Need to Make Up a Class?

Seeing your family this weekend? Show off what you've learned!

It's a holiday weekend coming up, so I expect some of you--particularly the Sunday folks--might need to miss a class. No problemo! You can drop into any Guitar 1 class this week and do a make up.
Remember that the Old Town School week starts on Monday and ends on Sunday, so if you know you can't come to the Sunday class, you'll need to attend a make-up BEFORE your normal class time.

I teach Guitar 1 on Thursdays at 8:30pm and on Sundays at noon. Both are in room B6 at the Lincoln Avenue branch of the school. Feel free to stop either of those if you can't make your regular session.

But if neither of those times will work for you, there are lots of other options. Click here for the full Guitar 1 schedule. (Just be careful as you're scrolling through because about halfway down it switches over to the NEXT session, which starts in April.)

It can be great to sit in on another teacher's class and get a different perspective, so please feel empowered to do so! Stop by the front desk or call 773-728-6000 to find out room numbers.

Free Workshop

Hiya gang!
A few blogs ago, I told you about the sad, sad crack in my guitar, and the importance of machine maintenance. That might've gotten you worried about how to look after your own instrument but never fear! The Old Town School is here to help.

On April 13th, there will be a FREE workshop on the care and feeding of guitars at 1pm in the Different Strummer music store. It'll answer burning questions such as:
"What strings should I use? Can I use polish on this? How often do I change my strings? What kind of case is right for me? I broke one of my strings what do I do? Pegwinders? Fingerboard conditioning? Straplocks? Humidifiers?"

I highly recommend attending if you can. It'll be extremely informative, and FUN!
Full details here.

Happy Birthday to...Megan's Dad!

Megan from my Sunday class was supposed to remind me to show her how to play Happy Birthday for her dad this week, and we both forgot! Sorry about that, but with luck you'll read this. We couldn't have done it until the very end anyway because it requires the shiny new G chord that we've only just learned.

I assume that we ALL know people that have birthdays, so I figured this was a good lesson to share with all of you. But before I just give up the goods here, see if you an figure it out yourself. You know the song, don't you? I'll give you a hint: you only need three chords.

Ok ok, I'll narrow it down even further for you: the three chords in question are D, A, and G.

Sing the tune to yourself and monkey around with those three chords and see if you can figure out the pattern by ear. Go ahead! It won't hurt and you'll feel SO good if you can decode the song yourself. If you're still stumped after you give it the old college try, scroll past these pictures I found when I Googled "guitar birthday" for the answer. (But try to resist cheating and only use it to check your own hard work, mmmkay?

 

Highlight the text below to reveal answer:
             D                  A
Happy birthday to you

              A                  D
Happy birthday to you

              D                           G
Happy birthday to dear whoever

             D              A  D
Happy birthday to you

Now Trending: John Denver

Look what just came across my digital desk--
There's a new tribute to John Denver coming out next month, but NPR is streaming the album now on their website. The first track is My Morning Jacket, covering none other than Leaving on a Jet Plane! Lots of other great artists contributed tunes too, including J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. fame (one of my favorites).
See? Stick with me, guys. Even when we play classic tunes, we're being hip and edgy. Nice little write up on John Denver's life and times in this article too. Check it out.

Strumming Suggestions

Oh Ringo

Mark from the Thursday class e-mailed me to ask for a recap of the strumming patterns we've used for each tune we've done in class--what a great idea! Happy to oblige.

A couple of things to note:

1) I may or may not have ACTUALLY used this in class. I sorta go by feel and even though I have a strumming pattern written down on my lesson plans, it's entirely likely that I came up with something different when we were all together. If you wrote down a pattern on your song sheet that doesn't match up with what I put here in the blog, have no fear because...

2) These are only suggestions! There are lots of different ways to strum a tune--so long as you stick with the same number of beats per measure (which, for every song we've done so far is 4)--and I heartily encourage you to experiment. At least take a run at placing the emphasis in different spots and listening to the effects. What happens when you really sock it to the ONE and keep quieter on the 2,3,4? How does it change things when you put the heaviness on the 2 and the 4? Does that make you want to shake your groove thing? Rhythm is as important to the mood of a song as the chords themselves, so take time to play with it, listen to what you're doing, and reflect on what's happening.

