-=[ From the 1996 brochure... ]=-

SESSION 1
Saturday July 20 Friday July 26

· Lisa Aschmann (Santa Cruz, CA)

Starting Your Songs (1-3) How do you get ideas for songs? How do you get a song title or riff and where do you take it from there? This class will include creativity exercises and tips on song construction.
Finishing Your Songs (2-4) This is a class for people who have trouble finishing songs or who want feedback on new songs. How do you go about rewriting or collaborating? How do you know and what do you do when a song is finished? This class will have a song-sharing format.

· Flip Breskin (Bellingham, WA)

Basic Guitar (1) Learn how to accompany over 100 songs by ear with only three chords and a few strums, plus how to hold and play the guitar to minimize the risk of long-term injury.
Bare Hands Guitar (2) Play guitar while you sing - without a songbook. Learn the secrets of playing by ear, mastering the F chord, playing with others, and using rhythmic finger patterns. This is the Basic Accompaniment Toolkit.

· Velzoe Brown (Santa Cruz, CA)

Jazz History A Show and Tell Session (1-4) Pollyanna's Syncopators pioneered Women's Lib in the 1920s. Relive the hilarious highlights in the career of a girl trombonist in a travelling dance band. Old photos and posters will help spark class discussion.
American Pop Music and How It Evolved (2-4) As the class moves from plantation cake-walk through Blues, Ragtime, and Tin Pan Alley to Swing and Jazz, we will all play and sing along (chords and melodies provided).

· Terry Enyeart (Bremerton, WA)

Bluegrass Band Lab (2-4) Starting a band and keeping it going can be tricky; learn how to do it in this class. Open to singers and instrumentalists (all instruments) at all levels beyond raw beginner.
Country Vocal Styles (3-4) Study various vocal styles including bluegrass, country, and folk. We will also work on the perfect harmonies within these syles.

· David Feingold (Bellingham, WA)

Classical Technique for Folkies (2-4) A little organization goes a long way; whether you want to play bass and melody together or create the illusion of melody over chords, classical technique may help you organize the fingers on that right hand.
Scale Theory (3) Scales are so powerful that sometimes we fail to hear how simple they really are. We will explore scales, modal and otherwise, and see where you might fit them into your own solos and compositions.

· Mary Gibbons (Oakland, CA)

Introduction to Flatpicking (2) If you can change chords in time but have fear-of-flatpick syndrome, this class is for you. The class will focus on technique, how to keep hold of the pick while moving it through the strings to produce both volume and tone.
Bluegrass Rhythm Guitar (2-3) We will concentrate on developing a bluegrass rhythm approach that will drive a bluegrass band without getting in the way of lead players. We will cover classic bluegrass guitar ornaments associated with the playing of bluegrass notables Lester Flatt, Jimmy Martin, and Clarence White.

· Wayne Henderson (Mouth of Wilson, VA)

Beginning Finger-Flatpicking (2-3) Learn fiddle tunes and melodies from the Southeastern U.S. using either a flat pick or Wayne's "pinch" style of fingerpicking. We will go over it (and over it) until you get it.
Advanced Finger-Flatpicking (3-4) Learn more complex Southeastern single-note fiddle tunes and melodies played either with a flat pick or with Wayne's "pinch" style of fingerpicking.

· James Mason (Vancouver, WA)

Camp Instrumentalist

· Tena Moyer (Long Beach, CA)

Writing in Style (2-3) Do you feel trapped in one style of songwriting? We will learn how to write pop, rock, blues, folk, country, and jazz tunes that sound authentic by analyzing the components of melody, harmony, groove, and lyric as they uniquely apply to each genre.
Picks, Licks, & Tricks (3) Turn predictable arrangements into exciting ones. This is the class where you learn to "fancy-up" your fingerpicking with chord substitutions, bass runs, licks, and new picking patterns.

