Sometimes it's nearly midnight and you've spent a very long time on day-gig stuff and you haul yourself back to the computer for the blog post and then your web editor won't let you log in. Sometimes your fingertips soften because you've been washing dishes instead of practicing guitar. Both of those things were true last night.
I've come to the last page of the little Roterfaden music notebook—which I guess proves I can use it for songwriting, though I still miss the Moleskine pocket staff-paper books. It ends with a lie.
I've come to the last page of the little Roterfaden music notebook—which I guess proves I can use it for songwriting, though I still miss the Moleskine pocket staff-paper books. It ends with a lie.
Not thinking about someone is a paradoxical goal, one that leaves you curled up around absence like a negative-space drawing. Thinking about whether you're not thinking about someone makes it even worse. Writing a song about not thinking about someone is just pressing on the bruise. Ba ba ba ba.
But coming to the end of a notebook was what prompted the harvest of song ideas for The Quarantine Tapes last year, and this notebook contains a similar number of unfinished ideas I like every time I leaf past them. So there's that.
I've been focusing on guitar skills lately, dishwater hands notwithstanding. (It would be entirely typical for me to finally feel confident with soloing just as the American live-music industry collapses.) Here's a different notebook page from some of that work, looking at closed-form modes that can be taken up or down the neck. I don't fully know what the end goal is with the modes—I am probably not going to veer off into experimental modal composition—but Dorian and Mixolydian are both more interesting to my ear than natural minor, which tends to grind on a bit if used for a whole song. And there are other aspects of modal play that hit me as completely alien, and that sort of discomfort can be instructive too.
But coming to the end of a notebook was what prompted the harvest of song ideas for The Quarantine Tapes last year, and this notebook contains a similar number of unfinished ideas I like every time I leaf past them. So there's that.
I've been focusing on guitar skills lately, dishwater hands notwithstanding. (It would be entirely typical for me to finally feel confident with soloing just as the American live-music industry collapses.) Here's a different notebook page from some of that work, looking at closed-form modes that can be taken up or down the neck. I don't fully know what the end goal is with the modes—I am probably not going to veer off into experimental modal composition—but Dorian and Mixolydian are both more interesting to my ear than natural minor, which tends to grind on a bit if used for a whole song. And there are other aspects of modal play that hit me as completely alien, and that sort of discomfort can be instructive too.
The notebook in question—pardon the slightly blurry image—is a Moleskine cahier (cruelly proving that they still carry staff paper, they just don't bind it in pocket size any more). It lends itself well to creating tablature, if you're willing to take a moment to add the sixth line with a ruler.
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