Dr. Dave’s Guitar / Music Blog

I have just discovered one of the finest guitarists in the world!

I hope you will forgive me for being a bit “late to the party” if you already know of him. Although I trained as a classical guitarist I have been away from the field for more than a few years as I have delved into jazz and fingerstyle guitar. However, when my former teacher, dear friend, and guitar genius Eli Kassner told me that Roland Dyens was one of the very finest guitarists alive today I had to hear his music! (When Eli talks, wise guitarists listen!)

The second half of Eli’s statement was less welcome: “The concert is already sold out!” Still, I am very appreciative that Eli managed to get out mutual student Markku Wainman into the concert. Hearing Markku and other friends rave about the concert I set about looking for Mr. Dyens CDs. Fortunately my student Karen brought four of Roland Dyens‘ CDs to her next lesson, and WOW! - I was hooked. Besides being one of the world’s top classical guitarists, Mr. Dyens has mastered a wide range of styles in which he is equally impressive.

I will not repeat my review here but I will tell you that I give a quick overview of some of his other CDs before reviewing his new one, Naquele Tempo, which has become one of my favourite CDs already.

Read my review here to see why! (http://davewalkermusic.com/page2/Naquele_Tempo_Review.html)

DO NOT MISS THIS OUTSTANDING ARTIST! You will kick yourself if you do!

You may recall that last summer I performed in Nashville at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention with my student and friend Markku Wainman. That was great fun for me, but I have to tell you that Markku sounds even better on his own. I am glad to see that he has just started his own channel on YouTube. So far he has two videos that are both well worth watching!

First Markku gets mellow with a fine solo guitar version of Blue Moon as arranged by John Knowles. Click here to watch it.

Next he performs at a benefit concert for Haiti, starting with a smoking version of Guitar Boogie that features some incredible improvisation. He then joins banjo, fiddle, and drums for some down home bluegrass pickin’. Click here to watch this one.

I can tell you honestly from watching this young man develop over the past 6 years that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as his talent goes. Expect great things from this young artist!

Thank you to all of you who have taken a minute to do my two-question survey about my Guitar Chord Course. If you are interested: Click here to take Dr. Dave’s 2-question confidential survey

Several of you have noticed that you can leave anonymous comments and questions. I will answer your questions today, but first thank you so much for all of the nice comments about the blog. It makes these long, lonely hours at the keyboard worthwhile to know that people actually read this stuff. On that note, in answer to the first question, our sysop tracks the visits to the site and he tells me that we have 7,500 core readers, with about half again casual readers.

Why did I develop a chord course when there are so many chord books out there? Well, that is precisely why. Over the years I have had dozens of students bring in 2,3, 4, or more chord books to ask which one was best. My feeling is that you should learn the basics of chord construction. That way you can figure out any chord and spice up your own playing. It is a great way to improve your improvisational skills. Also, I cannot imagine anything more boring than memorizing hundreds of chord shapes!

When will the course start? Another good question. I will leave the survey up until February 14 so please sign up by then. Assuming there are enough people for the course to go ahead (and we are almost there already!) I will email you the details on February 15.

How do you pay? I am not asking for any money yet. When we get enough people I will email you payment options, as well as the final cost. And yes, you can back out if you change your mind!

Finally, a number of you have asked for my qualifications, one way or another. PLEASE do not feel embarrassed about asking! I strongly encourage you to check out ANY prospective teacher to be sure that they know the instrument AND they know how to teach. I guess I should have included my qualifications in the last post but to be honest I feel a bit odd going on about myself. Anyway, here is the “brief bio” that the university uses to publicize the course when I teach it there:

“Dr. Dave has been teaching guitar for over 40 years, beginning at the age of 15. After completing an Honours Bachelor of Music (with a minor in Computer Science) at the University of Toronto, he continued by earning two masters degrees, one in Music (specializing in Theory and Criticism) and one in Computer Science (specializing in music technology). He returned to the University of Toronto to complete his Ph.D. in Education specializing in teaching music using instructional technologies. He also completed two doctoral courses in theory with Dr. Edward Laufer.

