Jack's Utopish social media and recording a Quip

Gotta love what Jack Conte tries to do. All the creatives out there, feeding the social media beast which has turned into a piece of crap algorithm driven attention seeking advertisement focus killing machine so billionaires can make more billions...creatives don't stand a chance of being truly creative if they need to feed that machine or are creative as a hobby with the day job pays the bills. I like my day job, but I also love creativity and I have been dabbling in sharing my creativeness with the world via the internet for more than two decades now. When Jack started up Patreon several years ago I jumped onboard - it's a way for fans to support artists.

So he's just released a bunch of updates which included the concept of "Quips" - shortform videos on the platform, with the idea that they are just quick and not overproduced. Behind the scenes style. I can get onboard with that! I have been making Jawmunji Talks videos on and off for years, generally I go longer form, but I have also done a few Youtube shorts. Seeing as I'm a recovering perfectionist it's good for me to be less-producey, so I just recorded a Quip and popped it into Jack's machine. Will that machine turn ee-vil? Maybe, but I want to say no. People will game it for sure, but will it intentionally be made ee-vil like the social medias? I want to say no. Will it get traction? Maybe! It will if we feed it! Can Patreon be the vehicle where fans can actually support creatives? I kinda think it already is! I love the "1000 Fans" notion - that you "only" need 1000 fans to pay you $100 a year and that is a decent income. I think of my youngest daughter in her various bands, I know she has followers, and she sells merch at gigs, and it gets devoured. I helped her make 30 high quality CDs for Hyperfest - all sold (note to self - write a blog about that). The lino print cheap t-shirts she makes move easily at a greater profit...heh, I think the CDs are much better value for money, but there you go!

The point being that she is already supported by local fans who show up and buy merch at all her gigs. So that, applied world wide on the internet seems like an obvious step. But the current social media, the streamers, all the internet machinery for it - designed to make the maximum amount of money for shareholders and if the creatives got nothing from it then that would consider that great.

Stepping off my soapbox, I decided to post a Quip. I love to talk about creative stuff that excites me. I love to engage with people who also love to talk about the creative stuff that excites me. I don't need to make a living from being creative, but I wouldn't stop people who want to support me as well! I do have a bunch of mates already on Patreon - in the early days I used to offer stuff so I amassed a number of supporters - but I stopped offering stuff (it was in a very very grey legal area) - and encouraged supporters who were expecting stuff to cancel their subscriptions - but offered cheap tiers for anyone who wanted to keep supporting me. Some did! Thank you supporters - it is great to engage with fans but when someone supports financially it changes things...people making a sacrifice because they believe in something. They don't have to sacrifice but they want to.

Let's switch to tech talking.

I would dearly love to have a dedicated room with cool gear set up to make it super easy for me record a video whenever I am in the creative mood. I do not have that. So just now I spent more time setting up the gear than recording the video. Shame. So here are some notes to Future JAW to help him out:

• OBS Studio: still amazing. Keep using it for this sort of thing.
• Web cameras: I'm running a classic Logitech C922 Pro and a C920. Both are dated - I'm going to buy a more modern replacement for the C920. Important - don't saturate your USB bus with webcam feeds, try to make sure each one is plugged into a different USB bus...currently I have one on the laptop and one on the dock.
• Microphone: my ever-useful Zoom H1D. Turn it on a set it into audio interface mode. Plug it into USB, it's low bandwidth so it will be fine. In OBS Studio go into Settings->Audio and point a Mic/Auxiliary Audio to it.
  Remember! Windows->Sound Settings for Input and Output definitively show what is connected. All apps refer to the devices there including OBS!
• PeSonus Studio 1824 interface, via Reaper DAW: this is the complicated bit. Guitar instrument cable -> PreSonus interface -> USB to laptop -> Reaper DAW -> OBS + headphones. I use the 1824 in ASIO mode, which is the best way to interface with an interface, and Reaper can apply fx and send them back to the interface, so I plug my headphones into the front of it and get near-zero latency. HOWEVER that isn't shared on the Windows laptop I use UNLESS you turn on Loopback=virtual in the PreSonus Universal Control application. Once you do that, you will see in Sound Settings an input for PreSonus Virtual - which you can then add to OBS as another Mic/Auxiliary Audio.
• OBS Studio again: brings it all together. I've tried different picture-in-picture/split/shifting/etc methods for the webcams, I went for portrait this time, one webcam on top another on the bottom. In Settings->Video I went Base of 1080x1920 (ie portrait HD). Then it is a case of adding the two webcams, cropping and moving them to fit. The Zoom HD1 microphone I initially added a gate filter, but the electric guitar acoustically was getting through the gate when I dug in. If I increased the gate I had to shout to trigger it. So I added a mute/unmute hotkey and remembered to deal with it. Not great.

When in doubt, just talk through your problems with a chatbot - that's what I did. General life tip with chatbots: you have to have some basic knowledge of what you are trying to achieve, you have to half know the answer or they will lead you down a never ending garden trail to nowhere. You have to have  a year's worth of built up a knowledge of knowing how to get what you need from a chatbot, accumulated from trial and error...hence I wrote the notes above to help Future JAW when he forgets things.

What I need to do to be a little better for next time (and there is always a next time, I have been doing "behind the scenes" videos for 20 years) - at least one better webcam, and a microphone stand that puts a microphone close to my mouth so I don't have to worry about mute/unmute, so I can just use gating.

Oh and I played Pink Floyd Learning to Fly. I was aiming for a more "Pulse" live feel, so more bassnotes, wasn't quite getting it, still undecided whether I should be hitting it that hard. The G string rings a bit too much, wasn't happy with my playthrough. BUT THAT'S ALRIGHT...if you want perfection use AI slop.

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.
• Metallica - Enter Sandman. I've basically arranged this in my head and play it out regularly, haven't tabbed it.  Pretty easy and super effective - a crowd pleaser.

