Yesterday, Seattle had one of those rare once-every-five-years storms, covering the city with enough snow to ski on. My buddy Jake and I took full advantage, skiing about five miles around Green Lake and taking a pit stop at bar for an Irish Coffee. Here’s the footage. (YouTube Video)
The Heartwood Beat, Issue 11: Tuning Your Guitar
Did you know that it’s impossible to tune a guitar perfectly? I don’t mean impossible as in, “It’s impossible to play an entire gig without some joker yelling ‘Freebird!’” I’m sure that’s happened somewhere. I mean impossible as in, Swedish-physicists-in-lab-coats-standing-around-a-guitar-shaking-their-heads impossible. To fully explain why, we’d need to talk about Greek philosophers experimenting with harps, and Bach’s contemporaries arguing about …
Stand By Me, Wherever You May Be
In the midst of a hectic day, a student sent this video splicing together musicians from around the world as they perform “Stand by Me.” At this rate, November 2008 will go down in my history as The Month Beauty Kept Making Me Cry. I swear, I’m not usually a crier. Stand By Me If you have the time, watch …
The Naggest of them All
There are some guitar skills you can only teach by nagging. Again and again, you remind the student, until finally, they start reminding themselves. And which skill is The Naggest Of Them All? Play slowly and carefully when you’re practicing something hard. Invariably, when I teach a beginner a hard piece of music, they launch into it much too fast, …
New Business
I’ve followed every crisis in my life with a transformation. I was bullied in middle school until my parents finally transferred me to a different school, where I made friends and discovered my love for the theater. After a bad breakup with a girlfriend, I found a counselor who taught me how improve my relationships with everyone I loved. And …
Arm Injury Update
As many of you know, I hurt my arms this past spring by simultaneously cramming for the first performance with my new band (three days after joining it), preparing for my students’ Coffee Shop Jam (which happened two weeks later), and, in a fit of vanity, trying to do as many push-ups as I could at the gym. Writing that …
Chord Chart Update
I’ve just added 32 new chord charts to my website, and made improvements on a handful of others. It’s a veritable cornucopia of carefully crafted chord chart compositions! You can find all my chord charts here. New Charts: 10,000 Maniacs – Like The Weather Barenaked Ladies – If I Had a Million Dollars Brandi Carlile – Fall Apart Again The …
The Heartwood Beat, Issue 10: The Power of Silence
Dear Faithful Heartwood Beat Subscribers, Hello again! It’s been too long. Since I sent my last newsletter, I managed to injure my arms playing too much guitar (and, though I’m embarrassed to admit it, taking workout advice from an over-caffeinated Hulk Hogan look-alike in a YouTube video). The injury put me out of work for three weeks and continues to …
Comments On the Fritz
The comment function on my blog was busted this past week. It’s up and running now, but if you tried to comment recently, it may not have worked. Sorry!
