November 11, 2011

This week we had a lot of themes that carried over different lessons.
It started with a few looks at Ain’t No Sunshine, by Bill Withers. We
put out the Campfire Version as part of our Free Lessons, a more
detailed version (really what Bill played originally) as part of the
Target Program, and a Fly On The Wall lesson where Fred and I worked
out the details.

We had a couple of John Lennon’s songs cross our path. The first was
Real Love, where we took looks at both his original demo version and
the Beatles reworking from the Anthology Project. There was a Student
Review of John’s tune Working Class Hero as well. This is a basic song
on one level but there are always some subtleties that require extra
attention.

Another Student Review started with Kevin complaining of being in a
guitar slump. One approach to getting out of these is to play
something new, fun, and relatively easy. We started into Comfortably
Numb and he left with a much better outlook on his playing. Stay tuned
till next week…

We wrapped up the week with a pretty easy song by Donovan, Hurdy Gurdy
Man. As is sometimes the custom, I took this one into a ‘Work It Out’
approach, turning it into an ear-training lesson. Be sure to watch the
beginning before printing out the chart.

The biggest news for all of us was a more formal launch of
TotallyVocals. This week we opened it up to the general public and
offered all our TG members a 7-Day Free Membership. We will now be
releasing new content regularly. Today we started with a video we have
alluded to a lot, my first vocal lesson with Jim. This was done a few
weeks ago and starts off his Fly On The Wall Series. Jim went to great
lengths to explain his approach and many of the exercises and drills
that will help anybody improve their singing. Be sure to check it out
at TotallyVocals.com!

That’s it for our Veteran’s Day wrap up.

Stay Tuned& In Touch,

Neil