Munji...JAW Munji

As (kinda) promised, here is a little video of me first time transcribing my way throught Naudo's James Bond Theme. It's straight off the bat, so if you see any obvious errors, please pipe up! :)

Video record fail...with some Pink Floyd consolation

Grabbed an opportunity last night to record the new song for youtube.  I stupidly put a lot of pressure on myself, and by take four my left hand had cramped up.  It's a regular issue for me now - if I play the same song more than say 3 or 4 times back to back, I'm using the same muscles over and over, they don't like it.  Not all songs, but generally, most songs I arrange have some part in them that hurts if you repeat it too much too often.  In this case, "Stupid Girl", you hang onto a G7 with a second string D for a long time.  When I first worked on "Something" it got so bad I did some sort of tissue damage to my pinky (I've talked about that before), fortunately, after about *a year* there were no further problems.

So I gave up.  I don't like the idea of a years worth or recovery again.

But, not to totally waste the opportunity, I played some different stuff.  I'm due for a re-record of some of my earlier posted songs.  Unfortunately the hand cramping didn't help, so both the songs did not meet my "stringent" requirements for what I will allow on my youtube channel.  But, my mates here (that's you) don't mind so much if my videos aren't up to scratch, so rather than throw away the videos I'll just post them on the blog channel! :)

First up was "Wish You Were Here", which I fumbled too many times through (one take), the tempo was not acceptable, dropped some key melody notes, basically I wasn't happy.  Mostly, I was happy, so it's probably worth a look.

Interestingly, when I posted it, Warner Chappell immediately flagged it and claimed it.  Bugged me a bit, so I deleted it, renamed it, and uploaded it again.  Warner Chappell immediately claimed it again.  Interesting - youtube actually parses the audio and checks if it matches claimed songs.  Worth noting.  I'll take it as a compliment (I play the song so well and true to form that it pattern matches) but in future if I upload a pattern matched song first I'll upload the video without audio, claim it for myself, and then upload the audio.  Ha ha, schneaky :)

Second up was the ever increasing/ongoing Dark Side of the Moon.  Again, hand was still cramping somewhat, even more dropped melody notes, bad tempo - my phone rang at one stage making a racket, I ignored it but it really threw me, played wrong chords and stuff, ha ha.  So you'll see a botched Great Gig in the Sky which I gave up on and moved on, Us and Them is still in production, and I made hard work of Brain Damage which is strange because I've been playing that for years.

But, some of my mates will appreciate it even if it is messy, in fact appreciate it more than they would if it wasn't messy (you can see me laughing at myself because of the ridiculous errors I was making).  Warts and all, but be warned, it is 16 minutes of your life you will never get back :)

There is no end...

What I find time and time again is regardless of the direction you go playing the guitar, there is no end.  You can take it as far as you like, there will always be something more.  You'd think after 30+ years I would have exhausted _something_, but no, it's no the case.  And once you have the guitar in your blood, it's there for life.  You might be in a 10 year hiatus, but the guitar will entice you back sometime.

I was on holidays with the family for the whole of last week and I didn't play any guitar.  When I came back, that evening I picked her up and played her, and she has the sweetest sound, so rich and warm, and my fingers just knew what to do and it felt and sounded like the best guitar playing I've ever done.  Just one week away.  You can never reach the end of realising how beautiful the guitar can sound.

This week I was mixing up the melody in my latest song, for a bit of interest.  You don't want to play the verse exactly the same every time, especially when it is sung different in verses, and I found an 1/8th note lag in verse 2 forced my brain to have to completely re-evaluate what was going on.  I could "feel" I needed to program a quite different process in my brain to be able to slip that one note back.  Here is the two almost identical melodies, there is one G missing on beat 2& (which actually provides a mental cue) but it is the Bb set back from beat 3 to beat 3& that makes the difference:

|---------------|------------| |----------------|------------|
|---------------|------------| |----------------|------------|
|----0-0-2-3--2-|------------| |----0---2---3-2-|------------|
|--------3-0----|------------| |--------3-0-----|------------|
|-------------1h|==3---3--1-3| |--------------1h|==3---3--1-3|
|-3--3----------|------------| |-3--3-----------|------------|

You can never reach the end of finding stuff that is challenging to push into your brain.

The last two nights I've had an opportunity to play the guitar a bit, and both nights I've run through Dark Side of the Moon.  You'll be pleased to know Ryan and Marc :)  Since it is a good twenty minutes of continuous playing, you're probably not surprised to hear that I experiment all over the place with subtle differences in melody, techniques and sound.  You'd think that the longer I'd played a piece the more consistent it would get.  I think that is true initially, but once you are playing a piece in autopilot that is when you can start introducing differences.  Naudo is a classic example, I've seen different recordings of something like "Losing my Religion" and "Another Brick in the Wall" and each one is quite different - maybe in another key!  You can never "finish" a song.

The list of never ending goes on - perhaps it is because our approach changes over time; if we were to do only one thing perhaps we would reach the ultimate end.  But I doubt it :)