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I was a big fan of Pantera back in the early 90’s, I think my first introduction to them was someone handing me a cassette of “Vulgar Display Of Power”, still my favourite album, then I worked backwards to “Cowboys From Hell” and finally forwards again with “Far Beyond Driven”. After that my musical landscape changed for a few years and I didn’t even hear “The Great Southern Trendkill” until years after its release. Growing up playing guitar and seeing someone like Dimebag live was amazing, he had riffs that made everyone else at the time sound like nursery rhymes, he had blistering solos that were flowing and effortless, full of passion and massive wide vibrato, he also had his signature Dean guitar even before it was an actual signature model and most of all he had a sense of humour and liked to goof around. Dimebag Darrell was a guitar hero who graced the cover of every guitar magazine and won just about every award going. On December 8 2004 Darrell Abbott was gunned down mid-song and killed along with security and crew members whilst on stage with his follow up band Damageplan.

Black Tooth Grin not only covers in detail the events that night at Alrosa Villa including the lead up to the senseless murder, some background on the killer and the events following Dimebag Darrell’s untimely death but also celebrates his career as one of the most revered guitar heroes of all time. Former Dallas Observer music editor Zac Crain gives an unauthorized biography of the Arlington, Texas shredder. From Darrell’s youth hanging out in his dad’s studio and through the early days of Pantera on the club circuit and how they were propelled from Texas clubs to world tours with Dimebag making friends the world over with his brand of alcohol fuelled fun.

Black Tooth Grin also covers the demise of Pantera fuelled by Dimebag’s alcohol consumption and singer Phil Anselmo’s heroin addiction and covers both sides of the story from the messy breakup. This is an area of Pantera that I really didn’t know much about as, like many others in the late 90’s, I had moved on seeking new musical inspiration that I wasn’t getting from Heavy Metal at that time. The sad incomprehensible slaughter of Dimebag actually inspired me to revisit his music and this book has had the same effect, since reading Black Tooth Grin I have listened to all my Pantera albums and have bought Damageplan’s “New Found Power” just to hear the last recording Dimebag made. It is sad to see Dimebag being exploited by Dean guitars after his death, after reading this book and reading how humble Dimebag was he would never have wanted to see someone selling 32 signature Dimebag guitars. Anyway that aside this is a fascinating insight into the life and death of Darrell Abbott and one that I highly recommend.

The other day I was reading a review on the always excellent Stratoblogster about a guitar teaching ebook called “Rob’s Totally Awesome Guitar Teaching Handbook”, aside from the great title I thought the book cover was pretty cool too and after reading the review decided to head over to Rob’s website Heartwood Guitar Instruction for a few more details and decided to buy the ebook for myself. Originally I hadn’t even intended to review the book I just thought it would be a good read as I’m thinking of taking on some students once I move house and actually have the space. Now I have taught guitar before including teaching at a high school but it has been a while so I figured any advice Rob could offer would be helpful.

The book is broken up into 3 Chapters, “To Teach Or Not To Teach?”, “Money Makin’” and “Teaching 101”. Chapter 1 is fairly short and basically poses a few questions about whether you should teach, if you are capable and patient enough, if you are knowledgable and whether you can cope with running your own business. As Rob points out, setting up a guitar teaching business costs next to nothing so even if you find out down the track it is not for you after all, you are likely to only lose out on the cost of a few flyers. Rob includes suggestions for lesson pricing, how to set up a waiting list and advice on how to stop teaching overtaking your life. Rob was an English teacher at an Elementary School before embarking on a guitar teaching business where he now has a 5 year waiting list for students so he has a good amount of experience with both teaching, motivating kids and running a business.

Chapter 2 is all about the main goal, making money and this includes how to set up your teaching space to begin with. Rob also talks about something probably often overlooked, gaining the trust of parents of younger students which is more important these days and the last thing you want are any accusations from disgruntled parents so don’t skip this section. Other subjects in this chapter include branding your business, advertising, alternative income ideas and accounting.

