equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
Viewing entries tagged with "guitar"
Pages (1): 1
31 Jan 13
1

torpor

The hol­i­day sea­son is offi­cially over when it doesn’t feel right to watch Christmas spe­cials of Only Fools and Horses. The Trotter boys are out of their ele­ment, try­ing to strike it rich in exotic locales, and the Peckham flat is too far away for things to feel nor­mal. Still, watch­ing them makes me miss the UK more than ever. I’ve taken to episodes of Sherlock to get my dose of London nights until I can find a way to make it over there again.

girl in snow

Pointer of quarry, tamer of cats.

Over here, it’s been a faith­ful Canadian win­ter. Bouts of var­ied snow­fall, record-breaking lows, and a spot of freez­ing rain here and there. My gui­tar must be achingly dry as the mod­est humid­i­fier help­lessly fails to main­tain bal­ance against the con­stant churn of the furnace.

I’ve been pick­ing her up again, rebuild­ing my blis­ters and re-learning old songs. Sometimes I won­der how I was ever able to play cer­tain pas­sages, but know­ing I have before makes it eas­ier the sec­ond time around. This time it feels a lit­tle dif­fer­ent though. I have a bet­ter reach and a more con­fi­dent picky, along with some new pains that have found their way into my hands.

cat in cat bed

 

The cold that per­me­ates the house means Dolly prefers sleep­ing in her bed over any one spot, and I can carry her around with me from room to room to keep me com­pany. Byron is rarely far away. Even though he’s not as affec­tion­ate as Dolly, he’s still my cat in the way he comes to walk on me when I wake, and the rit­ual play­time we have after teeth are brushed.

With the cats form­ing a lit­tle nest wher­ever I go, and the view of ice and snow just out­side the win­dow, I have lit­tle rea­son to leave the house nowadays.

tagged with #cats #Dolly #guitar #winter / filed under Daily Life Photos
04 Jan 13
2

tides

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve been look­ing for new inspi­ra­tion and lis­ten­ing to as much new music as I can find recently. I haven’t dared go into much of my old music. I sup­pose that means I’m not yet com­pletely over some­thing or other. Thankfully, peo­ple send me new songs all the time (this gem cour­tesy of Mansour Chow), and often it keeps me going until the next addiction.

I haven’t picked up my gui­tar lately either. For the first time, the break has been self-imposed, though out of a desire to pur­sue other inter­ests more than any­thing else. Also pos­si­bly the fact that I lost two months of growth when I chipped my thumb­nail, and I’m not inter­ested in learn­ing any­thing that requires a thumbpick right now. Ever since my dad gave me Larissa as a birth­day present two years ago, I haven’t able to put her down until now. I’m hop­ing it’ll reset a few bad habits, and give me more focus when I start again.

Practicing gui­tar has been the one tan­gi­ble way in which I could tell I was improv­ing. Now that I’m tak­ing a break, I’ve been faced with an unset­tling sense of stag­nancy, cause I’ve always held self-improvement as one of my main rea­sons for liv­ing. But I’ve also real­ized that it’s not always pos­si­ble to con­tin­u­ally improve, so I’m try­ing to be happy with who I am at the moment, and accept that it’s nat­ural to go through cycles of growth and stag­nancy, pain and heal­ing, frailty and strength.

tagged with #guitar #music #reflection #self-improvement / filed under Random Thoughts
05 Aug 12
5

I want to know do I stay or do I go

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

So.

Filmed a great wed­ding yes­ter­day, one that left me tired and sore and much deserv­ing of a break. It’s a hazy Sunday morn­ing, and another day that it’ll feel like it’s above 40°C with the humid­ity. Working nearly 13 hours and turn­ing into a lit­tle pud­dle of Asian man means I’m con­sciously avoid­ing the out­doors today. I’ll be con­tent to sip my cof­fee and peer out the win­dow at the gen­tly sun­lit trees.

cat and drink on a hot day

Majel helps us taste-test cock­tails for the reception.

Even though it’s get­ting ever closer to her wed­ding, and Lisa has an increas­ing num­ber of things to get done, we’ve been able to see each other more lately. I’ve real­ized that it’s not good enough to have her meet my needs. I have to fill a cer­tain role in her life too. That’s what brings mean­ing to the rela­tion­ship, cause it means she appre­ci­ates me the way I want to be appre­ci­ated. So often, it feels like that’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I’m glad to have devel­oped a rit­ual get-together with Aaron too. When we don’t see each other one week, it feels like a year the next time we catch up. Tonight I’m head­ing over to his house for the start of bach­e­lor week, some­thing we’ve been excit­edly plan­ning for a while now. It’s the first time he’s had the house to him­self since the kids were born, so I’ll be stay­ing there for a few days of games, movies, bar­be­cue, and gen­eral guy stuff, com­ing back home to feed the kit­ties every now and then. We’re doing a six per­son Magic tour­ney tomor­row, my first in the Constructed for­mat, and everyone’s mak­ing new decks for the chance to open some M13 boost­ers. I think my deck con­cept is BRILLIANT and I can’t wait to try it out.

