Dr. Dave’s Guitar / Music Blog

Wow! The response to my article on self-publicity has been incredible. Thank you to all of you who wrote for all of your kind words. One question was asked so often that I thought I should answer it right away. It was this:

So are all PR firms a waste of my money?

No. There are some things that a PR firm can offer you, and the most important one is contacts. A good PR firm will be able to get your material to many insiders who will not accept independent submissions. They should have not just a list of these folks, but a good working relationship that can assure that your music gets a fair shot.

There are other reasons too, but it looks like I’ll be doing a follow-up to the follow-up, so stay tuned for more on when to do your own publicity and when not to.

Thank you to everyone who wrote to me about my article on getting reviewed for My Rare Guitarticles! I enjoyed reading your comments and your questions.

I hope that I have answered your questions in my new follow-up article which has just been published, which you can read on the myrareguitars web site. This time I discuss the publicity package an artist needs, and how you can put one together without a press agent or other expensive consulting advice. Some of the best materials that I’ve received for review have come from an artist with a laser printer, a good imagination, and the right information. Learn how to save money while presenting a fully professional image.

And again, I welcome your comments and questions to DrDaveBlogFeedback@gmail.com

Fingerstyle guitarists and enthusiasts will be interested in Fingerstyle 360, a new digital magazine that promises “The Best in Global Fingerstyle Guitar.” Issue #1 is now available. It features music from such fingerstyle favorites as Adam Rafferty, Bill Piburn, and Simon Fox as well as harp guitarist Keith “The Viking” Medley.

Check out the Fingerstyle 360 web site.

Laurence Juber’s new CD Soul of Light is something of a departure for LJ. It is an introspective and elegiac walk through his compositional output that maintains a consistent mood through songs from 1990-2011. This is not a “greatest hits” compilation but it does include a good selection of earlier work that might be missing from a fan’s collection.

Read my full review for details.

If you have not yet heard about Eastwood Guitars you should head right over to eastwoodguitars.com for a real treat. They make some of the coolest guitars on the planet at prices that even musicians can afford. One of their signatures is resurrecting styles from the past and today I want to introduce you to the very cool Sidejack VI bass.

This instrument grabbed me at first sight and tugged at my inner bassist. It is so unique: it has a great retro vibe in the Mosrite-style body with a roller bridge and that Fender-style tremolo arm. I know that most people think Fender when they think of a 6-string bass (especially if you’ve seen it featured in The Beatles’ movie Let It Be) but the Eastwood makes a much stronger visual statement that is sure to grab attention. Whether you want that old Ventures look or just a bass that looks great on stage, you have to check this one out, as well as the other funky bass designs from Eastwood. You may never think about bass the same again!

Tommy Emmanuel’s Little By Little Songbook is a fingerstyle guitarist’s dream come true. This incredible collaboration between Tommy TV and Truefire sets a new gold standard by which all other learning products will be judged. 16 songs from what is arguably Tommy Emmanuel’s finest album yet, superbly taught on Truefire’s state-of-the-art technology.

Tommy is at the top of his game in both the performances and the teaching breakdowns for each song. Combine this with the Truefire player that lets you concentrate on a wide variety of angles, loop any section, slow parts down, follow along with notation and tablature, and you will be learning like you never have before. Just be sure to set aside lots of practice time, because once you start working with this amazing 3-DVD set you are not going to want to stop.

Read my full review for more info on the best learning resource I have ever seen!

When is “free” too expensive?

I’m thinking about free music lessons. For some reason this has been a hot topic this week among colleagues, friends, students, and folks I meet. There are so many free lessons on theory, guitar, improvising, you name it - why would anyone ever want to actually pay for a lesson?

Let me tell you up front that I would not waste my time with most of the free “lessons”  that are available online. If I’m going to work on material in my practice time, I want it to improve an aspect of my playing that needs it, and I want it to be effective and efficient. I also look for the best teachers I can find for the subject matter. So here’s what I have against most free lessons:

1) You usually get what you pay for. While there are some good free tips around, these are a slim minority of what are presented for free. Most of these seem to be posted at random, with none of the planning or focus of serious learning tools. And yes, I do give free tips on this blog occasionally, but these are meant to augment what you are (hopefully) learning elsewhere, not as a complete course in anything. (I do teach privately, and will have a complete theory course coming out later this spring, but they cost money. It’s a job I love, but it also pays the bills.)

2) There IS harm in trying some of it. I used to think that almost anything was worth a try, but as I’ve gotten older I have seen a lot of stuff that is not just wrong, but is grossly misleading. Over the last month alone, I’ve been sent parts of courses for comment that are so off-base that a student would have to spend month unlearning the biggest mistakes before actually learning a better way of doing things. Yes, there are many roads to “the truth” but not every road leads there, not even most of them. It’s like getting bad directions when driving: you waste time, get lost, and often have to re-trace your whole route just to get back to where you started.

3) You waste your valuable time. The majority of players that I know have day jobs, and so have a limited time to both play and practise. We all progress by working on our weaknesses, and we progress quickest when we have the best learning materials. My experience as a student, teacher, researcher, and reviewer has shown me that the best materials cost money. Still, there are real bargains that make some of these inexpensive, mostly through economies of scale, where the author sells enough to be able to keep the price low while still earning a living. When you are thinking of the cost of a DVD or book, factor in the cost of your own limited time and the investment that you will be making in learning the material. What will you have accomplished when you finish the material? Is it closer to where you want to be?

