Viewing entries tagged with "guitar"   //
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it is impossible to stop the motion of snow at night

4

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.

Date  December 27, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Spanish Romance

8

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. [↑]
Date  May 31, 2011
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Categories  Random

Silk and Steel and Steve

0

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. [↑]
Date  May 11, 2011
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Categories  Random Video

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

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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. [↑]
Date  April 6, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

mission

0

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. [↑]
Date  April 4, 2011
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Categories  Daily Life Photos
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