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.

Shine on you crazy tab

I saw Yoni play Shine On You Crazy Diamond many years ago, thought it was such a good interpretation, Ioved the idea of trying it, decided it was too much of an undertaking. Around May last year I had started noodling with it and even recorded a youtube short playing part I. Well I have been plugging away at it in the background. Yep, it is a massive undertaking. Heavily influenced by Yoni, there are a few bits he had taken out and I added in, a few bits he played I didn't. I also gave up at the start of part V whereas he took it a little bit further. I play my arpeggios different, more classical like maybe? I pay it different enough to warrant my own tab for it, otherwise in a years time I will have completely forgotten how to play it.

This very morning, on a sunny Labour day in Australia, I finished the tab...well it will need several more play throughs and tweaks - sooo many articulations. 6 pages. I kinda regret starting but it's so iconic and so nice to play. I play it through around twice a week to really push it into muscle memory, and at over 8 minutes, with a lot of complicated chords it's challenging. It's been more than six months, and it has kinda pushed out any other arrangements I have been working on, it would be at least three if not four of my normal arrangements worth. I practise parts on my electric, but my full playthroughs are usually on a classical. I think it sounds better on the classical, even though I run out of frets on a classical. On one calm day when I'm feeling chill and relaxed I'll try recording it. Then I can release the tab to you all. And get back to the backlog of all the other arrangements and recordings I have queued up :-)

What's happening Sep 2025

I have spent a number of weeks compiling an album. Nah, not an album from me, it is a live album, a production of originals showcased at my local church. There are 19 songs/poems, and many have introductions so the file count is actually 31. That's quite a lot of work. The styles were eclectic! From ballads to singer songwriter pianist to grunge to rock band. Each one I painstakingly reworked from the multi-channel recording from a trusty old M32 deck with SD card module added.

I had to think about stuff I don't normally have to think about - how will the songs all cohere together so they all sound like they belonged to the same event. I think some of that naturally happens because it is me mixing each one, and unknowingly I will already have a style that will carry through. But I considered how some of the quieter ones should sound quieter compared to the loud ones, but at the same time be just fine standalone. Some sort of album cohesion.

It's all but finished, which is great, because I've run out of steam for it... would be at least 50 hours invested to date.

To make my life harder while mixing all that, because of course you'd make life harder, I bought a set of Steven Slate VSX headphones. The ones which emulate a room, so you can say "this is what it would sound like sitting in a recording studio close to the monitor speakers. Or far away from the speakers. Or in a car. Or with earbuds." My youngest daughter kept stealing my Sennheiser HD280s...so I gave up and bought a set of VSX as my headphone replacements. They aren't as easy as they sound, it takes getting used to. Initially it just sounded like different EQ and different reverb. Which I guess it kinda is in a simplified sort of a way. Which is why it made my mixing more difficult, because I was now listening for other things.

I'm still getting used to them, I find I leave then in flat frequency response mode most of the time and only switch to a room as I'm finishing off a mix to see how it translates. It's interesting, well worth the effort. The sales pitch says "best mixes you've every made in your life" but I don't think it is that easy, it's not a silver bullet, I can see that they make a useful difference though. I just need to think differently, listen differently. Listen. Know what to listen for.

Meanwhile I play "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" twice or thrice a week. It would be around 7 minutes long at the moment - hmm, I should time it - okay, done, 8 minutes. It covers parts i-iv and end at the start of v, there are a few elements not included, but it's quite nice and definitely passes the pub test. There are a few more things I'd like to put in there, but history has shown the harder I make a piece the more likely it is to later fall out of my head and I stop playing it regularly. The song is already complicated, so I think if I'm going to do anything more to it - keep it simple! Well, "simple" is a relative term.

I've played it several times on my Friday work lunchtime hangout, there's one lady who stops past for a chat quite often, she doesn't recognise many of my songs because all she listens to is heavy metal and rap! The other week I played a few Metallica riffs, which she knew, I said I've work out something for her. "Enter Sandman" is a great Metallica song, I think we all know the intro, but I was sure I could do more than that. And you know what - I did - and not only is it relatively easy, but it sounds great! It is based on a listen through from Josephine Alexandra's cover, greatly simplified but still super cool. I even played it for my youngest daughter and she had a crack at it. I think that might be the highest compliment I can get - she hears it and wants to try it for herself :-)

Constant improvement is the enemy of standardisation

That's a quote often spoken at work, along with its converse "Standardisation is the enemy of constant improvement". Both are good in their own way - constant improvement - who doesn't like improvements that makes things better? But standardisation - who doesn't like it when things are expected, dependable, working fine and don't change?

In the past coupla decades I have been playing guitar I have honed down a number of techniques/sounds that I use all the time. That's my standardisation shining through. Not only does it make arranging new songs easier - just go to my existing bag of tricks - but it also means I have a signature sound. Dependable, expected. In my arranging of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (quite an undertaking) there has been a few tricky parts, for instance the chord 5-4-4-x-2-x (a B7 variant) I had already played in another song - but you'd always go for the much simple 2-0-2-1-2-x for B7 except where you want the high A on top for the melody. It's quite an unnatural chord shape, but doable.

There is however one section, right at the start of Part iii (on the studio recording it is at 6:33 mm:ss) where Dave plays this unique little riff underneath Rick's synth work (occurs again at 6:44 and a few more times after that). Looking at it, there is nothing sinister going on, it's just this unusual actually quite haunting 4 notes. Dave really did some amazing stuff on that song. In the context where he is using it, over a minor chord, it is essentially b7(below)-1-6-5. It is feels related to those four famous notes, which are 1-b7-3-6. Looking at it in tab, with a hammer on and pull off, it's straight forward:

But now let's look at it in context. First up, the key signature is 6/4, I've put my usual style into it, bass note on beat 1 and snare/flick chord halfway through the bar. This is interesting because this is establishing a polyrhythm already, bass->snare on beats 1->4 grouping together 3 beats rather than a 4/4 grouping 2 beats. 

