HELLO GUITARISTS!

I'll be having a live online guitar workshop in November. If you can't make one or more of the live sessions, no worries! They'll be put up each week as videos on RonBlock.com, along with bonus videos where I teach a tune/solo/song. 

LEVEL: Intermediate to advanced

OBJECTIVE: To help guitarists see new ways to move forward - to give you the tools and ideas that I've used to create my style of playing with Alison Krauss & Union Station so that you can take those tools and more fully develop your own styles of playing. Order link is here: Guitar Workshop

TOPICS: Roots and Inflluences - George Shuffler, Larry Sparks, and Clarence White to blues and country players. We'll move on into some of my solos with Alison throughout the course, but at the front end we'll look into some of the players that helped create the guitar style I use with AKUS, and how I change my playing for other situations. 

The Psychology of Playing Well (this is incredibly important) 

Right and Left Hand Technique 

Tone - Timing - Taste 

Rhythm Playing 

How I Learned and Continue to Learn the Neck 

Make Solos More Moving with Expression 

Make Solos More Engaging with Intervals ("doublestops") 

Playing the Melody: The Many Ways to Vary a Solo. 

Crosspicking 

And I'll add more before the starting date. 

Plus these freebies and more: Downloads of A Light So Fair: Peaceful Guitar Instrumentals; my Hogan's House of Music bluegrass instrumental record (I took quite a few guitar breaks on it); a pdf of my Traditional Guitar Workbook with my personal tabs of George Shuffler, Larry Sparks, Bill Napier, Don Reno, Clarence White, and Junior Blankenship. These freebies alone are worth about $47. 

The Workshop will be held on these days at 7pm Central in 2020: Nov 12, 19, 27, Dec 3. (Nov 26 is Thanksgiving, so that day will be done on Friday, Nov 27). 

When signing up, you'll get a download link for Hogan's House of Music. I'll be putting all email addresses into a file, and in the next week or so when I get everything into Dropbox I'll be sending out the Zoom link, passwords I'll use for the videos, and the Dropbox link with the outlines, tabs, and freebies. 

I'm looking forward to it!

(Photo by Russ Carson)
 

During the Alison Krauss Windy City tour in 2018, Alison suggested I record an album of peaceful, meditative guitar pieces. I took her suggestion to heart. Order the cd or download here.

Usually in the mornings I spend some time in reading and reflection. For this album I'd pull my guitar out after this peaceful, reflective time. A period of experimentation would lead into an idea for a melody, mostly simple and peaceful, which would then lead into an idea for an arrangement. The melodies are variously inspired by the morning sunlight on our fields in Tennessee, walks in the Yorkshire countryside, a river in Scotland behind Huntly Castle, writers George MacDonald, John Donne, and C.S. Lewis, melodies of Stephen Foster, and ballad books from the 1800s. 

By late morning I would be adding another guitar, or shruti (a simple, accordion-like instrument). The idea was to let everything flow into the music from that early morning feeling of peace, focusing on simplicity, tone, and nuance, with the intention that listeners would be able to take away some of that peace for themselves. 

Some stellar voices added background vocals. Suzanne Cox, Sierra Hull, Kate Rusby, Damien O'Kane, and my daughter, Erica Block, all added some lovely, ethereal parts to the mix. 

For vintage guitar aficionados: most of the recording was made using my 1938 Martin D28, used on the AKUS albums Lonely Runs Both Ways and Paper Airplane.

A Light So Fair will be released Nov 29th digitally. CDs will be shipped on Dec 3rd. You can listen to two whole tracks, "Hope Sings" and "The River Deveron," clips of the others, and preorder at the RonBlock.Com Store

Some of you know I've been working for awhile on an album of peaceful, sparse instrumentals. Usually in the mornings I spend some time in reading and reflection.  For this album I'd pull my guitar out after this peaceful, reflective time each morning. A period of experimentation would lead into an idea for a melody, mostly simple and peaceful, which would then lead into an idea for an arrangement.

By late morning I would be adding another guitar, or shruti (a simple, accordion-like instrument). The idea was to let everything flow into the music from that early morning feeling of peace, focusing on simplicity, tone, and nuance, with the intention that listeners would be able to take away some of that peace for themselves.

Some stellar voices added background vocals. Suzanne Cox, Sierra Hull, Kate Rusby, Damien O'Kane, and my daughter, Erica Block, all added some lovely, ethereal parts to the mix. 

For vintage guitar aficionados: most of the recording was made using my 1938 Martin D28. 

A Light So Fair will be released Nov 29th digitally. CDs will be shipped on Dec 3rd. Listen to clips and preorder here: http://ronblock.com/album/1226294/a-light-so-fair-peaceful-guitar-instrumentals

These tuners are classy through and through, from the feel to the materials to even the box. I put the Gold/Galaith Ivory pegs on my Rich & Taylor (So Long So Wrong banjo) and have been using them on the Alison Krauss tour. The 10:1 gear ratio makes my job easy. I'll be putting them on my 1926 Gibson Granada and my Banjocaster this week. Check the Store page for more details!