Besides playing in innumerable rock, country, and jazz bands, Dr. Dave studied classical guitar with Eli Kassner at the University of Toronto, and attended master classes by Christopher Parkening, Alirio Diaz, Oscar Ghiglia, John Mills, Alice Artzt, and Liona Boyd. He has appeared in concert as a classical guitarist and also as a fingerstyle player. For fingerstyle he has studied with Tommy Emmanuel, Laurence Juber, Stephen Bennett, John Knowles, Joscho Stephan, Pat Kirtley, John Standefer, Jim Nichols, and Frank Vignola. He also studied jazz guitar with Tony Bradan (who was recommended to him by Kim Mitchell).

Dr. Dave has taught as a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario, McMaster University, and Mohawk College; he has also been an occasional lecturer at the University of Toronto. He has been invited to lecture at Harvard, Yale, City University of New York, University of Osnabrueck Germany, University of Western Ontario, and the University of Ottawa, as well as presenting at conferences all across the USA and Canada as well as in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Finland, and Hungary.”

Every week I get a few inquiries asking if I will teach via email. Until now I have not had the time to consider email lessons, but for the next few months I have a unique opportunity to try it out.

I have decided that it would be best to start with my Guitar Chord Course, which is a 13-week course I developed for a local university. In this course I teach you how to create any chord wherever you need to play them on the fretboard. I have taught people who could only strum a couple of the most basic chords to jazz players with quite good technique. The idea is to learn the basics of chord construction that will allow you to immediately find the chord you are looking for.

The course would be a once-a-week email lesson in PDF format, with text and chord diagrams. We cover virtually all types of chords: major, minor, major 6, major 7, minor 7, dominant 7, 9, 11, and 13, sus 4, sus 2, fourths, and altered chords. The whole gamut. It will require some work from you, as any good course does. I would suggest practising a minimum of 15 minutes a day - more work will bring quicker results.

I chose this course to start with because it is basic material, it moves into my improvisation course, and it is helpful for any style of music. It has also been extensively tested on all sorts of students. Also important is that it does not duplicate or conflict with any of the instructional products I have reviewed over the years.

I plan to offer the course less expensively than the university one. The final cost will be somewhere between $120 and $150, depending on the number of people who sign up. If a minimum number do not sign up I will not offer the course.

Interested? If you are please go to my survey page and choose “YES” to give me an approximate idea of how many students to expect. You will also have the option to leave your email address - securely - to be notified when (or if) the course is set to start. Your email will not be used for any purpose other than this one email, and will then be deleted unless you are actually taking the course. You will also be given my personal email address for questions once the course has begun.

Click here to take Dr. Dave’s 2-question confidential survey

NOTE: The survey ONLY has two questions: are you interested in the course, and the OPTION to leave your email address if you wish to be notified. It is confidential, and you are under no obligation whatsoever. It is just for my information.

I admit that I have been slow in writing my latest review, but only because I have had so much fun “preparing” for it. I have been spending a good deal of “quality time” with Frank Vignola’s two-CD set Vamps, Jams and Improvisation. Not only can he play, he’s a mighty fine teacher too. Anyone interesting in learning to improvise, or improving their improvisational skills, should definitely check this one out! (I’ll even give you the link to free demos from the course!)

Read my review here: http://davewalkermusic.com/page4/FV_Vamps_Review.html

I have to hand it to James Jensen of Solid Air Records. In their “Groovemaster” series he has managed to pair up unique and incredible combinations of guitarists. The very first one paired Laurence Juber with Preston Reed, and if you have not heard this CD search it out - it is a real gem.

In the latest Groovemasters disc - number 11 - we find Tommy Emmanuel paired up with friend Frank Vignola for a memorable encounter entitled Just Between Frets. For added spice the very talented Gary Mazzaroppi adds his virtuosic (and fretless) bass work. This is an album that a lot of us have been hoping for since we saw Tommy and Frank play together at the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society convention in Nashville last summer. These are two amazing guitar players!

