READIN

Wednesday, December 17th, 2003

🦋 At the open mike

I played the open mike at the Dancing Goat tonight, the first time I have performed in a few years (not counting the time I played in West Orange, which I am trying to forget) -- and the first time in several years I have performed on stage, with mikes. It went all right; I felt a little like I could not get into my groove and my timing was a little rough; but people in the audience said it sounded fine, Janis said it sounded just like when I am playing at her house, which is about what I was aiming for. I played "Stagger Lee" and "C. C. Rider" in a medley, and "Prodigal Son".

The band 13 Scotland Road played before the open mike, and were terrific.

posted evening of December 17th, 2003: Respond
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Monday, December 15th, 2003

🦋 Tell old Bill

A song was running through my head all day; tonight I figured out (roughly) how to play it. The song is "Tell old Bill", which I know in a performance by the Chad Mitchell Trio. Here are the chords:

G
Tell old Bill, when he gets home, this morning,
                                       D
Tell old Bill, when he gets home, this evening,
G
Tell old Bill, when he gets home,
   C          G        D
To leave them downtown women alone
     G             D           G
This morning, this evening, so soon.

The fingerpicking is kind of difficult to describe but basically you just play the melody. A lot of time is spent on open B, G string second fret, and open G; and in the alternate melody, a lot of time on E string third fret, open E, and B string third fret. A nice song.

posted evening of December 15th, 2003: 2 responses
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Sunday, December 7th, 2003

🦋 Father Christmas

The Crooked Timber thread on annoying Christmas songs inspired me to think of "Father Christmas" by the Kinks, one of very few non-annoying popular Christmas songs. (Thanks to Apostropher for telling me which song I was thinking about. Google supplied me with lyrics and I came up with some chords that seem about right. The rhythm is still giving me a little trouble. Here is Tim Harris' transcription, which seems a little better than mine, he plays it in G while I prefer C.

posted morning of December 7th, 2003: Respond

Tuesday, October 14th, 2003

🦋 Open tunings

I've been interested for a long time in learning to play blues using alternate tunings. I may finally have found my avenue into this; namely dropped-D tuning. It is standard tuning, but with the lowest string tuned a full step down. I liked the key of D a lot already and this makes it a lot more fun. Specifically, I'm using it for "Down on the Corner" by Creedence; "Stagger Lee" by John Hurt; and "C. C. Rider" by John Hurt. A nice side effect of using this tuning is that it's encouraging me to play up the neck rather than staying in first position all the time. You can play really nice stuff on the G chord by fingering G bass on the 5th fret with your thumb and fingering the treble strings on the 3rd through 5th frets. (And don't play the A string.)

Mike told me he was having a lot of fun with open-G tuning and I'm looking forward to experimenting with that some.

posted evening of October 14th, 2003: Respond

Wednesday, August 6th, 2003

🦋 Here I Go

This is a fun song, by Syd Barrett. It is also quite easy to play on guitar, as I discovered this evening. I cannot guarantee the chords here are accurate but they sound alright. (Woops -- some of those chords were way off -- these should work a little better.)

 C                       G
This is a story bout a girl that I knew
           C                      G
She didn't like my songs and that made me feel blue
           B♭              A           G
She said a big band is far better than you.

    C              Am
She don't rock and roll
G
She don't like it
    C            Am
She don't do the stroll
         G
Well she don't do it right
    C            C7
And everything's wrong
       F           F6
And my patience is gone
       C
When I woke one morning
      G
And remembered this song.
C Am
G
   Kinda catchy,
C Am
G
 I hope 
              C          C7
That she will talk to me now
    F      F6
And even allow me
   C                                 G
To hold her hand and forget that old man.
F                        C  C7
I strolled around to her pad
F                            C  G
Her light was off and that's bad
F                       C        G
Her sister said that my girl was gone
F                       G            
But come inside boy and play play play me a song.

I said yeah
Here I go
She's kinda cute don't you know
That after a while 
Of seeing her smile
I knew we could make it
A-make it in style.
  
So now I've got, all I need
She and I are in love, we've agreed
She likes this song, and my, others too
So now you see my world is...
Because of this tune.
  
What a boon this tune,
I tell you soon we'll be
Lying in bed
Happily wed
And I won't think of that girl
What she said.

The key thing in picking this song is that nearly every time there is a G chord followed by a C chord, you need to end the measure of G by hammering on from an open G string to an A. That will establish the mood of the song -- for everything else you can pick and strum pretty loosely. Keep a nice walking pace, a little faster in the middle of the song.

posted evening of August 6th, 2003: Respond

Monday, August 4th, 2003

Motivation is in short supply over here... I eventually got myself down to the basement this evening, looked at the wood and decided I did not want to chop any mortises. It was not such a bad thing though -- I realized I could mark all the joints at one go, which ended up taking about a half hour with all the futzing around I was doing. Tomorrow night I will start chopping.

...

Also I got some guitar practice in tonight; I worked out what I think will be a pretty convincing picking pattern for "While my Guitar Gently Weeps."

posted evening of August 4th, 2003: Respond
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