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1 week ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Adam Perlmutter |Pete Madsen
Text by Jerry Snyder | Video by Doug Young — Excerpted from Ragtime Guitar Essentials. The roots of ragtime music come from gospel, banjo, and African American folk music traditions, as well as 19th-century European composers. From the late 1890s until around 1917, ragtime music was primarily arranged for the piano.
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2 weeks ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Adam Perlmutter |Maurice Tani |Danny Carnahan
The title track from Jason Isbell’s new solo acoustic album, Foxes in the Snow, is one of its happiest—an unabashed celebration of love and intimacy amid many songs that traverse much darker emotional terrain. Set to a bouncy minor-key groove, “Foxes in the Snow” also features some fine picking and is very fun to play, with a melodic solo that could stand on its own as an instrumental.
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3 weeks ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Greg Olwell |Michael Simmons |Adam Perlmutter
Jason Isbell owns some prized vintage guitars, such as a 1934 Martin 000-28 that he calls the best acoustic guitar he’s ever played. But when it came to recording his solo acoustic album Foxes in the Snow, he turned to this smaller and plainer Martin 0-17, a recent acquisition from Retrofret Vintage Guitars in Brooklyn, New York. Listed at $30, the 0-17 was nearly the bottom of the line in Martin’s 1940 catalog—only the 0-15, a very similar model with a less glossy finish, was cheaper, at $25.
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4 weeks ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Adam Perlmutter |Pete Madsen |David Surette |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
Sue Foley is both a guitarist and a scholar, and she was kind enough to create this exclusive lesson, breaking down key techniques from some of the musicians she celebrates on One Guitar Woman. In Example 1, Foley demonstrates the Carter scratch, a technique pioneered by Maybelle Carter in which the guitarist plays single-note melodies on the bass strings while adding chordal accents on the upper strings.
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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Joey Lusterman |Adam Perlmutter
Five awesome Teaching Artists—Isa Burke, Lisa Liu, Mamie Minch, Sean McGowan, and Thu Tran—want to help you grow as a guitarist!Beginning April 1, they’ll be sharing engaging insights and invaluable guitar wisdom with you each and every week in the Acoustic Guitar Patreon community. To kick things off, we hosted a live hangout with the TAs. It was a whole lot of fun and featured songs, stories, and a window into the musical lives of these great guitarists.
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1 month ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Jane Miller |Adam Perlmutter |Mark Goldenberg |Louise Lee
Mindfulness meditation has been in practice since Buddha himself taught private lessons and classes. Vipassana, the Pali word for this Buddhist technique of meditation, roughly translates to clear-seeing or insight—to see something as it is. Guitarists can tap into the mental resource of mindfulness in their own practice, especially as a centering warm-up exercise. Before beginning our exercises, consider players of wind instruments for some perspective.
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2 months ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Peter Penhallow |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers |Adam Perlmutter
It is said that the shore in this song is the shore of the Jordan River, and that Michael is St. Michael, who guides us at least metaphorically, if not at one time literally, to the Jordan shore. I enjoyed “Michael” at age seven, when the Highwaymen made this wonderful spiritual a big hit on the radio. You can hear their version on Michael, Row the Boat Ashore: The Best of the Highwaymen. “Michael” uses a four-chord progression, arranged here in D (D, F#m, G, A7).
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2 months ago | 
acousticguitar.com | Scott Nygaard |Ron Jackson |Adam Perlmutter |Mimi Fox
“When the Saints Go Marching In” has been a favorite of mine since I was a little girl. My father had a large jazz album collection that included Louis Armstrong tearing it up on this classic. Armstrong’s version transported me to New Orleans, making me feel as if I were marching with his band down Bourbon Street! There are as many versions of this song as there are musicians who have recorded it.
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2 months ago | 
acousticguitar.com | David Hamburger |Pete Madsen |Adam Perlmutter |Sean McGowan |Sean Mcgowan
Acoustic guitarists in all genres often use alternate tunings. Some of these tunings have become so prevalent that they practically identify their genre—for example, open D or G for slide blues, or DADGAD for Celtic styles. This article will focus on C G D G B E tuning (sometimes known as Hawaiian Wahine slack key), which lends itself well to a variety of styles.
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2 months ago | 
acousticguitar.com | David McCarty |Pete Madsen |Adam Perlmutter |Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
“Stay (I Missed You),” Lisa Loeb’s chart topper first released in 1994 with the movie Reality Bites, is in the long lineage of breakup songs, but in many respects is far from a conventional pop song. It has no real chorus and doesn’t even follow a repetitive pattern of verses or other sections, as it goes from a quiet intro to a full-band groove, back and forth several times.
