Thursday, February 25, 2010

Transcribing

This evening I hit a pretty neat goal. I'm now halfway through transcribing Wes Montgomery's famous 4-minute solo on "West Coast Blues". I've been doing one chorus at a time; the first chorus took me four hours, but it had been a long time since I'd transcribed anything; the second chorus took three hours, as I was getting better; the third and fourth both took about two hours each.

I'm leaving several days up to a week in between transcribing each part so that I have enough time to play through everything I have up until that point, so that I'm learning it, not just writing it down. It's a challenge for me, because I'm also trying to master reading sheet music for guitar. I'm not adding tab to the transcription, but I also end up cheating given time because most of it is committed to memory after a certain point. To help in this area, I also like to flip to random songs with easy melodies and sight-read them.

I remembered that Windows Media Player can play back at 90%, 80%, and even 70% speed on the fly and still maintain a somewhat decent sound, and that helped immensely with the third and fourth choruses. I sequenced an accompaniment track in Reason (took about two hours), so I can play along with some rather uninspiring bass, piano, and drums. This is giving me really great control over tempo for when I'm just running through what I've already got, over and over again.

Beyond all this, though, I know my ear is getting better. They say transcribing solos is the best way to learn jazz, and it's pretty clear why that's true. Unfortunately, I've come to a point in the solo where it's about to get a lot harder. The fifth and sixth choruses are all parallel octaves, the sound he's famous for; the seventh and eighth are all block chords, also his trademark. I guess parallel octaves won't be too great of an increase in difficulty, but it's amazing how he's absolutely no less fluent and graceful when he's playing in octaves. The block chords, though, will be something of an issue.

There's a part of me that's going "hey, maybe you should pick another solo for your first jazz transcription ever" and, you know, that may be partially right. But I'm halfway done, and I'm really enjoying this, and I picked this solo because I loved it every time I heard it, and I'm not ready to give up. Yet. Maybe I'll change my mind when I get to those block chords.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Shock and awwww!

I've been trying. Really. I've been trying so hard to sit idly by and whistle nonchalantly while the English language is heinously misused. Please, if you make these mistakes, do yourself and everyone else a very small favor and just don't anymore. It's that easy. I'm going to post this, and some people will think I'm a pretentious ass for daring to insinuate that they aren't intelligent. So be it. With the ubiquitous proliferation of the internet, someone has to take the blame for trying to keep some semblance of sanity in written communication.

1. Awe versus aw

This one is simple. Awe is a noun that describes a feeling of reverence. Reverence! Like the fear of God! You use this word when you talk about that feeling you get when you look up at the towering majesty of a skyscraper or when you think of the beauty of a Beethoven symphony. This word should almost never come up in casual conversation between friends or on Facebook status comments. Use sparingly.

Aw (also spelled aww, or awww, or awwww, etc.) is an interjection¹ that expresses sympathy or disbelief. It's what you say when your friend tells you his cat died. You can smile and/or laugh when you say aw, often when the situation is comical and has only a mildly negative outcome, like when someone tries to buy you a can of pop and the vending machine eats his dollar. In fact, the more severe the outcome, the less appropriate aw becomes.

Try this on for size: "My grandparents were killed yesterday in a horrible plane crash." "Awwww." ← Not appropriate. The outcome is way too severe. You need to choose other words and convey some genuine sympathy.

Also not appropriate: "My laptop got a virus and I lost all the progress I made on my research paper last night." "Awe." ← Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Another common usage of aw is as a sign of affection for something endearing or sentimental, like a new baby kitten. It's often followed by "that's so sweet" or "how adorable".

"I knitted you this scarf."
"Aw, how sweet of you!"

Hint: 9 times out of 10, guys, you really want aw, not awe.

2. 've versus of

This one is a little more tricky. We're all familiar with contractions, like do not becomes don't, are not becomes aren't, and so on. When you add have to another verb like should or could or would, and then add another verb like seemed or tasted or been afterward, you get familiar phrases like "should have seemed happy" or "could have tasted better" or "would have been wonderful". These should all make sense because we've been saying these things all our lives. When these are shortened to contractions, they become would've and should've and could've.

