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Guitar
Posts about Guitar
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I realized a difference between my guitar playing and my fiddling while I was practicing today -- I approach the guitar from a framework of the music's structure, where I just go with the feel of it on violin. I don't have much clue of what measure I'm playing or often even where the beat is, when I'm playing melody on violin. This is a major shortcoming; and yet I believe I am a much better violinist than I am a guitarist. I am the same with singing -- I think I can sing pretty well, but I don't understand what is happening with the structure of the melody I'm singing. Something to work on -- I would like to be able to understand (and to feel) the chord changes going on under the melody.
posted evening of October 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
I think I am not going to do any more Songs posts until I buy a microphone and an audio processor. I have been planning to do this sometime soon -- I think I will feel much better about the music I am posting if the audio quality is a little better. What I have been doing up till now counts as a sort of a proof of concept -- the concept is pretty well proven.
If any of you have got advice about what sort of mics and audio converter I ought to buy, please leave them in comments, or e-mail me if you prefer. I will be most grateful.
This afternoon I thought of a short tune. Played around with it on my violin and I came to realize that it integrates really well with "After Midnight".
I came up with guitar chords to accompany "Creepy Charlie" -- I am looking forward to recording the piece with viola and guitar, and maybe to writing a "b" part as well. (In the recording I posted the other day, there is something that sounds like it might be a "b" part but I think it is actually just a second voice on the "a" part. This is something I don't know how to figure out.)
Update: bullet two is no longer operative; I have ordered an Edirol E-MU EM8740 audio interface (which I will call "emu") and a pair of Behringer C2 microphones.
posted evening of January 7th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The site
I am a better violinist than I am a guitarist -- not really surprising considering I have been playing violin much more than guitar over the past few years. At the show tonight, I felt like I played a really respectable fiddle on "Smile to Pretend" -- like the performance was pleasurable in the same way that listening to really good music is, like I was tight and in the groove. My guitar parts felt more like flailing and nerve-wracking. So I think I am going to work on my violin and let my guitar serve as an aid to writing chord charts for songs, more than a performance instrument. (It can be hard to figure out what the chords are, to tell to other musicians, when you're only playing a melody.)
Something I really appreciate about the work I did with Hannah for this gig, is her helping me to work out a violin part to "Smile to Pretend" -- the chart she wrote for me helped me to listen to her CD in a way of actually hearing what the violinist was playing and how I could adapt that to my own voice. I'm not used to listening to music this way but it is something I ought to do more of. A feature of this fiddle part was long baritone notes during the lyric, moving into fills between the lines -- this sounds really good.
After the show, the second act was Felt, whom I haven't seen in a year or so. They asked me to sit in on "Angel from Montgomery" -- I was really happy to have the evening end up with more fiddling and not have to think as much about the flaily guitar playing.
The gig is tonight! I'm pretty excited and nervous. Hannah has been wonderful and encouraging throughout our brief acquaintance -- I hope I don't let her down! This will be the first time I have played in a bar other than at an open mic or jam. Looks like I'll be playing guitar on "Misguided Angel" (Cowboy Junkies), "River" (Mitchell, seasonally appropriate), "Can't Tear Myself Away" (Reimann, featuring horribly unfamiliar chord shapes, and that change throughout the song), and possibly one other song; and fiddle on "Smile to Pretend" (Reimann).
If you're around Maplewood next Friday, the 14th, and would like to hear me playing guitar and fiddle behind Hannah Reimann, come to the bar formerly known as Here's to the Arts at 97 Baker St. (That's still the name painted in the window, but they have taken their sign down and I think there is a name change in the works) at 8 pm. I'm so excited! An actual gig!
After we watched The Red Balloon today, we all went over to Hannah's apartment for us to get acquainted and try playing a few songs together. It went really well, I must say -- I was a little surprised to find out she wanted me to play guitar rather than violin (or "as well as" violin, but primarily guitar), but when I picked up her guitar it felt very comfortable and famliar. The songs she was thinking about playing sound pretty easy to get hold of; we played The Cowboy Junkies' "Misguided Angel" and then I played fiddle along with a recording of her own song "Smile to Pretend" (I might be misremembering the title -- a lovely song it was.) Very satisfying -- when I got home I took out my guitar for what must be the first time in a year or so and though it needs new strings, I was getting some pretty decent sound out of it.