Finally the 3rd and largest chapter covers everything you ever needed to know about teaching your students. How to set up a teaching plan, how to steer distracted students back to the task in hand, how to break down tasks for students. Actually this subject is very useful, it covers how to teach a simple skill. It might be something second nature to you and therefore frustrating to see someone struggle, so Rob explains how to use his formula which you can then apply to anything you need to teach. Rob also goes into muscle memory and making sure students don’t let their muscle memory remember a mistake by slowing things down.

Along with the eBook you also get access to some of Rob’s teaching aids from his website which include song tabs for loads of tracks that you can use for your own students, he also includes downloads of blank Tab, a practice list, practice sticker chart for kids and a milestone chart. There are also student payment tables which you can use for your own business.

The eBook costs $30 and is available direct from Rob’s website Heartwoodguitar.com, if you are thinking of becoming a guitar teacher and think that $30 sounds a bit steep, just remember you will get that money back in 1 lesson and like Rob points out music books, music, gigs, tabs etc. are all tax deductible to guitar teachers so that makes this book even more of a bargain. I found it really helpful not as a bunch of lesson plans but as a teaching aid and motivational book and it is something I will definitely be re-reading once I am ready to take on some students.

Thanks to Stratoblogster for the heads up.

The Soul of Tone

Recently I’ve been absolutely obsessed with my guitar rig. Maybe a little bit too much. Actually, it’s probably been definitely too much. I’ve been searching everywhere for little bits of secrets here and there and whilst doing that I stumbled on a book released by Fender, The Soul of Tone, which was published to celebrate 60 years of Fender amplifiers.

Now, I’m not going to pretend I know anything about writing books and review but this book is absolutely lovely! It’s how a book is meant to be! It’s got some incredible photography of some extremely beautiful Fender amps in there and also comes with 2 CDs. The first takes you through Fender’s Vintage amp range and the second takes you through Fender’s Modern range. Both of these CDs are absolutely fantastic and give a really brilliant sonic insight to what are quite honestly some stunning amplifiers. The CDs complement the book extremely well making this one of my favourite guitar books.

It’s been fascinating for me to read about how something we take for granted, the sound of the electric guitar, was almost entirely crafted by Leo Fender and his teams 60 years ago. It truly is phenomenal that these 60 year old beasts still sound so incredble. These amps are still copied today.

Be warned, if you read this book and listen to the tone demos you will want to get your mits on a vintage Fender amp!!

Highly recommended and not just for Fender fans but rather for anyone with an interest in understanding guitar tone.

There have been a distinct lack of books mentioned on Guitar Noize of late, in fact the last non-ebook book review was back in September 2007! so I thought it was about time to feature something that I think many of you may find quite interesting.

Precious Metal is a behind the scenes look at 25 Metal albums featuring interviews with the original band members from the recordings. The book is edited by Editor-in-Chief of Decibel magazine Albert Mudrian. I am not familiar with Decibel, so I did a quick google search and found their website which has the following introduction:

Decibel is America’s only monthly extreme music magazine. Since 2004, Decibel has delivered in-depth and intelligent coverage to the doorsteps of a legion of dedicated fans.

So it seems only fitting that Decibel’s Editor-in-Chief has written a book not only cataloguing “25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces” but also the stories behind the making of these albums straight from the horses mouths so to speak which are expanded versions of interviews from Decibel’s “Hall Of Fame”. I’m not going to pretend I know all of the albums featured in this book but there a many that I do and there was enough to have me reading way later into the night than someone with a 7 month old daughter should!

The book is in chronological order starting with Black Sabbath’s first album without Ozzy and replacement Ronnie James Dio Heaven and Hell, Diamond Head’s Lightning to the Nations, Slayer Reign In Blood, moving into the 90’s with albums such as Morbid Angel’s Altars Of Madness, Kyuss’ Welcome To Sky Valley and Meshuggah Destroy Erase Improve and has just 1 album from this century Converge’s Jane Doe.

