Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
ahh. The late great David Crosby pre-liver replacement days.
Saw them on this tour in Hershey, PA. He was so stoned I could tell from 30 rows back up in the stands. But they sounded great.
The bit of commentary at the beginning from Stills isn’t wrong. Apparently, he and Nash wanted to make a record, but the label didn’t want to promote anything unless it was all three of them. So they had to drag Crosby away from his hobby. Crosby contributed two songs to the album.
And they made a good pile from the result.
Daniel
Single subject fora are older forms of online communities than Facebook, Twitter, Discord, etc. They require more commitment to the subject than than the newer forms.
Brand selective guitar forums for high end brands like Collings and SCGC double down on the “inconvenience” that forums in general suffer from.
Plus, in my experience only about 10% of the members of any given forum -new or “old”- actively participate.
And so we have a quiet forum. 🙂
<grumpy old man mode>
Less than 30 years ago we got news/updates less than 5 times a day on average. We didn’t expect constant updates. Now we want to see something new EVERY time we fire up the computer. And on top of that we have FOMO!
upshot: Don’t look for updates here every time you turn on the computer. Relax into the fact that we DON’T share everything. Go play your amazing guitar! 🙂
</grumpy old man mode>
Daniel
New tune in class these days, though we’re still working on Recordame. The new one is McCoy Tyner’s Contemplation. It’s MUCH easier than Recordame: three scales to use instead of seven. There’s a subtley and smoothness to it too.
Ahhh… Telecasters.
They were designed by Leo Fender to be the exact opposite of everything that SCGC does to make great guitars.🙂
Daniel
Just in case you all are interested I found a video on YouTube that shows the head of Recordame played on guitar with onscreen guitar tab accompanying the staff notation.
I’m using it to read the staff notation I have. It’s a bear transposing/transcribing guitar to 5 string enamdo. No one has done it yet for mandolin, let alone 5 string mandolin, as far as I know.
Daniel
Matt, 🙂 Yeah. When I see Ab and Gb on the sheet music, I know I’m in for a challenge!
[Interstingly -or perhaps not- the French word for “sheet music” is “partition”. I almost wrote that sentence of above using the French word. Then I realized it would make no sense to you! I had to stop and think of the English term!]
Fortunately Christoph, a sax player, is cognizant of the fact that horn players are weird and gives us standard notation rather than Bb. 😉
And Happily for me the things you need to do with your left hand don’t change because the chords are all closed. You just need to remember where to put it!
We have a uke player who is trying to learn all these chords as open chords in the moment! She’s often lost. There have to be closed chords for uke as well. I’ll try to find something to help her…
Richard,
I’ve scanned the music and sized the PDF for 8.5″ x 11″ (us standard letter). WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload PDFs, so I’ve emailed them to you.[if anyone else wants a copy, just ask!]
I can’t tab it for you, but I have wrtten in the starting notes on the scale studies where I could. You can assume that if the scale is Cm7, that the scale starts at the bottom with a C.
And, as mentioned above, all the music assumes a standard instrument, not a Bb horn.
I forgot to mention that Christoph asked me to learn the melody as well. He wants me to play it with Thierry our soprano sax player. I said, “OK.” I have no idea why! 🙂
Hope all is well with you two in Cali,
Daniel
Class number 2 tonight…
We continued working on Recordame by Joe Henderson. There’s a particularly tricky passage that runs
|Cm7 F7b9|Bbmaj7 |Bbm7 Eb7b9|Abmaj7 |Abm7 Db7b9|Gbmaj7 |Gbm7 C7| Fmaj | E7b9.The magic in this progression is the change from a maj7 to a min7. It’s like walking down stairs, but I’d NEVER think of having a Bbmin7 follow a Bbmaj7. It’s nuts!
We had to run scales over the descending passage.
Christoph ran us through each section one at a time taking turns working with one scale, then the next and so on until we played through. That took us more than an hour, and I loved every monute of it.
This passage was kicking my ass, but now I can play through the passage both by chording and using a simple little improv.
Before class I had a quick chat with our choir director, Eric. I had suggested covering Sting’s “Fragile” and he liked the idea.
(Go have a look on YouTube for choral versions of it. Some of them are pretty cool, especially the German choirs.)
Except tonight he asked me if he could arrange a part for me to play on 5 string emando to introduce the piece and if I would be happy to take a solo. (!!) I said, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m taking a Jazz improv class.”
I have known Eric for 5 years and I have never seen him so animated. His wife told me he spent the whole day with staff paper under headphones except to trim the quince tree in their garden for 30 minutes.
It feels good to be so engaged with both music and a community.
I hope you are all doing well,
Daniel
See now that’s why you’re a better guitar player than I am, Matt!
Richard, I can read for voice (one note at a time), but reading for guitar or mandolin is still beyond me. I hope the improve class will help. (We use scores to learn the melodies.)
Good on you both!
Anyone else?
Daniel
(singing in the men’s choir tonight)Happy Birthday Santa Cruz Guitar Company! Many happy returns of the day!
(Missing California a bit today)
Daniel
Thanks guys.
I’ll share with Eric when it’s ready. Lore-Anne was jumping octaves out of deference to Barbara; taking the upper for the melody and the lower for support. When we get the arrangement sorted out, it’ll sound a lot more smooth. Also, I picked kind of a quick tempo. :0)
Daniel
As much as I love the 42BGD, it’s not the right guitar for this project. It’s strung with mediums, and it doesn’t sound right strung with anything else. Plus, it’s not the sound I need for this project (outside of the studio). I need a strummy-er rhythm guitar, so lights rather than mediums.
I rehearsed with the Rainsong Friday afternoon and nothing bad happened. But I use it for three or four songs and only one of those was standard tuning, open chords w/o capo. [Capo on the 2nd fret is 1 11/16.]
I have been looking at mini guitars by Vox. They have a 19″ scale, like my octave mandolin, and might be an interesting voice. Also a shorter scale would be less jarring as I switch to guitar from mandolin.
I’d love to try a SCGC Firefly, but finding one in the EU that I can afford would be a miracle.
If you guys know of anyone who wants to trade a Firefly for either the 42BGD (eek! did I write that?) or the Rainsong OM-1000, let me know. 🙂
Daniel
