adult guitar lessons

that old black magic

“That Old Black Magic” is a 1942 popular song written by Harold Arlen (music), with the lyrics by Johnny Mercer. They wrote it for the 1942 film Star Spangled Rhythm, when it was sung by Johnny Johnston and danced by Vera Zorina. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1943 but lost out to “You’ll Never Know”.

The song was published in 1942 and has become an often-recorded standard, with versions that include the original single release by Glenn Miller, by the singers Margaret Whiting, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Mercer himself, and others. Mercer wrote the lyrics with Judy Garland in mind. Garland recorded the song for Decca Records in 1942. Mercer recalled wanting to write a song about magic, and while composing, asking Arlen to write more music so the song could go on longer, but that they still wrote the whole song in about three hours. Billy Daniels recorded the song in 1949 and it became his trademark recording.

Download the lead sheet PDF

Paul2024-09-03T08:44:49-04:00

travel guitars

Travel guitars are pretty interesting, and if you travel and can’t bring your guitar with, there are a few “travel guitar’ solutions. Typically these shorter-scale guitars have a neck without a headstock, the tuners being built into the butt of the guitar. The guitars are meant to be played through headphones and although they may be suitable for performance, I suspect they are used mostly for just what the name implies, a substitute instrument you can use to practice while away from home. Some of them do sound pretty good though, judging by recorded travel guitar video on their various websites.

The tradeoff for travel guitars portability is tonality. The tone of the guitar comes entirely from the pickups so in the case of nylon-stringed guitars specifically (what I would be interested in) that pickup is a ‘piezo’ style. Piezo-electric pickups convert the physical movement of the guitar top into an electrical signal, and they can sound thin and ’tinny’. Some classical/electric guitars have both an internal microphone and a pixel-electric pickup; using onboard controls, the player is able to blend the sound between the two sources (plus EQ) for a more ’natural’ amplified sound. “EQ”, btw just short for ‘equalization’. You would use EQ controls to balance the sound of your guitar in the way that sounds […]

Paul2025-05-16T16:16:33-04:00

blues in Am

Paul2024-02-11T09:59:57-05:00

nutshell

nutshell pdf for scales to play over chords

Paul2025-05-16T16:21:09-04:00

monkey gets in the way

‘monkey gets in the way’

chords, notation and lyrics.

“day and night, I wanna do right but the monkey gets in the way”…

Paul2025-05-20T18:45:45-04:00

jingle bells

I’ve been playing this on solo guitar, adding to my Christmas repertoire a little this year. I downloaded a nice drum track from wikiloops.com where you can get some really great (and free) tracks to experiment with.

In Logic Pro the guitar track went down over the drums and then the bass (which Art Baguer said is “stylistically on point” and so I am inordinately proud of that for sure)!

I should have the changes up here shortly as a pdf download for any folks who are interested. Enjoy!

Paul2025-05-20T18:46:36-04:00

let it be part 1

Paul2024-01-12T08:52:54-05:00

hands on the wheel

notation and lyrics for this song

Paul2024-01-11T08:04:17-05:00

All that love for you!

It struck me how much his in-laws love him- really adore my kid! Typically when I’m composing I keep a picture of something in my head to focus on while I’m inventing and In this case I was thinking about his wife’s family, how lovely they are to him and to Deb and me as well. I worked this up to a built-in drum track in logic pro and the idea is to substitute a track that my son makes in Beats, and then sort of present this to his in-laws as a token of our appreciation for them. That’s the idea anyway.

Paul2024-01-08T08:57:20-05:00

silent night

“Silent Night” (German: “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. The song was first recorded in 1905 and has remained a popular success, appearing in films and multiple successful recordings, as well as being quoted in other musical compositions. You can download the pdf notation and tab sheet here

Paul2025-06-03T07:36:32-04:00