October 6, 2023

A couple new lessons, a cool discovery (and fix!), tips on percussive playing and ear training, and a friend’s band playing the music of Django and Stephane Grappelli next weekend for anyone near Redwood City, and a new album of John Renbourn pieces by Clive Carroll were the topics of the day.

This week we released lessons on You Don’t Have To Cry by Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. Both of these have interesting chord progressions and fingerpicking techniques. The Stills tune is in Double Dropped D Tuning and Baker Street includes a short vamp with percussive picking. That is what turned into this week’s tip, with a couple easy exercises to get you started in that direction. Other lessons worth looking into for more on percussion would be I Need You by The Beatles and Girl From Ipanema.

And speaking of new lessons (really an oversight now corrected), we have had a set of lessons on Ear Training For Guitarists here at TG for many years. Phase I goes into hearing melodies and Phase II is about recognizing chord progressions. The set is now available to purchase as two single lessons and they are on sale for the foreseeable future.

Part of the renewed interest in ear training came about because a couple of my students worked on trying to figure out Billy Joel’s A Matter Of Trust. For anybody who wants to take on that challenge themselves, I will go over the progression on an upcoming Update.

My friend Robert Witmeyer, who happens to be the new proprietor of our local music store, Keith Holland’s Guitar Hospital, has a band that plays old time Gypsy swing in the style of Django Reinhardt. They are playing on the peninsula on Sunday, October 15. More details and ticket info are at Club Fox.

Not too much playing this week, other than a little stab at Do, Re, Mi, and wrapping everything up with an old Renbourn tune, Debbie Anne.

Next week I will be visiting the area where I wrote a short piece called Wai’uli (a small beach park in Hilo) and will probably not get to the Weekly Update. But maybe I’ll come back with some new tunes…

Neil