For some reason today I was in a mood to play a little slack key guitar. Meaning I played a few things, none of which were related to this week’s additions here at TG. I think it started a couple of weeks ago when I decided to do the lesson on Tears On The Moon, in C Wahine tuning. This week I have my guitar stuck in Taro Patch (not as dangerous as it seems!).
Back to the subject at hand…
We continued our paths of Badfinger and Damien Rice (somebody ask me to stop) with 9 Crimes and a couple of tunes from Magic Christian Music.
9 Crimes was basically the title song from Damien Rice’s second album, cryptically titled 9. Seems to make perfect sense as the follow-up to O. The song was originally done on the piano but it translates very well to a simple, Campfire strumming song, as well as an arpeggio fingerpicking song that follows the original fairly accurately.
The first Badfinger album included some of their pre-Badfinger songs, when they released Maybe Tomorrow under their original name, The Iveys, along with a few songs in the movie The Magic Christian. I’m sure everybody had heard Paul McCartney’s Come And Get It but Carry On Till Tomorrow was a lot more obscure, unless you had the patience to sit through the movie. I recently tried to watch it and it had lost a lot over the years. Who knows what changed??? In any case, it shows the incredible talent Pete Ham and Tom Evans had.
We had a couple Fly On The Wall videos, of course. One was a short trip into getting better sound with a pick. The other introduced you to a young student of mine, Jacob. He usually comes into his lesson with a band in mind, and wants to try some of their songs. This week it was Marcy Playground. We listened to a few of their songs and as he left I wondered why he needed me to help him. He has a very good ear and finds things relatively easily on the guitar. We looked briefly at St. Joe On The School Bus, Sherry Fraser, A Cloak Of Elvenkind, and Gone Crazy.
Heads up for the coming weeks- slack key songs. It might be time to revisit some of our alternate tuning songs.
This week we followed mostly a similar path to last week, Badfinger
and Damien Rice were the headliners at TG, with a little excursion
into slack key guitar for good measure. From Damien’s catalog we took
a look at Cannonball. This is another typical song from him: haunting,
emotional, thought-provoking, with a very cool guitar riff as well.
As evidenced by some comments on the Forum, many people were familiar
with the song Without Out, mainly due to Harry Nilsson’s huge hit with
it. It was written by Apple artists Badfinger, specifically Pete Ham
and Tom Evans. These talented songwriter and musicians came up with
many great songs in their years together. We also had a Fly On The
Wall video with Fred working through the chord progression and
thinking about it in different keys.
While we are in the Fly On The Wall department, we had a real surprise
with a R&B type tune from Akon called Don’t Matter. Kevin wanted to
put a reggae spin on it and we basically came up with a simple
campfire arrangement that almost any student could play.
We ended the week with a composition of mine called Tears On The Moon.
It is a slack key piece done in C Wahine Tuning (C G D G B E), also
known as Keola’s C as it is commonly used by Keola Beamer. There are a
few more like this in the pipeline so don’t be afraid to tackle songs
in this tuning that really only requires lowering the 5th and 6th
strings.
Of course, all the stuff I have mentioned above is part of the Target
Program but we also added a couple of song packs for our members who
like their lessons bundled. We started the week with a 10-Pack of
songs by John Lennon and followed with a 5-Pack of America songs.
Today’s News also included a bit of a trivia puzzle, as well as a lot
of playing, maybe too much. At the last minute I decided to carry the
puzzle over until next week rather than give the answer. Check it out
when you can and let us know what you think.
This week we continued with some Target releases from artists that have been popular lately here at TG- Damien Rice and Badfinger. We did two Damien Rice songs, Volcano and Grey Room, along with Baby Blue by Badfinger. All of these have some very interesting challenges for most players, in spite of the fact that they seem simple on the surface. Be sure to check them out.
We also had a couple of Fly On The Wall videos with some of our regulars, Fred and Kevin. Kevin was working on Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, and Fred and I had a New Year’s check up. We looked back at progress over the last year and talked a bit about where we might be going in the near future.
