What are you working on at the moment?

[Matt2112]

Update on More Than Words:

A road test at the open mic went okay, so at the gig at my local three days later I decided I'd throw it in as set one's closer.

Now, I appreciate there'll be constant chatter while you're playing in a pub; however someone who had a foghorn of a belly-laugh that was literally as loud as my Bose S1 speaker chose pretty much the whole of MTW to be in fits of guffaws during whatever conversation he was having, pretty much ruining my performance of that song - the "quietest" in my 20-song setlist.

Of course, it wasn't intended as an act of sabotage, but it kind of killed the moment.

Anyway, I ran through it in public again at the subsequent open mic where quite a few of the punters and the barman sang along to it quite nicely, with the (excellent) host harmonising beautifully, so that went extremely well and I got a rousing reception which felt really good.

I'm getting more consistent and confident with the string-plucking element so practising that definitely is reaping dividends.

[Thenop]

Well done Matt! It's not easy being up there especially in such a small and intimate (well, kind of) setting.

And yes: practice makes perfect.

[Slim]

I had the idea of sneaking my own guitar solo onto an old big band tune, like The Good Life or Fly Me To The Moon.

I'd more or less decided to use Sinatra's version of The Good Life, but Tony Bennett's is a bit slower so I decided to use that one. The plan was to take the vocal off one of the verses using AI and substitute guitar. But: it's very short and the song just won't work with half the vocal missing. So ..

I split the tune into vocal and music parts using https://vocalremover.org/ and loaded both the tracks into Audacity. Then I repeated the first verse (there's a sort of verse - verse - chorus structure, so it's now verse - verse - verse - chorus). Then I muted the vocal for the second verse (actually Tony comes in with the vocal a couple of beats before the split point so it wasn't quite that straightforward). So it's now 3 mins 10 seconds long instead of 2 mins 15 seconds, with a nice instrumental backing section to play over. It was really seamless, sounds very natural.

The hard part of course is recording a guitar solo over a beautiful old classic that doesn't sound like a crime against music. Fingers crossed.

[Thenop]

Looking forward to hearing that!

[The Picnic Wasp]

Likewise, as Harry Enfield's mate used to say.

[Thenop]

Was asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.

The gig is tonight, headlining is an old English NWoBHM leftfield contender: More. Which is fun, I have the LPs they did in the early 80s.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Was asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.

The gig is tonight, headlining is an old English NWoBHM leftfield contender: More. Which is fun, I have the LPs they did in the early 80s.

Don't remember them. Must have a look.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Wow! Why did they not make it? It's a shame, great band, amazing singer.

[Matt2112]

The young 'un came home from school the other day singing Carols Of The Bells, specifically from the version by Pentatonix, which she is learning in music lessons.

So we've been watching and enjoying that on YouTube a lot, but I couldn't help having a look at a (lovely) sub-two minute solo classical guitar version, which also helpfully has tab.

Long story short, last night I started attempting to learn it, but didn't realise it's much trickier than a proper professional player makes it look, so I almost abandoned it within two minutes; I'm a strummer and picker, not a fingerstyle plucker, and my brain wasn't having any of the alien shapes and changes required.

But I persevered, and within an hour my playing resembled something like the video, albeit very rough around the edges, being a bit slower, more hesitant etc etc

But I was delighted and surprised I made decent progress from scratch and I'll be practising it regularly now.

[The Picnic Wasp]

The young 'un came home from school the other day singing Carols Of The Bells, specifically from the version by Pentatonix, which she is learning in music lessons.

So we've been watching and enjoying that on YouTube a lot, but I couldn't help having a look at a (lovely) sub-two minute solo classical guitar version, which also helpfully has tab.

Long story short, last night I started attempting to learn it, but didn't realise it's much trickier than a proper professional player makes it look, so I almost abandoned it within two minutes; I'm a strummer and picker, not a fingerstyle plucker, and my brain wasn't having any of the alien shapes and changes required.

But I persevered, and within an hour my playing resembled something like the video, albeit very rough around the edges, being a bit slower, more hesitant etc etc

But I was delighted and surprised I made decent progress from scratch and I'll be practising it regularly now.

I've been considering a new acoustic recently. Whenever I play now I find myself just noodling away with too many effects. It's fun but lazy and doesn't really improve my playing. I have an old Simon & Patrick acoustic but quite like the idea of a Baby Taylor. Shorter scale length so the strings will have less tension and will be easier on these old fingers. I also need more discipline. Earlier this year I started to learn A Design For Life with some encouragement from Nop & Slim. Those chord changes were so difficult for me but I began to make a bit of progress. However, I hadn't played it for ages and when I tried recently, it was almost back to square one. No substitute for putting those hours in.

[Slim]

I learned an economical version of Cavatina in the early '90s but I've forgotten how to play it now! Must have another go.