Random stuff

1. ..and most importantly, at last Sunday’s lesson, I started – just started, with an inkling of a hint of a smidgen of a chink-of-light-shining-through-the-crack, began to understand what and how to go about thinking about this jazz stuff. For too long, my approach has been ‘which scale goes with which chord’ – very rigidly. I’m gradually beginning to look at things as more in terms of the interval and the sound of that interval against the root. Last night I printed out some neck blanks and started writing out all the notes related to the root – C to start with, so the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th etc. then filled in all the b9/#9s and b5s and #5s and #4 and #11s and of course the 7ths, major and minor. I plan to try and think more in terms of the note choice against the root chord from now as part of my approach and the *sound* of it in terms of consonance or dissonance. 
2. Related to the above I have resolved (bad pun) to think in terms of the chord tones, the color tones and the tension tones to provide a bit of structure.
3. I’ve come up with a nice arrangement for Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I do’ which I initially discovered on a Frank Sinatra compilation. Hoping to record it soon.
4. Finally got the TAB book out of the case of my Chet Atkins guitar DVD and started learning his great arrangement of “When you wish upon a star” which uses a lot of artificial harmonics. It also has a great section with a nice walking bassline under the main melody. Awesome player, great tune, lovely sounding playing. I’m getting better at it.
5. I’ve decided I want a bass (again). Thinking.
6. …but it has to get in the queue behind a Gibson EDS-1275. Stupid really. I’ve wanted one of these for more than 20 years, but somehow always ended up buying something else. From now, I am going to be laser focused that this is the next guitar I will buy.

More Autumn Leaves

Spent an hour or so playing through numerous variations of chord voicings and walking bass augmentations of the Autum Leaves progression. Getting to know that song pretty well now – just need to work with Master to make my soloing over it less dorky.

Lesson 29

Worked more on Girl from Ipanema. Master corrected some of my chord fingerings and helped me hone the melody. We did a bit of jamming improv over the the A section and I have been trying this since.

We then had some general discussion/mentorship and he talked about different approaches to improv. At one point he mentioned a quote from George Russell which (paraphrased) went something along the lines of ‘improvising of a tune is like a boat trip up the Mississippi – you can can sail directly there, or you can stop at all the little towns on the way.’ The analogy was supposed to be related to how do we approach some chord changes. For example a ii V I in any given key – let’s say C. Do we just play C over the whole thing? Do we think D Dorian, G Mix , C Ionian at each chord? Do we treat each chord as a vertical slice and think of all the different harmonizations possible?

He also showed me a mod for a Maj7 chord, i.e. the #4 or #11 which implies the Lydian mode, e.g. Cmaj7#11 (I prefer this name as opposed to the #4 though my internal jury is still out).

New Guitar Day – Fender Custom Shop Custom Classic Telecaster

Here it is – my new Fender Custom Shop Custom Classic Telecaster. Aged Cherry Sunburst. Beautiful in every way, except sadly it arrived with a broken selector switch tip. I have written to them for a replacement, but no big deal.  Additionally, I find it puzzling that the guitar is in this colour. According to the Fender website, they never made a CC Tele in this colour, but then again, it is a Custom Shop – anything is possible. Further, the CC specs state that the control panel should be reversed, with the selector switch towards the input jack. Do I have the equivalent of a Penny Red with the Queen’s head printed back to front? I emailed the Custom Shop guys – let’s see what they say.

 

New guitar arrived in Singapore!

Apparently it arrived at the depot on Saturday. It might even be waiting for me when I get home, the postman having called while I was at the office! Woo hoo!

New guitar now somewhere over the North Atlantic

Lesson 28: Bossa Nova, Girl from Ipanema

One of my buddies wanted to jam to Girl from Ipanema so as much as I despise this song, I asked Master to show me and the Bossa Nova style and rhythm in general. We started with some basic rhythm clapping exercises, which, frankly, I suck at. Once he showed me the rhythm on the guitar it felt more intuitive to me though. As much as I hate the melody, the song has got very interesting chords and some great modulations in the bridge section

Chords if I recall correctly.

A)  Fmaj7 | Fmaj7 | G7 | G7 | Gmin7 | Gmin7b5 | Fmaj7 | Fmaj7 |

B) Gbmaj7 | Gbmaj7 | B9 | B7 | F#min7 | F#min7 | D9 | D7  | Gmin7 | Gmin7 | Eb9 | Eb7 | Amin7 | D9 | Gmin7 | C9 |

Couple of short HD vids of me playing

My friend Kirk trying out the High Definition video function of his Canon camera while I noodle around, so shot in 1080p; not sure what YouTube ends up encoding it as though.  He tries to swap focus between my right and left hands at various portions just testing what the camera can do.  Ignore sound quality – I just picked up the Strat and started playing – did not bother to tweak the amp settings so it’s a bit bright.

Megadeth – Endgame

Hailed as an instant classic. I agree. From the very get go this is an amazing album. Heavy, melodic, great songs and awesome shredding/guitar interplay between Dave and Chris.

Buy it.

New guitar continues its Great American Roadtrip

Sept 24: Bloomington, California.

What kinda guitar? Hmm… I don’t know yet!