Getting to grips with some new titles is always interesting for its own sake - but it also refreshes the ears if they’ve been only fed a diet of familiar sounds and songs thereby slowly losing critical acumen. At another level, there’s the odd effect caused by continuously recording and mixing solo acoustic guitar and [...]
Driving to the day-job listening to Charlie Christian certainly optimises any vestige of motivation I have for the day ahead. I’m looking at a book which analyzes Christian’s licks and which I’m trying to commit to memory; the more kid on the inattentive listeners that I possibly know something about jazz guitar. I have a [...]
Well, How Well may be, well, finished - nearly. I’ll whack it on to a CD with a few others, live with it for a while, and come back and do whatever tweaking comes to mind. It’s the third of three songs on this page:
How Well
A curious little song and I’m curious to know what [...]
I used to play in altered tunings extensively and arranged a number of Scottish and Irish fiddle tunes in them (particularly DGDGCE). Now, I’ve grown to really quite dislike open tunings. Why? Mostly because it’s impractical to change tonality, or keys, in them. Play in DADGAD and your stuck in (the key of) D, or [...]
I’m a big fan and I’ve bought books on the subject and CDs of some of the greats - but I can’t call myself a jazz player by any stretch of the imagination. I’m toying with the idea of getting a Gibson ES-335 for some of that groove which might kick-start me into putting in [...]
My relationship with folk music has always been ambivalent and has oscillated between a passion for arranging Irish and Scottish fiddle tunes for guitar to a real distaste for the precious attitude of many of the practitioners of the genre. I’ve come across examples of posturing ethnicity that is non-inclusive and reeks of a superior [...]
I wrote a couple of days ago about how I came to “lose” my ‘Gibson Country & Western’ guitar (see sidebar pages). Well, I found a piccie of the pub outside of which I “lost it”. It sends a shiver down my spine to look at it. Inside this place on a Sunday evening convened [...]
I have this new thing called The Little Tinker and an older one called Local Anaesthetic. There are parts in each that feel as if there at the limits of my technique. It’s all very well making up cool sounding “licks” and changes when you’re noodling at a slow tempo and sotto voce, but if [...]
A topic on an internet forum not too far from here. Various examples were proposed that might be timeless songs - examples from The Beatles, Dylan, Sinatra, et al. All the usual suspects. I opined that perhaps genuine folk songs that had been around for a couple of hundred years, or more, could lay some [...]
The day is still and only on the coast does there appear to be the rumour of a chill wind. The light is sharp and the low morning sun keeps one honest when driving east along the north Deeside road. The gulls, judging by the absence of airborne nagging and screaming, must be sunning themselves [...]
