DianeB

@T-Bone I'm sorry to point out the obvious, but the slider graphic directly above answers your question: March 5, this coming Thursday, Steve should be sending out the lesson material for the first hymn. All the best.

From The Guardian's Tom Service: "The Taliban are burning musical instruments in the name of morality. It is an assault on all culture."

Watch Live Lessons on the Guitar Gathering YouTube Channel HERE. 7:00 pm Central Time US 2026 LIVE LESSON DATES JANUARY 6th – The Top Chords to Know on Guitar 20th - How to Pick and Strum Like a Pro FEBRUARY 3rd – Open Talk / Working with Vocalists 17th - Drop D Tuning MARCH 17th - Improving Chord Changes 31st - Belmont Guitar Ensemble APRIL 7th - How to Learn a Jazz Standard on Guitar 14th - To be announced Future dates and topics to be announced.

It's true for all of us: just as we arrive in this world, someone leaves it. Hank and I traded places just after midnight on January 1, 1953. This poster is for the Canton, Ohio concert he never made it to that Thursday.

Coming soon, now in post-production: "A Quiet Revolution: The Story of Windham Hill Records", a film by Tal Skloot. Updates here.

The lights go down. You hear your cue, pick up your instrument. Walk to your seat. Applause. You nod to the audience, sit down, look around. They’re smiling, they expect something good. A switch flips on — you do, too. You smile back, settle in the chair, adjust your chart, check the E string. Strum a G chord. Pan across the audience. You pick out someone to sing to. Now you’re feeling it. Introduce the song. Pause, breathe, then hit it. Ya know what? You’re a bonny-fide guitar player! Is there any thing better in the world? With a wink and a nod to the late William Wittliff, screenwriter of The Perfect Storm.

Success! Tom kindly forwarded the archives of the old Learn and Master Yahoo Group to me, at least those that he could salvage. It totals about 450 files and 39 Mb. The Zip file here is 28 Mb. I think it’s best to provide the entire archive here as a unit, preserving the logic of the original organization, for anyone who is interested. I made no changes except to delete a few empty folders. Redistributing individual files across the current GG website would be counterproductive. I created an index in Word and PDF formats (8 pages) by which you can explore the contents. Tom added some context: Although the Learn & Master Yahoo group died a decade ago, I believe many of the files will be helpful for the Guitar Gathering gang. There are a lot of supplemental files in there that support each of the L&M lessons. Many documents are dated, but many still have relevance to new players. Quite a few files are from 20 years ago and are no longer available from online sources. My guess is that MikeM would take files dropped within the New Submissions [folder] and distribute them in their appropriate spots within the file share. As he passed on a couple of years before I captured the files, they will sit forever in the In box. The submitted files have even lost their authors which might have indicated where they belonged. A few of the files with .gpX suffixes are written for the Guitar Pro app. The GP app allows you to compose/write sheet music and play the audio from that sheet music. I believe somewhere in the L&M Yahoo files was a TON of GP files, upwards of 1000 or more. The files may have been on another site and referenced from the L&M Yahoo group. There may have been pointers to other websites. The pointers may have been in the SoftwareAppRelatedFiles directory. They are dead links now. I am glad that someone asked about the files and they finally will be available to all. Index LMG Yahoo Archive (Word).docx Index LMG Yahoo Archive (pdf).pdf LMG Yahoo Archive.zip

I've messaged Tom about the files, and I'll see what I can do.

@grzyman12 It's been so long, I can't recall just what was among those files. But over the past, oh, ten years or so, Steve has gradually replaced the supplemental files that were under the heading of "Gibson Skills House" through his Live Lesson handouts, which now number well over a hundred. Most of these are now in the Downloads section. You might have to go to the lesson itself on YouTube and search there to find a particular lesson handout of interest. If there's one you want but can't locate, message me, I will likely have the PDF.

Well done! That certainly brought back some memories. The link in Doug's post will take you to the individual session threads.

Epilog I'm home, at once renewed, humbled, grateful, and inspired. Steve and Paulette craft these gatherings like a John Williams symphony. Our sponsors were generous. Everyone received a mix of capos, CDs, tuners, picks, strings, t-shirts, notebooks, Acoustic Guitar magazine, and Acoustic Coffee. The crew at Gruhn Guitars treat us like special guests. Thank you, George, Julio, Kyle, and Benjamin. Greg Voros continues his treatments, is in good spirits and doing well. The dining staff at Deer Run could not have been more gracious. We never see the housekeepers, but our rooms are always spotless and tidy when we arrive. If someone (Doug, I'm looking at you) is careless enough to send me a clip of my performance of "I'm Easy," I may be shameless enough to post it here. So we return to our scales, our songs, our lives. To those who endure health challenges, storm catastrophes, crushing bereavements — here's to you, my brothers and sisters, for offering us the joy of your music and your companionship. You truly keep the faith.