Southeast Asian Rosewood Southeast Asian rosewood is an endangered species. This wood is no longer harvested for guitar manufacture, and is therefore extremely hard to find from legitimate sources. Southeast Asian rosewood has the exotic colors that make Brazilian rosewood so highly sought. It tends toward a reddish cast. Black grain lines offer contrast, but…
Category: The Skills
Rosewood: Brazilian, Indian, Madagascar & Cocobolo
Rosewood is a common choice of wood for guitars and mandolins. It has been used for backs, sides, tops, and fretboards. But did you know that instruments are built with several different types of rosewood? Seven of the most common are: Brazilian. Indian. Madagascar. Cocobolo. Amazonian. Honduran. Southeast Asian. Does country of origin make any…
You Can Teach Yourself Dobro
Teaching yourself Dobro is easy—especially with this book! You Can Teach Yourself Dobro by Janet Davis offers a logical sequence to learning this unique instrument, starting with the basics and using previous skills as a foundation for new skills. The book is divided into lessons, early lessons covering essential technique and subsequent lessons introducing a…
5 Tips for Improving Your Writing
Writing is a valuable communication skill, no matter what we do in life. Just to name a few of the uses a small farmer might have for writing: Writing posts and pages for an agripreneurial website. Blogging about country living. Writing a how-to book for future generations of farmers. Writing a business letter. Keeping a…
Pros and Cons of Laminated Woods for Guitarists
Perhaps you already have a particular type of wood in mind for your new guitar. Whether that wood is solid or laminated will make a tremendous difference in the sound that you will hear. Solid wood is exactly what the words imply. Pieces of solid wood are carved into the necessary shape for a guitar….
Pick Punch
Here’s a fun gadget every flatpicking guitarist will love! The Pick Punch lets you make your very own guitar picks out of any suitable plastic. Put those old credit cards and gift cards to use to make one-of-a-kind picks! Using the sturdy Pick Punch is super easy: Feed your plastic into the punch. Punch out…
5 Handy Resources for Writers
Every writer has a preferred modus operandi, including diverse details such as when we write, where we write, and what we use to write. For those of you who write in a research-intensive style or genre, here are a few tools that can make your life easier: Microsoft OneNote. And its equivalent, Evernote. You will…
Why Cowboys Sang
The singing cowboy is by no means a Hollywood invention. History records the fact that cowboys always sang, starting back when cattle trails began. At first, there were no true “cowboy songs.” Most cowboys just sang the good old folk songs that they had grown up with, ranging from mountain fiddle tunes like “Old Dan…
How to Play Minor Chords on a Dobro
The Dobro or resonator guitar has a unique feature that can be a great help or hindrance, depending on how you look at it: It is tuned to an open G chord. This means that if you strum all of the strings you will produce a G major chord instead of some kind of discordant…
Zotero
If you have ever tried to compile a bibliography by hand, you know that it is not an easy task, even with a small bibliography. Zotero (zoh-TAIR-oh) offers a free, simple, and effective solution to all of you writers out there. Zotero allows users to compile collections of research material: Blog posts. Books. Conference papers….