(Notice that I put in a one beat pre-bass note in, gives it some groove, but also that tiny chord fragment in an eight note before it (in yellow) which for me is like a dreamy echo from the "snare" hit.)

Let's add in Rick soulful synth work. This is right at the start of Part iii so it is establishing the vibe, coming in with just a few notes, but each one punches hard. I've noticed throughout this song that both Rick and Dave use beats 5 and 6 a lot in their expression. It's what makes this such a great song. The start of many bars is unassuming, and then there is a busyness in the end, carrying you into the next bar.

So now let's look at it in context. Dave comes in on beat 6 and the four note riff ends in beat 1 of the next bar. What on earth is that? I can't explain what is going on here musically, but it is sooo good! There are two quite separate, distinct parts that are sitting on top of the bass/rhythm, really playing up on the polyrhythm making it sound so rich:

Ok so we know what is going on, what's the problem? Well it's so unusual it doesn't fit in my standard techniques, it's not a standard chord spacing or even a standard melody feel in a chord. It's just weird and hard to play. It requires constant improvement.

To start with I omitted it altogether, but it was sorely missed. I put in the second two notes, while weird it was pretty easy to get under my fingers.  But those first two notes just really really needed to be there.  It completes the feel.

I have played the two bars over and over.  It's not sinking in.  Because constant improvement is the enemy of standardisation.

I will keep trying.

I won't be doing it on the second iteration, that involves a slide and a hammer on at the same time. I had a crack - nope, that is not something I need in my toolkit.  At least not yet.  The third iteration I have omitted -except that bar is pretty quiet so I shifted it to begin on beat 5 rather than beat 6, very easy to play and in fact I quite like it there because it really stands out.  Shifting melodies in time is 100% okay as a fingerstyle arranger, you either come in early and space it out, or come in late and speed it up, I do both all the time to create a bit of variation in otherwise repeated melodies.

(Yep, my desire is for constant improvement but my laziness and pragmatism usually ends with standardisation.)

What's happening October 2024

I've continued to do a lot of mixing. It's easy to load an SD card into the deck at my local church and record all 32 tracks, and then you have 4 songs to experiment with. I have a mate from work who has been doing that sort of thing for years, and trained, so it's great to pass mixes to him for a critique. It is a universe into itself the world of mixing, I've got at least my toe in it now. The more I do, the more I practise, the better and faster I am getting at it. I'm not aiming for perfection, I'm aiming to be competant at it - so when it actually counts I might be able to mix a song with some skills.

From a fingerstyle guitar point of view, you may think "What's the point JAW?" I have noticed it is making me think more about production. What does a song need? How can I fit the bassline in? Percussive strums to make a strong beat? The melody IS SO IMPORTANT! There is no doubt that mixing a multi-instrumentalist song will improve your overall musicianship - and it helps improve your ear. So would many other musical pursuits - like learning more theory! What is the best bang for buck? I don't know. But I do know that I'm enjoying the world of mixing and I'm more likely to do something that is fun than something that may be more beneficial, but I don't currently have any interest in.

Meanwhile I need to do a stocktake on fingerstyle arrangements that I really should record. Before I forget I can play them :-)

• Don't Dream it's Over - Crowded House
• It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards - Tame Impala
• Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
• White Room - Cream
• I Want to Break Free - Queen
• Horse With No Name - America
• Rain - Dragon

There's few others that I have put effort into but I'm not sure if I will continue to pursue them...

• Got What You Need - Eskimo Joe
• Live it Up - Mental as Anything
• Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
• Toccata - Bach (Sky Version)
• 19-2000 - Gorillaz
• It's All Over Now Baby Blue - Bob Dylan/Graham Bonnet
• Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Mmm. Fly like an Eagle.

Mmm.

<Some Time Later>

I'd forgotten how groovy that song is! I noodled further with my previous efforts from a few years back, started developing a cool bassline. I needed to refer to the chords (ultimate guitar) and a quick check of melody (musescore). I had a rough for the verse and the chorus pretty quick just from memory. I then re-listened to the song again :-) So much cool electronics in it. But I can't really emulate that. The bassline rocks, but the studio recording relies on the synth and the electronics to carry the, um, chord extensions progression? You can hear the chorus and verses moving through some chord extensions, but it's not in the bass. The bass is just hanging onto an A, popping up from a G on a beat, but it's hanging on the chord of Am. I couldn't come up with a chord progression and hang onto the A without it sounding a bit boring. But I can make the bassline emulate the chord extensions.  Maybe the first verse could be just on the A?  So much I could do!

And so groovy! I hooked up my practise electric guitar, dialed in a tiny bit of distortion and recorded a quick rough so I'd remember what I was playing with, have a listen!

Fly Like an Eagle rough thoughts:

What's happening June 2024

I finished my arrangement of "It feels like we only go Backwards", I have played it through many times, several people have heard it, vaguely recognised it but couldn't tell me what it was. I count that as a win! It is a good arrangement in that it has a few challenging parts. The bass has a prominent "one and ... three and", so funk style, and I'm not used to playing a bassline like that. It took me a while to get that under my fingers - although I didn't take it too far - in the places where the melody is complex I drop the "ands".

However it is good to push out of your comfort zone with your arrangements - it helps you develop skills that you can then use elsewhere. It's pretty easy for me to play everything in my default style, which is the drum equivalent of kick-hat-snare-hat, which translates to bass note-mid note-mid chord fragment flick-mid note...adding in any melody notes on top as required. If you can get all the variations of bass rhythms locked into your brain to naturally occur then you have a pathway to great sounding arrangements. I have said it before but I'll say it again - Travis picking a song sounds great...for the first song...but not for every song! (I recognise my  hypocrisy here - I play too many songs with a chord flick on beats 2 and 4...Kel Valleau did it for years and then suddenly stopped...maybe I take a leaf out of his book?)

