KARL STRAUB GUITAR WORKSHOP, MARCH 22, 7 TO 9 PM, WITH OBSCENELY LONG TITLE--"HOW I LEARNED TO PLAY ROCK AND ROLL, PUNK, ROCKABILLY, COUNTRY, JAZZ, BLUES, CLASSICAL, WESTERN SWING, BLUEGRASS, AND FOLK GUITAR, AND LIVED TO TALK ABOUT IT"

March 22, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
NOVA Music Center
12704 CHAPEL RD., CLIFTON, VA 20124
(not as far away as you think)

novamusiccenter.com/workshop-genre-mixing-guitar-workshop-march-22-7-00-9-00-pm/

(NOTE- this short video clip is a sample of what you can expect at the workshop. The first piece is in a Danny Gatton rockabilly style, and the second is a Bach-like sketch. They both use the same basic chord progression in the key of G. At the workshop, Karl will talk about how to find connections between styles, and how to mix them together in any way you want.)


Guitarist and Music Educator Karl Straub has led a checkered career. He has played many different styles professionally and spent more than thirty years studying the connections between different musical genres. Karl has shoehorned Monkees guitar licks into Thelonious Monk pieces, watched his audience slam dance to pop songs written when Jimi Hendrix's parents were young, and played Yardbirds fuzztone guitar while being pelted with enough fake blood, glitter, and chicken bones to stop his wah-wah pedal from working.

This workshop is partly a history of American guitar styles, and partly a master class on how to mix these styles together. Straub will talk about how slight adjustments to your playing can take you from psychedelic rock to blues to country to jazz faster than a Lady Gaga costume change.

Karl Straub has a Music Education degree, and almost 30 years professionally performing, recording, and writing. His songs have been recorded by numerous local artists, and he has played guitar with Last Train Home, Eric Brace, the Grandsons, the Graverobbers, the Kennedys, Little Pink, and Exit 10.



NOVA Music Center
12704 Chapel Rd
Clifton, VA 20124
703-830-7141
novamusiccenter.com/workshop-genre-mixing-guitar-workshop-march-22-7-00-9-00-pm/
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JIMMY WYBLE WITH RED NORVO

Jimmy Wyble is one of my favorite guitarists, even though I'm sure I haven't heard
more than five minutes of his playing, and maybe not that much.

This is because of Wyble's bizarrely eclectic career-- he authored many fascinating solo guitar etudes that mixed jazz and classical idioms, and sometimes included
interesting 20th century classical dissonances, but he also played with Bob Wills.
I've got a book of Jimmy's etudes, and they are deadly.

This clip, featuring nowhere nearly enough Wyble, is with Red Norvo, another terrific but often neglected musician who combined accessible swing music with a very advanced
dissonant language. And if that ain't hip, I don't know what hip is.
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GLEN CAMPBELL, "MY WINDOW FACES THE SOUTH"

Sometimes it seems I spend half my life listening to this song. (I've done some woodshedding recently with versions of "Window" by Willie Nelson with the Texas Troubadours and Leon Rhodes, Bob Wills with Junior Barnard, Red Foley with Grady Martin, and Grady Martin's Slewfoot Five.)

This version is a humdinger, with a young Glen Campbell doing an intro and a solo, plus some intriguing dance moves. It's more evidence of my theory that Glen did some of his hottest picking before he was famous.

THANKS TO CHARLIE MCCARDELL FOR SENDING ME THIS CLIP. Charlie seems to spend hours a day searching for hip stuff online, and we're all the better for it.
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HANK GARLAND AND CHET ATKINS, "THE HOT GUITAR" WITH EDDIE HILL

I think this is the hot cut I heard a dj play once almost thirty years ago, and have been searching for ever since. It's one of those songs where the singer acts as an announcer, and guitarists ape a bunch of other great pickers. But this one features the stellar lineup of Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, and steel guitarist Jerry Byrd trading breaks-- killer.

You have to guess who plays which break, but I'm assuming Chet plays the Chet and Merle stuff, plus some Chet-like hot licks. (We hear so much melodic Chet-style playing that it's easy to forget that Chet played hot licks too!)

Then I think Hank Garland probably handled the other imitations. He has a slippery way of picking that you don't hear in Chet's playing. Although it often seems that Chet can do anything, even virtuoso and versatile players usually run to form, and where Chet's playing usually has a prim consistency, Hank's looser phrasing and articulation can help you tell the two apart. (Unless I'm wrong!) At any rate, Chet was the guy who told the young Hank Garland about Django Reinhardt, probably the source of that bubbly and hell-bent quality in his sound.
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GUITAR WORKSHOP WITH KARL STRAUB--TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER

TEN IDEAS TO MAKE YOU A BETTER GUITAR PLAYER
OPEN TO PLAYERS OF ALL LEVELS
Karl Straub's Guitar Workshop is Thursday, Jan. 19, 7 pm at NOVA Music, 12704 CHAPEL ROAD, CLIFTON, VA 20124

http://www.novamusiccenter.com/categories/Workshops/

"BROKE DOWN GUITAR," A SHORT ROCKABILLY PIECE.


KARL STRAUB'S HIGHLIGHT REEL, A FEW DIFFERENT STYLES OF GUITAR PLAYING


The purpose of the workshop is to show you how to be a better guitar player. Most guitar instructional books and DVD's show you how to play specific licks and songs, but without knowledge of certain fundamentals, many guitarists stay at the same level regardless of how many licks and songs they learn.

This workshop will give you a pile of practicing and playing techniques that will improve your playing right away, and keep you improving from now on. Straub will pass along tips about technique and practicing he has learned in 27 years of professional experience playing rock and roll, country, jazz, classical, blues, and folk guitar.

among the topics discussed--

HOW TO PRACTICE FOR MAXIMUM BENEFIT

BUILDING SPEED WITHOUT BUILDING SLOPPINESS

PLAYING IN DIFFERENT KEYS

PLAYING ALL OVER THE GUITAR, NOT JUST THE FIRST THREE FRETS

EAR TRAINING-- IF YOU CAN'T HEAR IT, YOU CAN'T PLAY IT
CLEANING UP YOUR LEFT AND RIGHT HANDS

HOW TO TURN SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS INTO ACTUAL MUSIC

HOW EVEN A LITTLE MUSIC THEORY CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER PLAYER

Karl Straub has a Music Education degree, and almost 30 years professionally performing, recording, and writing. His songs have been recorded by numerous local artists, and he has played guitar with Last Train Home, Eric Brace, the Grandsons, the Graverobbers, the Kennedys, Little Pink, and Exit 10.
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