February 6, 2026

Lately I have been using a thumbpick for a lot of songs, due to a broken thumb nail a few months ago. I remembered that there are a few songs I usually like to use it for, even if my nail is intact. Windy And Warm is not generally one of those but it seemed to pop into my sphere as I was ready to start shooting the News. The video ended with a rough run through of one of the main tunes I like to use the thumbpick for, which had been on mothballs for a couple years until the other day when I thought to resurrect it, which meant looking back at some of the 11 pages of music I put together for the piece by Steve Howe.

This digging up the past was partly inspired by our 3-Minute 30-Day Challenge, which ended just last Tuesday. I announced our last winners, ncrump93 was the Week #4 winner and will have a set of strings from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company soon, and pghbill was the grand prize winner and will get a private lesson soon.

We are very close to our next TG Live, Saturday, February 14 at 11:00am Pacific time. The subject will be creating instrumental arrangements, also known as chord solos. There are almost 100 of these now at Totally Guitars, most searchable by choosing ‘Fingerstyle Arrangements’ under our Genre menu. I tried out a couple excerpts of All Of Me and The Weight as melodies under consideration at this point. There is a thread on the TG Forum where you can register to join us.

A couple new lessons joined the TG Library recently as well – Lost In Love by Air Supply and The Last Farewell by Roger Whittaker.

I hope to see many of you next Saturday!

Neil