the same time very powerful. At first, I was skeptical that there was any trick to understand the guitar. I thought there was no way to avoid having to learn thousands of songs, chords, scales, modes, arpeggios, harmonies, and double stops. Websites had convinced me that if I didn’t learn to read sheet music or memorize where every note is on the fretboard, I was going to go to hell.

After reading through the book twice, the fretboard looks much less scary. Every time I play a song, scale, chord, or whatever, I can actually understand what’s going on! I feel I am slowly earning my freedom from the confinements of rote memorization. Kirk knows his audience, and the book is written in a very friendly and understandable style. The PlaneTalk forum is filled with warm and talented people, and somehow Kirk manages to post in many of the threads.

Now, when I look at my guitar, I don’t see a stubborn old box all locked and obscured — I see possibilities and potential.”

‘yakbutter’ — from the PlaneTalkers Forum
[/quote]

So, if you find yourself at the stage where you have all the basics under control but still can’t bring it all together on the fretboard and turn it into music, drop in for a visit.

Slide Guitar in Standard/Dropped-D Tunings

The BIG NEWS:

I have finally taken delivery of the first batch of “How to play Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped-D Tunings” DVDs. It’s been a 3 year on-off project … it’s such a relief to have finished it and to be able to send them out. If you’re interested, drop into my other other site BottleNeckGuitar.com where you can hear a bunch of my slide tracks and find out all about he DVD.

That’s it for now, I’ll get Freight Train done asamfh … (as soon as my finger heals)

All the best,

Kirk
http://www.kirklorange.com