4) The best teachers can become discouraged. This may be the most insidious problem of supposedly free lessons. For anyone wanting to learn to play guitar we are living in a Golden Age. Some of the very best players of all time are willing to teach! Want to learn fingerstyle guitar? Tommy Emmanuel will be happy to show you how. Or Laurence Juber. Take your pick from all sorts of great players. Want to learn fingerstyle jazz? Martin Taylor will teach you. Jazz improvisation? Robert Conti has all sorts of courses from your very first solo to pro-level choruses. Rock more your style? Alex Lifeson will teach you classic Rush songs. BUT what all of these greats have in common is great demands on their time, so if the time they spend creating these materials doesn’t seem worthwhile - if they don’t sell - then that time will be directed elsewhere, and we all lose out. Besides, maybe the best in the field actually do have something to teach you.

Some Real-World Examples

Let me wind up with some actual examples from the past few weeks. My attention was directed to a web site full of free lessons consisting of dozens of arcane “modes” that were nothing more than arpeggios of altered dominant 7 chords. You could spend months learned these “modes” and yet still be completely mystified when it came to using them in a solo over a real tune. Knowing the basis of chord construction makes the entire “course” obsolete and needlessly confusing.

Parts of another course, this one actually somewhat expensive, was sent to me by a disgruntled purchaser who had read a positive review of it in a magazine for which I sometimes write. The pages he sent were again not just confusing but confused as well, this time mixing up the names of modes with the functions of chords on scale degrees. A good understanding of what a key is, and how to form its chords, would not only make this whole topic redundant, but would also show it as the “baffle-gab” it is: the use of impressive-sounding terminology to hide the actual lack of content.

On the positive side I’ll mention Robert Conti’s Ticket To Improv Volume Four, which I gave a rave review (see my last post). For $25, less than what I would charge for a 30-minute lesson, you get months of instruction focussed on learning jazz improvisation, plus a whole range of tips from creating your own style to speeding up your picking. No it’s not free, but depending on your level and free time to practise it can end up costing between $1-2 per “lesson” and you end up with four great solos to play. PLUS every one sold is one more reason for Mr. Conti to continue to spend his time creating DVD courses, time which could be spent gigging or recording or just relaxing.

So remember: Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware of “free” lessons. They may be more costly than you think.

And let’s keep the good teachers in business.

Aspiring jazz guitar improvisers as well as gigging players will be happy to know that Robert Conti has released Volume Four of his incredibly successful series Ticket To Improv. As with previous volumes, it features four excellent jazz guitar solos over the progressions of jazz standards, which Robert Conti teaches two bars at a time. Along the way, Mr. Conti adds so many helpful tips and variants that there are months of lessons concealed in this single DVD. But here’s the secret - these solos are so much FUN to play that you may not even notice that you are improving at a rapid rate!

For Volume Four, Robert Conti has chosen four great jazz standards: Days of Wine and Roses, Wave, Bluesette, and Georgia On My Mind. Each solo is a real gem, and you learn to play jazz the old-fashioned way: by playing jazz. That sounds obvious until you realize that Mr. Conti was for years the only major teacher who taught this way. Now that so many others are piling on his bandwagon, this DVD shows just how far they have to go to catch up!

If you want to learn to improvise jazz, or to improvise better, my recommendation is just to buy this DVD. At $25 it is one of the best bargains I know of. If you want more information, read my full review here.

Highly recommended!

Those of you who have a recording, or a friend with a recording, or are thinking of recording might want to head over to the My Rare Guitars web site for some of my tips on getting reviewed. In my article I discuss what you should - and should not - include with a CD that you send to a reviewer or critic. I also give tips on how to stand out from the pack and get your music noticed. All of this is based on the over 1,000 CD’s I have received for consideration for reviews, as well as discussions with other reviewers and critics.

I have already received so much feedback from the article that I am working on a follow-up on how to do your own promotion; to save money and still get professional-level results. If you have any suggestions or questions for that article please write to me at DrDaveBlogFeedback@gmail.com - and remember that I will NOT add you to any list or sell or otherwise give out your email address. In fact, I delete every message as soon as I have read it. Your privacy is safe.

Great news from truefire.com : Truefire is offering their annual “Egg Hunt” which means that until April 10, 2012 ALL of their courses are 50% off! They have a huge selection of really great courses, so now is the time to start learning that style you’ve been thinking about but just have not gotten around to yet.

My post on Ben Lacy brought in a whole new bunch of questions about Truefire.com so I thought I would answer them here.

Truefire is the largest online repository of guitar (and bass) lessons and the quality is top-notch. I checked them out a couple of years ago, and signed up for the free lessons to see how good they really were. I learned a lot and finally joined the mailing list. Then using the cash credits from signing up and the discounts from the list I bought my first course for under $10. I loved it and have been a fan of Truefire ever since. When I decided to do a video course on the essentials of music theory for guitar players, I turned down a more lucrative offer to do one for Truefire because they are the type of people I like to be associated with. Now I’m working with them on a number of guitar courses, helping out with the educational aspects, and Ben Lacy’s was the first of what I hope will be many excellent collaborations.

I recommend that you check out Truefire. Just go to truefire.com and try a free lesson on a course that interests you. Or search for Truefire on YouTube. And when you are looking for a course, they are the place to go. For the cost of a couple of guitar magazines you get something that no magazine will give you - a full course on just the topic you want to learn, from guitarists whose specialty it is.