· Jim Nunally (Crockett, CA)

U-Pick-Em by Tab (3) This class will get you into flatpicking and is geared toward players who like learning from tablature. We will learn fiddle tunes and discuss improvisation, jamming, and many other things related to flatpick style guitar.
U-Pick-Em by Ear (3-4) This class is the same as "U-Pick-Em by Tab" but will use no tab; we will learn the tunes and licks by ear. This may be a good class for the tab-dependent who want to try learning by ear.

· Stacy Phillips (New Haven, CT)

Beginning Dobro (1-2) Special Section This is lap style guitar made E-Z. We will start with basic techniques and non-threatening tunes. You need to bring a steel-string guitar with a raised nut, fingerpicks, and a bar.
Not-beginning Dobro (3-4) Special Section Prerequisites for this class are the ability to play a few tunes and take abuse from sleepy instructors. The repertoire will be taken from bluegrass, swing, Hawaiian, and new acoustic (say what?) music.

· Del Rey (Davenport, CA)

Women In American Music (1-4) Explore the many women in blues, jazz and country music of the '20s through the '50s. In class we will listen to the originals and talk about the lives and contexts of the performers.
Blues Songs with More Than Three Chords (3-4) Learn fingerstyle, arrangements of piano-based classic blues tunes from the '20s and '30s, some from downhome musicians like Louise Johnson, some from more sophisticated sources like Thomas Dorsey and Georgia White.

· Kim Scanlon (Seattle, WA)

Investigating Vowel Pitch (2-4) When you speak a sentence you make a little melody; every vowel utterance has inherent pitch. Understanding vowel pitch helps singers to sing on key, blend with other voices, and make shapelier phrases.
Song Study and Practice (4) Our goal is to interpret a song based on intimate knowledge of it. We will learn exercises that arouse curiosity about song details and explore the elements singers often overlook: repeated notes, inhales, vowel pitch, little words, diphthongs...

· Richard Scholtz (Bellingham, WA)

Instigator

· Avram Siegal (Berkeley, CA)

Beginning Bluegrass Banjo (1-2) Special Section Start by learning to play some basic tunes and how to play along with others. We will go through a few classic breaks, fundamental chords, and simple back up.
Intermediate Bluegrass Banjo (3-4) Special Section Learn how to work out your own arrangements, decipher the fretboard, find melodies, and create the solid rhythm that makes the banjo go. We will also look at back-up and examine the elements of style (and where they come from).

· Tracy Spring (Bellingham, WA)

Instigator

· Amy Stenberg (Crockett, CA)

String Bass Basics (1-2) Special Section Earn the title "heartbeat of the band," and do it by ear using simple tab and lots of hands-on playing. Look ma - no theory!
Country Duets (1-4) Birds duet, bees duet, and yes, Dolly and Porter duet... We will savor the tasty harmony singing of country music's finest duos. No experience necessary.

· John Stewart (Portland, OR)

Beginning Improvisation (3-4) Here we will examine basic concepts used to play, embellish, and create melodies within the swing idiom. Some knowledge of swing tunes is useful, but no soloing experience is necessary.
Swing Soloing (4) This one is for folks with some experience in swing/jazz and lead playing. Arpeggios, scales, chord-melody and other devices used to create solos will be explored.

· Joe Vinikow (Seattle, WA)

Cocktail Guitar (3-4) Just as the shipboard gala reaches its glittering crescendo, a rogue tsunami pitches the Steinway into the Carribean, leaving only a guitar aboard. Now you must save the cruise (by playing simplified chord melody arrangements of jazz standards, natch). Ready?
Beyond I-IV-V (2-3) Learn new tunes more easily and memorize them more effectively. In this class we will work on how to recognize basic chord patterns and how to locate and play them on the fingerboard using practical examples from folk, country, blues and swing.

· Ray Wood (Retsil, WA)

Beginning Swing Guitar (3) Step up to the world of swing guitar! A few new chord shapes, some simple theory, and nothing will ever be the same again. We will do lots of playing in class.
Intermediate Swing Guitar (3-4) Discover new ways to play the same old things by using chord inversions and substitutions. You can count on the unexpected in this hands-on class. graphic by P. Langston