I'll use V to indicate a down strum, and ^ to indicate an upstrum. Remember that down strums always happen on the beat (1 2 3 4), and up strums happen on the "and" after each beat (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +)

Pay Me My Money Down:
V V V V

Jambalaya:
V V V V
(try emphasizing the 2 and the 4 like, chick BOOM chick BOOM)

My Home's Across the Smoky Mountains:
V V V V
(or if you want to get fancy, try V  V^ V  V^ like, boom chick-a boom chick-a)

Sons and Daughters:
V^  V^  V^  V^
(put the emphasis on the down strums and keep the up strums light, like CHUG-a CHUG-a CHUG-a CHUG-a)

Leaving on a Jet Plane
V  V  V^ V^
(one two three-and four-and)

Galway Bay
V
(just play one chord per measure, but arpeggiate it, meaning slowly strum the bottom 4 strings only, one at a time, one on each beat. It should sound harp-like)

Another Saturday Night
V  V^  V^  V^
(emphasize the first beat BOOM chick-a chick-a chick-a)

Sunshine
V^  V^  V^  V^ 
(try the BIG little strum and emphasize the 1 and the 3, like CHUG-A chug-a CHUG-A chug-a)

Quick Check-In

OK gang, with three classes behind us, we've made ENORMOUS progress, but your head is probably spinning. Here's a quick recap of the major things we've covered so far. If any of this seems foreign or confounding beyond reason, e-mail me so I can get you caught up.

We know what to call the parts of the guitar; especially the strings and how they are named and numbered from ceiling to floor-- EADGBE (654321)

We see our fingers as numbers: Thumb=T, Pointer/Index=1, Middle=2, Ring=3, Pinky=4

We understand that tuning is very important and we get the basic idea of tuning the guitar--even if we still need an electric tuner or a teacher to help us along

We know how to read a chord diagram

Chords:
D, A7, A, E, Em, E7, G (two fingerings)

Rhythms:
Quarter notes -
(down strum on each beat in a measure of 4 beats--4 strums total: V V V V)
Eighth notes -
(down-up strums on each beat in a measure of 4 beats--8 strums total: V^ V^ V^ V^)

We can not only make the chord shapes, but we have some strategies for maneuvering smoothly in and out of them in various combinations

We talked about different ways of combining quarter notes and eighth notes into a wide range of strumming patterns, and also experimented with placing the emphasis on different beats in the pattern for added musical flavor and color ("BIG little" strumming with the emphasis on the 1st and 3rd beats; backbeat strumming with the emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats)

We're sitting up straight, tapping our feet, and brushing the strings lightly with a thumb or a relaxed grip on a pick, and we're singing all together with gusto

We understand how to read a song sheet, and play songs out of the song book

We can play:
Pay Me My Money Down
Jambalaya
My Home's Across the Smoky Mountains
Sons & Daughters
Leaving On A Jet Plane
Galway Bay
Another Saturday Night
Sunshine
(and if you look through your Old Town School Songbook, you'll find a whole slew of additional tunes that only use the chords you've learned. Give 'em a try!)

We've also started to talk a little bit about the different musical keys, and how chords are built from the notes in a scale.


You GUYS...look at how huge this list is! And you've only been playing for two full weeks!
Truly, you are amazing. Do a little rock and roll kick in celebration..and then go practice because we've still got a long way to go!

Singing: It's Not the End of the World

In my Thursday night class, we had a little debate about how to interpret the lyrics of "Leaving on a Jet Plane." The jury is still out on that--I looked up a bunch of online forums and there are as many theories as there are knuckleheads on the internet--but one thing IS for certain: you sing better than Ben Affleck does.



So here's a painful scene from a painful movie--though one of my guilty pleasures*--which I share with you now in order to inspire you to keep on singing in class. I know that when you arrived on the first day and I told that you'd be expected not only to learn a new skill, but to swallow your pride and sing, it felt terrifying and overwhelming. But you're all doing a GREAT job and making me very proud.

Remember, it's not about perfection. It's about heart. Some of my favorite performers are, frankly, terrible singers but I could listen to them ALL day because of the passion and conviction that they infuse into their art. Dylan, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone--none of those guys can sing per se, but I'd still take them over any of the auto-tuned, over-modulated "singers" on the radio today. (and by "radio" I mean streaming online music because that's what they do now, right? Now you kids get the helloffa my lawn!) I'm not the most dynamic singer in the universe either and some of the tunes we do in class are out of my range--a-hem, Sunshine anyone?--but I do it anyway because, well, I have no shame really. And it just feels good to holler.

