1952 Vincent Black Lightening

My cover of Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightening”. With a couple of obvious vocal flubs. Cut live with reverb to fill out the sound.

Theory vs. Practice

Lately I have been talking a lot about theory.  Theory is definitely important. Thinking about how things work is important. It is necessary to think about things and to think about how they work. Honestly, you need to do it from time to time in order to tweak your process and make it better.

However, practice is definitely MORE important than theory. Truth is you can get bogged down in theory. The real questions should always be: Does what I am doing work?  Can I do this better? How do I do it better? Is there anything that I need to learn to do it better?

Practice drills in the ideas of the theory. Practice makes the theory tangible/workable tools that are now in your arsenal. Ex. I can find out how write a piece of programming on the internet. But, until I have actually used and understood exactly what that piece of code was I couldn’t really use it again.  Once I understand the piece of code I could repurpose it and use it over and over again.

I believe in the magic of creation. I believe that first and foremost you should always trust your instincts when it comes to doing anything. However, it is good to know that somehow/somewhere there is a series of ideas that backs up what you are doing.

The other thing is theory is NOT set in stone. Ideas change. Practice is where the tweaking of the theory takes place anyway.

Weird Design

Made in MS Paint…

Follow Up To Guitar Stuff

Here is a graphic that shows three different minor pentatonic scale variations all lumped together. This refers to the related article listed below.

Related articles

• Technical Guitar Playing Stuff About Scales (jasonheires.wordpress.com)

Favorite lyric lines from Franz Ferdinand’s Right Action ablum

“I’m in love with a narcissist. I know cause the mirror told me so. I’m in love with my nemesis. I know cause the mirror told me so.”

“This time, same as before, I’ll love you forever.”

“Sometimes, wish you were here, weather permitting.”

“Thieves believe. Everybody steals. I believe there is nothing to believe.”

Technical Guitar Playing Stuff About Scales

So it was the slow part of the work shift, towards the end of the days. And I found a couple of you tube videos about scale positions for minor and major pentatonic scales on a guitar. This is going to get a smidge technical for all of you non-music people.

Now when I play a solo… I always thought that my pinky played the root note on the low E (thickest). This is true if you are playing a solo in a minor pentatonic scale. What I was NOT aware of is that if you want to play a solo in a major the root finger is your pinky instead…

Example if I want to play a solo in A. Here are the fret (metal bars on guitar) #’s

A Minor               A  Major

E          5-8                         2-5

A          5-7                         2-4

D         5-7                        2-4

G          5-7                       2-4

B           5-8                       2-5

E            5-8                      2-5

Just to be clear my pointer finger is always on the lowest number listed..  So a major key solo is three half steps lower than a minor solo. Like in this case the if I play the A minor solo starting with my pinky I will be playing an A note. But if I play an A major solo the first note I would play would be an F#,

So there are three variations of playing the pentatonic scale… once again this is for the   A minor pentatonic scale…

Normal mode. … (this is what I and just about everybody else in the world was taught first)

E5-8, A 5-7, G 5-7, D 5-7, B 5-8, E 5-8

Higher Mode: There is a high box part that I have played for years involving five notes but the whole scale works like this.

E 8-10, A 7-10, D 7-10, G7-9, B8-10, E8-10

Notice how the first number in this set is the last one played in the previous set.

Lower Mode: Then there is a third set (actually there are more than three but to make life easy we are just sticking with three for now)

E 3-5, A 3-5, D 2-5, G 2-5, B 3-5, E 3-5

Notice how this set the last number is the same as the starting number for the Normal mode.

So here you have three variations of the same pentatonic scale that you can play that all run into each other. And to switch the scale just add and subtract number. Like to move this to a G solo I would just subtract two from each number.

Let’s say I want to convert this over to a G major scale. I can subtract the 2 to switch the numbers from A minor to G minor and then I can subtract 3 again to switch to G Major. Or I can add 9 to each number to move from a G minor to a major too.

I know it is hard to explain but it makes sense. The big point is that these sets of notes can be used to play any pentatonic scale in any major or minor key.

Like I said sorry if I confused you all. But, it is fun to get this straight in my own head and once again it is one of things that I kind of knew but now I know better.

To all you people who know music theory better than me… you may laugh now!!!