I've also said before that I wish I had played more bass as a kid. With apologies to my classical brothers and sisters, but the bass rhythms you find in classical music don't have the groove of the bass rhythms in rock and pop. It's only been in the last decade or so that I have come to discover the wonders of bass groove and how it glues a song together.

It's all about musical growth.

Speaking of which I turned my attention to a song I have had on my back list for arrangement for a long time, "Don't Dream it's Over" by Crowded House, which is claimed by both Australia and New Zealand as their own. It too has musically challenging parts that don't fit with my default. There are prominent chords and melody accents on "1-ah", as in "1-ee-and-ah", being the 4th sixteenth note in a bar.  This really clashes with my desire to hit the snare on beat 2, one sixteenth beat later. I've found a compromise where I can hit the prominent chord and still feel the off beat 2 and 4 groove.

There's also some great melodic choices - after digging into it I found all sorts of interesting treasures - for instance the chorus "hey now hey now" the chorus are G-A, but the melody is E-B-F#-B, so you end up with unusual chord fingering of the quite haunting chords of G6-A6sus2.

It's all about musical growth.

(I highly recommend oolimo for analysing the chords you are thinking about.)

What's happening May 2024

Earlier this month I recorded a Jawmunji Talks video. I enjoy doing them, I have a lot to talk about. Unfortunately I don't have a good setup for recording them, and I'm not great at them either. Interestingly about the same time I recorded it Rick Beato put out a video talking about his obsession with the perfect look for his talking videos. I could relate to evertything he was saying. My computer is under a staircase, it's pretty tight but I make it work. It doesn't however give me much room to create an ambience. It would be nice to have a big room with the background filled with all my musical stuff, with warm lighting, and a set of cameras and microphones set up permanently so I can just go in and record whenever I felt like talking about something. One day one of my kids might move out and I will repurpose their bedroom into a music studio...

I need to work on my talking videos, I need to articulate more, and possibly plan what I'm going to say if not script it. I like the idea of being able to just talk without scripting, but when I watched that video back I realised that I missed saying some things I wanted to say, and said some things that were unnecessary. This media we are on right now - text - so easy, I can just go back and edit anything! And I do! And sometimes, when I'm a consumer, I prefer text, but sometimes I prefer video, so it's nice to have both.

It was good to dust off OBS Studio, I hadn't used it in a while. It's such a great program for staging AV productions. I had plugged in two logitech C920s, a Zoom H1N as audio input, a knock-off Behringer USB interface, and two display captures. It handled them all live, the USB interface was slightly more laggy than the Zoom H1N, so I had to mute the Zoom when I was playing the guitar (I was using the electric). I be honest I should just play the nylon string guitar through the mic...in fact a dynamic mic for voice and a condensor for the guitar. Mmm, maybe dynamic for the guitar, but I do love a condensor for the guitar, it captures everything, if not a little too much everything. I should look into being able to capture all audio feeds and all video feeds at the same time to do post production on - so all video angles and all audio streams, but I doubt my little laptop could handle that.

Anyway, something to chip away at in the background.

Meanwhile, I've had an obsessive dive into a Tame Impala song I first mentioned I should cover back in 2013. "It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" has been in my to-do list for a while, it's a nice psychedelic rock song, and Tame Impala is from my home town of Perth Western Australia, I need to have more Perth band songs in my setlist. It won Single of the Year for our local music awards in 2013, it has a nice high melody with a very groovy bassline.

I'm at a stage when the basslines in my arrangements are starting to get a bit more complex, which I am really enjoying. My thumb is starting to know where to go, both in rhythm and note selection, rather than just sitting on the root note for the whole bar.

It does make for playing it quite complicated though. But that is a good thing, it's how you progress!

The song is in F, but I'm just tired of needing a top string A over a bottom string F in arrangements, which it would have a few. So inititally I dropped it back to E, which ends up with the main chord progression of E-B-F#m. The latter two aren't trivial chords for arrangements.

I bashed out the melody and the bassline into Musescore with very little playing the guitar. I wanted "the actual" melody and bassline to be there at the start, after that I can grab the guitar and work out what I'm prepared to tackle and what I won't. There were some great sounds but some unusual fretting, and I've worked out that if I don't keep it simple then the songs won't stay with me, so I dumbed it down ever so slightly.

I came back to it the next day and considered instead of dropping from F to E, going from F to G. This created a much easier chord progression of G-D-C, but I needed to drop the melody down an octave to fit, otherwise it's a high B over a low G, which is slightly easier than a high A over a low F, but then I may as well stick to E.

The lower melody over the higher bass is also easier to put together on your left hand, but you've now compressed the song together in the middle frquency range. It gaves a warmer feel (it's how the Artic Monkeys play their cover of it) but to me it turns it into a lullaby. So I'm wrestling with "do I make it easier to play but more frequency compressed, or harder to play and a wider range? Not to mention that G-D-C is such an overused cowboy chord sound.

I know what Naudo would do :-)

What's happening Feburary 2024

Musically busy times!

• Over the Christmas break, I attempted to record the whole song "Wish You Were Here". Which I did! Except the singing! I featured myself on my new 12 string Gretsch and myself on my Maton 6 string acoustic, myself on the double bass, and because I'm a weak drummer I sequenced the drums...myself. It all sounds great! But after several attempts at trying to sing the song, even with pitch correction, I just wasn't satisfied.
  
  Luckily my youngest daughter, who can sing, felt sorry for me and has started giving me some lessons. She worked out my range is from C2 to C4 which is a shame because the song starts on C4. Yes, I did trying singing it an octave down, I didn't like it.
  
