Oh, shiny!

I am easily distracted. Not in a doom scrolling/cat video sort of a way, more some shiny and new creativity catches my attention. I think we all are at least to some extent - my fascination for new things/the unknown comes from a desire to understand everything. Case in point this very blog. I created it in 2008 born out of my obsession with fingerstyle guitar arrangements. But it was immediately filled with anything that had some grounding in music.

Currently there is plenty of shiny things around me - mixing, AI, recording - but underneath are still the fingerstyle arrangements. When I sit here at the computer, my custom electric guitar is hanging right behind me and if I've heard a song or had an idea I will grab it and hash something out. Further, I've learnt that if I spend so much as even half an hour hacking out a song, I need to type it up into Musescore, otherwise the next shiny thing will take over, my thoughts are lost and maybe years later it will be shiny again, I'd already had a crack at that song but there is no documentation and I'm almost starting from afresh.

For example, looking at my arrangements folder, I can see quite a number of arrangements unreleased. Don't get me wrong - there are a heap that are released! I learnt many years ago that you need to finish things, even if they aren't perfect. Just ship it - the next ones will be better. It needs to be to a certain level of quality and completeness though - I don't throw half cooked ideas out there as if they were baked, iced and ready to be served.

So - my most recent incomplete arrangements:

• Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly. It's a great song underneath, it meets the criteria of being simple enough - intuitive chords and melody - but with some nice flavours/textualisations that makes it interesting and engrossing. I can't decide whether to keep the bassline rolling like it is in Pulse or keep it laid back and relaxed.
• Supertramp - Give a Little Bit. Love the rhythm and the weird "chord progression get reversed" feel. Such a fun song to play and a positive vibe. I need to nail down the final arrangement, I have played this out a few times now.
• Dexys Midnight Runners - Come on Eileen. Fun, but quite difficult. Lots of chords that is hard to fit the melody in, hard to not play it too fast. Been sitting on that for ages simply becuase it is so difficuly.
• Gorillaz - 19-2000. Iconic. Weird. Challenging. Love it. Difficult to play. I need to simplify it to keep the groove and feel...in fact just then, looking at it, holding my guitar, I just resolved a tricky high melody into a bass groove. Simpler, but holds the same feel. Nice. Shiny.
• The Beatles - Blackbird. Yes, been playing this forever as just the guitar part, but then introducing the melody, the problem is the verse melody fits really nicely but a fifth down, but the chorus doesn't work a fifth down. Not idea how to resolve, have tried many ideas, have looked at others play this, still don't know what to do. Sits on the backburner. I play it out sometimes and just cheat through the chorus by not playing the melody.

Two layers of shiny going on here - first - arranging one song and not finishing it and being distracted by the next song - second - being distracted with mixing worship music/AI to automate and simplify processes/building guitars and basses/so many other tricks and hacks to thing about!

Oh, there is somethign shiny over there, I'll be back!

Note: I still don't know how I feel about AI pictures. They are quirky and fun and pull together ideas. But all built on stolen photos and art. Don't like AI music. Do like hacky AI code for tools. Don't like AI algorithms vomiting confirmation bias back at me. Do like AI as an intial research too. I could go on - but it's early days of AI and I'm still deciding where I stand. Today I felt like an AI picture. Sorry to those offended.