Canon 20 years 2026

Yep, it happened.

As previously discussed, it was difficult, not much fun, and I didn't really like the results. It was okay but I wanted better. Maybe again in 20 years time? I played it on the electric which is problematic - Drop D meant the bottom string was flabby, and my left hand fingering meant that I was bending the bottom string badly enough that even I could hear the F#m chord was out of tune. The second commentor also noticed...

It's okay, I learnt to let go of perfectionism quite a while ago. I have ranted about it for years. Don't let it consume you! Do I think I played it better than 20 years ago? Yeah, I did. But a clean playthrough on the nylon would have been better.

But let's talk stats!

I don't do any of this to drive engagement yudda yudda, but I love statistics. And I'm always interested to see what Mega Tech is doing with the stuff we feed it. Here's a graph:

So not unexpectedly, the algorithm still owns us. 81% of all traffic to this video was YouTube recommendations.

But look, 2% of you were notified and watched! Old school! And then another 11% were fed from subscriptions feed which could possibly be the last vestage of non-algorithm feed on the entire interwebs, and some of you are still using it!

YouTube Search is mostly The Algorithm, and Other is probably direct links.

So I want to say that around 85% of all traffic is The Algorithm and 15% is non-algorithm people actually following me and clicking on the video. So creators are still firmly in the hands of YouTube. It's been this way since around 2016, I can't imagine it's going to change anytime soon.

What's happening September 2026

A co-worker challenged me last month to play "September" in September. Which I promptly forgot about, and then on the first of September the conversation went: "Well?" "What?" "Did you do it?" "What?" "Learn September?" "Ha, that's right, no. I'm too busy for that." "I'm disappointed." "ha ha." "No, really disappointed." "Okay, okay, let's have a look."

Pulled out the guitar from beside the desk, whipped up the chords, started noodling with it, after about a minute the rhythm was in my head and I was starting to groove with it. I'd forgotten how good a song it it. Jazz style chords, but with a pop rock feel? Something like that. I wanted to sing it as I found the groove but I'm a terrible singer. Nobody in the office was game to sing it for me.

I mean check it out - this is from Ultimate Guitar - grab your guitar and play these chords, they are a little tricky, but get the chorus in your head and groove! How is that G major 7 over A at the end! Try playing it as a Gsus2 with a high A over A bass! ...and queue trumpets! Yay!

Bm7   E7   C#m7          F#m7
Ba de ya - say do you remember
Bm7   E7   C#m7          F#m7
Ba de ya - dancing in September
Bm7   E7   C#m7          F#m7 Gmaj7/A
Ba de ya - never was a cloudy day

I have too much other stuff to fingerstyle and that one would be quite difficult, and besides, Naudo did it already - actually around 20 years ago, but YouTube cancelled his account (more than once) - lucky Juan has all his videos backed up and reposts them.

Meanwhile, as the world is circling around music and AI - so much so that I not longer believe anything I see or read - what do we do? Perhaps the only thing that is truly real these days is what you are seeing and hearing right in front of you. Your conversations with people in real life (given they aren't reading from a script or wired into the matrix). Or the musos you see at your local - given that they aren't playing/miming to a backing track. In fact musos, I think in the middle of every couple of songs, just kinda hold a chord progression for several extra bars, and talk to the crowd, razz them up a bit, even respond to shouts and heckles (I'm sure you all do this already) - it proves "this is real."

Speaking of not being real, I am re-recording Canon in D for the 20 year anniversary since I posted that video. Yep, I started practising last month and I have two glaring problems - I still haven't been able to memorise it, and I still can't play it much better than I did in 2006. After putting a few hours of effort into it over a few weeks, and generally getting dismayed, I kinda gave up. I decided I won't ever be able to memorise it, and I don't mind. To be honest I don't mind if I'm unable to play it well, it's not that important to me. Sorry! It was important at a time and place a couple of decades ago, that is no longer the case. When my daughters get married I won't be playing it at their weddings, I will be walking them down the aisle. Beautiful music, very hard to play, I have some good sheet to play from, I will play it every now and then and it will put a smile on my face briefly before I get frustrated that I can never play it to my expectations.

All is not lost though! I recorded around 40 minutes of me attempting to play it...I was never going to get it in one take, in fact I just assembled the video and there are ten splices. Yeah, not great. Twenty years ago I played it through in one take! This time I needed to forgive myself and move on.

And yet you know what? I can play 8 minutes of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" totally from memory in one take. I enjoy playing that more.

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One more thing, in case I haven't said it enough. I never use AI when writing these posts. Not even to get ideas, not to proof read, not even the tiniest suggestion. I don't want it interfering with my thoughts, this was always a place to brain dump about all things musical when I'm not doing musical things. AI has its place, but that is not for rambling about the things in your mind.