Launching Snowdrift.coop

This past week, we launched a fund-drive for Snowdrift.coop. We need to cover legal expenses and further development so the site can begin operating. The fund-drive itself is at snowdrift.tilt.com. Update January 2015: The campaign succeeded!

At Snowdrift.coop, you can read dozens of pages of writings explaining the whole concept in depth. Here at wolftune.com, I focus on my music teaching and related topics.

I Hate Advertising!

My formative years were especially influenced by MAD Magazine. I started reading in the late 1980's, but I quickly amassed a large collection of back issues and book collections going back to the magazine's start in the 1950's. In fact, my introduction to many cultural icons was through MAD's satire of them before I'd even experienced the original. MAD was full of ingenious political and pop-culture satire but perhaps the primary target was advertising.

MAD even attacked the subtle details of things like the proportions of cereal boxes. Every manipulative detail of the ad-biz was ridiculed and laid bare.

Most substantially, MAD magazine itself had no third-party ads from 1957 through 2001. This practice went against all business assumptions about the publishing industry. They did everything backwards. Cheaper paper, black-and-white, no ads, and they purchased the rights to submitted artwork outright so they could use and reuse it freely. They savagely satirized all of America's consumer culture, ad-biz, and celebrity obsessions. Their interests were aligned solely with the readership.

Guest on the Unformatted podcast with Ryno the Bearded

This past week, I was a guest on a podcast show called Unformatted. The host, Ryno the Bearded, does podcasts dedicated to Creative Commons music, and Unformatted is the looser chat/interview show.

Check out the podcast at http://rynothebearded.com/2014/09/mere-exposure-effect

The show is a bit over two hours long and covers topics including: copyright, music business, economics, participatory vs performance-based music, philosophy of art, barbershop harmony, software freedom, and more. Overall, it's a good casual summary of my whole personal story of my life and career and how I came to my current understanding and feelings on these topics.

Many Ways to Introduce Guitar (or related instruments)

There's no one right way to start learning the guitar.

Even within the scope of strict classical guitar, teachers debate all sorts of things: Should we start with the plucking-hand alone or including the fretting-hand right away? Start with rest-stroke or free-stroke? Start with only rote listening and following of a teacher or use standard notation? Start with single note melodies or with chords and arpeggios?

Break out of classical assumptions and the options grow exponentially. Start finger-style or with a pick? Start with standard tuning or open tuning or other alternatives? Learn simple songs or simplified versions of more complex songs? Focus on solo guitar or guitar as accompaniment to singing or guitar as in a band context? Use tab or notation? Start with blues, rock, pop, Flamenco, folk-songs, or another style?

Even all those options have cultural assumptions. So, I prefer to start by teaching the basic physics of the guitar (which are truly universal to all styles and approaches). Then, we can explore the options creatively! However, despite my love of open-ended creative exploration, I've found that many students do best with the plain old traditional approaches. It varies from student to student based on personality, interests, and experiences from other studies (both musical and otherwise). With so many different things to learn, even advanced guitarists with decades of experience may remain totally unaware of some of the basics in other directions than the ones they know.

I already posted a lesson video on the rhythmic foundation of guitar. That's one great way to start. Today, I'm sharing a handful of other lesson videos which are still are only a sample of the countless approaches to the instrument.

Rhythm Guitar Lesson

I've been teaching guitar lessons professionally for around 15 years, and certain things keep coming up. I've been wanting for a long time to record the core set of lessons that I teach various students on day one. I can't teach every student everything, but there are a dozen or so ways to get started playing guitar. Each approach has a different focus.

Here's the first of the series:



Of course, there are a lot of details not covered in the video. So here I'm sharing further notes that touch on things I typically cover in the next several lessons (with varying amount of detail, depending on each student).

Homage to Pete Seeger 1919-2014

Today, I reflect on the passing of one of my few great heroes. Pete Seeger was first and foremost known as a musician, but he was much more than that. For Pete,
music was a vehicle. At his core, he was an activist for cross-cultural understanding, civil rights, a healthy environment, love, justice, and inclusion.

In my own essay about my teaching approach, I  quoted from Pete's guitar book which somehow cut right to the core in a way none of the other 400+ guitar books I've read have done. His sense of perspective was just wonderful, and he cared about people more than about music.

I don't need to provide any biographical overview here as Pete has been, thankfully, recognized and honored by millions of people. The Wikipedia page linked from the picture above goes through the details. The simple fact is: the core energy that Pete had was unfortunately unusual. He was a man of deep integrity who lived all his life working for a better world.