Chet Atkins has also been keep­ing me com­pany lately. I’m so glad to have found his instruc­tional DVD, where he talks with his old man charm about what he likes in each song and how to play them, phrase by phrase. I grew my thumb­nail out nice and long for nearly two months, cut it off for practicality’s sake dur­ing wed­ding sea­son, then imme­di­ately regret­ted the deci­sion. The elec­tric strings I’ve been using have a really flat, dull tone in the lower reg­is­ter, and since the bass line is so impor­tant in Chet’s arrange­ments, it’s like an entire part is miss­ing from any song I try to learn. I’m going to try learn­ing with a thumb pick, which is some­thing I’ve been avoid­ing for a while now cause I hate the loss of sen­si­tiv­ity (like a con­dom on your thumb), but hope­fully the com­pro­mise is worth it.

I have things to orga­nize, chores to do, errands to run, and a house to clean before I leave. For now, I’ll enjoy the rest of the morn­ing, wast­ing time.

tagged with #Aaron #cats #friendship #guitar #Lisa / filed under Daily Life Photos
02 Apr 12
4

this is my happy face

All i want to write about lately is sun­sets and awk­ward hugs and redis­cov­er­ing coconut mac­a­roons and under­wear and sec­ondish chances and grow­ing old and jus­tice and my new aware­ness of food indus­try issues and the smell of out­doors no mat­ter what the sea­son and want­ing to see Germany and my new Magic decks and that last date and how hard it is to do Street Fighter IV com­bos and pic­tures like this

golden girl

 

and not hav­ing to wear a coat any­more and hand­shakes after really close games and peo­ple being nice to me and feel­ing more com­fort­able with barre chords and what Geneviève wears and Breaking Bad and Nick Drake’s life and root beer floats and the sound of a melod­ica and pretty cats and open­ing boost­ers and the lux­ury of say­ing no and how weird it feels to drive some­where in your PJs and intro­duc­ing oth­ers to that aloe drink and the same old mem­o­ries that I still cher­ish and mini-Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and walk­ing base­lines and being sur­rounded by such good peo­ple and hav­ing a PS3 and the time com­plex­ity of sort­ing algo­rithms and won­der­ing if it’s too late to call and how excited Ryan gets when I visit and the songs I want to write and my mem­o­ries of America and scented oils from the Body Shop and choco­late beers and the image of a gauzy dress in the sun.

tagged with #food #guitar #Lisa / filed under Daily Life Photos Popular
27 Dec 11
4

it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

I got what I wanted for Christmas.

Piles of it. Sheets falling from the sky, melt­ing instantly on your wind­shield, forc­ing the traf­fic to 20kph on the high­way. So much that you have to brush off your car if you leave it parked for more than a minute, but the sky glows orange for you to savour every second.

house in the snow

 

Not that I cel­e­brate Christmas, but I do enjoy the trap­pings of the sea­son. The lights and the dec­o­ra­tions and the spirit and the snow. I’m just sick of the con­sumerism. It seems per­verse to see all this fancy paper wrapped around a box only to be torn off and thrown away. To see peo­ple scram­bling to buy things just to have some­thing to give. I’ve got it just right, where I don’t exchange gifts with any of my friends cause I don’t want either side to feel obliged. I’d rather give a present when the time is right for both peo­ple, and save my money so it’s some­thing spe­cial every now and then. The last thing I want is to be a scrooge, but the older I get, the more I feel like that’s what I’m turn­ing into.

The hol­i­days are the only time I truly veg out. I watch more TV on Christmas day than in the entire year com­bined, marathon reruns of Dog the Bounty Hunter and Parking Wars and Cake Boss. Shows that are fas­ci­nat­ing in short bursts with the right com­pany and snacks, but never good enough to make a point to watch on my own.

trees and night

 

I was lucky enough to spend some qual­ity time with a cheap elec­tric gui­tar. The body was dusty, the strings were dirty, and the into­na­tion left some­thing to be desired, but the action had me feel­ing like all the time I’ve spent with a stiff steel-string acoustic has paid off. About a month ago I put down a $200 deposit on the nylon-string beauty I’ve always wanted (with the promise that I’d get my deposit back if I didn’t like it) so I could wrap my arms around the body, run my hands across the glossy fin­ish, and feel the fret­board beneath my fin­gers. Guitar has been my only ther­apy lately. The only thing I can throw myself into and for­get about every­thing else, the only part of myself that I can tan­gi­bly tell is improv­ing, some­thing I need to be feel­ing right now.

