Mark Plays Solo Guitar at Willamette Valley Winery
Mark plays his guitar solos at Holloran Winery in Dundee, Oregon.
Mark plays his guitar solos at Holloran Winery in Dundee, Oregon.
Gryphon’s 50th Anniversary Party!
Mark Hanson’s new fingerstyle workshops!
Maybe sitting in front of an interactive computer screen is part of your practice regimen (that’s yours truly in the photo jamming with BB King’s band at his museum in Indianola, Miss.). But if not, here are some thoughts I recently offered to a student. To avoid the Yngwie Malmsteen-like physical maladies caused at least partly by shredding without warming up, I suggest starting your sessions with major scales at the end of the neck, using open strings. You’ll fret about two-thirds of the notes, so your fretting hand relaxes continually. Play the scales relatively slowly and softly to avoid […]
Mark Hanson teaches two fingerstyle guitar workshops at Gryphon in Palo Alto, Calif.
The B-string on a steel-string guitar can be loud – it is the thickest wire on the guitar, even thicker than the wire inside the wound sixth string. The inherent volume of the second string can produce unbalanced melody notes compared to notes played on the first string. Your ear is your guide in determining how hard to pick each string to balance the melody. However, when you pick the first and second strings simultaneously, it’s not easy to make one louder than the other. The volume differential between the first and second strings may obscure the actual first-string melody […]
Mark conducts a fingerstyle workshop in Shingle Springs, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills above Sacramento.
Mark and Greta participate in Morro Bay Wine Sellers’ “Songwriters At Play” event.
Folks write to me on occasion asking which of my fingerstyle books to start with: Contemporary Travis Picking or Beyond Basics Fingerstyle Guitar. My response: • The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking is strictly alternating-bass (“Travis Picking”), using pretty basic chords until later in the book. It is largely about training the PICKING hand. You get two actual guitar solos amongst the 14 pieces in the book; the other 12 are accompaniments to a melody that is played/sung by a second instrument. The techniques in this book allow singer/songwriters to beautifully accompany their songs, but it also provides all […]
Mark & Greta in concert in Los Altos, California, with fingerstyle guitarists Teja Gerken and Doug Young.