Dear [[{First name}]],

Welcome to the October Musicademy Newsletter. Its rather guitar-focussed this month so all you guitar players should enjoy.

In this edition:

Beginners guitar handbook
Turn each DVD into a 10 session course!

It’s been a long time coming but we’ve finally completed our student handbook for volume 1 of the Beginners Worship Guitar DVDs. We’ve had so many requests from churches wanting to use the DVDs for teaching in groups that we felt it was appropriate to invest some time in creating a really high quality workbook. The workbook is ideal for students learning by themselves at home or for tutors who are using the DVDs to help teach a small group.

The 27 page workbook helps you get the most out of the DVD and leads you through each instructional section, quick tip and worship leader interview with plenty of practical exercises, learning ideas and extra study tips to help develop your playing in a step-by-step manner. We’ve divided the DVD content into 10 sessions and added in lots of extras including additional songs.

The handbook is designed to be accessible by younger students as well as adults and includes lots of graphics for visual learners. There are also questions and discussion points for students using the handbook in a group.

We’ve also incorporated several features exclusive to the handbook that are not featured on the DVDs:

  • More strumming patterns that develop your rhythm skills
  • Exercises for developing the speed of your chord changes
  • Exercises to make best use of the backing tracks and drum grooves
  • Chord charts and diagrams with lyric cues for each song (a request lots of students have made)
  • Links to online video lessons of rock and pop songs using similar chords that you can learn at the same time
  • Learn how to play three new worship songs not shown on the DVD – How Great is Our God, Jesus Holy and Anointed One and Lord I Lift Your Name on High
To buy the handbook just click onto our store to purchase and download it. Volumes 2 and 3 will be coming in the next few weeks.

Ask the Expert
Palm Muting

We received the following question from Kathleen Trissel:

“I've just started to work with beginner guitar dvd volume 2 where it uses palm muting for the chords for Blessed Be the Name. I'm having trouble with emphasizing the 1, 2&, and 4 beat. Muting is a bit of a challenge too. I can hear what it is suppose to sound like, but I can't seem to get my hands to do what I see yours doing.

Do you have any suggestions? This is the first time I've started with it, so maybe I'm expecting too much of myself for the first time. I don't know...”

Andy replies:
The whole muting technique is a bit of challenge when you first approach it – and to be honest most students I’ve taught find this quite difficult to begin with as it requires development of some fine motor skills, but do persevere as it will come over time.

It’s a little difficult to give some tips as I obviously can’t see exactly what you need to correct but try this:

  1. Start by sitting down at first as it will give your right arm a slightly better strumming angle.
  2. Then, rest your wrist lightly on the guitar bridge and anchor the rest of the arm on the guitar body so it doesn’t move.
  3. Try and keep the part of your hand where the end of the palm meets the wrist just hovering over the bridge pins and press down so it’s very lightly touching the strings (see the photo in the right column). As you strum with your wrist you should feel the very light touch of the strings ‘tickle’ your hand. (This may take some practice to get your hand to stay in the right place.)
  4. Start strumming the strings without moving the arm at all – so just wrist movements and first use the rhythm 1&2&3&4&.
  5. Then, - keep going but count in your head the notes you want to emphasize – e.g. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & - so the 1, the 2& and the 4.
  6. Now try and make the 1, 2& 4 a bit louder than the other notes.
  7. If you do this to a metronome or one of the drum beats on the DVD for say 4 or 5 solid minutes a day without stopping (even if you mess up) you should start to see some improvement over time.
  8. Also make sure you are holding the pick correctly and don’t grip it too tightly. Above all try to keep the arm and hand relaxed.

I guess the key is doing a little practice often and not worrying if it doesn’t come immediately. Most adults find this hard as we expect to pick up skills pretty immediately and forget how time consuming the learning process is.

Vocals warm ups now online

We’ve made our hugely popular vocals warm-up CD available as an MP3 download on our website so you can access the exercises without paying shipping charges on the CD. You can choose to download the full CD or just 5,10 and 15 minute warm ups which feature scales, arpeggios, slurs and many more exercises to get your breathing and diaphragm working well and warm up your voice and facial muscles prior to singing. Feedback from customers tells us that using the CD regularly has really made a difference to their singing. Go to our webstore for a detailed track listing and to buy.

Vocal warm-ups vs workouts

Remember that our warm up CD is just that – a warm up CD so the pitch of the exercises do not go terribly low or crazily high although of course you can turn down the volume and take the exercises as high as you like by yourself. The exercises will get your voice ready for singing safely as well as helping improve your tone, range and power. If you would also like a CD that really starts to push your range then the Vocals Workout CD is more suitable. We would only recommend that product for people who have already had singing lessons or have been through our worship vocals DVDs. The workout CD is not available as a download but you can buy the CD itself from our webstore.

More T-Shirts and Bumper Stickers now in stock

We completely sold out of t-shirts over the summer festivals but we’re glad to say that we now have plenty more in stock together with bumper stickers for either your car, your guitar case or wherever else you would like one. Go to our webstore for more details. If you only want the bumper stickers please put the voucher STICKER SHIPPING in at the checkout so that you get free shipping.