I skipped a few albums that didn’t interest me but that is the good thing about this book, you can read it in a non-linear fashion. It has some pretty informal interviews where the band members really open up and aren’t afraid to talk about band conflicts during the production process which is what makes the book interesting. I don’t want to read that everyone turned up, played and it went well I want to hear about Ozzy’s alcoholic decline and how Paradise Lost covered a drumming recording mistake with sound effects which is exactly what you do get.

You really need to be into “Extreme Metal” to fully appreciate this book, I was hoping that there would be some classic Metal albums included such as Megadeth’s Rust In Peace or Iron Maiden’s Number Of The Beast but I suppose it was not always possible to interview certain bands and maybe they didn’t consider these albums “Extreme” enough to be included in Decibel.

Seeing as James has reviewed “How To Make A Living Teaching Guitar” today on Guitar Noize I thought I would post a review of the accompanying eBook “Fifty Flexible Lesson Plans for Teaching Guitar” also by Nick Minnion. One of the biggest problems I had when I was teaching was the lack of planning and preperation I used to do before the lessons, I would generally rock up with a few ideas and just try and think of stuff on the spot, no wonder my students lost interest. This book is not meant as series of lesson plans that you simply follow week by week but as a series of lesson frameworks that you can adapt to suit your students various levels of knowledge and skill.

My advice is to start with the contents page and home in on any section of the book that takes your interest. It may be that just reading through a few objectives will, in itself, fuel you with enough ideas to meet the needs of a particular lesson. Another approach is to effectively put yourself in the student’s shoes and work through the lesson plans yourself line by line.

Some of these lessons plans may actually challenge your own music theory knowledge or maybe your chord knowledge but this is a good thing, you see you don’t need to know everything in order to teach you just need to be able to learn it in order to pass on the knowledge. It is very similar to programming, I couldn’t possibly remember everything about every language I program but if I get stuck I have enough knowledge of say php’s syntax in order to look up a function in the online help and understand the usage.

I think this is probably a more useful book than “How to Make a Living Teaching Guitar” but you may need to read that first in order to get the inspiration, business tips and encouragement to teach in the first place. If you are already teaching but feel you need some sort of method to improve your lessons then this book could be just the thing.

How to Make a Living Teaching Guitar is an ebook (PDF) by Nick Minnion, whose website is http://www.teachguitar.com. It’s a book that aims to provide a complete guide on how to start teaching guitar, what to teach and how to run the business.

The first chapter after the introduction is a pep talk, trying to persuade you - the guitarist - that you do indeed have the skills and the ability to teach guitar. Or at least asking the questions to help you decide. I like the positive aspect to this chapter, sometimes you need someone to tell you its possible before you think: yeah.

The next three chapters cover the logistics of teaching, how to get clients and how you should behave. There’s some interesting ideas in these chapters, I particularily liked the chapter about advertising. Once you read it, it seems common sense, but I wouldn’t have thought of his approach.

The next four chapters cover what and how to teach with ideas on lesson structure, syllabus etc. Particularily valuable are the hard earned experience of what to avoid and how to keep the people you are teaching. That’s the sort of knowledge that I expect the average guitarist will find harder to come by than what to teach.

The book is being sold for $19, which at twenty five pages of blandly formatted PDF seems expensive, although that does includes a two month email consultation service with Nick. The price made me wonder whether these sort of tips can be found on blogs of guitar teachers? I don’t know, haven’t checked.

All in all though I thought it was a positive book, which may be useful and inspiring for anyone contemplating teaching guitar, but a bit expensive. For those already teaching it may not provide anything new.

James has been playing guitar for 20 years, in fact coincidentally we started playing guitar on exactly the same day!
Check out James’ SF blog Big Dumb Object.