02024-08-30 | Guitar, HuHeartDrive, Video
The piece softly softly from the album one guitar two. 40 minutes, 14 tracks, all recorded in hi-def during a week-long retreat at the Prajna Mountain Refuge in the Pecos, New Mexico, in the beginning of this month. I improvised the music between hours of meditation. There are a few upbeat pieces… like how did a rumba appear out of nowhere, or the bossa nova… but there also more quiet, soft, pieces like the one in this video. The album will appear on Backstage in September and will eventually show up on Bandcamp, too, but I don’t yet know when that will happen.
02024-04-26 | Guitar, Music, Video
I found this yesterday, while searching for something else. It’s an old live recording of the late Baden Powell playing (his?) Prelude in Am. I can’t seem to find the music on any of his albums. Does anyone know more about this piece?
02023-08-03 | Guitar, Philosophy
Quote from the book Love and Murder in the Time of Covid by Qiu Xiaolong.
i am playing the guitar
i am being played by the guitar
Deciding to do anything deeply, one opens a path through which that very thing one wants to work with also works on us. It changes us physically–the mouth (armature) of a trumpet player or the callus on the finger of a string player are obvious examples–and it also changes us mentally.
This is true for any relationship we have.
02023-07-09 | Guitar, Language
In Brazilian Portuguese an acoustic guitar is called violão, while the electric guitar is called guitarra. The Portuguese guitar is a very different instrument. The rest of the world calls it a Portuguese guitar, but in Portugal it’s simply a guitar. So a different word was used for what the Spanish call a guitar.
What I find interesting is that the guitar is female in all romance languages and even in German, which tends to try to be different. (the moon is male in German and the sun female. Craziness!!) But while it’s a guitarra (female) it is o violão (male). I supposed this shows that all languages develop around what feels good saying, not around what actually makes sense – as shown by aluminum or critter in American English – and perhaps people found that o violão and a guitarra sounded better. Or perhaps these genders really don’t mean anything… they are simply a way to make language more complicated. It’s something that English has solved beautifully.
02023-07-09 | Guitar, Rain Music
My guitar with a piece of sponge underneath the strings. The sponge shortens the sound and renders it almost oud-like. Hence the title of this post, the name a friend gave a track I recorded with it. (is the Oud masculine in Spanish??)
This last phase of recording Rain Poems has been about altering the guitar sound a little bit. Prepared guitar. Making the sound a little less pristine, less clear, less of that singing quality, and with more fuzz, a more percussive sound. Home-made wine. Moonshine. Kitchen food, not restaurant food. I used a cloth, woven through the strings and this sponge. I used a piece of paper, woven through the strings, on an album a few years ago. I bet nobody recognized it as a guitar sound. 😁
I often like limiting my palette because I have found that a small palette can inspire new ideas within those borders. There is so much one can discover through working with only a pencil. I suppose this is akin to having a tradition that limits what one is allowed to do. I don’t follow a tradition but perhaps I am creating my own for each album? There is an enormous difference between being told what we can and can’t do and choosing to draw our own lines within which we choose to work.
I have arrived at a point where I no longer want to use an electric guitar, or even a steel string guitar. I also haven’t used a synthesizer in a long time. I may use other instruments at some future time but right now I am loving everything about the Flamenco guitar. And, to be clear, by that I mean the instrument, not the tradition.
02023-07-03 | Guitar, Rain Music
My black back of guitar stuff always contains glue and acrylic powder, nail silks, strings and a wire cutter, an assortment of files, an extra saddle, IEMs, and a green piece of foam that was cut to a little longer than the width of the strings and about an inch wide. I have used the foam, shoved under the guitar strings, to practice in hotel rooms late at night as it dampens the strings nicely.
Yesterday I put the foam under the strings and right up against the bridge. This created a short, slightly percussive and mellow sound. Rest strokes didn’t sound great but free strokes sounded quite evocative of an oud. And so another piece was born. Now up to 16 tracks and about 55 minutes of music. A lot of great guitar sounds.
I am happy to report that my ears have been fine although I have been using IEMs, with foam tips, every day for more than an hour at a time. I am wondering whether the silicone tips I was using for a while were the cause of my allergy/infection.
