The week started off with the students arriving on Monday morning and early afternoon. A buffet lunch was served from 11:30 to 1pm to accommodate arriving students and their families. Then, there was orientation at 2pm and the first classes were from 3 to 6pm. (Normal class hours are 9 to 12pm and 1 to 4pm.) As I mentioned, I used the first afternoon to present an "Introduction to Touchstyle." Here's what I covered.

• position of hands and the instrument.
• the basic action of tapping, where to hit and hold a note (directly behind fret, towards the middle and on the fret, depending on the desired effect).
• tuning the instrument; tuning in one spot on the fingerboard; tuning to a chord, tuning to intervals (suggested A and D); using a tuner, which type of tuner (chromatic).
• which tuning to use; explored 4ths/4ths (Schell, Rockwell), 4ths/5ths (standard) and 5ths/5ths (Crafty).
• how to group strings; we discussed "crossed hands," "uncrossed hands," "symmetric" and "parallel tunings."
• equipment; individual needs, keyboard amp, rack mount, guitar and bass amps; suggested accessories like a two-to-one plug (from Radio Shack) and ground lifts (in case of ground loops).
• what kind of strings (Traktor's, mine, Stick Enterprise's, building your own sets from the store); and what gauges (light or heavy).
• what instrument to use; conventional guitar or bass (how to set one up), Santucci Treble-Bass, Chapman Stick®, Dave Bunker Touch-Guitar and Warr Guitar®.
• existing books and printed material I had; Jimmy Webster's "The Touch System," Emmett Chapman's "Free Hands," Daniel Schell's "My Space, My Time," my "TouchStyle Songbook" and "TouchStyle Quarterly," and Traktor's "Multi-String Shopper."
• notation; merits of concert pitch (good for LH chords) or trans- position up an octave (guitar/bass convention, good for most everything else), Tab (conventional and graphs) and fingering (conventional and Schell system).
• we started our first "Listening Session" with selections from Tony Levin's "World Diary" and Jim Lampi's "TV Weather" and "Young Lions." 

Tuesday
Technique
Fingering basics - don't use same finger twice in succession; three or four-finger technique; hand positions.

Right hand scale, starting with one octave scale, then on to two octaves on each.

Theory/Harmony
RH harmony; triads in major and minor; root position , 1st and 2nd inversion; learned 1-4-5-1 with parallel voicing in all three inversions; played rock tunes that use 1-4-5-1 like "Wild Thing," "Louie, Louie" and "Mr. Brown."

Repertorie
"C Jam Blues," (Duke Ellington), melody with single note bass line in whole notes, traditional ending, RH chords using 3rd and 7ths only.

Rhythm
Basic Rhythm ex; all four pages; practicing with a metronome.

Listening Session
Stanley Jordan "Stolen Moments", Volker Rein of "Kiss of Reality" and Kuno Wagner "Acoustick."

And I did a half-hour session on "Ear-training." I explained the difference between relative and perfect pitch. I showed them how to work on relative pitch; I explained and demonstrated how to make a relative pitch practice tape, and we did relative pitch ear-training exercises.

Wednesday
Technique
Two octave RH scales thru the cycle of 5ths; two octave LH hand scale; explored different fingerings for LH scale.

Theory/Harmony
RH harmony; 1-4-5-1 non-symmetrical (TQ Vol 2, No 3).

Rhythm
Basic interdependence exercise; interdependence exercise with 3 note groups; jamming over interdependence bass line using mixolydian scale.

Repertorie
"C Jam Blues" with simple walking lines (bass with roots; root and 5th; root, 3rd, 5th, 3rd; root, 3rd, 5th b7th).

Students started to compose piece for student concert; rehearsal of sections and transitions.

Listening Session
Victor Wooten "A Show Of Hands," Brian Kenney "Implatical Leptitude," Philharmonie with Bernard Ros "Nord" and Steve Hahn "StickBurst."

Thursday
Technique
RH scales in 3rds half-way thru the cycle of 5ths.

Worked on the first two sections of "Mr. Sechter's Frühsport" by Wolfgang Daiss. This piece is composed exclusively of arpeggios and utilizes two hands on the melody strings. ("Mr. Sechter's Frühsport" will be featured in the October 1997 issue of the "TouchStyle Quarterly.")

We put together a glossary of "Ornaments;" slides, bends, pre-bends (use two hands), bending into unisons (one or two hands), vibrato(s), pull-offs (with one and two hands), hammer-ons, harmonics, plucking, picking, slapping, double stops, muting (tap note on top of fret or mute with right hand), volume swells and different combinations of the above.

Theory/Harmony
Played rock tunes with non-symmetrical 1-4-5-1 ("Wild Thing," "Louie, Louie" and "Mr. Brown").

