February 2014 - Dream Guitars

Learning to Play Guitar

At Dream Guitars we are often asked for our thoughts on good ways to learn how to play guitar. We are so lucky to live in this modern age where knowledge is all around us and easy to find.

Here are a few thoughts on the best ways to learn guitar.

If you are completely new to the instrument, there’s no substitute for a good teacher, as initially learning the correct hand positions and physical posture are crucial early on in the process. This will help prevent bad habits or even worse, injury in the future.

Most often we are asked about learning a particular style of play such as Fingerstyle guitar. Many players are brought up on electric guitar, learning to play with a pic and strumming. Hence, the switch to Fingerstyle can seem daunting.

For Fingerstyle, there are some amazing resources that we can highly recommend.

Al Petteway Teaching "The Crossing" from Dream Guitars Vol. 1 The Golden Age of Lutherie

Dream Guitars itself is proud to be producing more and more in the way of free lessons for our viewers. Please be sure to check our website and our Youtube channel often for the latest lessons from some of the top Fingerstyle players in the world.

Dream Guitars also offers a CD and tab combination that is a wonderful learning tool for Fingerstyle: Dream Guitars Volume One: The Golden age of Lutherie DVD by Al Petteway featuring some of the finest guitars in the world and a companion tab book making it easy to learn your favorite Dream Guitars songs that you’ve heard on our website.

Homespun is another company that has long offered some of the best tutelage in the business. Their myriad of DVDs, featuring some of the best players in the world, are a great way to learn Fingerstyle guitar. Dream Guitars owner Paul Heumiller says “I grew up playing electric guitar and blues. When I switched to Fingerstyle I was lucky to find the Stefan Grossman tapes that taught the early blues material with alternate thumb finger picking. This was a great start for me as getting some independence from the thumb and the other fingers on the right hand is key to Fingerstyle. Then I moved into slide material and later found the homespun tapes from Martin Simpson, Al Petteway and many more of my heroes.

Another great resource is CandyRat Records – they have some of the best Canadian artists on their label and offer educational material as well. Look for Don Ross, Antoine Dufour, and Craig D’Andrea.

But don’t forget about private lessons and camps as you begin to improve with Fingerstyle guitar. Some of our clients will book a private lesson with Al Petteway when they come to visit the shop. Spending an hour or two with the Grammy-winning guitarist can shed light on your strengths and weaknesses and give you a fresh look going forward.

There also amazing workshops all over the country, most in the summertime, in the form of week-long camps where you can study with a half dozen or more teachers and jam with many like-minded guitar loving nuts. Here in Asheville we have the Swannanoa Gathering every summer where Al Petteway hires many of the top players in the world to come and teach for a week at Warren Wilson College. You choose classes each day from a variety of instructors and styles. It’s simply magical. You’ll go away with enough material for a year or more of practice.

We highly recommend the Swannanoa Gathering and if you plan to attend, come swing by Dream Guitars as well while you’re in the area. We’d love to have you.

For more information on any of the resources above or to pick our brains further on the topic, please feel free to call the shop 828-658-9795.

February 26, 2014/by Paul Heumiller

Meditating through Music

General Interest Guitar

The last few years I have developed a deep meditation practice. I won’t go into all of the benefits of meditation here because there are wonderful narratives on that subject. But suffice it to say that I find meditation a true key to happiness and contentment. Therefore I prioritize it in my day above all else. But sometimes that comes into conflict with my music and guitar playing. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m sure we all can relate to having to slice up 16 waking hours into slots of time for family, work, exercise, music, meditation and fun. And one day it hit me that music and meditation could be done at the same time. I actually did this when I was a teenager when I would play a piece of music until it became a trance-like repetition that I played just for pure enjoyment. Now that I have actual meditation skills and experience I find the two go beautifully hand-in-hand.