Be patient with yourself, be at ease in the knowledge that your classmates and I are all here to support and encourage you, have a sense of humor and willingness to be silly, and raise your voice!


*In a past life I was a film student and I once got top marks for an in-depth analysis of Armageddon in which I pointed out--among other astute observations--that despite being a big-budget blockbuster, the cast was comprised mainly of actors known at the time for predominantly "indie" films. Affleck had only appeared in Good Will Hunting, Steve Buscemi was only known for Reservoir Dogs and other obscurities, Liv Tyler had only done extremely artsy movies on the fringe, Owen Wilson and Michael Clarke Duncan were nobodies, Billy Bob Thornton had Slingblade and not much else...hardly the A-List, and an extremely unusual maneuver for a summer box office draw. But look at them all now! Weird, isn't it?
Also, if you make a drinking game out of this movie and hit the bottle every time the American flag makes an appearance, you'll be pretty blitzed by the second act. This works for all Michael Bay movies.

Gosh Dampit!

You may not realize it as a new player, but there are a lot of important physics at work in your guitar-machine. It's not just an assemblage of wood and metal. There are precision relationships of tension and shape that keep your tone sounding the way you'd expect--and these require maintenance.

Dryness is one of the quickest ways to wreck a guitar because the wood warps and cracks, seams come unglued, and all of that beautiful alignment gets knocked out of whack. I'm currently getting an object-lesson in the care and feeding of guitars, which I shall now pass onto you.

During the winter, my radiator-heated apartment is like the Kalahari Desert. Plants get crispy, my skin crackles when I move, and my guitar audibly gasps for moisture. Knowing that this will be the case, I use a Dampit. It's a tubular sponge inside a perforated rubber sleeve which you slip into the sound hole of the guitar to release moisture in a controlled way to maintain the proper humidity inside your instrument. Using the handy humidity gauge that comes with it, I can determine how often I need to replenish the water inside the Dampit to keep my guitar happy and healthy.

Unfortunately for me, one Dampit has not been enough this interminable winter! I probably should've been using three of them and a sound hole cover overnight because, despite my best efforts, I discovered crack in the back of my guitar when I was restringing it on Tuesday. It doesn't help that my apartment is about 80 degrees most of the time (not exaggerating! my radiators are VERY robust!), and several times a week I sling my guitar on my back for a 1+ hour commute--including a pair of 20 minute walks--in the wintry outdoor temps two times per day! It can't be helped, but big temperature fluctuations are another guitar-killer.

At any rate, I'm lucky enough to work at a music school with an excellent store which does repairs! Before class tonight, I'll be dropping off my ax at The Different Strummer for some TLC--probably some aggressive re-humidifying and a bit of a glue job. You might also consider dropping in there and picking up a Dampit of your own! The staff is very friendly and helpful and can assist you with getting to know your own musical pet and the particularities of caring for it. They can also change your strings for you, which is like getting a makeover and will make you feel like a million bucks when you hear how terrific your fresh strings sound.

The Ides of March

It's March 15th, the one day each year when we pause to remember this awesomely-heavy 70s rock anthem from local boys The Ides of March (heck yeah, BERWYN!).*
Great god in heaven you know I love this song.

*Also Julius Caesar was assassinated or something.

What's in a Name?

Found this pic today on one of the many Tumblr feeds devoted to rock and roll that I follow.
Man. If I could find these, I'd totally hand them out in class. Except then when I call on you, I'd refer to you as "Led Zep" and "Pearl Jam" instead of by your real names. (and I think we'd all be ok with that, right?)

Creative Cover Songs

Here's a little preview of a chart I have in mind for Week 2 that'll be useful for getting the shiny new E minor chord into our fingers.

Most of you have probably heard the original Wilco version of this tune, but here's an alternative take from one of my favorite local bands, JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound.

For me personally, when musicians choose to perform a tune that someone made else famous (also known as "covering"), I want the cover version to either be extremely faithful to the original, or else put a completely different spin on it altogether. This is an example of the latter.
(Catch these guys next time they're in town if you can! They really bring it to their live show.)


How about you? What are some of your favorite cover songs?

