Newel Kimball’s Seventy-Five Gosepl Favorites for Guitar in Full-Picture Harmonic Melody is a collection of the most familiar, beautiful and spiritual gospel songs, written in an entirely new and unique method for guitar. It is innovative, natural, and obvious but best of all, it is simple, easy and beautiful. With this new method, virtually anyone with a love for guitar music can play these beautiful songs. Accordingly, this book and DVD: shows how to play guitar like the masters removes the barrier of staff and tablature notation shows right-hand fingering for the first time even children can now play beautiful guitar music returns the love for these and other hymns increases the desire for beautiful guitar music uplifts and encourages where hope is needed increases love of God and spirituality These things are made possible by bringing together a lot of ideas over many years. The ideas of themselves are not original. My inspiration came from Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, George Benson, Herb Ellis and others. However, bringing theses ideas together — written in this manner for the first time ever — is unique. THE IDEAS: HARMONIC MELODY is how music is played on an organ or piano and by orchestras and bands. In this style, each note of the melody is played within the context of a chord (three-to-six-part harmony). Even though harmonic melody is the essence of keyboard and orchestra music, it is not the common style generally played on the guitar and the reason is simple — staff notation has become the common musical language because it is a natural and obvious method for keyboard notation like piano and organ. However it is entirely unnatural for fingerboard instruments like guitars, banjos and mandolins. The mis-match is why guitarists must spend years of study and practice to master the difficulty of translating the staff notation to the guitar fretboard and is the reason why the guitar is most commonly played as an accompaniment or single-note instrument. Tablature is the other popular guitar notation method and even though it is more natural and explicit for the guitar than the staff, tablature’s is hopelessly slow to read due to the due to the ever-changing use of numbers for the frets. Worse, both staff and tablature do not show the right-hand fingering — the most vital aspect of guitar music. GUITARPERFECT NOTATION: Now, full-picture notation written in GuitarPerfect™ symbols allows practically anyone to play beautiful harmonic melody arpeggio fingerstyle music almost instantly! GuitarPerfect™ full-picture notation, is just that — a picture of the guitar fretboard, including all finger placements and actions. It shows exactly where to place the left-hand fingers on the fretboard, as well as the way the strings are played by the right-hand fingers. Each note of the melody has its own GuitarPerfect symbol, so this new symbol makes it possible to describe even the most complicated arpeggio finger-styles! The only requirements are a simple understanding of the GuitarPerfect symbol method (found on the inside back cover) and a guitar. INSTRUCTIONAL DVD DOWNLOAD: A DVD DOWNLOAD LINK is provided with the book. Once downloaded it shows both left and right-hand fingering for 26 of the Seventy-Five Gospel Favorites in the book in two side-by-side screens. The DVD material can be stopped at any time for closer scrutiny, which allows a nice visual comparison to the written music. The visual and aural DVD DOWNLOAD facilitates the fastest possible learning and playing of a song’s melody and accompaniment. The DVD DOWNLOAD material also explains the use of the new GuitarPerfect symbol, along with some important music and guitar theory from Newel’s guitar classes. LIGHT-ACTION GUITAR: Many guitar makers believe that guitars do not sound good unless they have heavy strings and "high-action." However, typically, such guitars are especially hard for a beginner to play. Recently, pioneers like Les Paul, Leo Fender, Takamine and others have proven that guitars not only can sound good but can also sustain a reasonable volume level, so what is their secret? An easy “light-action” guitar means: The neck and frets are perfectly flat The tuning bridge has been lowered to “zero” Ultra-light strings (.009 steel, .029 nylon) The bridge saddle has been lowered to 1/16th inch above the “buzz point” of the strings.These conditions produce the easiest guitar possible at a reasonable cost. If more volume is needed, a microphone or pickup can be used. You will be able to play with ease and others will be able to hear you play — a nice combination. SIMPLE CHORDS: The easiest keys for playing harmonic melody on the guitar are A, D and E. Each of the seventy-five hymns have been written in one of these three keys (with the exception of one or two in the key of C) making it as easy as musically possible for anyone to play. In the instances where the guitar must accommodate a different pitch for a singer’s voice, an inexpensive capo can easily change the key. These are the ideas that make the guitar and the music you can now play simple, easy and beautiful. The guitar will now become a delightful instrument for any and all who have ever wanted to play their own beautiful music. Try it and see! NOTE: Also available is the companion volume Newel Kimball’s Harmonic Melody Guitar Method — an in-depth course for those who wish to further their guitar studies.