Hi everyone. It's been a while. I've finally been able to get back to a normal routine after finishing the video. Since then I've been hard at it marketing the damn thing. Once again, the easy part is making a new product. The hard bit is letting the world know it's available. The internet sure facilitates that task, but it's still long row to hoe.

Both PAL and NTSC versions are now available, and I've put together a pretty good book / video deal for anyone who has yet to read about THE TRICK to putting it all together on the fretboard, the subject of the book. As one of my customers recently wrote:

"...you pair the book and this video together and you have a truly extraordinary set of fine learning materials. Develop a grasp of the method in the book and when you watch the video it will greatly fine tune your skills."

OTHER NEWS FROM KIRK:

http://www.guitarforbeginners.com is getting rave reviews in the guestbook there. It's receiving several hundred visits per day now and growing. Drop in and say Hi!

My tune "Storm a Comin'" reached number 3 at mp3.com in the General Blues genre (love that word), and it was also one of 100 tunes included on mp3.com's Flashback 2000 CD. I believe 200,000 free copies were sent off worldwide. Thank you Mp3.com! You can listen to my stuff at http://mp3.com/kirklorange if you're interested. You'll be able to hear many examples of what my article is about this week.

MIXING IT ALL UP

It is a rare occasion for me not to be wearing a slide on my little finger when I'm playing the guitar. There are a few things that really are much more difficult to play with that heavy brass tube swinging around (if not impossible), but over the years I've been able to alter my approach to accommodate it.

I play in dropped D tuning, lowering only the bass E string down to D, so I'm pretty much in standard tuning. Apart from the bass string, everything is where it should be; All my chord shapes are the familiar ones I learned years and years ago, and apart from the bass string, I don't have to re-think the whole fret board. Thank goodness, because once you start having to think too hard about music, it dissipates... it becomes just a bunch of notes.

That one lowered string gives me a pair of tonics and a fifth on the three bass strings, making it ideal for the slide. I can grab all three at once, giving me a low, growlly power chord. Because there is no third, I can use it against minor or major chords. Comes in very handy. The dropped D also gives me access to some wonderful inversions of chords impossible to find in standard.

The combination of these factors -- the tuning and the wearing of the slide -- gives me the ability to mix it all up, to combine all kinds of styles in the same tune:

I can play normal rhythm type guitar. Because my little finger is occupied by the slide, I usually look for smaller chords to play. Three or four strings are all I bother with usually. There are a few positions where you can play a nice big six string bar chord, but I prefer to use more compact chords, if only to provide contrast to the 'bigger' versions. I simply keep the slide out of the way when I'm doing this. (I say 'simply'. It took many moons of practice to make it even seem simple.)

I can play normal, fretted licks and lines. No problem. Even with the weight of the slide there, I've got used to the feel of it and I've subconsciously changed my approach to accommodate for it. Again, because the tuning is five sixths standard, all my notes are where they ought to be except on the one E string.

Of course, I'm fully equipped to slide too, and I can bring it into play at any time. I can use it during my rhythm playing, using it for every fourth beat as a stab for example, or sliding one of the chords down to another in the progression, or as a single note component of an overall rhythm part. There are a million ways around any chord progression/feel/tune.

I can use it to play certain notes of a riff, leaving the others as fretted notes. This is very effective, as the fretted notes are always there to remind your ear of true pitch even if the slide notes are a little off. Or conversely, I can play a predominantly slide part, adding fretted notes to it, usually as pull off notes.

Naturally, I can play pure slide, either chords or lines, without any fretted notes. If I want to imitate a pedal steel, I can. If I want to play the blues, I can. The slide power chord on the bass strings will raise any hair, I can guarantee it, and the five standard-tuned strings allow me to locate and play any kind of slide chord, whether major, minor, augmented, diminished, major seventh, ninth, sus 4, minor seventh. Believe it or not, they're all there.

The fun part is incorporating all these different ways of making sounds on a guitar into the same piece of music. For example, I often find myself playing a slide guitar intro, then a compact, uncluttered rhythm part while the singer is singing, interspersed with fretted licks and lines, playing a solo which is half fretted, half slide, perhaps opening up the chords with a bit of chorus for the last verses, and building the end with a combination of all of the above. The permutations are endless. The challenge is always there to come up with a slightly better mix, the perfect combination for that tune.

I have posted an extensive look at this tuning at my site http://www.lorange.kirk.net -- look for the Slide Pages link, and as I mentioned earlier, you can hear many examples of this kind of playing at http://mp3.com/kirklorange

The main thing about this tuning is that all standard tuning landmarks are untouched, apart from the bass string. If you're anything like me, you rely on visual cues to keep track of it all. Chord shapes and positions take a long time to assimilate. I've always found that open tunings, often preferred for slide, smear them out. I especially need to be able to use the simple trick that is the subject of PlaneTalk, the trick that decodes the standard-tuned fretboard.

All the best, and as my old pal Dave says, keep on twangin'!

Kirk

http://lorange.kirk.net
http://guitarforbeginners.com
http://mp3.com/kirklorange