Category: Press

Mark’s Three New Books Released!

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Mark was busy in 2018: Two 30th Anniversary Editions and a new Repertoire book! Relaxing Songs for Fingerstyle Guitar includes 15 new Hanson solo guitar arrangements of well-known tunes, from a spectacular new version of the classic “Sleepwalk” to Ed Sheeran’s recent “Photograph” and “Hallelujah” from Leonard Cohen. Notation/TAB/Online Audio. Lower-Intermediate to advanced. More info. The Art of Solo Fingerpicking 30th Anniversary Edition includes 20 new/updated pages and four cool new tunes, including Mark’s “Cast Away” and “Easy Virtue.” Notation/TAB/Online Audio. More info. The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking is the perennial best seller, having trained scores of thousands of […]

NAMM Trade Show Anaheim, January 2019

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We made our annual January trek to Anaheim, Calif., for the music merchants’ trade show. Here are some photos: Holding some of my books in the Hal Leonard booth: In the Collings Guitars booth with (L-R) Peghead Nation’s Teja Gerken, Portland fingerstyle virtuoso Eric Skye, L.A. session guitar ace Mark Goldenberg (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, etc.). Greta at Laguna Beach during the Upper Midwest Arctic Vortex.

Mark in a Fretboard Journal Video!

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I visited Jason Verlinde and his cohorts at Fretboard Journal‘s office in Seattle a few months back. They filmed me playing my arrangement of “Water Is Wide” and  my alternating-bass warhorse “Key to the Kingdom.” Although I brought my own guitars along, they requested that I play a guitar that the magazine had commissioned from local luthier T. Drew Heinonen. Below is the “Water Is Wide” video. The “Water Is Wide” notation and TAB are available three ways in hardcopy from us: 1) as a stand-alone piece  2) in my publication Great American Tablature Songbook (57 tunes in all), and 3) […]

“Tri-Tone Substitutions” Made Easy!

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Understanding “Tri-tone Substitution” Note: This article references my bluesy rave-up fingerstyle arrangement of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” A video of me playing it in Santa Barbara in August, 2017, has been posted here on YouTube: The actual music starts at about 0:35. Perhaps you have come across the term “Tri-tone substitution” in your studies, and had a hard time understanding it. Here’s an easy way to understand tri-tone substitutions: Think of them simply as dominant-seventh chords resolving down a half step – F7, instead of B7, going to E, for example. Most of you use B7 to resolve […]

A Tribute to John Renbourn

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September, 2016 Greta and I were invited to a tribute gathering this month for English guitar hero John Renbourn. John died at the age of 70 at his home in Scotland in March of 2015. Unfortunately, we had to turn down the invitation to attend. This is the tribute I wrote to be read at the gathering: Tribute to John Renbourn My wife Greta Pedersen and I have known John ever since I recruited him as a guitar columnist for Frets magazine in the 1980s. We have many fond memories of John: from sharing the stage with him numerous times, to […]

Mark’s University of Oregon Interview Published!

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The text of the November 2014 interview is included below. View the entire interview, including photos and video, at the Register-Guard of Eugene, Oregon.   THE VIRTUOSO MENTOR: Acoustic Guitarist Mark Hanson Shares His Gift in More Ways than One By: Sumi Kim, Taylor Goodman, and Michael McGovern “As a teacher, I’m constantly rewarded by the interactions with my students and to see the satisfaction they get from learning something new or having an epiphany.” – Mark Hanson He wanted to be the next Mickey Mantle, to play center field for the New York Yankees. Or maybe he was destined […]