String Theory

Thanks to Angie, who dropped in on my Thursday night class for a make-up (stop by any time!), we have a handy mnemonic device for remembering the names of the strings in order.
It goes like this:
Every Apple Does Go Bad Eventually
Remember, that's the order from the top down as you're holding your guitar in playing position--from thickest to thinest, closest to your face to closest to the floor. And in descending numerical order from 6 to 1.

Son of a Gun

I came here to post a video of Hank Williams Jr. doing his daddy's tune--which you now know how to play. But in my search I stumbled onto this adorable kiddo. (his squeezebox even has a crawfish on it!? Shut the front door!)
If this doesn't make you smile, you have a heart of stone.
Hunter's foot-tapping is excellent, by the way. Take note!

At any rate, here's the video I meant to post. Hank Williams Jr. was groomed from birth to follow in his father's footsteps--perhaps not the best idea, since Hank Sr. died at 29 from hard livin'. Junior eventually rebelled against being pigeon-holed as a knock-off of his father and developed his own blues- and country-infused southern rock musical style (along with his signature beard, seen in that first clip).

Getting Attuned to Tuning

Please do not smash your guitar,
no matter how frustrating this is at first.
Unless you are Pete Townshend. In
which case, smash away!

Tuning is THE most important thing to master if you want to sound good on the guitar. It's also one of the most confounding when you're new to the instrument--even moreso if you're new to playing music altogether! It's hairy at first, but you'll get it eventually.

[Confidential to my Thursday night students--your teacher had first-day-of-school jitters and forgot to give you the handout on tuning she had so carefully prepared. 1000 pardons. But here's what you need to know...]

The quick and dirty way to tune your guitar is to buy an electric tuner. There are several types, they're pretty cheap and portable, and it's a fail-proof way to get all of your strings sounding the way they ought to without any stress. Some guitars have a built-in tuner, which is awfully convenient. But you can get ones that clip onto the headstock of the guitar or that you simply set in front of you on a music stand or in your lap. Regardless of the style of tuner, you'll pluck each individual string, and watch the tuner to see what it says. It'll usually give you some sort of dial, a plus or minus, or an up or down arrow that's telling you if the string is ringing too high (sharp) or too low (flat). You'll adjust the tuning pegs--tighter to make the sound higher, looser to make the sound lower--until you get the dial to line up right in the center. Using a tuner will help you train your ears to hear the right sounds and relationships too, so that you can eventually move onto...RELATIVE TUNING!

There are two easy ways to tune your guitar by listening. The first one I like to call "The Reality Show"--(and by that I mean I just made that name up as I was typing this). The name of this reality show is "Here Comes The Bride--on NBC":
Pluck your 6th string. Remember, that's the big fat one closest to your chin, otherwise known as your low E. Now pluck the 5th string--the next one down towards the floor, otherwise known as your A. When you play your E followed by you A, it should sound like the first two notes of "Here Comes the Bride". That's a relationship, or 'interval', known as a perfect 4th, if you really wanted to know.
If those two strings in that order don't sound like Here Comes the Bride, adjust your 5th string (A) until they do.

Notice I said to adjust your 5th string, not your 6th string. Leave your low E string alone. When you don't have a tuner (or teacher) handy to verify whether or not your E is really an E, it doesn't matter so long as you tune the rest of the string to that low one. Your guitar will at least produce the correct sound relationships, even if they aren't technically the right notes.
Once you've got your 6th and 5th strings sounding like Here Comes the Bride, move onto your 5th and 4th (D) string. Notice how you're playing different notes now, but the relationship--the interval--between them is the same (once you're in tune, that is). It still sounds like Here Comes the Bride, even though you're playing an A and a D instead of an E and an A. That's because A and D have the same musical relationship as the E and the A--a perfect 4th. Neato, eh?
Now you can move onto your 4th (D) and 3rd (G) strings and rinse/repeat this Bride business.

Here's where things get a wee bit tricky. Your 2nd string (B) messes up our Bridal system, because G and B are NOT in a perfect 4th relationship, goshdarnit! Instead, G and B have a relationship known as a Major Third. A Major Third sounds like the first two notes of "When the Saints Go Marching In" (the "Ohhh when..." bit). For me that's trickier to hear, so instead I use the NBC method to tune my B string. Play the 4th string (D), 2nd string (B), and 3rd string (G) in that order and you should have the NBC theme. If you don't, make adjustments to your B string accordingly. Remember, you've already tuned your D and your G, so if something sounds goofy with one of them, go back a few steps and do the Bride method again on those strings.
Once that's squared away, you can go back to the Bride method on the 2nd (B) and 1st (high E) strings, because those two have the same perfect 4th relationship that we've come to know and love--whew!

