The fine art of dampening strings, or specifically stopping particular notes from ringing and thereby colliding with the other notes that you do want. I learned much about this by watching Jon play bass. The fingers of both of his hands are constantly refining the sound that comes forth from his instrument, adding a slow vibrato here and dampening a string that would otherwise clash with the next harmony.
You can observe this constant vigilance in classical guitarists like Julian Bream. While one finger of the left hand goes to a fret to define the next note, another finger is poised to dampen the string that rang the last note.
I recommend renting a DVD of Bream playing guitar as it is most interesting and educational. (((You might also observe how he bends certain notes to create harmonies that are in tune… the well-tempered scale is a compromise, especially on a guitar, and you will notice when you play an E major chord followed by a C major chord that the G-string, if tuned for the E chord, will sound off when playing the C chord and vice versa.)))
And the faces he makes while playing guitar are very entertaining, also.
This, of course, is most important when changing keys, but is always a good idea because even strings you haven’t plucked or struck with the right hand will ring sympathetically. By dampening those strings you focus more attention to the notes you are playing. Things become clearer, as if a fog has been lifted.
This is what I sent to Jon: Some kind of opening-chord, a mood-setter intro for “On the Road to Shiraz”. An intro to the intro. Something that might sound like dawn in an Arabic countryside w/o being too literal (((i.e. no arabic scale or quarter-tones))). Perhaps a grainy texture, representing sand, but also sweet, like dates and figs.
And this is what he returned:
Isn’t that lovely! And how did Michael figure out where to play the tom-hits at the beginning of the first chorus, when we worked without a click-track and we could not see each other? That kind of wonderful stuff starts happening when a band works well together.
The arroyo below sounds like a fast mountain stream today. Water is racing down the canales, as the snow on the roof melts. Three leaks are dripping, two in the house and one in the garage. Those damned flat roofs my dad always exclaimed. More work in the studio. The icing on the cake, the little things, the surprises, that make repeated listening more interesting. ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• Le Whif: As Sweet As Chocolate, As Light As Air Now in coffee flavor, with the equivalent amount of caffeine of a double espresso. The kick of coffee without the cup, they say. In one of his books Bruce Sterling described a bar of the future, where people inhale alcohol, because it enters the bloodstream quicker and does not damage the liver in the process. Pretty funny, that. •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.
Who said THAT?
None other than United States Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood in this blogpost.
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Forget about bicycles, racecars or motorcycles, I think this has got to be the biggest rush. I love this photo of a ski jump in Oslo! Beautiful! The record is held by a local, who jumped 141m. That’s over 462 feet!