  But after a good warm up, and working up from notes in my range, I could hit the D4 and E4 the song requires, with almost no hint of straining, so I am going to tackle it again. I've already made a how-I-made-this video, everything is ready to go, I just need the singing! I have planned a harmony, which would be nice if was a high harmony, so I can either sing it an octave down instead or enlist my daughter to do it. I wanted it to be a video of "I made this by myself", maybe to inspire others who were thinking about doing something similar, but also it would be nice to have my daughter sing on there with me. Or she sings the whole thing!


• Since I was revisiting "Wish You Were Here" I found some fantastic resolves with beautiful colours for my fingerstyle version, so I have been updating that arrangement. Some stuff I can't believe I had never noticed before. I've always meant my arrangements to be works in progress, as my skills develop, as my ear develops, so to add additional complexity and texture to an arrangement is how to keep the passion alive.


• Speaking of tabs, I have finalised notifying all my Patreon Supporters that I would not longer be putting tabs on Patreon, instead everything is moving to PaidTabs. This fixes 3 issues I had with providing tabs on Patreon:
  1. It's not really legal, there is no royalty payment to copyright holders. While I could dress it up as "supporting me but hey here are some tabs for free"...yeah nah.
  2. The more tabs I put there the less value each one was. In the early days you could subscribe for $3, take the 10 tabs there, unsubscribe, okay! But the final tab I gave out to my supporters took the total to 35. So less than 10c per tab. Of course it is better to sell them individually. I don't want to be "one of those people" who is ruining it for struggling musicians trying to carve out a living while I'm living a great life with my day job and music is my hobby.
  3. I was starting to feel a burden to create tabs for my Patreon supporters. That I needed to hurry up and realease another tab "it's been 3 months already!" I like working on other musical projects in between arranging new songs for fingerstyle guitar. I don't want to create an expectation that I'm going to create an arrangement every 2 months on the dot. That's how you burn out.
  
  
• ...so I'm updating my tabs again and releasing them on PaidTabs. I've got more then 10 on there now, people are buying them so that's nice. It takes me at least an hour to update a tab depending on what state it is in - I want them to be execptional - so I just need to keep working through my catalogue...only around 70 to go...


• At work the marketing team attempted to put an in house rock band together for a campaign promotion. They reached out to a bunch of people including me, I guess with a few thousand people in an organisation there would be quite a number of musos...and there was...and most of them were unavailable for the launch date. I mentioned that "If you are going to have a rock band you need a lead singer" and that if you can't pull anything together then I can play some rockier fingerstyle on the day, that's easy for me.
  
  They were unable to secure any of the singers.
  
  One of the guys who works in my team is a drummer, so I dragged him over the other weekend and got him to play along with some of my fingerstyle. I have played with drummers many times in the past and it's always good...except for my ability to keep tempo. But with a few years of playing in my local church band I reckon I have improved. We managed to bash out around 10 songs in just over an hour that we thought we could do, it's only an hour's gig. He was happy enough to play on my little electric drum kit, so I'll be able to pack up my PA, mixing desk, drumkit and guitar and a bunch of cables and ship it to work.
  
  It shall be fun :-)

Noodling with Stairway to Heaven

We've all played Stairway to Heaven. Such an iconic rock song, it's the same age as me!  We've all mangled it, never playing the whole song just little bits and pieces for our own amusement. And then got tired of it and stopped playing for while.  Well for some reason it jumped into my head again a bit over a week ago and I started noodling with it again, taking some creative license from Naudo's cover, and I started tabbing it out.

Because it is a "precious" song it's important not to upset people with your cover - and I'm not talking just butchering your playthough, we all do that anyway - I'm talking your choice in arrangement.  So with my "campfire" guitar I keep stashed under a desk at work I played through some concepts to some work colleagues, both laymen and musos, for some feedback.  There were some flourishes and motifs I added (after all these years I have developed a certain style I almost cannot escape) some were universally panned, and some were approved.

The feeling I get (when I look to the West) is that people want it as close as possible to the original.  I'll give a little sigh here, and at least to some part obey the people.

So in my borderline obsessive arranging and considerations and testing, after fretting Am and adding the g-string A as the melody so many times, I injured my left hand index finger.  I actually stopped playing altogether for a few days, but it is a bruise in the top joint, the last time I did this was more like a fortnight to heal.  The moral of this is that don't keep playing through pain even if you are in the middle of some obsessive arrangement.

But this morning, I tested my finger, yeah, it is still bruised, but I persisted long enough to at least record a little section of my current thoughts, for your consideration.  It's on a telecaster copy I keep near my computer because it is quiet and soft on my hands, and even though I don't like the narrow neck and the sound is incredibly unforgiving with fingerstyle with fingernails, it sounds nice enough when recorded through my computer.

Just the first verse and a bit of chorus, there is plenty I've sorted out, but I hurt my fingy :-)
JAW

We Will Rock You

Naudo played "We Will Rock You" recently and I couldn't leave it alone. Since it just Em all the way through, then 2 bars of C, then A until the end, how hard could it be?

But now I'm beating myself up about it a lot.  Because it's now all about the touch.  Let's discuss.

Naudo plays the two bass notes E+B, more of a strum for most of it. I didn't want to hold onto the B the whole time, and my right hand position is more of a thumb fingerpick than a thumb strum, so I resolved to just the bass E for the Boom Boom...then I felt the CLAP! needed top three trebles filling out the Em...if I was to play just the top two strings it would be a pure (abiguous) E5 which is okay but hey, I'm playing a classical guitar - Em gives it a great Spanish feel doesn't it?

So now playing the verse words you really want to keep that big "Boom Boom CLAP rest" going, it is a pivotal part of the song. The clap just becomes the "usual flick" on the 3rd beat, but wow, Boom Boom and rest are so hard to play like clockwork.  After years of playing melodies over basslines, my fingers just want to naturally fill the space where the rest is, and quite often want to take a break from the second Boom.