Go With The Flow

Lately I have been kicking around this concept of flowing along with life. I think a lot of stress comes from when you try to push at life. From trying to force things to happen. Like let us say that you end up behind someone who is slow at the store or something. You get annoyed because you want to push the person in front of you to go faster. So you push at them with a negative will. But, it doesn’t help. It is not like the person is magically going to break out of their befuddlement. So you get mad that your will does nothing.

When I teach myself how to play something on guitar, I by necessity have to slow the part down. Once I learn how to play the part slowly, then I can gradually speed it up. But if I try to play a difficult part at full-speed right away it isn’t going to work. I am pushing myself too hard.

It is hard not to panic or to get frustrated when things don’t go your way. But, that is the key. Things don’t ever go YOUR way. Things go the way they go. The only thing you can control is how you let what happens effect you.

I repeat this over and over, mostly for my own benefit. I often find that when I try to give advise in the end the real person I am talking to is myself. But, if my weird little self-dialog can make you feel better about your own struggles, that makes me happy.

Short Takes— 8/26/13

The Heat Is On— Summer is burning with a vengeance where I live with highin the 90’s all week.

Back To School—Most of the kids are going back to school this week and most of the schools are NOT air-conditioned.

Short Weekend/Long Weekend—Last week I worked four hours on Saturday. This week I have a three-day weekend. Of course due to being a contractor I do not get paid for Monday so I will be a day short on hours.

US Open—The last big tennis event of the year started today. Been following the scores online no major upsets so far.

Trance—I watched this movie yesterday. While the premise and the cast was interesting, the movie kind of degraded into something kind unnecessarily twisted at the end.

Football—So college football starts this weekend and pro football starts in two weeks. Where does the time go?

Johnny Spade—I have decided to shelve the story. Basically, I was going to have something like Johnny and the blond were genetically engineered and they were going to end up doing a garden of eden type thing in a new colony. Yeah… I didn’t really like the plot either.

Practice– Does Not Necessarily Make Perfect

I was having a discussion with a fellow musician at work. We were talking about what it takes to make a living at being a musician. And we were talking about one of the key ingredients to getting good. Practice. Lots and lots of it.

And yes there really are no shortcuts if you want to get good at something, You have to do it. Even if you have natural talent, you still have to work at it. Natural talent might make is so that you don’t have to start so far back, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have to work.

You can have all the natural tennis playing or guitar playing talent in the world. But, you aren’t going to be better than me right away. I’ve put the time in to learn the skills, you haven’t.

However, to say that practice alone is the only key to improving is misleading. A big factor of practice is HOW you practice. For instance, are you attempting to do things that you never have tried to do before? Are you learning new things or are you constantly re-hashing the same old thing. Are you only just coping things that people have shown you or are you trying to do your own unique things.

All of these things lead to productive practicing which move you forward. Also never under-estimate the value of actually performing in the moment. You can play a part correctly ten thousand times but in the heat of the moment when the nerves are high can you still play it? And if you screw it up do you have the moxie to brush it off and keep going.

Also while perfection looks good on paper, a little bit of imperfection keeps things real. Why does pop music sound so fake? It is too perfect. So perfect it doesn’t sound real or feel real. In this age where we can air-brush, auto-tune and every other damn thing to make something perfect. Isn’t there something to be said for something that is imperfect yet still beautiful.

Franz Ferdinand- Rights Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action

Review… after a lengthy hiatus Franz Ferdinand is back with it’s fourth album. This album comes after what I felt was the band’s most realized album to date Tonight.

This album has two sold traditional Franz singles, “Right Action” and “Love Illumination”. And this is a good solid album pretty much from top to bottom except for “Fresh Strawberries” that falls flat for me. To me this album feels like a transition album.

You can kind of get a feel for the direction Franz Ferdinand is reaching for in the songs “Universe Expanded” and “Brief Encounters” these riff on one idea longer and play with more textural songwriting.

Sleeper songs on the album are “Bullet” and “Treason Animals”. One could almost argue that this is Franz’s weakest album. But, it still has plenty of quality songs that makes it worth having.

Franz Ferdinand is one of the better modern bands out there and any new work from them is welcome. The album is officially released on August 27th in the states. The album is free to listen to in its entirety at npr.org.

I will be buying my copy on the 27th rest assured…