The other big news this week was our sister site, TotallyKeyboards. We have had the site available to Target members for a few weeks and appreciate them kicking the tires for us. We are now offering free trial memberships to all TG members, with special discounts available to Target members and Target Founding Members. See the recent post on the Forum for the specifics.
Otherwise… Happy Friday The Thirteenth, a popular day in this part of California thanks to historical figure Sarah Winchester and her ‘Mystery House.’
Welcome to the New Year and I hope everybody had a good and relaxing Holiday Season. This week we got back in stride with a few new Target releases and a couple Fly On The Wall videos. Our in the studio lessons this week featured Fred working on adding the vocal part to our arrangement of Ain’t No Sunshine, and Paris taking a look at the intro to Nothing Else Matters, by Metallica.
The lessons we added this week included Damien Rice’s unreleased tune Wild And Free, a song we found here at YouTube from a few recent appearances of his. It is another great example of his simple, but incredibly inspired and moving songs.
We also reached into our Recommend A Lesson list and pulled out No Matter What by Badfinger, a very talented group of musicians who got started with the Beatles’ Apple label and big support from Paul McCartney. Pete Ham and Tom Evans managed to write a handful of great tunes that have stood the test of time and I hope to get to more of them in the near future.
On the obscure front we looked again to the English band Caravan. Their song Hoedown (not to be confused with Aaron Copland’s piece as done by Emerson, Lake & Palmer), is an example of their use of unusual time signatures and some of the lesson focuses on singing along with the odd timing.
We also want to welcome our sister-sites TotallyVocals and TotallyKeyboards into the New Year and hope everybody’s musical life is happy and healthy.
The big news this week was the launch of another sister site- TotallyKeyboards. We are very fortunate to have a great keyboard teacher, Dave Coldren and are excited about welcoming him into the family. Be sure to check it out when you can.
On the new release side we added a few Christmas songs with instrumental arrangements of Let It Snow, I Wonder As I Wander, and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, along with a couple of personal favorites, Lonely People by America and Clifton In The Rain by Al Stewart. Al’s song is from his first album, released in 1967, and one he still performs regularly. This was a request from our Recommend A Lesson section that jumped out at me and I had to act on it. Keep ‘em coming.
Another song that has made the rounds here at TG is Mad World, originally done by Tears For Fears but later covered with a completely different feel by Gary Jules. This has inspired many people to tackle an arrangement by Ulli Bogershausen and my student Larry came in with it recently and we decided to make a Fly On The Wall with his lesson. We also added a Fly with Fred looking at Please Come Home For Christmas.
Best Wishes to all our TG Family this Holiday Season, particularly to my friend and partner Matt, and everybody behind the scenes who work so hard to keep our sites running on as many cylinders as possible.
This week we had to bring out a few new Christmas tunes- a couple of
instrumentals and a bluesy sing along. We started the week with a
ragtime arrangement of Gene Autry’s Here Comes Santa Claus, followed
that with a reverent take on The Little Drummer Boy (done in Dropped D
tuning), and ended the week with the contemporary classic Please Be
Home for Christmas, mostly along the lines of the Eagles version.
We tried to balance the heavy holiday leanings with a look at I Need
You by America and a couple of Fly On The Wall videos visiting Don
McLean’s Castles In The Air and singing tips with respect to Bob
Dylan’s Dream and The Boxer.
I also had a little time to sit down with the guitar and explore some
melodic and harmonic ideas. We put out a couple of these as Acoustic
Guitar Abstracts (#4 and #5). Looking back, it was about this time
last year that I started this soon-to-be tradition. Maybe the holiday
season gives me a chance to play the guitar more.
We also had another trip into the past with Jack van Breen showing us
a 1930s Gibson lap steel guitar- definitely a blast from the past for
the vintage collectors.
Next week we have a very cool announcement coming so check in early in
the week.