The t-shirt range has the following slogans

  • Love One Woman … Many Guitars
  • Love One Woman … Many Basses
  • Stick With One Woman … Many Drums
  • Love One Man … Many Guitars

New online rock & pop guitar lessons

We’ve just uploaded seven more online guitar lessons to our webstore. As you may know, Musicademy runs a music college in the UK and we’ve taken all our rock & pop guitar lessons and made them available as online video downloads.

The latest set are from stage seven which we would normally use to teach guitarists who have been playing for two to three years. This is where guitar playing really starts to get exciting as we take you through some exact guitar parts of well known rock & pop songs.

You can learn:
Somebody Told Me  - The Killers
Practice octaves, power and bar chords and we show you all the intro, verse chorus and lead riff sections of this great modern classic step by step.
Green Day – Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Billie Joe Armstrong’s wonderful acoustic guitar part will teach you about arpeggios, picking technique and 1 finger chord changes in G. In this lesson we break the parts, and show how to play it properly.
Lead Guitar – The 7 Major Scale Positions
Another essential building block for lead guitarists is learning how to play the major scale over the entire neck. This lesson shows you the 7 positions that will allow you to play all the right notes in any key. A great starter all sorts of lead playing and a first step towards learning about modal playing.
Chuck Berry - Johnny B Goode
Learn the intro note for note, to the possibly the best known rock and roll song of all time. This lesson will increase your knowledge of blues licks, string bends and pentatonic positional playing.
Lynard Skynard - Sweet Home Alabama
Get some country licks under you belt! This lessons take you through the intro, verse, chorus and main riff sections note for note. Great for mixing chords with lead guitar.
High and Dry – Radiohead
An early Radiohead classic that combines octaves with some very usable slash chords in the key of E. Really useful stuff for rhythm and acoustic players.
The Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called love
If you like classic rock you need to learn this! The first of three lessons where we teach you every part note for note. This lesson shows you how to get the Intro, verse and chorus sections exactly right.

Save money by downloading all seven lessons. When you get to the checkout simply insert the coupon code FULL STAGE 7 to receive one of your lessons for free.

Musicademy DVD group teaching licenses

We get lots of requests from around the world for the rights to use our DVDs to teach small groups of students. We’re really happy about this but want to try and continue to invest in new products which can be tricky when say 20 people effectively share one DVD. So in line with Christian Copyright best practice we’ve created a license which you can purchase from our website. Each license gives you the rights to teach one student from any one of our DVDs.

We’ll even refund the price of the license if the student then comes to us and purchases a DVD of their own. For further info go to our webstore.

If you are teaching in a group using the DVDs do talk to us as we’re very happy to give you a bulk purchase discount for multiple copies of the DVDs. It is really useful for students to have their own copies as it focuses their practice time between lessons and is so much more interesting to have something to play to rather than trying to remember the lesson when you get home. 

Musicademy Facebook group

If you’re a member of Facebook you might like to join the Musicademy group. At the moment its basically our local tutors and friends but it would be great to have our DVD students and subscribers online as well. Click here to join the group and you can even post a link to your website or other sites that you think Musicademy people might find interesting.

Competition result

Donna Newell fro Houston Texas won last month’s download competition. This is what she told us:

“Recently I attended a worship seminar which challenged us that we shouldn’t settle for mediocrity, but always be striving for excellence. As musicians, that applies to our musical skill level as well, and he encouraged us to be intentional about practicing and taking lessons to increase our effectiveness and excellence in our musical service. That sounded great, but I was wondering how I could fit guitar and piano lessons into an already busy schedule with all the family, work and church activities and obligations. I think God answered me when I read about Musicademy’s video lessons and won 5 free Song Learner Series downloads. Since I recently started playing both the guitar and the piano for a children’s and ladies group I wanted to try out lessons for both instruments, and found both of them to be very well done, with instructions that are extremely clear and easy to understand. On the guitar I’ve learned ways of using the different chord fingerings, how to be intentional about strumming patterns and other techniques like palm muting that I had not done before and that I can utilize even when I choose to play the song in a different key. In the piano lesson I was glad he gave me places to pause the player and practice before moving on so that I could learn each section at a time before putting it all together. The overhead video shots of the keyboard when he was demonstrating the chording and rhythms made it very easy to see exactly what to do. And when I came back to the piano the next day and couldn’t remember everything, I was able to review that section of the lesson again as a refresher. But for me, I think the best part is that I can work on the lessons when I find some free time in my schedule rather than according to an instructor’s schedule.”

Win Five Free Song Learner Downloads

We really like to know what you think of our newsletter and the Musicademy products so please take a couple of minutes to answer these questions and e-mail them to us. One respondent will win five free song learner downloads and we’ll let you know what they think of them in the next issue.

  1. What did you think of this newsletter?
  2. Which articles did you particularly enjoy?
  3. Any questions for our “Ask the Expert” feature?
  4. Any suggestions for content that you would like to read in the future?
  5. Any suggestions for websites we could recommend people?
  6. Have you bought a Musicademy product or downloaded a lesson and what did you think of it?

Please e-mail your responses to enter the draw!

Having trouble reading this?
If for some reason you can't see the pictures, or the newsletter doesn't appear correctly, you can see a copy of it here.
Privacy Notice
We never loan or sell our customer information to others, however, if you would prefer not to receive information from Musicademy, please e-mail us with the word REMOVE in both the subject and body of the email.