Hello to all.
It occurs to me that I’ve never announced three of my last four books! So let’s rectify that, pronto!
When last we spoke (not counting the very last post from last week), my Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Art of Songwriting was just about to hit the bookstores. There have been three new ones since then!
Just about a year after the Songwriting book, I wrote The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing the Ukulele. Guitar Noise’s own Paul Hackett wrote a brilliant review of this on Amazon. And I don’t mind saying that I wrote some great arrangements for this book, culminating in a chord-melody arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which Alpha was kind enough to spring for the copyright. In the penultimate chapter, there is an arrangement of Nick Torres’ original piece (from the Sunday Songwriter’s Group) “It’s Not a Love Song.”
The following year saw DK Publishing take over the Idiot’s Guides from Alpha Publishing. Consequently, they wanted an new Idiot’s Guides: Playing the Guitar, which was published in September. This is very different from the old Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guitar (published in 2010), in that it has tons of photographs. It shows you how to hold the guitar with each hand, as well as up-close fingering of various guitar chords, all courtesy of my good friend Greg Nease. Like the previous Guitar guide, this one has numerous public domain songs reimagined for you to learn. It also contains two original pieces of my own – “Lullaby” (sung by Nick Torres) and an example of Hawaiian style “slack key” playing in open G tuning.
Finally, in November of 2014 Idiot’s Guides: Guitar Theory came out. This book is essentially a music theory book, but geared primarily towards the guitarist. The chord charts in Chapters 22 and 23 practically are worth the cost of the book itself!
I think that brings us up to date on the publication front. Coming soon – more news!
Peace