"You should've been there!"
"I could've stopped by, I suppose."
"It would've been great!"

That's right. It's not should of and could of and would of. Why is it not shuld of and could of and would of? Because, not only does it not make much sense, it doesn't actually mean anything! Of is a preposition that indicates derivation or inclusion. It is always followed immediately by a noun (or perhaps an adjective that describes the forthcoming noun).

I'm quite certain that the confusion arises from the existence of the colloquial phrases kind of and sort of. These are adverbial phrases that don't do much except set up a condition, be it a verb or an adjective, that is of uncertain accuracy. It's the easily discernible difference between hungry and kind of hungry.

"I'm kind of excited about the party."
"It would've been nice to get an invitation."
"You're sort of bitter about that, huh?"
"She should've known better."

It doesn't help that Cormac McCarthy writes entire novels that gleefully break this one. You should know that he's deliberately using it to illustrate dialectal speech patterns of less educated persons, not correct usage. Perhaps he should of known better.

3. Definitely versus ???

Now this one is ridiculously easy. It's definitely. Not definately, or definataly, or difinatly, or jesus I don't even know how many variations there are. I've seen this word misspelled more often than any other word, ever. I'm not exaggerating, either. The occasional misspelled word or typo is completely fine, I do it frequently enough myself. We all do; it's inevitable. But this one is a like a plague or flu that has spread beyond control into the dark, vast reaches of the internet.

Listen, if you've been spelling this wrong, just look it up, acknowledge to yourself that you spelled it wrong all those years on Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, accept it, and then spell it right. Suddenly you look much more intelligent and people care what you have to say! Except for people who swear it's definately, who will just be confused. Let them.

¹ Interjection is a fancy word for "nothing at all really". It's an isolated word that generally conveys emotion and has no grammatical function.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Box

I spent an hour or so the other day looking through a box that I've kept with me since I put my things into storage last August. I don't know exactly why I took it with me to North Dakota; I never once looked inside it while I was there. It was in the storage unit up until my absolute final trip down the long, dim hallway with the last few remaining items; I picked it up and put it in the car instead, perhaps with the idea of finding something inside it to inspire me again while I was away. The box contains most of my scrap lyrics and song ideas from the past decade or so. I'm sure there are some things that belong in there that aren't, and maybe they're hidden somewhere in that storage space, or maybe they're lost in a sea of clutter in my parents' basement.

I looked through every notebook, every folder, every scrap of paper (which makes it sound like a bit more than it really is). I was abysmally embarrassed of most things I had written in high school and freshman year of college. There were only two or three things I read from that period that I can still appreciate. That's not to say that everything written from sophomore year on is necessarily great, but I was able to find a pretty enormous number of little ideas that never became songs, ideas that I really enjoyed reading, whether they were two lines or ten. I recognized most of them, but there were a few that I didn't remember writing; these struck me as particularly interesting. It's the same basic awe and respect you have when you first read something wonderful that's written by someone else, but with the embedded irony of knowing that you were the writer. There's a disconnect there, and your brain tries to fill it with something, and that something is emotion: the emotion felt at the time, but it's gone now, and it's replaced with something different.

I was surprised by how much I had written during those years, roughly from sophomore year to senior year of college. Not surprised by the writing itself, but by the knowledge that I hadn't done nearly as much writing since. Things have happened, to be sure, the kinds of things you typically think lead to the kinds of songs that are about those kinds of things; and generally they are. Things like heartbreak. And I've written those kinds of songs in the past. I even tried to write some in the last few years. In fact, I know that somewhere are a few song ideas and lyrics that got jotted down, maybe even a few demos. But the difference is that it is with less and less consistency that these are becoming actual songs. I wrote "Clementine" and I love it, but it's inspired by someone else's powerfully beautiful creation. There has been no "Speed Dial", no "Metropolis". I wonder if there ever will be again, if I'm wasting my time even wondering.

