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Hi Gang,

Here is the first schedule for IGC 2014, of course subject to change. We are definite still looking for suggestions and comments. I also sent messages to everybody registered yesterday, I hope. Let me know if you are registered and did not get my email that went out Monday afternoon.

[center]International Guitar Camp 2014
The Quaker Center – Ben Lomond, California[/center]

Wednesday September 17
4:30 – 6:00 Check in & get settled
6:15 Meet with Quaker Center Staff
6:30 – 7:15 Dinner
7:30 Welcome with Neil & Vanessa
8:30 Open Mic I

Thursday September 18
8:00 – 8:45 Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15 Doug Young – Altered Tunings & Arrangements I
10:30 – 11:45 Dave Nachmanoff – Songwriting & Accompanying I
12:00 – 12:45 Lunch

2:00 – 3:00 Breakout Sessions – Dave, Doug & Vanessa
3:30 – 5:00 Master Class with Neil
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Concert with Dave & Doug
8:30 Open Mic II

Friday September 19
8:00 – 8:45 Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15 Doug Young – Altered Tunings & Arrangements II
10:30 – 11:45 Dave Nachmanoff – Songwriting & Accompanying II
12:00 – 12:45 Lunch

2:00 – 3:00 Breakout Sessions – Dave, Doug & Vanessa
3:30 – 5:00 Master Class with Neil
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Open Mic III

Saturday September 20
8:00 – 8:45 Breakfast
9:30 – 11:45 Recording Tips & Techniques
12:00 – 12:45 Lunch
1:00 – 5:30 ???
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Closing Night/Open Mic IV duos, groups

[center]IGC Highlights[/center]

Group Classes

There will be classes for the whole group offered by Dave Nachmanoff, Doug Young, and Neil. Dave and Doug’s classes will be Thursday and Friday mornings and Neil’s Master Class will be the same afternoons.
Dave’s Thursday class will start with Songwriting, offering tips and insights, then an assignment to come back with for review. Doug’s Thursday class will be an introduction to Altered Tunings with exercises and pieces for all level students.
Neil’s Master Classes will be run with individual students working with him in front of the whole group. Everyone will be welcome to join Neil in the Hot Seat with any questions, problems, maybe even song requests.

Breakout Sessions

These will be 60-90 minutes blocks in the afternoons where Dave, Doug, Neil, and Vanessa will be staked out in different areas to work with small groups on any topics students would like. This will be a good time to get some general questions answered as well as any specific questions geared toward any instructor. Vanessa’s sessions will be geared towards Campfire Sing Alongs and group playing. Suggested songs will be sent to everyone soon.

Open Mic/Concerts

Each evening will include a short concert featuring some of the instructors, followed by an Open Mic where everyone will have multiple chances to perform with the PA on stage. The PA will also be available anytime for students to practice playing amplified.

Late Night Scrums

After each night’s Open Mic we will have a projector set up with an Apple TV feed that should take charts from an iPad and project them on the wall for folks to join in.

Saturday Free For All

Saturday morning the instructors will be available for anything the students might want, or recommend. We have talked about trying to do short, individual lessons, maybe working with duos/trios on arranging a song to perform, setting up a space to record and edit your own ready-for-YouTube video, or anything else that crosses our radar.
Saturday afternoon might be similar to the other afternoons if there are more takers for the Breakout Sessions or Master Class. It may just be time to jam and practice for the last open Mic.

Down Time

This was one of the main things lacking last year and we have set out time for folks to play together and practice, maybe even work on assignments, take a hike, sleep in (well OK, maybe not much of that), but at least be able to spend more time with everybody at the IGC in smaller groups. Hopefully everybody will get all the quality time they would like with the instructors and other students.

Thanks Neil for posting, it's looks like it's going to be a lot of fun!!!!!


Dennis

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the schedule. Looking forward to it :woohoo: :woohoo:

Bob

It sounds great, enough time for just about anything!

Edit: Except for sleeping in!! :laugh:

Also, 4 open mic's, folks you better prepare a couple of songs! :cheer:

It sounds like Neil's concept of the breakouts is to be flexible and see what people would like to do, but just in case we need some ideas to get started, here's some quick thoughts I have on possible topics. If anyone would like to weigh in on whether any of these sound interesting (would you come to one of these?), or you have other topics to suggest, fire away!

Exercises - on and off the guitar - Go over some right and left hand exercises both on and off the guitar that can improve your flexibility and speed

Custom and not-so custom guitars - What we look for in a guitar, and maybe chat about luthier-built guitars, what it's like to order one - why you might or might not want to - I'll bring a few, and we can share experiences and maybe check out each other's instruments.

Learn some tunes - Learn a beatles tune, a fiddle tune, a christmas tune, or ??? We could also talk about arranging or even composing

Pickups And Other Amplification Gear - talk about and try out various pickups, preamps and what you need for live amplified performance

Hands on Recording - we can do a short recording session or You Tube video session, from performance thru editing and mixing

Doug (et al),
My two cents ... Last year Richard Hoover (Santa Cruz Guitar Co) gave a pretty good fire-side chat on what makes a good acoustic guitar, so I may not be up for that again. However, every other suggestion is great by me. My order of interest is: Composing, recording, technique exercises, pickups; and I can never know too many Beatles songs! Re: The recording stuff - I'm going to bring my portable 8-trk (Boss Micro BR-80).

Looking forward to all the knowledge!

Doug:

I am so glad you will be back this year. I am really looking forward to more info on alternate tunings. Your ideas on some topics for break-out sessions are all appealing to me. Like Bob, composing and recording would rate very high.

Thanks for bringing this up.

Jason

I'm definitely up for any of these things. As for the pickups/etc. - hell yea! Folks, we have a chance here to learn from one of the top (if not the top) expert on this application so count me in!

Hello Doug,

Any or all sounds good to me. Especially the recording aspect. I have been toying with the idea of purchasing some new software for recording. However, I've put that on the back burner since I haven't even been playing much lately. (Life just keeps getting in the way) Mostly, I want to be able to do 2 or 3 "picture within a picture" videos to the same song. I see others do this but have never been able to do it with my system.

Looking forward to meeting you soon...
Bart

thanks doug


those are great ideas. as you mention arranging: one idea that i would like to have help with is taking a tune from conventional sheet music and converting it to a guitar piece; i'm sure folks who can read music have an easier time, but for those of us who don't read (or who read very poorly) are there any tricks? for example: say you have a tune you'd like to play; cole porter or some other standard...you can't find tab, so you get the sheet music (usually in some key like Bflat or Eflat); you might even be able to crudely (painfully) pick out the tune, but harmony is right out because the chords aren't written out (i know...they really are, but reading them is another painful exercise in itself); or the fingering in the written key just makes it hard...

is there a logical approach for that type of arranging? i don't know if that was your intent, or if you were thinking arranging different voices and registers

are there keys that are more favorable to fingering/transposition than others? can you look at sheet music in the key of A and say "oh...that tune works fine in A for piano, but for guitar the fingering would fall better in D". not even talking about altering the tuning.

and then you have to put it all down in tab so that you don't forget what you did.

is there a sw program that will read scanned sheet music and autoconvert to tab (or even just OCR the music) to help?

thanks

robb