What's going on in my head is a really unusual fight but if I relax into it, while concentrating hard then it flows nicely. I'm singing the words and playing the melody in my head, but letting the clockwork happen underneath. Did I mention it is really unusual? And, as mentioned the touch needs to be just right, this arrangement is about the feel not so much the notes.

Naudo improvised some great jazzy stuff  in it, but this is me, and I want the studio solo at the end.  I'm picturing Mike Meyers as Wayne playing it on the white Strat.  A good resolve fell out, than can be played on the Boom Boom CLAP rest...if you have >14 frets available. It was possible to bring it down so that the highest note is only the 14th fret, so playable on the classical, but it makes the fingering less natural, and to get the pull-offs right I had to drop a note in the essential chord and make sure it doesn't ring by lightly leaning on it during the pull-off.  Look, it works, but again, see: unusual.

Alright, this is all very cryptic, I need to record it so you can see it don't I!

As an aside, I'm still playing with text-to-image AI as you can see.  It's so cool, so brilliant, and yet so awkward and misses the mark.  The first picture up there, which is Bing Image Create (a version of DALL E, April 2023) really captures the text I put in "music we will rock you".  It channelled Brian May, got the dimly lit smoky stage feel, the rocker clothes and the triumphant rock hand held high in the air...wait - what is THAT?  Ha ha, so close, and yet just comical.  I won't show the other one that had me rolling in stitches, suffice to say, a giant three fingered fist with the middle finger raised.  Ah, the AIs, so good but that tiny last detail not quite understood changes everything.

The second picture is also funny - the prompt was "music we will rock you outdoor". And there you go, some sort of amplifier fused into a rock. What a work of art, I want one, my very own "WH Sowtur iWuck".

The text-to-image is improving so fast from just a few months back when I first posted one - I'm imagining there won't be much to laugh at soon enough...

Missing Notes

Yeah, I missed some notes.

In hindsight, it is pretty obvious, so it's a wood-for-the-trees moment. But some other notes I missed weren't quite like that, they were more about not having a good ear.

Let me explain.

In my recent cover, which I'm still pretty happy with, for the melody, "Ev-ery breath (you take)" I played "Ev-ery breath" as B-B-B.  Whereas, of course, it should be B-C-B. Maybe not so much "missed" as "got wrong".  But, they don't specifically sound wrong, in fact you could sing it B-B-B and it would sound fine, it just lacks colour.

I put that one down to wood-for-the-trees, because I was so focussed on the chords, and the left hand fingering, and the timing, and the tone/touch - the trees - that I didn't notice I had missed a key note to the song - the wood.

Those subtle 7ths, and 9ths, and the rest, which bring so much depth to music, I haven't trained my ear to recognise enough.  I'm still stuck in the beginner's land of recognising basic chords, not the added spices!

A prime example of that is I only recently noticed that in "Us and Them" from Dark Side of the Moon, starting from a Dsus2 - ie it has an octave E in it (Dadd9?) then goes to an Esus2/D - ie move the first chord up two frets but keep the D bass, and then continues the tension on a Dm major7 - ie has an F instead of an F# (minor) and a C# (major 7th).  I had played that forever as a D major with the major 7th rather than minor with major 7th! While the dissonance of the major 7th already gave the chord some spice, I should have heard the minor coming through rather than the major.

So basically, more ear training required.

While we are still talking about missed notes and Dark Side of the Moon - I have dusted off my arrangements in celebration of 50 years of DSoTM.  I came across some sheet for Breathe, and noticed the very first note in the slide guitar at the start isn't just an octave E - it is an octave B as well.  Not sure why I was only hearing the fundamental E, and it sounds fine when I play it, but adding the octave B - and then playing two note "chords" for all of the slide guitar work - sounds so good!  I look forward to sharing more with you!

2023 arrangement stocktake

This is more a message to Future JAW... I just recorded two songs, but sometimes I lose track of what I'm mucking around with. Shout out if you would love to see one of these songs done and recorded!

Ready to be recorded:

Cream - White Room
Dexy Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Queen - I Want to Break Free
Queen - We Will Rock You

Tidy up, get tab finished so they can be recorded:

America - Horse with No Name
The Beatles - Blackbird
The Animals - House of the Rising Sun
Dragon - Rain
Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now Baby Blue

Back list - some have work done, some are wish list.

The Eagles - Hotel California
Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary
Adele - Rolling in the Deep
CCR - Bad Moon Rising
Daddy Cool - Eagle Rock
Tame Impala - Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
Steve Miller Band - Fly Like an Eagle
Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
Bach - Toccata (Sky Version)
Bob Dylan - Knocking on Heaven's Door
Gorillaz - 19-2000

Songs that I need to get Tabs done:

Lipps Inc - Funky Town

New years eve noodle!

Ah, seeing Naudo post this old classic again made me get out my guitar and noodle: Naudo Angie

I wrote down some of the notes I was hearing, and added some extras I wanted to hear, but left out some that I couldn't hear... or play.  Here's some scribble, I'm not sure if I will take this on, so I'm posting this just in case I don't!

Every Stalk You Make

A few weeks back I discussed my lunchtime office playing with a work mate, and mentioned that I had a stalker - someone who I'd seen a few times, sitting in a booth at the very back mostly hidden, never saying anything.  He asked if I played any stacker songs.  I immediately thought "Every Breath You Take", but as the internet shows there have been quite a few stalker songs written.  And then The Algorithm got me - when I next looked at my Youtube feed up came Gabriella's recent version of "Any Breath You Take".  She played it in a style similar to how I would play it, so I picked up the guitar and had a crack.

I started on a G chord which was what I heard in my head. The chord progression turned out to be the basic doo-wap (Stand By Me chord progression) so G - Em - C - D. But wait! There are super tasty 2nd intervals in there, which come through loud and clear in the studio recording guitar riff.  My understanding is we refer to them a Major Ninths - I guess if you played a G with the A two semitones up it would sound bad, but if you play the G and the A an octave + two semitones up it sounds delicious. What made me even happier with that is the Em becomes Em add 9 which is The Pink Floyd Chord, the first chord on the Dark Side of the Moon Album. Happy days!