I struggled then, as I've done for quite some time now, to come up with a good reason for me to have so drastically reduced my output in the ensuing years. When I look at my situations, then and now, with an eye for differences, it strikes me that the primary difference is that I'm not in a band. Maybe that's it. I'm not actively performing on a regular or semi-regular basis. I'm sure that plays a significant part of it, but it can't be the only thing. I'm looking beyond that for something else. I wish I could say that I had thought of it, or come close. That would make such a satisfying conclusion to this piece.

I can't sit very still
when the body's very ill
makes the brain swell up until
I can't see very straight
and I laugh a bit too late

digging holes for fun at night
you can join if the weather's right
we can sleep there when it gets light
cause we'll be far below
where the roots of tall trees grow

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Progress

Tonight, before I went to bed, I went to put my guitar in its case and I instead wound up playing it for about half an hour. (That's how it goes sometimes.) I played it quietly, unamplified. I've found that this is one of my favorite ways to hear this guitar. It's a very intimate, personal experience. It's late, it's quiet, it's secret.

I realized tonight, just as I stopped playing and finally put the guitar away, that I finally feel like I've made some discernible progress. I feel like all the fundamentals (scales, arpeggios, etc.) and exercises that I've been focusing on for the past six months have really started to pay off. I feel like I am the best guitarist I've ever been. I'm humble enough to know what that statement really means, though. Truth is, I was never a great guitarist to begin with. I got by with some chords and some pentatonic scales¹, but I always knew I had merely scratched the surface. For years.

It has been my goal for the past six months to dig deeper, to study and learn, to teach myself. To pick up where I left off learning eight years ago.²

Back when I was first learning to play, I was subscribed to an email newsletter by some guitarist whose name escapes me, although I think it's something like Jamie Andreas; yeah, that sounds about right. It was just something I found while I was searching online for educational materials, and I did a lot of searching online for educational materials. I remember he introduced two concepts: horizontal growth and vertical growth. Horizontal growth is using skills and concepts you've developed and applying them. Vertical growth is learning new skills and concepts.

You can see how this applies to guitar. Horizontal growth is basically learning new songs. I got by with only horizontal growth for many, many years. But vertical growth is something else entirely. Vertical growth is the acquisition of new skill and the improvement of technique. It's improving picking technique, or it's learning a new chord voicing, or it's transcribing a difficult solo. Or something. I'm just making this up as I go along, but it sounds right. I'm pretty sure it's what he talked about. Or it's how I feel about it now. Truthfully, I don't remember much of anything he said or if I gleaned anything important from the newsletters. The point is, for the first time since, I don't know, high school, I feel like I'm making vertical growth on guitar.

Don't get me wrong. I still have an exorbitantly long way to go. I still feel like an incompetent jackass on guitar a great majority of the time. But I feel like slightly less of an incompetent jackass than, say, six months ago.

¹ The best discovery I ever made in high school was that I could play the minor pentatonic scale three half-steps down from whatever major key a song was in, and it would sound good. (i.e. "Wow, A minor pentatonic sounds great in C major!") Little did I know how crippled my guitar skills would remain when I left it at that. "Oh, you're in G? I'll just noodle around with my E minor pentatonic scale." In hindsight, I feel like a phony and a fool.

² This is also why my foray into jazz has been a slow-moving one, because it's coupled with this remedial stuff.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

A Performance of Sorts

Last night I had a rather neat opportunity. For the past month or so, I've been going to McGinnis occasionally on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Well, I've been going on other days, too, when it's convenient. But on those particular evenings, a guy by the name of John Vermilye ("Johnny V") plays guitar and sings. He's got a good set that covers a lot of bases, including folk, early rhythm & blues, and classic rock. There's an emphasis on acts like Paul Simon, Neil Young, The Beatles, that sort of thing. It's a relaxed, laid back, and enjoyable atmosphere.

