I’ve been refining my two-camera movies … I’ve started to indicate the chord changes also, so you can follow along with the tab easier. It imperative to know what chords are setting the rules for any piece of music. They encapsulate the essence of any tune, so try and make it a habit to mentally track the chords as they change, until it becomes second nature and you simply ‘hear’ the changes as they occur.

This week I did a short impromptu waltz that I sort of invented on the spot — following well known changes — using all the elements of your standard finger style playing: bass line, melody line and chord fragments gluing it together. It has a nice happy vibe about it. I think you’re going to enjoy playing it … I sure do!

Go to http://www.guitarforbeginners.com and follow the Weekly Lesson link.

I’m deep into the ‘How to play Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D tuning’ video … phew! Big job, lemme tellya. I will, of course, announce it here when it’s finished. Most slide players tune their guitars to open tunings … I did also, decades ago, but reverted to standard tuning and found, to my surprise, a rich and diverse fretscape. Meantime, if you’re interested in the art of slide guitar, why not join the Slide Guitar Discussion Forum? http://www.bottleneckguitar.com …

What can I say about my book PlaneTalk? Just that it continues to be the last piece of the puzzle for thousands of twangers out there who had to give up on scales/modes as a means of playing melodically. They sure never worked for me … they always just sounded like scales. It doesn’t take much analysis to realize that melody comes from chords, not scales. PlaneTalk reveals the ‘trick’ to seeing your entire fretboard as a chord. Once you can do that, you can begin to build beautiful, meaningful melody lines … not play scales or modes. Well, I should correct that last statement: you do, of course, wind up using scale and mode notes, but you need not think scales / modes. You need only think melody. That’s at http://www.thatllteachyou.com … make sure you check out the Testimonials at http://www.thatllteachyou.com/testimonial2.php … PlaneTalk has turned a whole lot of twang fans into very happy pickers.

OK, that’s it for me, enjoy the lesson,

Kirk
http://www.kirklorange.com