When I looked back at Gabriella's version, I noticed she started on A.  Ah, interesting. I then looked it up and the actual song starts on Ab.  Too late, I had my heart set on G so I could play The Pink Floyd Chord :-) I didn't look at Gabriella's version again, but thanks for inspiring me Gabby!

It took under a week to arrange it "JAW style" learn it and memorise it, it is now in my Friday rotation, ready for any stalkers I might have. "Oh that beautiful wedding song!" "You mean that creepy stalker song?"

I really need to record some songs for you all don't I.  Tell you what, for now, grab your guitar and play the intro as a primer:

JAW

Thanks to https://www.htmlwasher.com/ for having a html cleaner that thinks the same as I do. I probably should stop writing in html but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Thanks also to https://www.hooktheory.com/ for some interesting and well laid out insights into this song!

What's happening September 2022

Quite a lot going on! Guitar repairs, new songs, playing out, where to start? Quick review, more details later!

• "Fixed" the nut on the classical using the old supa glue and filler trick. The tips is to use bicarb soda as a filler - ie, make a "cement" of bicarb and superglue, and fill the slot. Then when it is hard, file it down. I thought that bicarb of soda sounded a bit wimpy, so I filed a bit of bone dust off a spare nut I had. Don't do this. The bone dust is nowhere near fine enough. While it made a good cement, and I was able to file it down, and now the buzz is all gone - it's so rough the string won't slide through when you are tuning. You have to yank it, and it twangs as it moves. No good. I will have to fix this properly.
• I'm "playing out", kinda. I left my old classical guitar at work, some mornings if I'm early I'll play a few tunes before work, but on Fridays I would go to the park nearby and play for an hour lunch break. One Friday, it was raining and cold so I asked the security dudes if there was somewhere in the building I could play. They said to go into the break out room - it's quite a big room, there is a TV and couches and a kitchen and tables for people to have lunch at. Not normally very busy, so I sat in there and played for an hour. It's good practise, gotta keep all these songs fresh. A few people would stop and chat, but mostly quiet. But then last week it was getting busy, and people asking me if I'm doing this again next week. So, kinda playing out, kinda building an audience :-)
• So I listened to Rick Bee-at-oh talking about famous songs that were only two chords. Rick is an interesting guy. Him and Mary Spender (an interesting lady) and another dude played them - one of them was "Horse With No Name" and I was, "No way, that's not just two chords". Went and listened to it. Yep, it's two chords. "That one will be easy to fingerstyle, shirley!" Well it is, and kinda addictive.
• My eldest daughter, yes the one mentioned in the Canon in D, now 18, was in Sydney last month and while there saw Gorillaz in concert. Said it was a hoot. You know, I never realised that Damon was the lead singer of Blur. It all makes sense now. Anyway I looked at a bootleg video of the concert, and 19-2000 came on. I'd always liked that song. Thought - "I might be able to fingerstyle that". And I did. There is a lot of flying up and down the fretboard, so it's hard to be accurate. More practise required. But I reckon I've come up with a perky arrangement. Check it out!

JAW

Best Albums of All Time

I hinted in my last video about Best Albums of All Time. No - not best songs, but particularly best albums, from the days when albums used to be a thing. I generally don't post click bait Top-14-Best-Things-Everrr but the comment I made had me thinking a bit - what albums have had an effect on me over the course of my life, and what albums have stood the test of time, what are the ones I would play through right now? Let's find out, in my most favourite listenable order!

---

1. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon - 1973 ^{Phase 2} No surprise here, this has been with me since I found it in the late 80's. Only album I have put all songs to fingerstyle. I would still listen to this album once a month, sometimes more.

2. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here - 1975 ^{Phase 2} Also no surprise, I discovered this album at the same time as Dark Side of the Moon. Not much more to say, I also listen to this album once a month. Great album.

3. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours - 1977 ^{Phase 1} Every song stands on its own. Not a concept album like the previous two, but they all link together in such a great way. Well crafted, great album, my dad had me listening to it the moment it came out. Musically this album was very formative.

4. Ween - The Mollusk - 1997 ^{Phase 3} I was put onto this by a friend when it came out, and I couldn't stop listening to it. Another concept album, and another album where each and every song stands on its own. Some dark themes in there, all very progressive rock. Caution - coarse language. Fun fact - the cover was created by Storm Thorgerson, who did a lot of art work for Pink Floyd.

5. Jeff Wayne - War of the Worlds - 1978 ^{Phase 1} Another concept album, imagine that! A science fiction rock opera with recurring motifs and such varied characters. I loved the LP art - I would stare at those pictures as a kid while listening, I felt closer to "being a part of a story" through that music and art than any movie had ever done.

6. ELO - ELO's Greatest Hits - 1979 ^{Phase 1} A collection of great songs, it was my dad that put this music in my head. Wonderful collection of Rock and Electronic perfect for my early teens. Strange that they released a "best of" so early on, there were several albums with great songs after this one. I like all the songs on this album, but it is missing "Don't Bring me Down" - that should have been there!

7. The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America - 1995 ^{Phase 3} My wife and I would play this loudly while imbibing a few beverages. It fit perfectly in those early marriage years, just fun and catchy music.

8. Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell - 1977 ^{Phase 1} Just classic rock. Another album my dad put into my head. Lots of emotion, lots of meaning. Each song great listening.

9. Tame Impala - Lonerism - 2012 ^{Phase 3} A band from my home town, this is a great fusion of old school psychedelic rock, catchy pop rock, and interesting synth sounds. One or two songs are a little too far out there for me, but this is an album I can listen to from start to finish anytime. Interestingly, this is the "newest" album on my list, and yet it has an old school sound.

