This morning I had a couple interesting lessons which led to topics I addresses in today’s update. One was holding notes to keep voices independent in John Renbourn’s Judy, and the other was about the harmonic minor scale and how it alters the natural minor scale. I opened with an improv in A Minor which did use the harmonic mostly. There was also a personal story on how this week’s release of the Tom Petty 5-Pack struck a chord with an old friend who tracked me down to let me know it got him back into loving the guitar. Another slight diversion went into the post of Tommy Emmanuel and his piece Questions. I hope everybody has seen the our Acoustic Snapshots with him from a visit in San Francisco a few years back (hotel room and toilet as the backdrop!).

Other than the usual ramblings and noodling, the new stuff we added this week include a ridiculous range of lessons; Be Bop, AC/DC, Steely Dan and Neil Young, including the folky Out Of My Mind, the jazz rock Josie, the mad guitar of Angus Young in Thunderstruck, and Charlie Parker’s Blues For Alice.

On to the rest of May…

Neil