December 2010 Blog Posts (13)

Recently, I've been studying scale, pentatonic + blues notes. I have a few questions, hoping someone could help me with......? I'm trying not to get to complicated an stress out, an being a mere beginner, I'm hopping to keep this as simple as possible, so here goes.......

Are these five pentatonic forms w/ or w/o the blues notes movable? Ok, I read they were.

Are they always named from notes on the 6th string? I.e. G pentatonic, C pentatonic, D pentatonic, etc?

If so, then then… Continue

One of the greatest challenges facing the guitar teacher is finding good students, and avoiding bad students. Good students can be defined as interested, eager to work, and enthusiastic about learning guitar. They are stimulating to teach, they make you feel like you are getting "money for nothing"! Bad students are the opposite, the agony of being in the lesson is quite evident on their faces, and as the teacher, you feel like someone has opened one of your veins, and… Continue

So, it's almost the end of 2010, another decade that flew by!  However, each passing year is a stage of development much needed to create the artist I have become.  I have many visions of my musical future and this coming year feels like it's the turning point for me.  I have not visited this site much, in fact, this is my first EVER blog, and I think I am going to like this. I want to extend my warmest wishes to all of you that are reading this, and my hopes are that you too, will envision…

Continue

My Hometown had a local radio station that would play nothing but Beatles songs all day long on Christmas.  I was first exposed to Beatles music as a child around 1967.  I had teenage uncles and aunts who had all the records and became a little Beatlemaniac pretty quickly. Watched the old Beatles cartoon on TV too.

The second album I ever bought for myself was the White Album in 1968....saved all my change and they had to use a counting machine to verify the $11 amount. Had a little…

Continue

A Merry Christmas to all at the acousticguitarcommunity. My fingerpicking guitar video of the classic song, The Christmas Song (chestnuts roasting by an open fire) http://www.fingerpickingguitar.org/category/guitar-blog/

 

I'm happy to announce that we've just completed a new Big Guitar Wall for the well-known and renowned archtop builder, Peter Hopkins. Here's a peek a the new Hopkins Guitar Wall located at http://hopkinsguitars.theguitarwall.com.…

Continue

The new cd is here & I am so excited about getting the music out!! The 15 tracks feature guitar, harp guitar, percussion, and even a string quartet on one track. It should be available for purchase on my website, www.stephaniejackson.com, by the end of the day (12/21/10); until then, email me if you want to purchase a cd!

If anybody was looking for ideas for their Dads christmas present……I recently came across an old film now re-released on DVD, “Talmage Farlow” ( available on Amazon !!!) that was a great inspiration to me when I first watched it in the early 80′s. The film looks at the life of Tal Farlow, recognised as one of the all time great jazz guitarists, who came to promenance in the 1950′s. After a 10 year spell at the top of Jazz, Tal turned away from the jazz spotlight to lead a quiter life in New…

Continue

I always talk about capturing the first ever good take on a song I record. I strive to capture songs in one take if possible, maybe two if I mess up bad. I call this keeping the feeling of a song and find the more I rehearse the more the feeling is lost, so I stopped rehearsing (a luxury of being solo acoustic).



Neil Young just said something very relevant to my own approach.

Perhaps some of you might find this relevant for you too.

Here's an excerpt from the full 34 minute… Continue

By way of introduction - Myspace very kindly ripped out all their RSS feeds - which means The Rawmarsh Mashers Blog went missing from it's usual haunt on our profile page.



If you want to keep really up todate with whats going on in South Yorkshire then please head off HERE and BOOKMARK THE PAGE INTO YOUR FAVOURITES - make sure you call back often.



Every now and then we'll… Continue

I've spent literally thousands of hours developing, building, managing and marketing The Guitar Wall, and and now I'm able to share some of that experience along with a wealth of resource information from the Wall that's never before been available until now. I written a book about it called, The Guitar Wall Guide.



Hundreds of thousands of guitar players and enthusiasts have come to visit The…

Continue

I know that I am supposed to sight read but I would like to be able to scan treble cleft music into the computer and end up with that and tablature that I could edit. This would help a lot in figuring out the fingering. A program such as SmartCcore will scan the music from my songbook. I have trial copies of Power Tab, MusEdit and Guitar Pro.6 that will do the last part. The programs don't seem to have any common formats. In other words they won't talk to each other. Am I asking too much. I can… Continue

I was flipping through Robert Henri's The Art Spirit before I began my

guitar practice tonight. This book has more pieces of paper sticking

out of it then any book on art theory that I own. So many great thoughts

that apply to any creative process. Henri had a connection with his

muse on all levels that I admire. He was more than capable to express

his connection in words. He says: " A line is not good because it is

like a line. A line is good because of it's… Continue