You can read my full review of this remarkable CD on my web site. (http://davewalkermusic.com/page2/JustBetweenFrets_Review.html)

Here’s another great freebie, this time for guitarists.

Guitar Player magazine has posted some really great master classes for guitarists in almost every genre. There are a lot of lessons on this particular page but the link I am giving you is to Laurence Juber’s master class on Composing and Arranging for Solo Guitar: http://www.guitarplayer.com/LessonsVideo.aspx?bctid=41363455001

Enjoy!

Here we are in mid-January, holidays over  and presents a thing of the past. Trying to think of some way to brighten up these dark days I came up with an idea: FREE STUFF!

I thought I would start off with freebies for the classical musicians and music lovers, since I am always amazed at the response to my posts on classical music. One problem for us is finding scores, and then the price of them if we do find what we are looking for. You might think that the Internet could help here and you would be right. There is a fantastic repository of classical scores that you can download for FREE. And it’s even LEGAL!

The site is the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library at http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

There are over 50,000 scores there, all organized by composer, period, genre, and nationality. It is simple to find what you want and just as simple to download it in PDF format.

What’s the catch? Well, there is none, except that they only have works that are in the public domain. Note that this site is housed in Canada, so public domain is governed by Canadian copyright law. But it is probably easiest to go to the composer’s page and see if the work is there.

And if you are wondering, Petrucci is supposed to be the first person to print sheet music using movable type, the sheet music version of Gutenberg. An apt name for an idea that Petrucci would likely love.

Enjoy!

When I reviewed Frank Vignola’s CD Looking Up last summer I included a quote he gave me when we spoke in Nashville: that he did not consider himself a “jazz” guitarist but had a broader view of his musical turf. So how does a CD entitled Standards fit into this non-jazz outlook? Read my review to find out!

(http://davewalkermusic.com/page2/FV_Standards_Review.html)

Twitter

Hawk-eyed reader “Terrence T” has asked why he usually sees two links to my reviews here on the blog. Hopefully you will see both of them above, and either one should work fine. However, some blog software tends to lose links, so I put in the actual URL so that you can copy-and-paste it into a browser if your software will not let you just click on it.

If you are wondering how Terrence contacted me, he added a comment to the blog, and said in it that he did not want it posted but wanted it “treated like an email”. That does work and it is anonymous, but it is also a bit cumbersome. If you are following me on Twitter, remember that you can send me private email there. That is a LOT easier. (I am DrDaveGuitar on Twitter.)

Also, one caveat about Twitter: Be careful about the personal information you put on it, or on any other social networking software like Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, etc. What you put there is public and could be misused by miscreants.

I have just returned from a trip to Northern California. What an amazing feeling it is to stand in the redwood groves there, among trees that are over 3,000 years old! I find that a staggering age to imagine. These trees were growing before Homer wrote the Odyssey and Iliad. They were already 1,000 years old when Julius Caesar was assassinated; when Jesus walked the earth; and when Ptolemy was writing in Egypt.

Balancing this euphoria were barren hillsides where clearcutting had destroyed huge swaths of the primeval forest. This reminded me that I have been meaning to write about the Forest Stewardship Council and Greenpeace’s Music Wood campaign. The point of these initiatives is to be responsible for the remaining wood resources so that ours is not the last generation to be able to make guitars from wood.

I am happy to report that most major guitar makers are taking an active role in these initiatives, including Martin, Taylor, Gibson, Fender, Guild, and many others. I would urge you to look for responsible luthiers when considering your next guitar. If we work together we can help ensure fine wood guitars for musicians in future generations.

Read more about the Forest Stewardship Council and the Music Wood campaign at http://www.musicwood.org/campaign.htm

NOTE: You can follow me on Twitter, where I am DrDaveGuitar. I’ll be tweeting stuff that is coming as well as things that do not fit into the blog but are still very interesting. Check it out!