Hi, fellow twanger. It's been a while since I last added my post to GNW. I had a big computer crash and studio/office revamp and I was out of the loop altogether. But, I'm back now.
I found a long-lost slide lesson a while back on my computer while cleaning things up a bit. For some reason, it never got added to the new GfB&B site. It's a good one too, in dropped D tuning, pretty straight forward all things considered, but not for beginners. It's got a couple of very scary sounding intervals in it. You'll see that it's in the old 'one-camera-low-bandwidth' format, but it's a good one. Check it out here:
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=19636
The latest one is a sort of bluesey jazzy feel I called Daydream Blues. It's not really a beginners lesson, but if you've had even just a bit of playing experience, I recommend you give it a whirl. It's a good finger-stretcher piece and rarely uses more than two at the same time. I just finished that one and you can find it here:
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20163
You've got to love the Internet! I've had 820,000 views of my guitar related movies at YouTube! Going up the rate of 3,000 or so per day. Check 'em all out at http://www.youtube.com/user/planetalk
PlaneTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book > http://www.thatllteachyou.com
What do you do to get to the next level? Simple, you order my book PlaneTalk. There seems to be so much to remember where it comes to playing guitar, especially when you start looking into all those scale and modes. How on earth do you keep track of them all?
You don't.
I've been chastised by many players over the years for saying this, but once they read PlaneTalk, they understand what I mean. While it is good to know what those scales and modes are and where they come from, you don't really ever need to play or practice all of that stuff to make good strong melody. I know I don't, not even the Blues Scale or the Pentatonics. I do, of course, wind up playing through their notes, but I'm not thinking them. I'm thinking something much MUCH simpler and accommodating, something that never lets you down no matter how complex the chord progression.
Here is a demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1ebDlvbJU
This is not really my style of music, but the fact is that ALL music is the same if you're thinking the PlaneTalk mindset. Not once in this improvised piece did I ever think 'scale' or 'mode'. Here's another, more my thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh3orNb2n5s … again, I'm not thinking scales, I'm thinking melody a la PlaneTalk.
Enough said, read some of the many testimonials here: http://www.thatllteachyou.com/testimonial2.php
Once you buy the book/DVD, you can also join the private forum where we discuss the simple technique on a daily basis and where any questions you may have are quickly answered and cleared up. I'm there every day, so are many others.
Order it here: http://www.thatllteachyou.com/order.html … you won't regret it.
Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped D tunings
I recently added a couple of new slide videos to my YouTube pages, I call one 'Scratch my Itch'. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhxEBbFZTsM
The other is a tune I wrote years ago called Summers End. On this one I play a self-duet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzoEMOLpwME
There are a whole lot more at http://www.bottleneckguitar.com , all played in standard and dropped D tunings. I did spend a few years in open tunings — the traditional way of playing slide — but found it impossible NOT to sound like everyone else and so went back to standard tuning. What I found was a very rich environment for playing slide, a tuning that is in fact a bunch of mini open tunings all living side by side. All chord flavors are there for the twanging … all you need is to know here to find them. I show you everything I know about the art in my 70 minute DVD, so there's no need for you to spend the years it took me to refine it all.
Visit http://www.bottleneckguitar.com for more info and to order. You can also buy one of my beautiful custom brass slides.
That's it for now,
Kirk