Home Forums Guitar News Weekly Guitar News Weekly Archive Kirk’s Column: More finger style …

  • Creator
    Topic
  • #22040
    Guitar Expert
    Keymaster

    Hi again, I’m back.

    This week I did the first half of EC’s beautiful tune Tears in Heaven. I realize this piece has been tabbed to death on hundreds of sites, but as usual, this version is just a little different. The original was played in the key of A, but A throws up a few too many barre chords for a lot of players, so I dropped the key a wholetone to G. G is a more open sounding key. However, in G, the bridge part of the song (which may well have to be part 3 of this lesson) changes key to Bb, which isn’t the most friendly to get around on a guitar. I’ll figure out an easy way though … there are so many ways of playing the same thing on a guitar that there’s always one way that’s easier. I was a bit timid playing this one as my index fingertip has been sore as hell for days. I can’t see any obvious problem, but I sure want it GONE.

    Go to Guitar for Beginners and Beyond and look for the Weekly Online Guitar Lesson link. As always, I make you jump through a hoop or two to get to the movie, but it’s well worth it to see the fingering and basic positions, so I hope you don’t mind too much. I remember when I was starting out, all I really wanted was to see someone who could play well doing it. Midi files and even the mp3 are a help, but seeing the real thing, the actual playing of a piece, is always more inspiring. To this day, after 45 years of playing, I still get all fired if I’m watching someone play something neat on a guitar. It still makes me want to go grab my own instrument and twang away.

    PlaneTalk blurb time: For the price of a couple of lessons, you can learn about the ‘trick’ — a neat way of looking at the fret board — that I stumbled upon after years and years of searching for it. I always knew there had to be some simple, concise way of ‘seeing’ how music lays itself out the length of the fretboard … I’d seen my heroes playing with such ease that they must be thinking of almost nothing. Scales and modes didn’t do anything except confuse me; I tried this, I tried that … nothing ever made anything easier until one day about 25 years ago I looked at something I’d known since day 1 in a new way, and that was it. Problem solved, fretboard decoded. Come and check The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book

    The Slide Guitar Forum is getting busier and busier, so drop in there and take part. We have many great players who are always happy to pass on their expertise.

    Footprint, my slide guitar tune, is still # 1 at the Jazz General charts of Soundclick.com. It’s not really jazz … it’s something else. Electric slide guitar has never been a standard jazz instrument, that’s for sure, but there’s something horn like about the sound I get out of my old Strat these days, and I like to emulate saxophone lines when I improvise, so I think even if you hate jazz you may still enjoy this track. Go to my Soundclick Page to have a listen … it will stream automatically once the page loads.

    Until next week when I post the second half of TiH, have a good one!

    Kirk
    http://www.kirklorange.com/

  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.