Kirk's Weekly Guitar Lesson: 'Waltzing Matilda' Part 2

I'm back! Sorry about the delay ... I've been very busy, but I finished off 'Waltzing Matilda' and it's ready to go. It's the chorus section, so all you need to do is tack it on the end of part 1 and you've pretty much got the whole tune.

Go to Guitar for Beginners and Beyond for that, and over 100 others, all consisting of a movie (showing both hands), tablature and notation, midi files to play along to (full and half speed), the Guitar Pro file in case you have that great program, an Mp3 of me playing it, and plain English written commentary. You really can't help but learn, which is proven to me time and time again now by members who post their mp3 versions of the lessons on the very active forum. There's nothing I love more than hearing others play my fingerstyle arrangements!

Membership at the forum is now almost 14,000 members strong, a very civilized bunch we are too, thanks to webmistress Clancy and a bunch of great moderators. It's by far the friendliest, most well behaved community on the Internet, and there are some super talented players there who are always willing to pass on their expertise. Join up and join in, if you haven't already.

I've been slaving away on my 'How to play Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D Tunings' DVD for the past few weeks and I'm extremely pleased to say that it's done! I finally shot and edited the last footage , so now all I need to do is bring it into the DVD authoring software, come up with some cover artwork and get them pressed. I'm getting very close to having the final product for sale ... after about 2 years of putting it all together. You can imagine how relieved I am! I will announce it here when it's available.

My book PlaneTalk just keeps on keepin' on. I had a recent customer, Jim, who is a guitar teacher, write to tell me this a couple of days ago:

"I am absolutely having a ball rethinking 20 years of hard labour. So happy to be Off The Scale treadmill ... am beginning to feel like a Pilgrim who has finally been gifted with The Holy Grail."

That's just one way of putting it, here are a bunch more. PlaneTalk teaches (in a most unconventional manner) 'the trick' to seeing the whole fretboard as friendly, familiar territory ... to improvising melody, harmony without once thinking 'scale' or worse still: 'mode'. This is not for beginners, but if you're one of the many players who has spent years getting the basics down learning scales, modes and chords, but STILL can't seem to bring it all together on the fretboard and make it music ... do yourself the favor. PlaneTalk has been selling from my site for close to ten years now and I can still say -- with total confidence -- that it will change the way you look at your fretboard forever more and that it still lives up to its subtitle: The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book. The PlaneTalkers Forum has close to a thousand members now, all very happy twangers indeed. Read all about it here.

I've had over 125,000 listens to my music at my Soundclick.com site ... if it's swampy slide guitar and rootsy fingerpicking you like, drop in!

Enjoy Waltzing Matilda! See you next time.

Kirk