About The Heartwood Beat
My newsletter, The Heartwood Beat, is a way for me to keep in touch with people who like this website. I send it every few weeks or so.
The Beat features:
- Chord chart update announcements
- Playing tips
- Product reviews
- Recommendations for my favorite instructional materials
- Updates regarding the instructional DVDs I'm producing
- Reflections on music and teaching
It does not feature:
- Spammy links
- Annoying ads
- Promotion of products to increase your virility (though I suppose some might argue guitars perform that function...)
Here's a sample newsletter:
Dear Musicians, Welcome to the first Heartwood Guitar Newsletter. I'd like to begin by extolling the virtues of power chords.
I love power chords. They're so easy to play, yet so useful, that some bands have made careers playing little else (not that I would recommend this). If a jazz chord is a Shakespearian love sonnet, then a power chord is a big, wet kiss.
Here are more reasons to love power chords:
1. Beginners can play them using just one fingering. To change chords, just scoot up and down the neck. Stick to power chords with a root note (the lowest note) on the 6th string at first--they're easier. And if you lower your 6th string to a D (called drop-D tuning), you can play power chords with one FINGER by barring the 6th, 5th, and 4th strings.
2. Power chords sound great with lots of distortion. "Normal"
major and minor chords have three kinds of notes: A 1st, a 3rd, and a 5th (they're called triads for this reason). These notes normally sound lovely together, but when you crank up distortion, the 3rd creates all this muddy dissonance. Power chords have no 3rd--they're made of just 1sts and 5ths, which is why they're notated with a 5 (as in A5 or G5).3. Power chords are neither major nor minor. If the keyboard player is playing Am, you can play A5. Now she's switching to an A major chord? Keep chugging on A5--you need to save energy for that 10-minute solo coming up...
4. Power chords aren't just for long-tressed hessians. They were the first kind of harmony, after the octave, to be accepted by composers of Gregorian chants.
Don't know a power chord from a Power Ranger? Here's some tablature. The notes in parentheses are optional.
E5 F5 A5 B5
E||-------------------------------|
B||-------------------------------|
G||-----------------(2)-----(4)---|
D||-(2)-----(3)------2-------4----|
A||--2-------3-------0-------2----|
E||--0-------1--------------------|For more information on power chords, check this out:
http://guitar.about.com/library/weekly/aa092600c.htmAnd if you'd like to discuss this newsletter, you can leave a comment at the corresponding entry on my blog:
http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=82Thanks for reading,
Rob
Heartwood Guitar Instruction, 820 NW 51st St., Seattle, WA 98107, USATo unsubscribe or change subscriber options visit:
http://www.aweber.com/z/r/?sample/each/subscriber/gets/their/own/special/code
