Kirk's Weekly Guitar Lesson: Pachelbel's Canon (part II)

Hi, I'm back with another finger style lesson.

I thought this week I'd have another look at Pachelbel's Canon, that piece written back in the 1600's that was recently made famous by the Korean shredder on YouTube. It's a great piece of music, even if we are all a little tired of it, and it's a good one to use for lessons. If you saw last week's lesson, you learned how it uses all but one of the related chords from the key; this week I take one of the more memorable melody lines and show you how it weaves through those chords.

Pachelbel Canon - part 2: http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14159

Guitar for Beginners and Beyond Community

We broke through the 40,000 member mark yesterday! What a great horde of twangers they are too. If you have any questions about any aspect of playing guitar, I can guarantee an answer in no time flat. We have experts on everything there, from finger style, slide, equipment, theory, shredding, recording, songwriting ... you name it. If you have any recordings you'd like to either show off or ask for some constructive criticism, load 'em up. That's all happening on a daily basis at http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/forum/

PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book/DVD

What can I say about it this week? I keep sending them off to all corners of the World to twangers who have hit the wall, who want to know how to negotiate the whole fretboard, not just the first five frets; who want to know how to improvise without getting trapped in those pentatonic boxes or having to juggle all those Greek modes; who want to know how to play a line out of the blue, then play it harmonized ... without having to stop for half an hour to figure it out. PlaneTalk teaches this mind set, one that allows you (with lots of practice, of course) to literally see the music, moment by moment, on the whole fretboard. Melody comes very easily if you know where to look for it. Have a listen to this blues track I call 'The F-ing Blues' hi-fi URL:

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=3783555&q=hi

This was played without once thinking 'pentatonic' or 'blues scale' or any other scale mindset. If this melodic style appeals to you and you're wondering how to get there, save yourself a couple of decades of poking around and order PlaneTalk. You can then join me and ,any other PlaneTalkers at the private forum and discuss it all at length. I'm there every day. Read all about it at order it http://www.thatllteachyou.com

Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped-D Tuning

My all time favorite way of extracting music from a guitar is to slip a heavy brass slide over my pinkie, lower that E string down to D and go searching for melody (a la PlaneTalk). Here's an example of that approach:

http://www.soundclick.com/util/getplayer.m3u?id=5151156&q=hi

... you can make the guitar sing with a slide. If you'd like to learn everything I know about the art, you're in luck: I reveal all in a 70 minute DVD I put together recently. Read all about and order it here: http://www.bottleneckguitar.com You can also order one of those heavy brass slides I mention.

That's about it from me this week, see you here next,

Kirk Lorange

http://www.guitar.name