Hi folks,

I’ve been encouraged to do some podcasting. I have one interesting experience with it a couple of years ago but let it drift. Too busy recording and playing. But now due to constant nagging and a growing feeling of guilt at not exploiting the medium, I’ve decided to resurrect the process. So how about a first episode? Huh? Huh?

OK - here we go…

Dave Keir | Acoustic Fingerstyle Guitar Songs - Episode 1

Enjoy!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

        

Free MP3 and tab / notation of the The Favour for members. Click on the song title to play it or save it to your computer:

The Favour

If you are not a member yet (and why not??), you can register here.

I do hope you enjoy the song and the guitar score. Please leave your impressions or thoughts below. Feedback is important - and your opinions can count and make a difference to the finally released versions! Also, if you have any questions about the song or the tabs, I’ll be very happy to help!

Thank you!

        

The studio has been decommissioned (except for some editing and podcast recording) and the acoustic treatment is just about to get torn down. We’re moving to Edinburgh from this rather remote part of the world - at least culturally. Pretty as Deeside is, there are damn’ few places to play guitar.

Anyway, we’ll be out of here at the end of July. Truth be told, we’ll be renting in Banchory for few months (maybe less) until we find our new home in Edinburgh. Anyway, it’ll be a while before I can get the studio up and running again. Got many songs “in the can”, though, so plenty to do, plenty to do. Look out for some of these recordings here soon.

        

Within limits I do my own tweaking. I can mess around with saddles and truss rods quite happily confident that “I know what I’m doing”. The only setup issues that I would want to take to a professional would be anything to do with the nut. I’ve never felt the desire to get into the ungluing and gluing side of things or to invest in nut slot files and other accoutrements associated with minor guitar surgery - partly through laziness and partly through the knowledge demonstrated by efforts into picture hanging around the house that my DIY skills are not part of my oeuvre.

Now, as every acoustic guitar player knows, we occasionally get plagued by mysterious rattles, buzzes, creaks, and squeaks which emanate from our beloved instruments. These can reduce sensitive souls to tears as they poke around and shake about their guitars in attempts to track down the source of the offending sound. Leaving well alone is not an option because these sounds are invariably of a sort that would drive the most robustly constituted musician crazy. So more than once I’ve had my forearm deep inside a guitar via the soundhole in a manner reminiscent of a farmer delivering a cow of a newborn calf trying to figure out if a brace might be becoming loose. I’ve even invested in an inspection light and mirror that would have been more suited to an ear, nose and throat clinic. Sometimes I’ll attack the tuners with spanners and screwdrivers in attempts to make sure there’s nothing loose that’s not meant to be. Yanking strings to make sure bridge pins aren’t the cause of my misery is also compulsory at these times. These were all inevitably futile gestures in establishing the structural integrity and other aspects of the health of my instrument. Voodoo and witchcraft would have been a better investment of my time.

My biggest fear has always been that the truss rod deep inside the neck was resonating in some evil way designed to make me learn the trumpet. The remedy for this (so I’ve read) is to drill a hole in the fingerboard and squirt some oil through it. I’m not going there. I’m also not going to buy a plane and take it to my fingerboard in attempt achieve what is referred to as “dressing the frets”. At least not without being under sedation. That’d be me – not the guitar.

Anyhoo, let me pass on a couple of links to websites that are riveting reads in the area of guitar setup and repairs. If it’s possible to become hypochondriacal on behalf of one’s guitar, then these sites will induce it.

These folks are among the top in their field and I commend the information to be found on their sites to you. I, for one, have learned a great deal from them. Mostly about not messing too much with my guitars…

        

A recipe for a contented (albeit a shorter) life. The world would be a little grayer without these little pleasures. This view is not very fashionable but there’s little about me that is fashionable.

And this urge to live as long as possible: if an eternity of oblivion awaits then a lifespan of forty years or one hundred and forty - are both a blink of an eye. And if we go to a “better place”, then the sooner the better, no?

And more: do I not hear from the TV and radio that the nation (the UK in this case) is getting swamped by old people who will shortly become an unsustainable drain on the health care system? Not to mention the lack of money for adequate pensions!

Apropos the length of my own life: I’m not sure how much it will matter when I’m dead how long I’ve lived. (I’d like to smoke less, though… )

        

…that I can think of: namely; (1) muscle memory which enables the fluent playing of the guitar, (2) that which enables aural recognition of intervals when hearing them and, (3) that which enables recall of which chords are diatonic to which keys, their voicings, and their placement on the fingerboard. All three need attention on my part, for sure, because it strikes me that if these three memory sets are optimised then I could say I could really play my guitar, improvise, and write.

Muscle memory is a double edged sword. Sure, it’s essential. Without it we couldn’t play a damn thing with any fluency. Indeed, we couldn’t remember how to finger even the most simple chord. When it (muscle memory) is performing at its best, it enables you to focus on the performance while your fingers go where they’re supposed to, as it were, blindfolded. But it’s a curse if you’re trying to correct some mistake that’s become ingrained through repetition. I can’t recall who, but some smart player or teacher opined that too many of us spend all our practice time practicing our mistakes. Re-educating your fingers is hard, hard work. It’s like digital boot camp.

