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Category: Noodles
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Songwriting: On the use of early fragments
I’ve writ elsewhere (all over the world wide web) that I picked up the guitar at an age too early to learn anything proper like an extant piece of music. I was simply interested in making twanging and snapping sounds. I had no loftier ambition than to disturb the peace in our home. It’s true…
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Chord voicings and “broken” chords
For a couple of months, I will mostly be learning and figuring out chord voicings. It strikes me as dumb and lazy to imprison myself with the root-at-the-bottom cliches that seem to be the foundation of the vast majority of my songs. Certainly, when I have used alternaltive voicing in the past it has been…
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Those two weeks away from the guitar…
…when I was in Italy have not done my chops any good. Indeed, picking up my (new) guitar again after returning made me wonder at how easily and quickly technique can fall off. I recall reading somewhere that Segovia opined that technique never stands still; it either improves or deteriorates. I dunno, I normally do…
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Songwriting – Stirring the muse
Sometimes I’m asked… Most of the time I stumble across something when I’m working on some experimentation with harmony and finding different ways to change key, or trying to get some weird scale under my fingers. An idea will pop up which I’ll mess around with to see if it’s got any legs. Thoughts of…
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Songwriting – a fact of imbalance
Proportionality is a lost cause. I have the curious knack of making my major key output sound more minor than most peoples’ minor key output! It might tell of a deeply troubled nature. I would, there is no doubt at all in my mind, be a deeply troubled individual did I not have the therapy…
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The act of songwriting…
…has never been a challenge for me. I think it’s because I’ve been doing it so long – since I was so uninhibited as a kid – that it’s a habit that’s simply been ingrained. I’ve never thought about how to go about the task. I did it before I thought about it. Like a…
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One For Julie (My Lucky Stars)
… is the title of the latest consequence of my incessant noodling. It’s a bit schmaltzy and jazz-tinged and is about as romantic as this guy is ever likely to get. Another result, so it is, of noodling with a glass of wine near to hand. I guess the guitar part was done and dusted…
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What?
Yes: “Noodles”. As in noodling on the guitar. I was going to call this section “Songs” but that presupposes a section on finished articles which would be as interesting as stripping paint – to write about, anyway. So “Noodles”, it is, then. Most of everything comes from noodles. Not always as haphazard as just moping…
