Duck discusses usage of passing chords going from a C to a  G and also comfortable ways of fingering the chords. He also discusses right and left hand co-ordination, and holding bass notes and playing the melody notes with the other fingers.

These sort of tunes are great for singer/guitar players because the techniques used are very good for adding variations to your guitar parts when you’re not singing.  Personally I find playing solo arrangements  a key to creating much stronger accompaniment parts for when either other singers sing or I sing.  Really, what you are doing is expanding the toolbox.  When Playing solo gigs, a single note guitar solo generally just won’t cut it, you need parts which are much stronger or the whole tune just falls apart.

Duck Baker Youtube Guitar Video Tutorial is available at:

duck-baker-youtube-guitar-lesson-part-1

Here is a great guitar book with CD by Duck Baker.

Encyclopedia of Irish and American Fiddle Tunes for Fingerstyle Guitar By Duck Baker. By Duck Baker. For Guitar (Fingerpicking). Solos. Encyclopedia. Fiddle Tunes. Level: Beginning-Intermediate. Book/CD Set. 152 pages. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc. (98545BCD) See more info…

The Following book includes El McMeen using tunings such as CGDGAD (A as well as other oen and normal tuning arrangements.

Complete Celtic Fingerstyle Guitar By Stefan Grossman, Duck Baker And El Mcmeen. By Stefan Grossman, Duck Baker and El McMeen. For Guitar (Fingerpicking). Solos. Complete. Celtic/Irish. Level: Multiple Levels. Book/CD Set. 244 pages. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc. (95217BCD) See more info…

  
I will post Part 2 within a few days.

The conversation triggered a memory of a conversation I had with someone about 10 year ago, he  is a close family friend who has known me since I was 15.  The friend had said to me after I played a tune, that it sounded like music did when I was young, this wasn’t an insult either, he was really just commenting on something that I had had some suspicions about for years.

What came out of the talk was the idea that we are born with our own musical stamp, our own way of expressing and all we need to do is to nurture it and develop techniques, tools and the musical vocabulary to turn the feelings into music, OUR music, not somebody else’s.

Out of fear, I think a lot of players are not willing to just be themselves, and although they have great skills, the identifying aspects that define their musical personality is squashed.   When I was about 17 or 18, one of the guys that had as a guitar teacher was Don Andrews, a guitar player who had written dozens of guitar book, at that time he had played for 44 years.  Don was not famous for something that I think he should have been famous for.  Don once showed me a Maton classical guitar he had made; one day he was sitting on his couch tapping away on the arm of the lounge chair… then he thought, oh that sounds good. He then sent the couch off to Maton to be chopped up and the arm of the chair was used as the neck.  It was a seven string classical, that was in the early 1970′s.

Anyhow, back on track, Don said to me at the time “If a person practices all the RIGHT things, eventually they’ll be a very good guitar player, but whether they have talent is another thing”.   The talent bit is the thing that may not mean the same to everyone.  My view is that everyone has music inbuilt into them at birth; some have it closer to the surface and it matures at an early age, like Charlie Christian, Pat Metheny or Ben Harper.

The goal for me as I see it is to strip away the layers which get in the way of music coming out.  I think that the missing elements are Trust and Confidence. If we listen hard enough and are sensitive to what is trying to come out, eventually when we have the right tools in place, the music will have no choice than to just ooze out.

Tony Hogan 2009

Tony Hogan and Karen Brown

Yesterday I was giving a guitar lesson to a friend of mine;  she has only come to the guitar as a creative tool in the last couple of years.  We had spoken in the past about the need for a decent guitar to help her define her own musical voice, and I don’t mean singing, I mean a way of saying what needs to be said emotionally when words are too short or not powerful enough.  So, because she happens to like herself, she bought herself a nice small bodied acoustic Takamine for Christmas.  The small bodied guitars seem to fit women better, and also I often find they have a sound which will cut through better than the standard Martin dreadnought size. 

During the lesson we were talking about the need to ‘Make Things Musical’, this does not mean more notes.  It’s about working out what really needs to be played.  And this can be in any style at all, an open mind about accepting the diversity of styles is a healthy thing . 

Over the last week I had ripped apart an old Beatles tune called In my Life and totally reworked it so it is more of a fingerstyle guitar tune with a slightly blues folk edge to it.  By digging into what is underlying a composition, it’s possible to extract and highlight things which were not obvious when the tunes were first written.  You will often find that good musicians, once they have written a song will reinterpret the song numerous ways over a period of years.  Often the only people playing it the original way are those that have copied it.   Songs are living, not static and they are things for us to experiment with.  Example Jimi Hendrix “All along the Watchtower”… would Bob Dylan have ever thought that anyone would do that, or Cream doing Spoonful… or even the numerous versions of Bach, Air on a G String.. ( Many jokes come to mind)

When I play I don’t necessarily play just the straight chords.  I consider what I think  should be happening in the bass notes of the chords and try and create a nice musical pathway from one to the next.  This always creates an interest for the listener, even if they don’t know what they are listening to.   When you are interpreting a song on a guitar, which was recorded by a whole band, there’s a lot of work to do to replace the other half a dozen or so band members and the multi million dollar production.  You’ve got to think smart and move things around a little otherwise the tune can sound empty.