Recognising musical intervals when you hear them is a faculty which I’ve never spent any time concentrating on. This has resulted in my only being able to differentiate major and minor triads – easy if they juxtaposed next to each other – and major sixths, which seem to have a distinct aural flavour. Well, come to think of it, dominant 7ths with augmented 9ths rarely pass me by unnoticed. Augmented 5ths, also. Well that’s quite a few, you might think. But I couldn’t tell you which key they might be in, or what keys might be involved in a modulation.

Clearly, I’m talking about music I hear. If I’m playing it, I only have to look at my memory challenged fingers.

The recall of what chords are diatonic to which keys is a matter of sheer repetition of playing in different keys – or learning by rote. This might seem trivial in “guitar keys” like G major or C major. But do you know which chords are nominally diatonic to E flat minor? Can you list them? Or even A flat major (without thinking) even though it’s only a half-step away from G?

Not being fluent in these areas makes me feel a bit like a cheat. Sort of like I had landed an engineering job with a fake qualification. I keep meaning to set some time aside to practice all of this. Even try writing down in notation things I hear in my head. The trouble is that there is no time and I don’t hear new music in my head, anyway. I’m a noodles sorta guy…

        

I once wrote a piece about factory built guitars and those built by independent guitar makers.

Well, “luthier” is a term that irritates me no end. When I was younger, there existed guitar technicians and guitar builders. Seems now that the latter are become luthiers. I thought luthiers made lutes. My bad.

Nevertheless, in 1987 my old friend Chris Eccleshall built me a guitar. He was a guitar builder. I think he still is. I don’t recall him referring to himself as a “luthier”.

I’m tempted sometimes, when I come across these luthiers on internet forums and bulletin boards, to yank their chain about their highfalutin’ professional handle - but always hold back in case I offend. Anyway the dictionary.com definition of a luthier is “One that makes or repairs stringed instruments, such as violins.” So be it. Nevertheless, the term smacks of a snobbery that irks.

On the other hand, it may just be me that’s not moved with the times.

        

Alright, I’ll try this again. My last (and to date only) attempt, although successful, didn’t stir the blood. At least mine. I wasn’t sure what podcasting was supposed to do and it takes time to do it properly. Time well spent? I wasn’t convinced. I remember when I was preparing the last one in the studio that I was thinking it would be more worthwhile to record another song, there being so many left to get down.

But I’ll give it another go. Watch this space. Let me know if you would like to subscribe and I’ll let you know where and how.

        

Lurking around online guitar communities one’s bound to come across a variety of opinions on this, that, and the other to do with the best example of this and the best way to do that. It’s all excellent fodder for contemplation and is occasionally informative. Most of what one reads is, though, borne out of ingrained prejudice or the recycling of received wisdom, or reiteration of some pronouncement of this guitar god, or that. This exchanging of views is commendable, no doubt, but fresh insights or genuine authoritative advice is rarely found - particularly for free.

As ever, the most productive time is spent alone in serious study and objective (insofar as this is possible at all) consideration of one’s output. To honestly and objectively appraise the progress of a song under development is a piece of voodoo that I’m only partially successful at practicing. Criteria to use in judging the success of a song is a prerequisite to the process, but is more difficult to arrive at than it might appear at first glance. Consider:

What are the aims of the song? To sound “good”? If so, to whom? The writer? An audience - real or imagined? A prospective publisher / artiste / producer? To an aunt or uncle? Posterity?

Or is the purpose of the song to make money? If so; what is the target market?

Or is it intended to be a piece of art of purely aesthetic value only without reference to commercial appeal or admiration of an audience -.one small part of a magnus opus defined by your entire songwriting output - whose mere existence is its own justification.

Or might It could be written as part of a strategy to charm the pants off some girl? Or is it going to be another page in a musical diary recounting your thoughts, dreams, experiences, hopes, joys and disappointments as you make your own way through the days.

Or could Its purpose be catharsis, or to have some other therapeutic value? A safety-valve less you do some awful deed? Ha! Ha!

Or could it be a means to emulate or imitate a hero / heroin? A three-minute dreamscape in which you can “be” your idol? A means to escape the horror of the hum-drum day after day after day?

It doesn’t matter if, like me, you took to songwriting as a child without thinking or questioning and just did it as naturally as eating and sleeping. With self-awareness and learning about bad, good, and better - and pu-leeease, don’t tell me music is all about personal taste - you will make value judgments about your output. About form and content; about design and execution. So it would be better if we had a clear idea about the purpose of all this effort into writing songs. Without knowing this, how can we judge how successful we are? Because, for sure, different qualities are needed for songs serving the different purposes I mentioned above. And, yes, although I was drawing caricatures in these descriptions I will still assert that clarity of purpose is needed.

“Ah,” (you might say) “but I have to write songs. It’s what I am. I am a Musician. It’s innate. What else is there to say? Thinking about all of what you suggest would do nothing but unnecessarily complicate the process. It might tie me up in knots and even inhibit my songwriting. I would rather not interrupt my free and natural musical outpouring, thank you very much!”

OK. So be it. Rock on.

        

It has come to my notice that my last record has been reviewed rather kindly in a couple of places:

FAME

Minor 7th (a little way down the page!)

You’ll notice that the first reviewer opines that I’m a better player than singer. I won’t argue with that, although some folks have written to me in indignant protestation which is heartwarming! For my part, I long ago decided to do the best I can with the tools I have.

I’m also delighted that the CD has been warmly received by customers - and even more so since many of them had bought the first - Interim Reports - and had come back for more!

What now? On with the next! Several songs are “in the can” although the shape of the collection has not yet formed in my mind. More soon.