Hi fellow picker, I’m back with a new finger style lesson, this time an old nugget from the Rolling Stones: As tears go by. The original was done with an almost chamber music approach, using harpsichords and small string sections. My finger style version uses the same classical approach. The tune is composed entirely around the related chords and is a great example of the solid structures those chords can build.

Go to Guitar for Beginners and Beyond, follow the Weekly Lesson link and get stuck into it.

Big news: I took delivery of a couple of thousand copies of my book PlaneTalk (and the Guitar Slide Rule) last week and they will be available just as soon as I can get into the site and add them to the order page, which should be by the time you read this. As you may or may not know, the book has been available only in PDF format for the last few months. It sure is good to have real, tangible books again.

PlaneTalk, of course, is the book that reveals the ‘trick’ to seeing your entire fretboard as usable, friendly territory. It has been selling form my site since 1997 and has gone out to all corners of the globe. I get a steady stream of feedback, all of which I post at the testimonials page, but here is the latest form Bruno in France:

“I’ve downloaded your book yesterday night. At first, I was thinking: I already know everything he’s talking about… but then, I figured out that you discovered something evident, so evident that it didn’t appear to me until yesterday! In french, this is called:”enfoncer les portes ouvertes” (to smash in an opened door) … This said, it’s much more evident once someone tells you! I’m amazed by the progress I’ve done in one night. All I have to do now is practicing. In two words: THANK YOU! … Your book is amazing, really. It changed completely my vision in two days.”

If you’re at the stage in your playing where you have all the basics under control, you know your chords, scales, modes, but you still can’t seem to bring them all together on the fretboard, then it’s time you read it. You can save yourself the 15 years or so it took me to stumble over the obvious.

Go to PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book for more info. Once you buy the book, you get to join the private PlaneTalkers Forum, where several hundred of us discuss music, playing guitar, the PlaneTalk technique etc.

I’m about two thirds of the way through a huge project: the ‘How to play Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D tunings’ DVD. I plug away at it every chance I get, editing the two camera angles together and adding any graphics I need to to make it all very clear. It shouldn’t be too much longer. Meanwhile, you can go to Bottleneck Guitar dot Com and join the forum there. There are a bunch of expert sliders there who are more than happy to give their pearls of slide wisdom away.

If you’d like to listen to some of my slide tunes, go to my Soundclick site.

OK, until next week, keep those fingers nimble,

Kirk
http://www.kirklorange.com