This week’s episode started with a short Merle Travis style improv, borrowing from one of his most famous tunes for a couple reasons, the main being that Muriel Anderson did a workshop for us recently and spent quite a bit of time talking about ‘real’ Travis Picking. Possibly more on that as we develop the film.

The big news this week is not only is the Student Review Uploader working, today we pushed out Reviews on Craig’s Here Comes The Sun and NKenny’s Still The Same. So PLEASE consider letting me see what you are working on and get back in the swing of offering suggestions.

Next I took a little self indulgent time to run through Pat Metheny’s Last Train Home, which is finally coming close to finished. Maybe a lesson in the works if there is some interest.

This week’s new releases included These Arms Of Mine by Otis Redding, Ben Harper’s Amen Omen, Max’s theory/technique lesson on Filling Space Between Chords, and a new 5-Pack of songs by Sarah McLachlan. We also got back on track with a Fly On The Wall Lesson. This week it was with Kevin working on Hallelujah, which led us into general fingerpicking patters that I consider essential.

In the last part of the update I went into some interpretation ideas on making things more musical by being flexible with the rhythm and separation of bass notes and melody notes that are written on the same beat. I used a bit of Romanza as an example, along with an old composition of mine, First Impression #1, the first of a set of 3 abstract pieces that I recorded for my album On The Horizon. That and all my other recordings are still available at the TG Audio Store if anybody is interested.

And that was the News!

Neil