I’ve never been this uncer­tain about the future, and it’s freak­ing me out. I already had a feel­ing 2012 was going to be a new start. My projects would be done by the end of the year, I’d have a nice lit­tle break, and I’d be ready to begin again. Now I’m forced into that real­ity, and life is soon going to be very dif­fer­ent. I don’t know if I’ll be able to han­dle it, but I sus­pect I won’t have much of a choice.

tagged with #change #guitar #self-improvement / filed under Daily Life Photos
31 May 11
8

Spanish Romance

To be hon­est, I’d never heard of Spanish Romance until this year. Once I found out it was a clas­si­cal stan­dard, I started see­ing it on all these CDs by respected gui­tarists and com­pi­la­tion albums of “clas­si­cal greats”. It seems like any­one learn­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar will try to tackle it at some point, seduced by such an ele­gant melody. I have no clas­si­cal aspi­ra­tions, and even I fell for it.

I fig­ure I’d record this before I cut off my nails cause I’ve been grow­ing them for about two months1 and I’m com­pletely sick of them. They clack on my key­board and iPad, and I always have to be annoy­ingly care­ful about not break­ing them. Unfortunately, this song also sounds way bet­ter with some bright­ness to it when it’s not played with actual nylon strings; I’m still using a set of Silk and Steel, and there’s a cer­tain fat­ness to the sound when you really dig into them.

I’ve only had Larissa for six months now, but it feels more like six years. There’s so much famil­iar­ity in the wood and glossy curves. Even when I’m try­ing out a gui­tar sev­eral times the price of what she would cost, it never feels as nice.

  1. Although halfway through I cut them down to 1/4 length and lost a lot of growth cause I thought they were inter­fer­ing with my rest-stroke. Turns out the prob­lem was actu­ally in my tech­nique. Oops. [↩]
tagged with #guitar #music #projects / filed under Random
11 May 11
0

Silk and Steel and Steve

I’ve always been after a more mel­low sound than what I can cur­rently get out my gui­tar. Madeleine sug­gested I try D’Addario Silk and Steel strings, so I bought a pack a few days ago and have been play­ing them since. I asked Steve to demo the strings, as well as my lovely gui­tar Larissa, cause my abil­i­ties aren’t good enough to really show her off.

Sometimes I love them cause they’re so bright and clear, other times I hate them cause the tone comes off as thin and frail; it really depends on what kind of music I’m play­ing. When Steve plays them they’re shock­ingly bright and pierc­ing com­pared to the sound I get; I’m not sure if it’s the dif­fer­ence in our nails or tech­nique (or both).

They’re def­i­nitely meant for fin­ger­pick­ing cause they’re so light1 that even mod­er­ate strum­ming will make them buzz, which severely lim­its my pos­si­ble reper­toire. On the bright side, it’s much eas­ier to fret barre chords, and cer­tain pas­sages that were a strug­gle to play cleanly only require a light touch now.

Another advan­tage is that the tone makes me feel like I’m play­ing a dif­fer­ent gui­tar. Even though it’s not quite the dry and mel­low sound of a clas­si­cal nylon, it’s some­what staving off my desire to buy the Taylor I’ve been eying2, but who knows how long that’ll last.

Steve’s the only per­son I know who lives by the gui­tar, both lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. I’ve seen such bril­liant things come out of his fin­gers. Sometimes in the mid­dle of a song I’m show­ing him, he’ll pick up the melody and go some­where com­pletely dif­fer­ent with it that’s more beau­ti­ful than the orig­i­nal. And even though he’s mainly a jazz guy (after Wes Montgomery), he can play any style from clas­si­cal to flamenco.

I’ve taken up his belief in not using a pick and stick­ing with my fin­ger­nails. “Just another thing between you and the gui­tar”, he said to me once. And when I explain how I’m stuck on some­thing he’ll say, “Have you done it three-and-a-half mil­lion times?” to remind me that anything’s pos­si­ble with enough prac­tice. He’s filled with all these tiny yet cru­cial bits of infor­ma­tion that have influ­enced how I approach the instrument.

