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Happy Traum's Guitar Building Blocks
HOMESPUN
Taught By Happy Traum.
Level 2
Four-DVD or VHS series, includes music and tab
Happy Traum created these easy, enjoyable lessons to help novice players learn essential guitar techniques, along with several songs to illustrate each subject. Great for beginning/intermediate guitarists who want to target specific areas for improvement.
Lesson One:
Barre Chords and How to Use Them
60-minute DVD or VHS, Includes chords
Barre chords are a vitally important part of your ability to move beyond the third fret, play solid rhythm in all keys and get a wide variety of sounds through chord inversions. Happy de-mystifies these powerful chord shapes, providing tips on how to play them cleanly and easily. You'll learn basic chord theory, how to transpose from one key to another and how to play several chord progressions and songs, including Abilene and Stagolee.
Lesson Two:
Bass Runs and How to UseTaught By Happy Traum.
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
Bass runs help provide a smooth and musically interesting transition as you change chords. They're especially useful in country, bluegrass and folk songs, often providing a harmony line to the sung melody. Learning to add bass runs to your chord progressions teaches you how to play the notes of the scale in several keys, and helps you develop good timing and single-note accuracy. This tape teaches you a variety of bass "walks" in several keys, from the most basic to more complex chromatic runs. You'll learn to add solid accompaniment to several songs, including "Will The Circle Be Unbroken," "Bury Me Beneath The Willow," "I Am A Pilgrim," "Walk Right In" and more.
Barre Chords and How to Use Them
60-minute DVD or VHS, Includes chords
Barre chords are a vitally important part of your ability to move beyond the third fret, play solid rhythm in all keys and get a wide variety of sounds through chord inversions. Happy de-mystifies these powerful chord shapes, providing tips on how to play them cleanly and easily. You'll learn basic chord theory, how to transpose from one key to another and how to play several chord progressions and songs, including Abilene and Stagolee.
Lesson Two:
Bass Runs and How to UseTaught By Happy Traum.
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
Bass runs help provide a smooth and musically interesting transition as you change chords. They're especially useful in country, bluegrass and folk songs, often providing a harmony line to the sung melody. Learning to add bass runs to your chord progressions teaches you how to play the notes of the scale in several keys, and helps you develop good timing and single-note accuracy. This tape teaches you a variety of bass "walks" in several keys, from the most basic to more complex chromatic runs. You'll learn to add solid accompaniment to several songs, including "Will The Circle Be Unbroken," "Bury Me Beneath The Willow," "I Am A Pilgrim," "Walk Right In" and more.
Lesson Three:
Instant Fingerpicking Success
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
The fingerpicking style is one of the most popular and engaging ways of playing the guitar. It's especially good for song accompaniment, and has been favored by folk, blues and country pickers, especially singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Paul Simon, Shawn Colvin and Nanci Griffith. This lesson de-mystifies the right-hand technique by breaking it down into patterns that can be learned quickly and easily. Once these are mastered, a world of wonderful sounds will be available on the guitar, and you'll be able to apply them to some all-time favorite folk and traditional songs such as "Nine Hundred Miles," "Red Apple Juice," "Railroad Bill" and "Pretty Peggy-O."
Lesson Four:
Creating Easy Song Arrangements
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
The beauty of the guitar is not necessarily based on advanced and highly technical playing skills. Interesting and unusual arrangements can be created with very simple ideas, as long as you have some knowledge and an elementary understanding of the guitar. On this lesson lesson, Happy takes some easy songs and shows you how to transform them into beautiful show pieces using interesting right-hand patterns, altered chords and chord substitutions, ornamentation, harmonized scales and other very basic but useful techniques. You'll be amazed at what you'll be able to do with the simplest folk songs.
Instant Fingerpicking Success
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
The fingerpicking style is one of the most popular and engaging ways of playing the guitar. It's especially good for song accompaniment, and has been favored by folk, blues and country pickers, especially singer-songwriters such as James Taylor, Paul Simon, Shawn Colvin and Nanci Griffith. This lesson de-mystifies the right-hand technique by breaking it down into patterns that can be learned quickly and easily. Once these are mastered, a world of wonderful sounds will be available on the guitar, and you'll be able to apply them to some all-time favorite folk and traditional songs such as "Nine Hundred Miles," "Red Apple Juice," "Railroad Bill" and "Pretty Peggy-O."
Lesson Four:
Creating Easy Song Arrangements
60-minute DVD or VHS,Includes music + tab book
The beauty of the guitar is not necessarily based on advanced and highly technical playing skills. Interesting and unusual arrangements can be created with very simple ideas, as long as you have some knowledge and an elementary understanding of the guitar. On this lesson lesson, Happy takes some easy songs and shows you how to transform them into beautiful show pieces using interesting right-hand patterns, altered chords and chord substitutions, ornamentation, harmonized scales and other very basic but useful techniques. You'll be amazed at what you'll be able to do with the simplest folk songs.
During the past forty years, Happy Traum's avid interest in traditional and contemporary
music has brought him recognition as a performer, writer, editor, folklorist,
teacher and recording artist. He has performed extensively throughout the U.S.,
Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared on recordings as a featured
artist, as a member of various ensembles, and as an accompanist. He has played
and recorded with Bob Dylan, Chris Smither, Maria Muldaur, Eric Andersen, Rory
Block, Jerry Jeff Walker, Allen Ginsberg, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel
and innumerable others. Happy is the author of more than a dozen best-selling guitar instruction books, has written numerous magazine columns and articles, and for three years was editor of Sing Out! The Folksong Magazine. He and his brother, Artie Traum, have been playing as a duo since 1968. Their first two Capitol albums, "Happy And Artie Traum" and "Double Back," are widely considered to be classics. Long-time residents of Woodstock, NY, Happy and Artie co-produced several important records for Rounder, featuring some of the area's finest folk and rock musicians. These included "Mud Acres, Music Among Friends" and "Woodstock Mountains." Happy and Artie's album "Hard Times In The Country" featured liner notes by Allen Ginsberg. In 1993, Happy and Artie released their latest duet album, "The Test Of Time," featuring traditional and contemporary songs backed up by some of Woodstock's finest musicians.
Happy's solo albums include "Relax Your Mind," "American Stranger," "Bright Morning Stars" and "Friends And Neighbors." A compilation CD, "Buckets Of Songs," has been released by Shanachie Records. In 2001, “Bright Morning Stars” was reissued in CD format in the U.S. (Lark’s Nest Music) and in Japan (Slice of Life Records).
Perhaps Happy Traum's most important and lasting musical contribution has been Homespun Tapes, which he and his wife Jane founded in 1967. This dynamic and growing mail order company has a catalog of approximately 400 different music instruction lessons on audio cassette, CD and video tape, taught by top professional performing musicians. Happy produces all of the lessons, and brings to Homespun his many years of experience as a popular and productive member of the music community.