Ploddings

Just posted a video & write-up on how to play Amazing Grace in the style of John Fahey. It goes into more details about how you can: (1) learn the chords, (2) learn the melody, (3) combine both, (4) add more variations to come up with a Fahey-ized version of Amazing Grace, or many other similar types of melodies. It also gets into 3 types of picking patterns: modes 1, 2, and 3 - and using that language and framework it might help with knowing whether certain melody notes are "pinches" (that coincide with bass notes), or "alternating" melody notes (played between bass notes), or a type that Fahey used often - "pickups".

New video on Mississippi John Hurt's Spike Driver Blues here. For the first time, there's a MIDI embed with play-a-along tabs as well.

As a bit of fun, here's a small op-ed about how playing Spike Driver Blues relates trees from computer graphics..

For context, there's an idea of "mediocristan/extremistan" by the author Taleb; he says, usually, people describe things based on normalities, with extreme events thought of as outliers u usually just ignore other than when they happen. Contrarily, Taleb points out that "extreme outliers" are what influence things the most and should be the main focus.

Notoriously, pre-war blues is tricky to make sound "authentic". It's actually very improvisational and spur-of-the-moment, but usually described in terms of repetitive forms, with "outlier" modifications here or there.. (as I have done it)

As an analogy, in movie graphics, virtual forests used to look really "fake" because video editors used programs that just copy-and-pasted the same tree, over and over, with only small changes like tree-size; this is like mediocristan bc it's focused on the normalities, and tries to ignore how all trees are a bit different. However, in the 80s or 90s, there was a guy who started using fractal "rules", where some trees might have a branch on a branch, while others would have a branch on a branch on a branch — it was set of simple "tree" rules that gave room for randomness within those boundaries, and led to more realistic-looking forests. It's like the more extremistan point-of-view that variations in the trees should be the focus, rather than overlooked.

Thinking about Spike Driver Blues, and making it sound more "real", like the virtual forest, has some similarities. If u have the same note-for-note chorus that gets "copy-and-pasted", with slight changes here or there, it arguably comes out not sounding so "real". But if instead u define some simple rules (ranges of notes, rhythm, volume, etc) and improvise within those boundaries, it starts to feel more like the fractal-generated forest where no one chorus sounds the same just like no one tree is the same.

To hammer this home a bit more, you can view the transcription/tabs in that link (first line) above.

There’s actually no consistent/everlasting alternating bass, for example. It’s not mediocristan where it’s 99% consistent alternating bass, with 1% where he remembers to vary it up. Instead, he "breaks" the alternating bass rule almost as much as he doesn't — it’s like extremistan where it's as much or more dominated by variations/modifications than the "as-written" on-paper notes.

It happens on the treble-side as well. There’s definitely a recognizable theme of a guitar-riff, but sometimes this-or-that note is on this-or-that beat, and sometimes it’s not; sometimes the notes are displaced one way, sometimes they’re displaced the other way.

Rather than the "set tree-image" stuck in a guitar book, that brushes outlier improvisations under the rug, it’s actually those very “outlier” improvisations that make the song Spike Driver Blues!

One popular question from site visitors here is "who drew the blues artists here?" For example, if you check out the "threads" (clicking into the top menu), you'll see artwork for musicians like Robert Pete Williams, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and so on, depicting their portraits. Those were all created by an artist named Felipe Nunes, solely for this blog, and as you can see he did an incredible job! They're cool in that they're almost like an alternative to the Crumb blues musician portraits — and if you haven't seen those, they're worth looking up. Maybe it's because of the climate down there, in Rio, Florianopolis, etc, but it seems like Brazilian artists have a special way with colors. At least, the colors he uses here are really cool, and the site's themes have been adapted for that. If you'd like to see more of his work, you can visit his Instagram: @nunes_nunes.

You'll find some "broccoli" mixed into the nachos here, having added a thread called "Reading Music".. (the picture of Leo Kottke is totally not related to this).. yes, you'll probably resent the taste of it, but it's good to know a little bit about reading music. This'll sound harsh, but thinking you don't need to read music to be a musician is a bit like thinking you don't need to read words to be a good storyteller. And there are examples of that, no doubt, Django Reinhardt signed his first record contract with an "X" because he was illiterate! But, it's not hard to make the argument that knowing how to read and write is worth doing.

With notes, it would be odd if things were different from words. Unsurprisingly, by most accounts, it isn't too different. As reading words isn't all about reading Shakespeare, reading music isn't all about being forced to play "Hip Funk in C" from "Exercise Book II" (buuut yes that still might happen..) You'd probably know more about Jack from The Shining if you read the book, versus just watching the movie, although I wouldn't know because I haven't read the book!

Actually, developing a skill-set for sight reading music can have a lot of positive and unexpected "side-effects" to your guitar playing. For example, you start knowing the note names of the neck; then, having a label in your head for each fret, it actually helps you web together a mental map of the fretboard — not just in your favorite positions. And that "across-the-neck" checkpoint is something a lot of guitarists want to achieve, but aren't quite there. Another "side-effect" is that you get speedier at reading multiple notes at once (so chords) and that forces your brain muscle to "light-up" multiple notes at once, in steady time, which pulls your brain muscles into new PR territory! Literally, when you're done reading a challenging passage in time, you almost feel like you finished a jog! Your brain feels like it's in cool-down mode, and you almost get a runner's high type of feeling when you really put yourself into it! Also, since sight reading lets the part of your brain that "invents" notes or rhythms take a breather, since it's all pre-written for you, you actually have more brain "space" to focus on your sound and your time, so that can improve unexpectedly.

Just like you don't have to spend every future moment of your life reading books, you don't have to spend every future moment with the guitar, reading music. But, if your goal is become an articulate storyteller, it's good to know how to read and write, and if your goal is to reach another tier on the guitar, you might find reading music helps also! This thread covers the basics on music notation, so that at least you're aware of the "grammar" for starters. More will come, and like board games you'll start picking it up once you start playing.