Hi, fellow gittar picker … I had last week off, I took a break from it all and went to New Zealand’s South Island. Wow! What a place! Breathtaking scenery and great people.

Kirk’s Weekly Guitar Lesson

This week I’ve done an interesting lesson showing how you can insert different bass lines under the same melody to change the mood of the piece. I used that old Stephen Foster classic ‘Oh Suzanna’ for the melody which occurs three times in the snippet and I think you’ll agree that the three different bass lines alter the overall vibe considerably. It’s a finger style lesson in G, suitable for beginners and beyond.

Click here for ‘Oh Suzanna’

Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Community

We passed the 30,000 members mark a few days ago … not bad for just over a year. If you haven’t already, you should join up and join in. We’re a very civilized bunch of twangers and more than able and willing to help out with any questions about all things guitar. Apart from the 120 plus finger style lessons I put together, you’ll find experts on gear, set-up, theory, recording … you name it, we can answer it! All you need to do is register, which you can do here.

PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book/DVD

As if you didn’t know already, I wrote a book describing the simple mindset I use when navigating the fretboard, something I stumbled upon about 20 years ago, after 25 years of playing. It’s about as easy as it gets and uses something you already know … if you’ve been playing for at least a week. I know my home page makes me sound like all the other “Play Guitar Like a Pro in 30 Days” sites out there … it’s not easy to come across as anything else. There’s only one way to become proficient as an instrumentalist, and that’s to play and play and play. But, there is a way of thinking and looking at the fretboard that can help you get there a whole lot faster, especially if you’re having trouble trying to turn scales into improvisation and being able to use the whole fretboard at all times. PlaneTalk describes that way of thinking in great detail.

Go to the site here. Read some testimonials here and here.

Slide Guitar in Standard/Dropped D Tunings

There’s no more fun way to extract music from a guitar than with a slide, in my opinion. I fell in love with the art back in about 1969, probably before you were born. Like most, I first trying the traditional open tunings, but reverted to standard tuning and my favorite, dropped D, soon after. I discovered a rich environment, full of flavors and possibilities, all there without the need to mentally re-map the fretboard. If you’d like to learn everything I know about it, you’re in luck … I recently finished a 70 minute DVD in which I reveal all.

Watch and listen to some of my slide in dropped D (just the bass string down to D) here, here and here.

Find out more about the DVD here]Find out more about the DVD here. I also sell the heavy slides machined from solid brass that you see in the movies.

That’s about it for this week, see you next,

Kirk Lorange
http://www.guitar.name