Hey y’all, I know it’s been awhile since my last entry here. I always have so many things I’m working on that I don’t often manage to share what’s up with you. I’ll probably do a bit better now that I have more time on my hands. We’ll see.
I had intended to finish up on my “Burn at the Barn” story, and may yet do so, but not right now. D’oh!
The main thing today is, new videos to share, and notice of new recordings I’m doing, alone and with others remotely. The new videos:
1) “Just practice – workin’ on ‘Teen Town’” – Here’s a little snippet “edu-trailer” I played this morning (4/4/20 – Covid-19-self-isolation-stay-home day #24) of my arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson” I’m working on. Giving it a little different spin what with the hop-swing-funk feel and all. So fun to play, though surprisingly challenging to get all as clean as I’d like. For any fans of the 17 year-old Buzzy Feiten’s guitar part from the Rascals’ “Jungle Walk” from their “Island of Real” album, it’s in there towards the end.
2) “Mrs. Robinson – edu-trailer” – Here’s a little snippet “edu-trailer” I played this morning (4/4/20 – Covid-19-self-isolation-stay-home day #24) of my arrangement of Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson” I’m working on. Giving it a little different spin what with the hop-swing-funk feel and all. So fun to play, though surprisingly challenging to get all as clean as I’d like. For any fans of the 17 year-old Buzzy Feiten’s guitar part from the Rascals’ “Jungle Walk” from their “Island of Real” album, it’s in there towards the end.
3) “Kit Guitar Practice Caged Cform 3-Arpeggio-up/3rds-down” – This video is a tid-bit from my practice, focused on 1) a warm-up exercise devised by Larry Coryell that I always start with briefly to get my fingers moving, then 2) a couple of ways I might go through the C form of the CAGED system, then 3) a combination of those two ways to go through the pattern exercise in all keys, though in this clip I only do a few to avoid boring you with an extra 20 minutes or so of repetitions of the same this in the remaining keys. If you want me to create the full exercises in the future, to play along with, or for whatever reason, let me know. If I get enough interest I’ll do some of that. I will be doing more of these with various exercises, concepts, guitar focused stuff, general music thinking, theory, whatever…
4) “Applying a Pattern Concept – Skip-a-note” – This video talks a bit about applying a particular concept, or “musical algorithm,” or a “rule,” or whatever you wanna call it, to patterns. The concept is to “Skip-a-note” from each successive note of a pattern. To do it, pick a particular pattern you want to work with, then apply a number system to the notes of the pattern, with the first note being 1, the second note 2, the third note 3, etc. This is done before applying the “Skip…” rule, or whatever rule you may use in the future. THEN, apply the rule from each successive note, from 1, from 2, from 3, etc. So, when you lay out the pattern note numbers with the concept applied, the numbering becomes 1-3, 2-4, 3-5, 4-6, etc., clarifying the sequence you’ll be playing with the rule applied. The beauty of it is that you can apply a concept to any pattern, and the more you do it with a variety of patterns the more adept you become at doing it. I could go on about the benefits of this sort of practice, but suffice to say just practice with focus, patience, consistency of technique, tempo, volume, attack and all as your first approach, then you can vary a thing or two at a time to focus on (volume, accents, whatever) as you continue to practice it over time.
The collection I’m recording for CD and digital delivery is a bunch of my original jazz-ish compositions old and new that have never been properly arranged and recorded just as I would like. Now is a good time to do it. I’ll be doing the guitar tracks and possibly some bass tracks, and there may even be a bit of midi stuff to fill things out (don’t know about that part yet), and I’m enlisting some great musicians I’ve worked with over the years to add bass, drums, percussions, keys and such here and there, possibly lots, to many if not all of the tunes. We’ll see how they evolve. Very excited about this!
Gotta go now. We’re gonna be working on expanding our gardening this year and we’re building a new enclosure for that today.
Everybody be smart, be safe, be considerate, be creative, and be well!!!
P.S. If you want to keep up with videos I’ll be posting more regularly now please subscribe to my YouTube Channel. I plan to be more consistent in keeping up this blog, and if I do that, and if you prefer finding out what’s up with me here, then, well, there you go…