Now you should have a guitar that sounds like a guitar, and can produce pleasing chord sounds according the the shapes we've learned.

There's a second method of relative tuning by ear, which is a little trickier to explain by typing, but I'll do my best...
That perfect 4th relationship between the notes of the strings means that, for all the pairs of strings that sounds like Here Comes the Bride (6th and 5th; 5th and 4th; 4th and 3rd; 2nd and 1st) you can put your finger onto the 5th fret of the lower of the two strings (lower in terms of sound, NOT lower in terms of number or distance from your chin) in order to produce the same note as the open top string. So if you've got your finger on the 6th string, 5th fret, it should produce the same note when plucked as the 5th string all by itself. If it doesn't, make adjustments to the OPEN string until it matches the one you're pressing down on at the 5th fret.
Now that pesky B string goofs all of that up, so for the 3rd and 2nd string pairing, you'll need to place your finger on the 4th fret of the G string (3rd string) in order to match it to the open B (2nd) string. If it doesn't match, adjust your B string until it sounds like the G string when depressed at the 4th fret.

Got that? You will. I promise. And we'll spend time at the beginning of each class tuning up together so the whole band sounds good.

Pay Me or Go to Jail

Okay, Guitar 1, we're off and running. After your first class, you've got a D and an A7 chord in your brain, and your fingers are starting to get the message. (If you don't have 'em, let me know so that I can help)

With those two chords, you've got everything you need to tackle one of my favorite tunes in the Old Town School songbook, Pay Me My Money Down, which you'll find on page 93. (We probably played it in class, if things went according to my lesson plan).

I don't know about you, but I love singing "Pay me or go to jail!" It doesn't get more rock and roll than that, though this tune is waaaaay older than that. It started out as a song that stevedores (dock workers) sang down in Georgia when unloading cotton and freight off of ships.

You know who else likes this song? Bruce Springsteen!  And if it's good enough for The Boss, I daresay it's good enough for us. In class, we probably stuck to a straight-forward marching rhythm (one down strum on each beat: one two three four), but listen to the way they shuffle up the rhythm in this video. More of a chuck-a-chuck-a with a down-up strum on each beat. Give that a try when you practice at home--because you're TOTALLY going to practice at home, right? RIGHT?!

Getting bored with the tune because you've practiced it SO much? Change up the lyrics! One of the things I do to help me come up with ideas as a songwriter is make up new words to tunes I already know.
How about Take Me To Funky Town? (credit to my fellow instructor Charles Kim for that one)
What Makes a Monkey Frown?
Hey, See That Funny Clown?
Chasing a Bunny 'round?
I give up. You can do way better...

Folk yeah!

Why, in the year 2013, do we still teach folk music? Because it's our music!
When you flip through the Old Town School songbook, it's an American history lesson (with a smattering of tunes from overseas too). Ours hasn't always been the prettiest history. Folk songs are filled with heartbreak, loss, suffering, injustice, and death. But no matter how bleak times were, there were still reasons to sing--and coming together over music is one of the most powerful ways that humanity works through dark times and moves forward (and also one of the ways we just plain have fun together!). These songs make me feel patriotic and deeply reverent of the privileges I get to enjoy because of the toils my fore bearers had to endure.

I--hopefully--will never know what it's like to lose a child to starvation or cholera; to see my town crumble around me when the mill closes and puts everyone out of work; to be pressed into service and reap no benefits from my labor; to long for my lover from my jail cell window while I await the gallows; to watch my husband drown when his Mississippi riverboat sinks. But I can honor the songs of the oppressed, the persecuted, the impoverished, and the meek. And I can join my voice to the protests of generations that sought to overturn inequality in all its forms and never gave up hope for a future where we can all join hands and sing.

That's to say nothing of the fact that so many of these songs are simple, beautiful, and flexible! It takes seconds to learn the basic chords and melodies, but every musician can put their own personal spin on them. To learn these songs is to be given the building blocks of almost ALL music. No jazz, pop, or rock and roll tune would exist without them. They're built on this same basic foundation. (That being said, we will take on plenty of non-folk tunes in my classes--but you appreciate the hits more when you understand where they come from).

Lesson Number One

Just kidding. We're all in this band together. Speak up!