Fingerboard Stories
In my formative years, my guitar teacher Jean-Marc Guenette gave me a set of strumming exercises to work on. These exercises had me counting a series of 16th notes, strumming on some, not on others, all while keeping a constant down-up motion with my right hand.
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In 2019, Bryan amassed a collection of songs written in just a couple of months. He and his friends rented an Airbnb in Florida, threw some mattresses on the walls to create a makeshift studio and recorded what was to be his debut album DeAnn (named after his late mother). It was also around this time that the YouTube video for the song “Heading South” was uploaded to YouTube.
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Nashville session guitarist Ray Edenton is often credited with developing this tuning, looking for a way to get more jangle out of the acoustic guitar while reducing the inherent boomy-ness of the instrument. What he got were the jangly characteristics that are common on a 12-string guitar without the lower octaves adding any low end to the sound.
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When I started teaching guitar, I began by using whatever method books the schools and music stores used but found that the exercises were just that, exercises. Good lessons, but nothing that the student wanted to play. Anyone who tries their hand at guitar wants to play songs and riffs and doesn’t care for scales and theory (at least not at first).
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Probably one of the most famous songs to make use of a capo, Don Felder originally wrote the song in E minor. While the original version had some weight because of where the chords sat in the guitar’s range, it was out of range for Don Henley’s voice. So, out comes the capo and seven (!) frets later, “Hotel California” took its final shape in the key of B minor.
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