String Traveler

Peter Mulvey has been a songwriter, road-dog, raconteur, accomplished guitarist, passionate educator, and almost-poet since before he can remember. Eighteen records, one illustrated book, thousands of live performances, a TEDx talk, opening for luminaries such as Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, and Chuck Prophet, appearances on NPR, emceeing festivals, hosting his own boutique festival… Mulvey’s impressive pedigree is a mile long.

We’re thrilled to welcome Peter to the family with his first TrueFire course, String Traveler. You will likewise be thrilled as you travel his enlightening curriculum with guitar and pen in hand.

”I’ve been playing guitar, writing songs, and taking those songs out on the road, in front of live audiences, for over 30 years. Over that time, I’ve studied my mentors, my colleagues, and the work of a lot of the iconic practitioners of this art form.

Whether you’re a working singer-songwriter, an aspiring singer-songwriter, or a guitar soloist or accompanist -- we all want to put ourselves in service of the song.

Dedicating myself to that process has given me great joy and occasional mortification and now I hope that this course will pass on to you both that joy and perhaps even some occasional mortification.”

Peter will guide your exploration through five original song studies. For each, he will first perform the song, and then use that performance as a springboard for a series of lessons focused on many of his favorite guitar techniques, creative harmonic approaches, lyric writing, and storytelling concepts.

”I’ll perform the song “Shirt” and breakdown some of the ways I use alternate tunings and capos, the way a guitar part can inspire a lyric, and the power of working with a cowriter. Then we’ll take a look at “Black Rabbit”, an instrumental piece that shows off the power of using iterations of musical phrases, call and response, and how quickly a song can take flight from there.

There’s “Knuckleball Suite” which delves into inspiration, how you can sometimes get it from reworking some of your favorite cover songs, and how the blues form and dynamics play a role in songwriting. I’ll perform “Who’s Gonna Love You Now” and we’ll talk about writing songs as your “job”, how “list songs” can be a useful approach for creating a quick draft of a song lyric and some thoughts on the arrangement (mostly subtraction!).

And finally, “Dynamite Bill” focuses on how to deal with roadblocks as a songwriter, and the importance of understanding the sound of your lyrics versus the meaning they convey.”

Peter will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, you’ll be able to use TrueFire’s learning tools to sync the tab and notation to the video lesson. You can also loop or slow down the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar, pen, and notebook — let’s do some string traveling with Peter Mulvey!