Kirk’s Weekly Guitar Lesson

Hi, fellow picker, I’ve got a new one for you. It’s that beautiful tune ‘The Long and Winding Road’ written by Paul McCartney … I guess the words have new meaning to him these days. It’s one of those tunes that sounds quite complex but in fact is composed around the related chords of the key. It’s not or beginners, but it’s not too difficult … as always, there’s a movie showing both hands, midi, tablature, notation, written commentary. All you’ll need is some time to piece it all together.

You’ll find it here: The Long and Winding Road

Guitar for Beginners and Beyond

The community continues to grow at about 80 members per day … what a great bunch of members too! Our recording forum allows you to upload mp3s of your playing, so why not join up and let us hear you? Some incredibly talented players from all over the World have done so … drop in for a listen at least.

One of our contributing members ‘Fretsource’ has posted a new lesson on Ear Training … part one of a series. It’s very informative. Check it out here.

PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book

One of the most difficult but most rewarding aspects of playing an instrument is the ability to create, out of thin air, a guitar part that is always ‘right’, that always follows the piece of music you’re playing along to. Whether it’s a playing a solo, or adding fills and licks and riffs, or playing a rhythm part, or all of those elements, improvising is as fun as it gets.

What’s the trick? You may have already discovered that simply knowing scales and modes isn’t enough, especially when the piece you’re playing to is more than a 12 bar blues or a funk groove. Scales and modes are essential knowledge, but fall short more often that not … PlaneTalk the book explains that ‘trick’, the DVD demonstrates it, the ‘Guitar Slide Rule’ that comes with it crystallizes it. It dead easy, but like every other aspect of playing guitar, need time to sink in. Endorsed by Tommy Emmanuel, it’s has helped thousand of players see the light. Here’s how Geoff from the UK put it the other day in a forum discussion:

I also spent months trawling the net, and got completely bogged down with all the material I collected. It almost became an obsession, collecting all that ‘essential’ material.

Kirk’s PlaneTalk unravels the mystery and paves the way to becoming focused on what really matters. Focus is what a lot of beginners lack the most IMO. PlaneTalk really is an eye-opener, a ‘holy grail’ type work. Thanks Kirk.

So, if you’ve hit the wall where it comes to the art of improvisation, do yourself the favor, save yourself years of looking for that one constant that points to everything else, that automatically solves the ‘kink in the tuning’ problem we twangers have to deal with every day, that uses something so simple you’ll kick yourself for not seeing it yourself, that allows you not only to create relevant melody on the fly, but also harmony and chords. Drop in for a visit, read more about it.

Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped-D Tunings

It was in fact poking around the fretboard a couple of decades ago, searching for positions in standard tuning that I could use for slide, positions where notes line up, that made me all of a sudden ‘see’ the trick PlaneTalk describes … it was a huge Eureka moment for me … I’d grown tired of open tunings and the fact that I sounded like every other slide player. It’s almost impossible not to sound like everyone else in open tunings, and I’d reverted to standard tuning. I discovered that it’s an incredibly rich environment for slide … you just need to think laterally and accept that the units you can work with are a little smaller, more compact. The fact is, all flavors of chords are there for the sliding — major, major7, minor, minor7, augmented, 9th, sus4, 11th, diminished — and, they’re all right where they should be … no need to remap the fretboard.

I divulge everything I know about it in the DVD that I finished a few months ago. Check it out at my other site, Bottleneck Guitar dot Com.

Here’s a free mp3 for you, a minor key slide blues played in dropped D tuning.

OK … back to work for me, back to my new handmade acoustic guitar I took possession of over the weekend. Michael Palm is a craftsman beyond compare.

See you nest week,

Kirk
http://www.guitar.name