On The Beat - Episode 814 - Weekly Guitar Video News Wrap Up July 25, 2025
July 25, 2025
This week I was bitten by a bug from the past. In an earlier life I spent a lot of time playing Renaissance and Baroque music, on the guitar at first. But a couple years into that obsession I decided to get a lute and play John Dowland’s music on the instrument of his day. A year or so later I tracked down the same luthier who built my Renaissance lute and ordered a Baroque lute. Over the last 30-40 years I rarely played either of them, occasionally grabbing the 10-course Renaissance one but not usually the 14-course Baroque one, which really fell into disrepair with missing and loose frets. Two days ago, I thought to resurrect them, fix the frets and pluck the strings. I opened today’s Update with a short attempt at a tune on each one. I hope you get a kick out of the fumbling, particularly on the Bach piece.
The real News for the week included a Student Review of In My Room by The Beach Boys, a lesson on Let Your Love Flow by The Bellamy Brothers, James Taylor’s version of Oh! Susannah, and a new pack that includes all the James Taylor songs we have at TG – The Essential James Taylor.
We have a couple important dates coming up. On Saturday, August 16 we will host our next TG Live. This will focus on the techniques and tendencies in James Taylor’s playing and style. (I have moved from Elton to JT now). It will be at 11:00 am Pacific time and info on registering will be going out soon.
We will also be giving away some tickets to the CD release party/concert that Djangatos will have in Santa Cruz on Saturday, August 23. Ditto- details soon.
Some great suggestions on the Forum came in lately, mostly song recommendations, but also one for a continuation of our Lead Secrets course. I will get on that soon, but it also triggered some thoughts and challenges for students to consider tackling themselves. The extension of triads would be to figure out how to add sevenths to the top three-strings approach.
Things wrapped up with a short improv around Oh! Susannah.
I hope you enjoy the ride,
Neil