There was probably more playing than talking on today’s news. The weather here today just made me want to sit outside and play the guitar. I did go over a few of the highlights this week though. We had probably one of the most varied set of 3 songs released to the Target Program. They ranged from the dark recesses of Damien Rice’s Eskimo, through the great acoustic stylings of America with Sandman, and into the wacky world of Caravan with Hello Hello. Caravan is known for using unusual time signatures so be sure to give it a listen and see if you can figure out what’s going on in Hello Hello.
We continued our extensive series of lessons on Ain’t No Sunshine with Fred working on refining the picking, something that is fairly new for him. We also had another Fly On The Wall video with Kevin getting back to Friend Of The Devil.
That’s about it for today’s report… I’m going back outside to play the guitar!
This week everybody is allowed to get out their seasonal gear and
start listening to Christmas tunes. We even added a semi-seasonal tune
to the Target Program, John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over). This is
an interesting series of chords and key changes.
A couple of special requests made it to the top of the list as well-
Damien Rice’s Delicate, and the solo guitar arrangement of Ain’t No
Sunshine. We also put out a couple of interesting Fly On The Wall
videos. The first featured Fred in our second lesson on Long May You
Run, and the next was Kevin taking a second look at Another Brick In
The Wall by Pink Floyd.
The last big news for this week is we are now offering all members of
TG a 25% discount at our sister-site TotallyVocals. Follow the link to http://totallyvocals.com/TG25
This week at TG we had a set of new Target lessons, a Pink Floyd Fly
On The Wall, and a nod toward the American tradition of playing
Alice’s Restaurant around Thanksgiving time. Our Arlo Guthrie
connection was rekindled with a Student Review of his country-blues,
talking-blues, ragtime fingerstyle guitar, 1960s folk-protest song
(I’m sure I missed a few adjectives there so feel free to fill in your
own).
As part of our Fly On The Wall lessons we took Kevin a little further
into the world of Pink Floyd with a look at Another Brick In The Wall.
Of course, this is the title song (or at least Part 2 of 3) the last
real PF album that also included Comfortably Numb, Is There Anybody
Out There, and Goodbye Blue Sky, all lessons we have here at TG, I
think.
Our main Target releases started with John Lennon’s Instant Karma, a
lesson presented in our Work It Out style to improve ear-training. I
guess I have to start warning people to not print out attachments
until watching the Preview, as this format is obviously gaining
popularity. On Wednesday we stayed firmly entrenched in the 60s with
Donovan’s folk song Catch The Wind. This is a nice song to work on
picking out some bass lines as part of the strumming, much like is
done in Bluegrass playing. The week ended with a look at You’re So
Vain by Carly Simon. This lesson included some of the piano parts, and
even the little bass flourish at the beginning.
I hope everybody in the US had a good Thanksgiving weekend with
relatives/food/football… whatever.
This week we had a couple of huge things happen. The biggest is the we
are now offering some very special deals to our long time members at
TG to become Founding Members at TotallyVocals. Our early TG
supporters carry a badge that identifies them as a Founding Member of
TG. This means they are locked in to the best rate ever offered to
subscribers. This option is now being offered to all Target members,
with an even better deal offered to Founding Members. This is the time
to be a Founding Member at TV. Check the Forum for the latest details.
The other really big news is we have released a set of lessons on Lead
Playing. I have never been a fan of mastering dozens of scales and
translating that into becoming a solid lead player. My approach has
been captured on video in our new package- Lead Secrets: Triads. Be
sure to check it out for a radically different approach to playing lead.
We also had a couple of lessons built around a great Neil Young tune,
Long May You Run. This included a Target lesson on the song as well as
a Fly On The Wall lesson where Fred and I worked the song out.
On the blog side we had a couple of great pieces from our old buddy
Keith Holland, talking about bridges for Teles and Strats, and a short
clip from Jack van Breen on a great amp from Fender, the G-Dec. Be
sure to check them out.
That’s it for the week, be sure to think about the benefits of
becoming a Founding Member at TotallyVocals.com