Johnny graciously offered to have me fill in on his break with a few songs that I had worked up to a respectable level, having never heard me play. (Crazy!) I was both nervous and excited. See, it has been over a year and a half since the last time I played guitar or sang in front of anyone. Yep. For the last, oh, nearly a decade, I've been in and out of bands, playing acoustic and electric; doing covers and originals; classic rock to modern pop to jazz; basement shows, battle of the bands, open mics; from high school through college. But since I graduated college, I sort of lost touch. I've been out of it so long, I don't even know how to get back into it, or what to play, and I've become pretty shy about my playing. Not that I wasn't before, but I guess now it feels more pronounced, more of an obstruction to the process entirely.

When he asked if I'd like to play, I had a feeling that it was something like fate knocking. I felt obliged to accept. I have a tendency to view things in this light right now; if something great comes along, I just accept it, embrace it, and move with it, figuring that all paths have led me here.

(To be fair, I actually had to turn him down the first time he offered, because I'd already had two pints of Dogfish Head IPA. And that does not make me into a better guitarist, by any means.)

So I spent a few days over the past couple weeks trying to work up several songs that I felt comfortable playing. I showed up at McGinnis last night and Johnny asked if I was interested in playing that night, and I said I was.

About an hour and a half later, I was sitting on the barstool with my stupid little book of lyrics (because after all this time I still can't get through most songs without a reminder), guitar and pick in hand, with faces of people I don't know watching me. (There were a few faces I did know, too. Thanks to Casey, Shelby, Kristen, and Rachel for being there!) It was a familiar feeling, but it also felt kind of strange and new. I got nervous all over again. I played my three songs. There were a few mistakes. Nothing fell apart or sounded like a disaster, though. Mostly just a flubbed note, a bit of rushing, or an extraneous beat to fit in a syllable because I dragged on a phrase. All in all, it could have been quite a bit worse. I got some compliments on "Clementine", which was nice.

I don't feel like I'm any closer to figuring everything out. I'm still somewhat perplexed as to how my life is supposed to make any sense regarding music, and what role it will ultimately play. But I feel that I at least took a good step last night toward continuing to rediscover the things that used to give me such pleasure and joy.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Accident

You may have heard that I was in an accident. If not, well, now you know. Here's how it went down.

Casey and Paul decided to have a co-birthday party in Indy last Friday, February 5. Nevermind that their birthdays are, in fact, weeks apart. Both Shelby and Casey had to sub that day, so when they were done we all gathered at the Brown house and made our departure. Shelby drove us in the trusty ol' Buick. We headed south on 421.

A winter storm had been hammering central Indiana all day, but the most Michigan City had gotten was a smattering of flurries. The further south we went, the more white we saw, and the more ominous it became. I had recently pulled The Hobbit out of my bag and began reading. After getting through not more than a page or two, I heard Shelby exclaim a loud, mono-syllabic utterance. I looked up from the backseat and saw that we were approaching a wide curve to the left in the road. I gathered from Shelby's reaction that something was not right.

We were sliding. The car suddenly lurched to the left as Shelby attempted to keep it on the road. Good thing, too, as we would have been headed full-speed straight into an electrical pole along our current route. As the car continued to swerve, we found ourselves mostly perpendicular to the road and edging into the other lane. A black pickup truck was headed right for us. I encouraged Shelby to just try to maneuver the car off the road. Because we were sliding at an angle into the turn, the far edge of the road, which we now faced, seemed elusively out of reach.

The truck loomed closer. Casey, in the front passenger seat, and I, in the back passenger seat, looked on. With a slam and a crunch, the vehicles collided.

We were completely at rest. I could see the truck out the opposite window some twenty yards away. Nobody was hurt. Shelby made an attempt to drive the car forward a few feet to get it off the road, and with a grinding of metal he was actually successful. We got out to assess the situation, although Casey's door wouldn't open and he had to crawl across the front seat. The front bumper was missing entirely, along with the passenger-side fender, and the door was crumpled in. We found the bumper on other side of the street, behind the car, about 30 feet away; this we found somewhat comical as we were at a loss to even contemplate the physics of its trajectory. The front left tire had come completely off the rim. Everything under the hood looked remarkably intact. The driver of the truck was completely unharmed. His vehicle was damaged but not nearly as badly as Shelby's.

