Category Archive

Hello Heartwood Beat Subscribers, I hope you’re all well and enjoying the start of summer. I’m having fun with my most recent writing project: Creating a beginning guitar course that I’ll offer on my website starting this summer or fall. Chord Chart Update I just posted thirty new chord charts, including a trio of toe-tapping Taylor Swift tunes, a round …

Update: Looks like the clips have been removed from YouTube. Bummer! Today I want to share with you two examples of great music, deconstructed: A classic Rolling Stones recording split into its separate tracks, and an epic analysis of the gorgeous and baffling use of delay effects by U2’s guitarist, The Edge. Gimme Shelter Deconstructed Dangerous Minds turned me on …

Dear Heartwood Beat Readers, Sometimes I come across a rhythm that’s so complicated, or weird, or fantabulishously funky, that I can’t stand it. I’m at the gym on the hamster wheel, listening to this cool groove on my iPod, and I want to grab the poor guy on the machine next to me and yell, “You gotta hear this!” Thankfully, …

I hope you’re all having a great summer. The Heartwood Beat reached 4,000 subscribers since I last wrote. Welcome new readers! Fingerpicking Hand Position This past week I introduced yet another beginner to fingerstyle guitar–that is, picking the guitar with thumb and fingers instead of a flatpick. Every time I teach those first steps–how to orient your picking hand, how …

Hi Heartwood Beat Subscribers, I hope you’re all enjoying February. I want to let you know about several updates I’ve made to the website. Print or Save Function One of the fun things about having a popular guitar instruction website is bumping into people (usually at guitar camp) who’ve printed music from my site to make songbooks. But I wince …

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 …

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 …

Happy Thanksgiving, musicians! I’ll be spending the holiday with my family in California. I’m excited to try a bluegrass song with them this trip, called “Devil’s Dream.” We never played music together when I was a kid, but as my sisters and I have gotten older the family’s been able to find some common ground in our skills and tastes. …

Hi Musicians, First of all, I’d like to welcome all the people who signed up for the newsletter recently. We’re coming up on one thousand subscribers! Holy cow! I’ve been traveling a lot this past month, and The Heartwood Beat went into cardiac arrest as a result. Thanks for your patience. To my amazement, several readers have been clamoring for …

Hi Musicians, Last week I spent six days making music under the trees at the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, and I’m still floating. What a great intellectual, social, and dare I say…spiritual experience. If you like traditional acoustic music (folk, country, blues, western swing), or if you’re a rocker who’s interested in broadening horizons, I highly recommend this camp. More …