Here’s how I approach it…

Clearly the piece of music has to be somewhat simple and repetitive. For me it’s usually just a few chords or a riff with some drone strings that I can play over and over. This is actually great fun and gives you all the benefits of building strength and endurance for your hands and fingers while also working on tone production and getting to the place where you can play without thinking. In meditation, there is no thinking – the whole idea is to forgo thoughts and focus on just one thing. Often this is the breath or image, but it can also be a sound, the sound of the music.

Start by playing something very simple even just a few open strings in DADGAD for instance, then begin to focus on hearing the music and nothing else. Put all your intensity into just hearing and letting the music come into your being. If your mind begins to wander and you find yourself thinking about playing the music better, work you should be doing, the kids in the other room, then gently, like you’re talking to an old friend, tell your mind that there’s no time for thoughts right now and bring yourself back to intense focus on just hearing the music.

Do this without any judgment or any feeling of failure. It’s a very hard thing to control the mind. It controls us every moment of every day and it doesn’t necessarily like it when we try to take control back. So thoughts will come, but every time gently bring yourself back. Even a few seconds of calm are extremely valuable and slowly those seconds will grow into tens of seconds and maybe half a minute and then a full minute and so on.

Studies show that meditation and calming from within is extremely healing and beneficial to the brain. But to me it’s something even more, it’s healing for my soul. I invite you to join me and try meditation, or if you already meditate try it with music and your guitar. Anything we can do to have the guitar in our hands more, put music into the universe, and work on controlling our mind is time will spent.

February 21, 2014/by Paul Heumiller

Fanned Fret Guitars

General Interest Guitar, Handbuilt Guitars, Paul's Pick

“Clearly straight fretted guitars work beautifully and have been around forever, but there are advantages to Fanned Fret depending on your playing style.” – Paul Heumiller

What’s up with the crooked frets? Yes the slanted frets on my guitars are awesome conversation starters. But that’s not what it’s all about.

According to Wikipedia, Ralph Novak, guitar builder and designer, patented the Fanned Fret at the end of the 80’s. While the patent has expired, he still holds the trademark of the term “Fanned-Fret”. Fanned Frets create a different shape to the guitar. The slanted frets lengthen the bass strings and shorten the treble strings. This is further achieved by positioning the bridge at an angle opposite to the nut.*

Fanned Fret guitars are multi-scale instruments designed with a real purpose.

To understand the concept, we need only look at non-fretted stringed instruments. Consider the piano and the harp dulcimer and you immediately notice the bass strings are always longer than the treble strings. The reason for this is to create proper tension with a longer, thicker string to produce full low notes. Conversely the treble strings need to be shorter so they can be tightened to produce the higher pitch. There is a beautiful resonance you get from a longer bass string. When you tune down to D or C or even further, a longer bass string makes all the difference in the quality of the bass notes. The treble string remains normal length or slightly shorter depending on what you need and can offer a great feel that allows for easy playing high notes, bending strings, etc. The combined string lengths or scales, can provide the perfect amount of bass, sweet trebles and playability that you want for your personal style.

Another benefit is slightly improved intonation. You can understand this if you look at a True Temper Fretted guitar like the Bamburg JSB currently on our website, a Micro-Fret guitar, or a Sitar. You will see that accurate placement for every note on every string would require many tiny frets. The Fanned Fret and its longer length bass strings help intonation across the entire fingerboard.

One other powerful benefit is simply the tension of each string in relation to one another. On a standard guitar as you play from the bass strings down to the treble strings, the treble strings are often more tense and noticeably tighter feeling. Fanned Fret guitars help even out the tactile feel and to me are smoother feeling when playing across the strings.

