March 2, 2012

This week at TG sat in on a couple of lessons with my students (Fly On
The Wall lessons), reviewed a couple of student uploads, released a
couple of artist packs, and looked at songs by Buddy Holly, Stevie
Nicks, and the Guess Who. The News also included a short look at my
wooden guitar stand.

Our Target lessons started with Leather And Lace by Stevie Nicks, of
course with additional vocals by Don Henley, who helped her quite a
bit in composing the song. This is mostly a basic strumming song, that
works on hitting individual bass notes. Our second song, Well All
Right by Buddy Holly, is a little similar, needing some bass notes
leading into chord changes. We also looked at a medley by The Guess
Who, No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature. This really was separate
songs by Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings that combined perfectly in
a manner similar to what McCartney and Lennon did with I’ve Got A
Feeling.

Our Fly On The Wall series continued with a look at Kevin working on
Falling And Flying from the movie Crazy Heart, as well as Fred
polishing up the strumming in Not Fade Away. These were paired with a
couple Student Reviews on Classical Gas and Wipe Out, both songs I
like to have many students play.

For those TG visitors who like their songs in artist packs we put
together a 6-Pack of Badfinger songs and a 10-Pack of Damien Rice
songs. These packs are a great way to save a lot compared to the price
of individual lessons, although not nearly as economically efficient
as a Target membership.

A request came in form one of our members who wanted to get a better
look at a wooden guitar stand you may have seen in the TG cabin. I
took the opportunity to do a ‘Show & Tell’ with it and hope to inspire
folks who are handy woodworkers to build their own. This is something
way outside my capabilities and I really admire people who can do
stuff like that.

By the way, our first song this week (Leather And Lace) was one that
jumped out at me from our Recommend A Lesson section. This reminded me
to take a closer look over there again and there will be a few more
coming in the near future so this would be a good time for folks to
visit that section and keep the votes coming. Generally a song needs
to get up around 20 votes to start getting seriously considered for a
lesson. Of course, there are many factors and exceptions involved but
this is a general overview of how we take the suggestions.

Until next week…

Stay Tuned & In Touch,

Neil