Kirk's Weekly Guitar Lesson: New finger style lessons

Hi, fellow twangster ... I hope you're well.

It's been a while. Between keeping my own site running and having the kitchen renovated, I've been out of the loop for a while. Sorry about the gap in my contribution to GNW. I'm back, though.

Kirk's Weekly Guitar Lessons

Since I last wrote, I've added a quite a few finger style lessons to the site. Here they are:

Danny Boy in Dropped D - I did this great old nugget in G already as you may recall, but it lends itself so nicely to dropped D that I thought I'd do again.

Pachelbel Canon - A finger style workout on the timeless chord progression from this classical piece written centuries ago.

Pachelbel Canon melody - Another look at this classic, this time the melody line. Great for limbering up those fingers.

Yankee Doodle Dandy - One for the beginners, a look at merging bass line and melody together over this simple tune.

Travis Picking - A look at the basics of this well known picking style. Get that thumb thumping away independently.

Amazing Grace in D - This beautiful old hymn in the key of D. Another finger style 'primer' for those just getting into it.

The Blue Danube - The Waltz to end all waltzes, written by the Waltz King, J Strauss II. A good fretboard workout.

They should keep you busy for a while! The tunes are all public domain as the copyright issue just can't seem to be resolved in a fair way.

There are many other lessons submitted by our contributors, so have a poke around the Members' Lessons Forum.

GfB&B Community

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PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book

Is there anything more complicated than the way music imposes itself on a guitar fretboard? Whoever decided on what standard tuning is was a cruel man indeed, and of course we all know that music has as many exceptions to the rule as rules. But, there is a way, a very neat, succinct and tidy way to keep track of it all. It only came to me after about 35 years of playing and searching for that one bottom-line, lowest common denominator, constant that's easy to track and that opens the fretboard up from nut to 25th fret, turning it all into familiar well-worn territory. The best part of it is that you can put all those scales and modes and boxes on the back burner and start making real melody over any chord progression, no matter how many times it modulates.

Read some of the many testimonials here; Read more on the PlaneTalk the book/DVD here.

Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped-D Tunings

If you'd like to learn how to play slide without tuning your guitar to open and unfamiliar tunings, check out the DVD I put together on just that. I like to drop that bass string down to D myself ... here's an movie example from the DVD: Blue Groove.

Read more about the DVD and how to order here.

That's it from me, until next time,

Kirk Lorange

http://www.guitar.name.