“There is also something about the splay of the fret that feels extremely comfortable, it seems to suit my hand beautifully, more naturally than straight frets.” Paul Heumiller

One other note I’d like to make is that there is very little difference in the overall feel of playing a fanned Fret guitar. I have handed them to many players in our shop without them knowing I was handing them a fanned Fret guitar and often they don’t even notice until they take a hard look at the fingerboard. On a technical note, you can choose where to place the one perpendicular fret and that decision will effect the feel at the first position and elsewhere. Common choices are the 7th, 9th or 12th frets. After owning several fanned fret guitars I’ve settled on the 7th fret for my playing. It keeps the first position very easy to play. “We once had a Jeff Traugott guitar where all the frets were slanted backward toward the headstock 10 degrees. This one purely ergonomic and can be comfortable to some players as well. Though you don’t get the multi-scale benefits.” – Paul Heumiller

Now let’s look at some common Fanned Fret scale combinations and the uses for each. Let me start by saying there are no hard and fast rules. I encourage experimentation and fearlessness in this regard. The least amount of fan that we typically see is a half an inch combining the two common Martin scales 24.9 inches on the treble to 25.4 inches on the bass. This is a great design for someone playing in standard and drop D and even DADGAD but not really going to lower tunings. You’ll feel very little difference at all but you will get improved intonation and clarity and the short trebles are a joy to bend. Other scales we often use for DADGAD players is 25 inch treble scale and 26 inch bass scale, Paul’s Somogyi employed this combination. This works great for DADGAD and even some C tunings. The one inch fan is still very manageable and very versatile. Both of these scales above can be used with standard gauge strings – light gauge works fine as well.

Paul Heumiller’s McConnell SJ Fanned Fret

For my personal McConnell guitar we elected to use 25.5 inches on the treble side and 26.25 on the bass side. Jordan McConnell and I decided on this scale combination as I primarily play this guitar in low tunings C9, Gsus4, and DADGAD down a whole step to C. Paul says “I left the trebles long because we wanted them to bite. But I can also put it in standard pitch and it works great. I use 12.5 to 55 gauge strings – just personal preference here.” On the longer side of Fanned Fret would be 25.6 on this treble side to 27 inches or so on the bass side. This big of a spread you’ll feel a bit more but it can go very low – all the way down to A or B, crossing into baritone territory. “I once owned a Traugott with this spread and it was killer!. Bill Tippin is currently building me a short Fanned Fret guitar, this one will be 24.75 – 25.5, I plan to play it mostly in Drop D and Standard and wanted really bendy trebles!” – Paul Heumiller

There’s really no limit to what you can do with the Fanned Fret to accommodate your music and your style of play. At Dream Guitars we are Champions of the Fanned Fret concept and almost always have one or two in stock. We work with many builders who offer Fanned Fret options and owner Paul Heumiller is currently working on a new Fanned Fret Baritone design with Ken Jones that will be available in Spring of 2014.

Give us a call to discuss your needs and see if a Fanned Fret guitar is right for you. We would love to help you design your perfect Fanned Fret guitar.

Sexauer Fanned Fret Guitar 24.9″ – 25.4″ Scales

“We all know that 12 fret guitars tend to have a different tonal profile than 14 fret guitars. Often they are often a little more complex and seem to just breath a little easier in the low end. This is largely due to the bridge position being shift down to a more central position in the lower bout. With a fanned fret guitar, the bass end of the bridge is in a ’12 fret’ position and the treble end is is in a ’14 fret’ position. This makes it easier for the bass strings to move the top and produce a nice full bass response. Meanwhile, at the other end of the bridge, the treble strings are still in a 14 fret position. The top is ‘tighter’ there and better able to produce good strong trebles. So… it seems to me that a fanned fret guitar, by virtue of the angled bridge, gives us the tonal best of both the 12 fret and 14 fret design.” – Mark Blanchard – Blanchard Guitars

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanned_Fret_Guitars

February 6, 2014/by Paul Heumiller

Find Your Dream Guitar

Looking for your next guitar? Join our DreamCatcher™. We’ll do our best to find it for you quickly…

FIND AN INSTRUMENT

COMMUNITY

POLICIES

EDUCATION

Enjoy FREE Live Demos

Book now and discover your dream sound

NEW Consignment Rates

Trade up discounts and more

FREE Digital Book Download

Sound Investments: A Guitarist’s Guide to Curating a Valuable Collection

Learning to Play Guitar

Meditating through Music

Fanned Fret Guitars

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanned_Fret_Guitars

Find Your Dream Guitar