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Totally Guitars News Podcast

This week I was inspired, partly by a couple lessons, to mess with some instrumental versions of songs. So what else is new? You might ask. I think it really started last week with the lesson on Girl From Ipanema, which I hope to continue with a solo version, but also by our songs by Three Dog Night that appeared this week, quite coincidentally I might add. It is pretty clear that the upload of Never Been To Spain a couple weeks ago got both Vanessa and me looking at songs by the huge group from the early 70s. I am glad I opted for One after seriously considering doing Never Been To Spain, which may have proved embarrassing had we done a lesson on the same song.

So somewhere along the same lines I was inspired to review and relive music from one of my all time favorite bands, Focus. This led to finding the videos I shared with you the other day and sent me down the rabbit hole of trying to arrange Sylvia for solo guitar. The work-in-progress closes this week’s update. There is even a little teaser of Hocus Pocus, both of which were inspired by Jan Ackerman’s acoustic take on the two of them that I ran across at YT.

Along with our Three Dog Night songs, this week we brought out Eric Clapton’s cover of After Midnight by J.J. Cale, James Taylor’s Millworker, and a FOTW lesson with Sandy starting to work on Diamonds And Rust by Joan Baez.

The motivation thread was very interesting as I can get pretty uninspired at times, as I’m everybody does at times. I talk a bit about a couple things that can combat that, and my reawakening to Focus helped me snap out of it somewhat.

This week we also started bringing out some videos from our last night at IGC 2017. The last night is dubbed ‘Collaboration Night’, and everyone is encouraged to get up and play with other folks who they have been working with during the week. The night started off with our 6-man group The Beagles. I hope you had a chance to check them out. More of that evening will be posted soon.

I also addressed a question that came through our Support network about Guitar Pro. I know many of you use it to play the files I create with it. It allows you to change the speed and/or pitch of anything in the format, which can be a great practice and educational tool. I use it just about everyday. Another really useful program is Song Surgeon, which let’s you do something similar to any audio file. This proved very helpful to me this week when I realized I needed to change the key that Sylvia was in, which really opened the door to getting a grip on the song.

OK, enough rambling, watch the News and get out your guitar and play!

Neil