Tuesday 26 August 2008

What's happening August 2008

I'm usually working on several tunes at a time, I flick between them as my interest weathervanes.  The funny thing is if I've been away from a tune for a week when I get back to it I can play it better!  Strange old thing the brain.

Anyway, what's happening - I've been processing Naudo's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" for about 6 months.  It's hard, good fun though.  I can't play it well enough for youtube, but it is next on the list.  This one is more plucked than strummed; I used a similar technique that I applied to my "Reckless".  Naudo strums it but I found it initially easier to pluck it.  If I was to do it again I'd probably force myself to strum it instead.  Next time.

It's got a skippy feel to it baaah-da-baaah-da-baaah-etc and you lock your first finger across second fret first 3 strings and your _third_ finger on the third fret second dtring to make a D - and then use your second finger to do the walk the thumb bassline F# and B.  Give the intro a try, remember, skippy and mute the treble strings with your left hand after you plucked them:
|---2---2---2---2-|
|---3---3---3---3-|
|---2---2---2---2-|
|-0---------------|
|---------0---2---|
|-----2-----------|

Another tune I've been working on for a long while is "Great Gig in the Sky".  Whenever I play "Breathe" I spawn straight into it.  It's quite complex from a chord point of view, and I tried for ages transposing it for a "nice" left hand position, but nothing worked.  Found a piano version, it doesn't transcribe very easily to guitar; pretty much everything ended up being a bar chord.  Which means I can practise it for about 3 minutes before my left thumb is knackered ;)  However, it sounds *fantastic*.  I'm up to the vocal solo, and surprisingly it is going to be straight forward to oo-ah-ah-oo while keeping the bassline going, as the vocal is in the chords (which are Gm and C9).  Just a case of memorising it...and putting in the 3 minutes a day practise!

I've got a couple of others on the go...talk about them next time.

2 comments:

  1. What happened with "great gig in the sky"? I can't imagine the vocal solo working too well fingersyle, but for sure I'd like to see that!

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  2. Yep Nil I started out on it, there is a recording of what I did on my mp3 page. The solo will work, but like the entire song, the fingering is hard and I don't "remember" it well. So, on hold for a while. DSotM is a long, long term project!
    JAW

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