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Hi
Folks
Well that’s another year to add to the life of Guitar Weekends.
We have now been doing the weekends for 13 years and by the
Letters
and Emails
we get we seem to be doing it right. Well we should have learnt to by now. My
New Year’s resolution this year is to help even more people to play better and
improve the way we teach here at Beckfoot and add to the Info Folder that you
take away with you after the weekend.
When you have been away on one of our weekends you should be able to answer that
age old question that everyone asks when you tell them you play guitar, “Can you
play something for me”? As you all know most hobby players at home tend to play
bits and pieces, I think this is due to the low boredom threshold of most guitar
players in general. However with the right tunes and chord progressions you can
make whole pieces very interesting and we will show you how to get through them.
We have introduced a group performance workshop on the Saturday evening now. Yes
we do get you playing again after dinner. In fact we have between 20 and 24
hours of playing over the course of the weekend, Something to keep in mind when
you come regarding your fingertips getting sore.
We
need your Feedback
Back
After every weekend here we have a feedback form filled
in and that has helped us develop the weekends over the years. Your ideas and
suggestions have helped us develop the weekends to truly help you play better.
Mind you the one thing we can’t give you is the time to practice when you get
back home. However we are developing a practice schedule that can work for small
amounts of time each day, bite size chunks as they say. This will involve
working with 5 to 15 minute blocks of practice time, which if you have longer
can be amalgamated to suit. All we have to do now is devise the warm up and
practice elements to fit into these blocks. We are working on that as you read
this. We welcome any feedback from those of you have been on a weekend or ideas
and suggestion from those considering coming on a weekend in the future. In fact
I am developing a survey at the moment and there will be a chance to win a
weekend later this year or next year. From previous feed back
I have been asked to put more resources on the web site for downloading in pdf
format, so:-
Resource kit
This
Years Weekends
Back
Bookings for the weekends this year have really taken
off with the November
Blues Two
weekend having just two places left on it NOW. Of course to come on this one you
need to have been on a Standard
Blues weekend.
The
Rock
weekend
in November with Gary Dunn is also filling very quickly as I can only fit in one
Rock weekend in the year. However the
Improver Weekends
with Gary are also Rock orientated so as well as core subjects like Scales,
Useful chord progressions, Improvising, Transposing and Timing you can learn
some neat rock techniques as well. Gary is also good at getting that great tone.
So if you are contemplating coming on a weekend this year then get booked in.
Both the
Strugglers
with Lin Flanagan and the
Improvers
with Gary Dunn are our entry level weekends where we hit core subjects to ensure
that you have some good basic knowledge to help you go forward. Even if you have
been playing guitar for some 40 years there can still be some big gaps in your
musical education. Usually it is just a small amount of knowledge that can move
you on a huge amount. As Lin often says
“Age is no barrier to learning but procrastination*
is”.
We continue to get a lot more females on the courses now and that’s great to
see, no reason guitars should be a male dominated domain. In fact we had 3 on
the October Strugglers weekend and one returned for the November
Strugglers Two
weekend.
*(Procrastinate
– put off till tomorrow, which as you know never comes.)
Maintenance
Weekends
Back
Due to my wife Lesley reaching 60 years of age in May I have had to dispense
with one of the
"Maintenance and Setting Up Weekends"
with Chris May, there only being two this year on the 16th of May
then the 31st of October. Plans are now afoot to have a next level
maintenance weekend to include re-fretting and some more repairs that can be
done to your guitar. The electrics seem to be a side that fascinates a lot of
people, so more on that as well. The timing for it will depend on demand and I
anticipate this being early 2009.
About
Home Recording
Back
The home recording workshops are on hold at present as I don’t have enough
weekends in the year to do one at present. I plan to have some workshops at the
Guitar Show this year on this subject. I also notice a big move over to having
effects units as software on the PC now as well. With gear like ‘Guitar Rigg’
now into its 3rd generation you can have a whole rack of Amp
simulators and effects on your lap top with just one pedal board. New software
linked to pedal boards is coming out all the time.
Country
Weekends
Back
Jim Hornsby’s Country Weekend is already half full so if you want to
learn some great country techniques a la Albert Lee or Brent Mason (To name just
a few) then get along to us in April. Jim was one of the founder members of
guitar weekends back in the last century. As the Rock weekend we only have space
for one of these very popular weekends this year. If you want to get into the
Chet Atkins style of playing, and using banjo rolls to enhance your picking
technique or have an interest in Dobro slide then he is your man. Jim is a
stickler for good grooves and tasteful licks and with his help you can get them
as well. Jim is now developing a teaching DVD to come out later this year.
Cumbria
Vintage and New Guitar Show
Back
The Guitar Show enters it’s 12th year this year so I have
some plans to celebrate that in August, updated info will be put on the Guitar
Show web site as it arrives. I will be sending a Survey out to anyone who came
to last years show with some prizes on offer. This will be on the web site as
well and I will email out to let everyone know when it’s there and available to
fill in.
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