Rhythm
Interdependence exercise with 4 note groups, writing melodies using predetermined rhythmic groupings.

Repertorie
Improvise on "C Jam Blues" using pentatonic C, Eb, F, G, Bb and blues C, Eb, F, F#, G, Bb.

Continued working on piece for student concert; rehearsal of sections and transitions; decided name of the piece to be "Plaque Market," name of ensemble is "Sixty-String Quintet." We talked about performing basics like eye-contact, volume levels, tuning, listening and placing guitar cords thru pants loop or strap (just in case you step on it!) We also discussed how to recover from mistakes.

Listening Session
Emmett Chapman "Parallel Galaxy," Greg Howard "Stick Figures," Jim Wright "Jazz Heretics," Michael Manring "Drastic Measures" and Preston Reed "Metal."

Friday
Technique
Continued with "Mr. Sechter's Frühsport."

Theory/Harmony
Kuno Chord Concept, a system for using both hands on the melody strings to play four note chords.

I gave them LH chord exercises 1-4-5-1 and 1-6-2-5-1 to learn at home.

Rhythm
Continued practicing the interdependence exercise with 4 note groups, as well as improvisation over it.

Repertorie
Reviewed "C Jam Blues."

Discussed previous night's performance of "Plaque Market" at the student concert. Consensus was volume levels should have been more balanced (no sound check was possible) and transition sections could have been smoother. Everyone felt it was a good performance given the limited time playing a new instrument.

Listening Session
Primus "Sailing The Seas Of Cheese" and "Pork Soda," (thanks to Colin and George for turning me on to Primus), Bob Culbertson "A Moment In Time," Marco Cerletti "Random and Providence," Tarace Boulba "À La DemandeGénérale," Jack Grassel "Solo Burner" and Trey Gunn "The Third Star."

Concerts
Monday night's faculty concert started with visiting artist John Jorgenson (Elton John, Hellcasters) playing the music of Django Reinhart. I played a duo with jazz guitarist Jack Grasell. The tune was "Footprints" (Wayne Shorter). Jack took the head and then played a nice solo using all harmonics. (There is a one-song limit due to the large size of the faculty.)

Tuesday night there was a taping of a video show with the father of be-bop guitar, Tal Farlow. Guitarist Jody Fisher interviewed Tal and played a number of songs with him. Concurrent with this was the second part of the faculty concert.

Wednesday night was the acoustic faculty concert. Jack Grasell and I got together in my classroom for an impromtu jam. Anyone walking past wandered in and listened a while.

Thursday afternoon we were treated to a seminar and performance by John Scofield. John performed "Yesterdays" (Jerome Kern) and "Cantalope Island" (Herbie Hancock). Bassist Gary Willis, who was also teaching a seminar this week, held down the bottom end. (Guitarist Mark Dziuba and drummer Yuichi Hirakawa rounded out the band.) Then John took questions from the audience. (The seminar lasted three hours with more playing and discussion. Our class opted to leave mid-way so as to continue with our lessons.)

Thursday night was the student concert. Our class wrote a piece for five tap guitars entitled "Plaque Market" (ensemble name "Sixty-String Quintet".) The piece was in three sections. The first section started with Mark playing a D-7 to C Major left hand chord vamp. Colin played the opening theme with a distorted sound on the melody side. Ben played a counter melody high up on the bass side.

This segued into part two with Colin playing a bass/chordal pattern (A to F major), Ben played a repeating tritone figure, George tapped percussion on the bass side, Mark doubled the bass part and Orest played a two-handed solo.

Part three started with George playing a funky bass line utilizing both low bass and melody strings, Orest and Colin played a rolling eighth-note melody in >unison, Mark played a right hand chordal pattern and Ben did string swells on the melody side. The piece ended with Mark's chordal pattern and Colin twisting the dial on his digital delay. The audience loved it. It was a fine performance of the piece considering each student had only just picked up the instrument four days prior!

Costs and Registration
The price was $590. for the week. This included instruction, concerts, room and board. (Prices subject to change.)

Brochures for the summer of 1998 will be mailed after the first of the new year. To receive one, call or write the National Guitar Summer Workshop at: NGSW, PO Box 222, Lakeside, CT, 06758, 1-800-234-6479, http://guitarworkshop.com, ngsw@esslink.com

Instrument Rental
This year we had five Warr Raptor model guitars available for students to rent. Cost was $35. for the week. Students also had the option to buy these guitars at the end of the week for a special price of $995. plus $95. for the case. We hope to continue with this policy. (Prices subject to change.)

Thanks
Thanks to Mike Allain, Canterbury School, Laurie Chant, the staff and faculty of the NGSW, Dave Smolover, Warr Guitars and all who attended.