The Practice Room

Intellishred

Alfred Publishing and the National Guitar Workshop bring us Intelli-Shred: The Thinking Musician's Guide to Incredible Guitar Soloing. Intelli-Shred offers an in-depth look into the mechanics and concepts behind guitar solos by artists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Randy Rhoads, John Petrucci, and others. Exercises and etudes challenge and motivate students and enable them to build strength, speed, dexterity, and fretboard knowledge. An enclosed CD included demonstrates all the examples in the book. You can order it from the National Guitar Workshop’s on-line store.

[TJH]

Making Music

Making Music is a magazine dedicated to amateur musicians. (The tag line: “Better Living Through Recreational Music Making.”) The web site has almost as much useful information as the magazine, and is definitely worth a browse. Some of the current stories:
   - Creating Community the Classical Way, about the Chicago Classical Guitar Ensemble – 10 amateur guitarists of varying skill levels rehearse once a week and perform in public twice a year.
   - Do You Have Tender Tendons? “Musicians, like athletes, should know how to treat tendonitis, so an acute case doesn’t become chronic, impacting your ability to play.”
   - Give Me Just a Little More Time ..., about facilitating a group of Weekend Warriors from across the generations trying to play rock ‘n’ roll together.

Making Music is a long, long way from the guitar-hero-driven mags most of us a familiar with. (You’ll never see Slash on the cover.) The focus is on amateurs, regardless of instrument. I’ve come across the occasional error  (“Learning the classical guitar, a centuries-old variant that uses nylon strings and is tuned an octave lower than steel-string guitars, might seem daunting to some…”), but that may be a small budget/big topic problem. Anyway, I like to see my fellow duffers get the spotlight every now and then.

[TJH]

Best flatpicking

Flatpicking Guitar Magazine has just released the "Best of the First Ten Years" on four CD-Roms. The compilations include articles published from November/December 1996 (Volume 1, Number 1) through September/October 2006 (Volume 10, Number 6). The discs include:

Volume One: Cover Story Articles: every cover story article that was published during FGM's first ten years, including the transcriptions and tabs. 

Volume Two: Guitar Builder Articles: fifty Guitar Builder articles, plus 14 guitar reviews and 11 articles about guitar building by Don Gallagher. 

Volume Three: Rhythm Guitar Articles: includes 90 rhythm guitar articles (with tabs) and 29 interviews with rhythm guitar players.

Volume Four: Editor's Pick Song Transcriptions: includes 147 song transcriptions.

All are available through FGMs's web site, www.flatpick.com

[TJH]

Thinkin’ About Your Body

Musicians, like athletes, practice a craft that takes a toll on their bodies and, again like athletes, they don’t like to admit it. A recent Northwestern University study found that almost all incoming freshman music majors – freshmen - already have a playing-related physical ailment. Hearing problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, shoulder problems from bad playing posture - all are familiar to players almost regardless of instrument. Throw in years of traveling from one low-paying gig to another in the back of a van, eating fast food and breathing second-hand smoke – it’s enough to make you change to a safer job, like rodeo clown.

Dr. Kris Chesky, a physician with a doctorate in music education, has developed a specialty in saving musicians from themselves. At the University of North Texas Center for Music and Medicine, he helps musicians with playing-related health problems like hearing loss. He's published studies on the wrist impairments of clarinet players, the painful hands of pianists and the damaged mouths of trumpeters. And he's using technology to measure the exact sound levels classical musicians expose themselves to. That’s right – it’s not just rock players who have decibel excess. College marching bands, for example, can get awfully loud (and it can’t help that they’re playing marching band versions of “Louie, Louie”, either.)

For more, here’s an interview with Dr. Chesky from the Dallas Morning News.

[TJH]

New WorkshopLive Feature: Find A Teacher In your Area

WorkshopLive has just installed a new feature, the Teacher Resource Program. In a nutshell: students can find teachers by country, state and city (we list teachers in the U.S. and Canada); teachers can sign up to  be listed.

This is a great service that will help you find the right teacher and help us promote WorkshopLive as a great supplement for any teacher's lessons, since we don't believe that WorkshopLive can replace real music teachers.

The Teacher Resource Program is not only limited to listing teachers who teach an instrument currently available at WorkshopLive, but is open to all instruments. WorkshopLive teachers are marked with "WL Approved."

Wherever you are, use our Teacher Resource Program and find the teacher of your choice.

Peter

More things my guitar teacher used to say

Success in music takes three things: talent, luck and hard work. The only one you can do anything about is the last one, so work hard, and forget about talent and luck. They'll take care of themselves.

[TJH]

Practicing

"If you don't have time to practice,then you should get out of the business."

   - Jazz pianist BIlly Taylor, quoted in Larry Coryell's Improvising: My Life In Music

[TJH]

Latest Lessons at WorkshopLive

Here's a brief summary of new music lessons WorkshopLive has added recently:

Guitar:

• Using Major Scales to Solo over Triads - Tom Dempsey
• The One-Finger G7 Chord and 3/4 Time - Lou Manzi
• The Full A Minor and E Minor Chords - Lou Manzi
• Time: Rhythms, Beats, and Measures - Lou Manzi
• Notes on the 2nd String - Lou Manzi
• Time: Rhythms, Beats, and Measures - Susan Mazer

Keyboard:

• 7th Heaven: Dominant 7th Chords - Andrea Amos
• Intervals Revisited: Minor and Major Intervals - Andrea Amos
• A Scale of Minor Importance: Introduction to Minor Scales - Andrea  Amos

New lessons are published constantly; check WorkshopLive's home page frequently or look for news in The Practice Room.

Peter

So you want to be a musician

A music lesson from piano master Dr. John’s autobiography, Under a Hoodoo Moon:

“There would be times when Johnny [Vincent] called me up and said, “Call a session for eleven; I’ll be there at three with the money.” We’d do the session – Johnny wouldn’t show up. This happened so many times that me and Huey Smith and a bunch of us had to go stick Johnny up at the record distributor’s office to get the money he owed us. We held a gun on him while he went through his shoes, drawers and trousers. This didn’t seem to phase Johnny; it was nothing personal, and he’d try the same #&*$% on us a few weeks later. And a few weeks after that, we had to track him down and stick him up again for our dough.”

[TJH]

Practice Tips from Greg Horne

1. Do it a lot, but pay attention to what you're doing so that you don't waste your own life. Remember to consciously enjoy the sounds you and your instruments make. Listen, watch, listen, enjoy, listen...

2. "Learning" and "practicing" and "playing" aren't necessarily the same. "Learning" is the part when you're doing it wrong a lot and trying to figure out how to do it right. "Practicing" is when you're making a habit. "Playing" is when you do what you've built as a habit. Sometimes it helps to think about which verb you are enacting at any given moment.

Check out Greg's lessons on WorkshopLive.

[TJH]