Posts tagged with "guitar"

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.

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. [↩]

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. [↩]

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. [↩]