  1. 0.11–0.47, but they feel like 0.10. [↩]
  2. It just so hap­pens that Steve’s main gui­tar is the exact nylon-string Taylor hybrid I’ve been drool­ing over for months now. [↩]
tagged with #guitar #interesting people #music / filed under Random Video
06 Apr 11
4

so I had to go out and find love of another kind

All I tend to do nowa­days is tin­ker on the gui­tar or uke. It’s nice to have projects, to be able to exper­i­ment and explore and scream. Music is such a won­der­ful medium.

And the small rit­u­als1 — mois­tur­iz­ing cal­louses before bed, fil­ing nails, tun­ing, clean­ing, adjust­ing the action — always bring a com­fort­ing famil­iar­ity when every­thing is per­fect. Not to men­tion that won­der­fully juicy feel­ing when hit­ting cer­tain chords just right.

Larissa

 

Ever since I left my Tai Chi stu­dio, I’ve been look­ing for a hobby to throw myself into. Something just as com­plex and slow to mas­ter. It’s nice to feel like I’m improv­ing myself some­how, and the best part is I don’t need a part­ner or a sub­ject or any­one else.

  1. Ironic, me being a Taoist. [↩]
tagged with #guitar #music #projects / filed under Daily Life Photos
04 Apr 11
0

mission

I’ve been on auto-pilot.

It’s nice be able to stop think­ing cause I’m on a mis­sion to make sure every­thing goes well, to be able to put aside my own inse­cu­ri­ties and ner­vous­ness for the sake of get­ting shit done, and be happy with the per­son I am when I can pull it all off.

writing thank you cards

Energy for the day, with chicken-apple sausages and the cutest single-serving bot­tle of Heinz ketchup.

Alayna booked me a room at the Hilton cause it’s lit­er­ally a block away from the venue, and she knew I was com­ing from out of town. It was only John and I at the hotel that night, a lit­tle bit of pri­vacy and peace we had together that worked to our advan­tage. The fact that he wasn’t ner­vous made me ner­vous, even though I knew that meant he was mar­ry­ing the right one. While I wish I could have filmed the entire event, I knew my role was more impor­tant than that.

I finally got to meet his core group at the bach­e­lor week­end, and I fuck­ing love them. They’re amaz­ing peo­ple1 with such intel­li­gence and con­fi­dence and inten­sity, and I’m so proud that John can count them as among his clos­est. But I took the most pride in the fact that I was best man out of the wed­ding party of 16 peo­ple, as well as the only one going back to his ele­men­tary school and even high school days.

Hilton view

A view of City Hall, Nathan Philips Square, and John’s office in the finan­cial dis­trict from the 27th floor. Toronto always seduces me at night.

It was great to see all of John’s fam­ily in one place; usu­ally it’s scat­tered cou­ples and kids at the cot­tage. Heather’s girls are grow­ing up, and even Grandma Currie was able to make it despite the fact that she hasn’t been in good health.

The only time John choked up in the day was dur­ing in his speech at the recep­tion, as he explained his dad’s influ­ence on his life. When I’m com­mis­er­at­ing with him, he always takes enough time between his words for the emo­tion to clear from his head, but when he was up at that podium he lost pace and the words got caught in his throat.

John reads the bible

Reading Genesis in the Trinity College chapel at John’s old University of Toronto stomp­ing grounds, as we wait for guests to be ush­ered to their pews.

It was only the sec­ond day I didn’t pick up the gui­tar since I got it. And while I haven’t been inspired to play every day, I’d still touch the strings at least once out of habit before going to bed. My fin­gers feel like they’ve already lost some flex­i­bil­ity, but at the same time I think the break reset some of my bad fret­ting habits.

Chinese rice noodles

Rice noo­dles smoth­ered in peanut but­ter and soya sauce and sesame seeds. There’s so much com­fort to be found in this food.

The more I come back to Toronto, the more I want to stay. I feel like there’s so much I want to leave behind in Ottawa. So many mem­o­ries and emo­tions I’m try­ing to escape.

My friends are busy with their own mar­riages and kids, and I never see them any­more. I think mov­ing will solve the occa­sional bouts of lone­li­ness. But in the back of my head, I know it’s really my own intro­verted ten­den­cies that keep me from explor­ing out­side of my com­fort zone, and I won­der if it’s my city that needs chang­ing, or me.

  1. One of whom has already had an award-winning CTV movie made about his life, star­ring Graham Greene. [↩]
tagged with #guitar #John #reflection #Toronto / filed under Daily Life Photos
Viewing entries tagged with "guitar"
Pages (1): 1