10. Metallica - And Justice for All - 1988 ^{Phase 2} This dropped at the exact time I was ready for this. I didn't like hard heavy metal, but this more pop/rock flavour of heavy metal really worked for me. Full of political commentary which gelled with me at the time, these days not so much. But I could still sing you each song.

11. Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction - 1987 ^{Phase 2} As above, this was released at the right time in my life. One or two songs don't work for me quite as much as the rest, but its relentless beat, and like the above, political and personal commentary, just clicked for me at the time.

12. Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette - 1995 ^{Phase 3} My fondness for this album comes mostly via my wife. Well crafted, razor sharp lyrics - anger abounds - but tempered with the occasional sweeter side.

13. Iron Maiden - Powerslave - 1984 ^{Phase 2} Discovered during the time I was enjoying the heavier side of music. Has a bit of a concept feel to it with its nod to ancient Egypt, the last two songs on the album I can still listen to all day.

14. America - History: America's Greatest Hits - 1975 ^{Phase 1} Another album my dad forced into my brain. Some great songs.

15. Ottmar Liebert - Nouveau Flamenco - 1990 ^{Phase 3} A quirky/wonderful instrumental album that was on constant repeat in a café where my wife and I often had tea and cake.  We had pretty much memorised the whole album before we asked what it was and bought it for ourselves.

16. U2 - The Joshua Tree - 1987 ^{Phase 2} Probably the only album in my list here that is a celebrated "best album of all time" that got so much airplay I bought the album because it was just really good. Side one is a standout, side two doesn't standout but is quite good.

---

So I noticed that these albums came into my life over 3 broad periods of time:

• Phase 1 - 5 albums - the 70's stuff my dad caused me to fall in love with when I was young;
• Phase 2 - 6 albums - the stuff I found myself in my late teenage years when I was music focused;
• Phase 3 - 5 albums - the albums I discovered from my 20's until now.

There are a few albums I have not listed on purpose, all great albums, but they exhaust me. Like Pink Floyd The Wall and The Final Cut. There should be at least one Beatles album there, but I find Beatles Albums are always a mixed bag - half brilliant songs, and half don't work for me. Even their greatest hits albums aren't 100% keepers. Same with Queen and Led Zeppelin. Pink Floyd Meddle was a close call, but I only really listen to two of the 5 songs. I was close to putting Midnight Oil Beds are Burning on the list, again, another album at just the right time for my musical sensibilities at the time, but I couldn't listen to the whole album.

👍 JAW

Was never going to try that again...but Paul Davids made me

Paul Davids is such a likeable guy.  Good musician, guitarist, video producer - he has a knack for how many words are too many - and are too few.  I've been watching him for years, right back to when he was in his old house...yeah, he started his youtube channel 4 years after me...  He has a quirky accent to boot.

Anyway, he talked about Never Going Back Again, the fantastic (Fleetwood Mac) Lindsey Buckingham fingerstyle piece. From one of the best albums of all time, "Rumours".  It's a complicated piece, and I'd meddled with it decades ago, but never really bothered to properly learn it.  It's one of those pieces that is already completely full, there's no room to add the melody on top - although Kelly Valleau did with a slightly modified tuning.

I haven't felt the need to learn something complete rote for a long time.  But Paul Davids put out a challenge, so I am learning it completely from the sheet.  Paul was nice enough to include tab portions on his video which I bashed into musescore, now it's just play play play until it gets into your head.  It is within my capabilities, and I can play all the phrases.  But there a big problem, which he did point out, and I also experienced while arranging and learning "The Great Gig in the Sky"...you have to hold strange bar chords for long times.

Now you can only really hold constant bar chords for a few minutes at a time, which isn't really enough time to get the Travis picking polyrhythm funky chord positions that the song is into your noggin.

The end result I had with "The Great Gig in the Sky" is play it every time you pick up the guitar, after a few months it will go in.  Luckily this song is repetition of the same and similar phrases, so there is less to learn and you can go through the whole thing more then once in a sitting.

So it shouldn't take me months 👍

2021 End of Year Stocktake

This is what is laying around at the moment, quite a lot of songs that need a recording. Shout out if you would love to see one of these songs done and recorded!

Ready to be recorded:

Chicago - If You Leave Me Now
The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Cream - White Room
Dragon - Rain
Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now Baby Blue
Queen - I Want to Break Free

Tidy up, get tab finished so they can be recorded:

The Eagles - Hotel California
The Animals - House of the Rising Sun

Back list - some have work done, some are wish list.

Adele - Rolling in the Deep
CCR - Bad Moon Rising
The Beatles - Blackbird
Daddy Cool - Eagle Rock
Tame Impala - Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
Steve Miller Band - Fly Like an Eagle
Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
Bach - Toccata (Sky Version)
Bob Dylan - Knocking on Heaven's Door

Songs that I need to get Tabs done:

The Wiggles - Rock-a-bye Your Bear / Where's Jeff
Lipps Inc - Funky Town

What's happening August 2021

I'm supposed to be working on "I want to break free", and I should have recorded videos for "If you leave me now", "While my guitar gentle weeps" and "White room", but instead I've been distracted by adding more into "Something" by The Beatles. Lucky I'm not a professional music arranger with a schedule! 

As I discussed last month my version of "Something" is from 2010 based on Naudo's arrangement. The original key is C but Naudo took it up to D, I followed suit. I have been adding in more bass notes to more closely follow the original song...but not necessary the same ones in the same place, more of a similar feel.

Naudo did his own (brilliant) solo, which I also roughly transcribed, but this time around I wanted the original solo. It is so memorable, etched in my mind forever. I spent some time analysing other solo covers to come up with something that sounds about right sitting over top of some bass notes and some rhythm work. I've got it down, just finishing up the tab. Pretty happy with it...but I was happy with what I did a decade ago, so maybe in another decade I'll do more with it again ;-)

For you interest, here's how the start of the solo looks!