We had no idea where we were. All of those little towns along 421 kind of look the same. We waited in the car for the police to arrive, which took a bit longer than expected, no doubt due to increased numbers of calls that day. After assessing the scene, he said he had to move on to an accident that involved a child. He told us we were a few miles south of Francesville, gave us the phone number of a towing company in town, and told us a county officer would arrive shortly. That also took way longer than expected. Eventually he showed up and took the report, followed shortly by the tow truck.

As the tow truck headed back in the direction of Francesville, we meandered aimlessly behind along the side of the road. Shelby said that the driver of the pickup truck had mentioned that he could help us arrange to get a ride to town if we needed. We didn't know what to do except awkwardly ask. As we walked in the direction of the truck, we passed the police car that had yet to leave the scene. The officer rolled down his window and asked if we needed a ride into town. We all got in.

He dropped us off at a gas station in Francesville that was conveniently right across the street from where Shelby's car had been towed. Gotta love small towns. We walked in and were greeted by an elderly couple that were sitting at a table inside, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and just generally passing the evening. They invited us to sit, and we were soon joined by a friend of theirs, who looked to be about 30. They talked with us for a while and we told them what had happened while we waited for a ride back to Michigan City in the form of Rachel.

Shelby and I decided to go over to the car to get a few things out of the trunk. When we got there, the trunk latch inside wouldn't work, and we didn't have the keys. We walked back over and sat and talked some more. We heard a lot of stories from these people who knew each other quite well and, in fact, it was pretty entertaining. The 30-year-old fellow was quite fond of 75-person motorcycle racing on a frozen lake just outside of town. Fancy that.

Not too much later, the guys who had towed the car walked in. Gotta love small towns. They went over to the car with us and opened the trunk so we could get our stuff out. We walked back to the gas station and sat and waited some more. Eventually Rachel showed up, and our little gas station party was at an end, as they all went home and we piled into Rachel's car and headed back north.

The next day, Shelby and his dad drove down to Francesville to see what could be done about the car. I wondered if it might still be drivable, since everything under the hood looked completely fine, as long as a tire was put on the front left wheel. They discovered that the front axle was too mangled for that to be possible. So it goes.

The heroes of our story—Shelby, Casey, and myself—have quite a bit to be thankful for with regard to this accident. There are many different ways it could have played out. Casey told me later that he was certain that we (or at least, from his vantage point, he) would surely die. Automobile tragedy is no strange thing to me. My uncle and his wife were killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver before I was even born. My cousin, with whom I was extremely close growing up, was killed only seven years ago, along with two friends of his, when the driver of their car fell asleep at the wheel.

Any number of factors could have been infinitesimally altered, and the outcome of this accident could have been very different. The only thing we can do now is be thankful that it wasn't.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Inertia

People of all walks of life, but mostly scientists, love to discuss inertia. Okay, probably no one actually loves to discuss it, but I imagine it comes up from time to time. It usually comes up in the context of a moving object, as it is the tendency of that object to resist any change to its motion.

Think of a bullet; as it's careening through atmosphere and ozone, it doesn't really want to slow down and most of nature is obliged to comply.¹ You are inclined to kindly step out of the path of the bullet and the bullet is inclined to tip its hat at you as it screams by faster than the speed of sound. The sound of the bullet, meanwhile, is struggling to catch up, trillions upon billions of bumbling air molecules bumping into each other as fast as they can. They give you a cursory glance as they stumble past and your ears pop.

Some people, like the moving bullet, might be said to have a high level of inertia. Figuratively. That is to say, they like to stay moving, and once they start, it's hard to stop them. These people seem to always be moving, doing, talking, walking, saying, playing, starting, finishing. They may tip their hats at you as they fly by faster than sound.

But the bullet wasn't just always tearing across the embankment or zipping down an alleyway. It was, at an earlier point, comfortably at rest inside the chamber of a gun. In fact, the bullet was so comfortable and so at rest there that, had it not been for an exorbitant explosion, it probably would be sitting there comfortably at rest forever. Rather than kindly stepping out of its path and rubbing your ears as the sound of it (trailing behind considerably) dawdles past, you would be sipping tea somewhere across town with no knowledge that there even is a bullet. This is another property of inertia, that of a stationary object that is inclined to remain stationary.