What is important is to find tunes that mean something to us.  So many players just try and copy the originals.  The originals are fine BUT, you’ve got to make them your own.  Some ways of doing this are by  putting the songs into another key and capoing up.  What I will often do  is transpose a song from G to E and then whack a capo on the third fret.  This means that I have to really listen to the movement of the chords and chose only the notes I want.  Sometimes I’ll just play two or three notes instead of a whole chord;  this is the beauty of playing fingerstyle guitar, other times I’ll add a couple of chords and on other occassions leave things out completely to ‘understate’ things.  The idea is to make it my own.  

When I first heard my friend sing a few years back, she was playing piano, but I realised that the texture of her voice would sit beautifully against the sound of an acoustic guitar with a  slightly country blues feel to it.  So yesterday we worked on blues.   When people say blues often there is an immediate conclusion of what that means.  The underlying structure of a blues is very simple, in fact it’s possible to play a blues with one chord or simple riff, but the hidden potential of a blues is endless. 

It is important to make your own music, to learn from what has been and to process it all and turn it into something which is truly a reflection of our inner most feelings, something that is uniquely and unmistakebly our own.  And as my friend and I came up with, “Life Is Too Short to Play Crap Music”

Tony Hogan … now on Facebook 

Mark Antony, has a guitar blog, he specialises in classical guitar (in truth a blog is just a web site that enables you to quickly ad content without having to frig around) .  Mark and I have been discussing the idea of him writing an article or so some time for my sites.   As one great guitarist said to me when I was about 18, there comes a time when every guitarist falls in love with the classical guitar.

SOME SIMPLE GUITAR TIPS FROM MARK ANTONY

• Think about the best time to take a break in your playing. Often, just as I’ve been about to take a break different people will turn up (if restaurant) so it’s a tendency to think “I can’t go off now as these new people have only just turned up”. BUT it’s hard to play for over an hour without taking a break.

• If you play at the same venues two nights running, try to play a different programme, or one with variations. Like when I told one diner “I will try to make any mistakes at different point in the music this time”, or “I’m playing the same notes as last night, but in different order”.

• Think about the best time to take a break in your playing. Often, just as I’ve been about to take a break different people will turn up (if restaurant) so it’s a tendency to think “I can’t go off now as these new people have only just turned up”. BUT it’s hard to play for over an hour without taking a break.

Mark’s Interviews, Videos of great Classical players and aticles go to Mark Antony

 1.      Turn up on time 

The sundial has been updated and many years ago the Swiss developed some great technology called the clock

 2.      Check all your equipment is accounted for before you leave for the gig

 Leaving your amp at home really sucks

3.      Learn how to communicate with other musicians

Screaming at band members was outmoded around about Neanderthal Man

4.      Never get intoxicated before you play

 Pretending you are Jimi Hendrix is fine, believing it is scary for the rest of the band.

 5.      Don’t teat the audience with disrespect if they don’t like your music

 The chances are, if you haven’t tuned up and the drummer is playing a different song, the audience has every right to be critical.

 6.      Create good relationships with venue owners

 Using the PA to describe negative attributes of the guy paying your wages is a no, no, even if has short changed you two dollars, there are other ways to sort issues.

 7.      Speak up for yourself when need be

 Telling your girlfriend about band problems instead of telling the band, is a great way to prove to your girlfriend that you don’t have any skills at dealing with issues, but don’t worry there’s a great market for songs about your lover leaving you

 8.      Don’t throw tantrums in public places.

 Unless you’re using is a promotional tool, showing the anger management skills of a four year old is not great for your career

 9.      Pack an extra extension power lead and guitar lead

 Standing next to a refrigerator at the other side of the room at the only available power point waving at the rest of the band, would be a little embarrassing.

 10.  Check all your equipment is accounted for before you go home

 “Now where did I leave my ’69 Les Paul, I had it last night?”

 11.  Don’t believe the saying “You’re only as good as your last gig”

 That’s bullcrap, there’s good and bad nights, learn from your experiences

As a general rule, a chord has a 3rd.  I’ll just explain this:

A basic Major scale starting on a C note would go C D E F G A B and just to complete it , I’ll add another C note.  

We could give each of those notes a numerical value e.g. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.  

A standard Major chord is made up of the 1st 3rd and 5th of the scale.

This would equal C E and G

Minor scales are built the same but the 3rd note is flattened, 1 fret lower

This would equal C E flat and G

Power Chords are neither Major or Minor, they are built of the 1st and 5th of the scale

So, the C Power Chord is just a C and a G.  In the example I have duplicated the C.  It’s just a couple of C’s and a G.

To download the printable version of How to Play Power Chords click the linkHow to Play Power Chords for Guitar

To download a printable version in Adobe Acrobat click the link Minor Seventh Chords 

In this article I have created a simple guitar Tab and music notation of Major Seventh Chords for guitar.  
Major Sevenths have a sweet sound about them,  many of the seventies tunes by acoustic bands were full of major seventh chords.  A clasic example from the sixties would be ‘Don’t let the sun catch you crying’.  Another would be Magnolia by JJ Cale.
I have done them as triads, threenote chords.  I like using triads, they have a lot of bounce in them and are very movable. 

To download the free guitar tab and notation click on the 
Major Seventh Chord Triads for Guitar TAB and Notation