And just like moving persons, there are stationary persons. They are comfortably at rest inside their chambers. In fact, they are so comfortable there that, if not for an exciting explosion, they probably will be sitting comfortably at rest forever. You won't have to kindly step out of their paths, because they are on no path whatsoever.

Both types of bullets (the lethal, faster-than-sound kind and the harmless, comfortably-at-rest kind) are said to have inertia. Two contradictory states and one word to describe them both. It almost seems to invalidate use of the word entirely. What is the point in using a word to describe something if it can also be used to describe the very opposite?

And what about people? The always-moving-doing-talking-walking-saying-playing-starting-finishing person has inertia, just as the stationary, on-no-path-whatsoever person has inertia. You and I both have inertia. It all comes down to what that inertia means. It's the tendency of any object, moving or stationary, to resist any change to its motion or lack thereof. People waiting around comfortably for an extraordinary explosion to set them on their course may find themselves waiting an awfully long time.

¹ We're ignoring drag and friction.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Resuscitation! Reinvigoration! Regurgitation!

First entry in over three years. This is an awkward transition, because in those three years I posted a hell of a lot of content on my MySpace blog. So it looks like I haven't written anything since I was a lowly intern at Echo Park Studios in Bloomington, but that's not the whole truth. I recently re-read some of those MySpace entries, and I'm pretty fond of them, so I recommend going to that blog and catching up, at least back through early 2008.

Actually, reading through all of these, I notice that 2008 seems to have been a pretty interesting and mostly good year, despite getting off to a rocky start. I recall fondly that I wrote quite a bit of music that year (even if not many of them turned into full songs, there are a lot of demos from that year that I still really enjoy), recorded even more of others' music, and I wrote a lot in that blog. So why was most of 2009 such a god damn train wreck? (That's not including the four-month layover in North Dakota, by the way.) Come to think of it, I wasn't too fond of 2007 either.

...Maybe it's something to do with odd-numbered years...

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. I mean, a lot. I have read seven books in the past month. They're mostly books whose names (or whose authors' names) I'm familiar with but had never read and just decided it was time that I did so. For example, Fight Club and Slaughterhouse-Five. I haven't read much in the past week or so, because my mind has been a little distracted. I decided for my latest round of choices I would revisit an old favorite: Tolkien. I'm currently halfway through The Hobbit, and I'm planning to enjoy The Lord of the Rings next. When I read, I often come across certain passages that strike me as particularly beautiful or moving, but I never write them down! I regret that. So I changed that very recently. I wish I had done it sooner, but what can you do. I'm now putting my favorite excerpts from books I read into my Facebook profile. Also, I've considered writing down my opinions on the books I read as I finish them to put online, but I haven't decided if the internet really needs any more opinions.

...Maybe it's because I was single for a majority of 2008...

The journey of teaching myself jazz guitar has also stalled momentarily. Again, it's mostly just because my mind has been distracted for about the last week. Up until this set in, I was making pretty good progress. The last thing I did was transcribe the first chorus of Wes Montgomery's solo in "West Coast Blues". That's about 30 seconds of music. It took me approximately four hours. I didn't realize before I started it that it's actually an incredibly popular solo, and that jazz guitarists frequently use it for audition material, and that ohmygodwhathaveigottenmyselfinto? I don't know that my playing and my ear are advanced enough yet to tackle this, but I'm going to stay on it for the time being. That is, once I pick up my guitar again.

...Maybe there's no connection to anything at all...

I'm actually going to stop this right here. I have a feeling that I could probably keep typing until, oh, the sun rises. And that might actually be a good thing, from a certain point of view. But if I slather my sloppy linguistic excrement all over the place tonight, there will be nothing to save for future updates, and you won't come back to read, and I won't be able to keep my sponsors happy, and they'll revoke sponsorship, and then I'll go broke, and then I'll have to sell my body for cocaine money.