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Wednesday, April 7th, 2004
More on the Broonzy records -- I took disk A over to Bob's house last night and the four of us worked out a pretty fun version of "Pig Meat Strut". It is easy to play and we sounded pretty good, except too slow and not enough variation.
posted afternoon of April 7th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, April 5th, 2004
Looking through the blues discs at Borders this afternoon -- hmm, I'd like to have this, yes, this one too... when I notice a 5-cd box set of Big Bill Broonzy. Wow -- Broonzy holds a sort of mystical allure to me -- my old teacher Eric Frandssen once played me a video tape of Broonzy finger-picking and it was one of the most wonderful things I've watched. I have a late recording of him but it does not capture the real blues genius -- but this was recordings from 1927-35 and would surely be what I'm looking for. So I looked at the price tag and it is marked at $29 -- how weird -- all of the other discs are $11 or $12 per, these 5 are going for $6 apiece. I double-check to see if this is damaged goods or something but it looks alright. Must be fate! We listened to Disc 1 in the car this evening and yes indeed, it was everything I wanted it to be. I am going to start right in on trying to learn Broonzy's picking style. More to follow. Update: That price was not an anomaly, either! Here it is on Amazon for $26, with free shipping! You should absolutely buy this record.
posted evening of April 5th, 2004: Respond
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Saturday, March 6th, 2004
So it turns out to be easier for me to play The Ballad of Hollis Brown in straight Drop-D tuning than in double Drop-D. It's sounding really nice although I have not quite got down how to sing it without whining. Or how to remember all the lyrics.
posted evening of March 6th, 2004: Respond
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Friday, March 5th, 2004
Pursuant to some thinking I've been doing about Dylan lately (inspired in large part by this Crooked Timber thread) I have tracked down a couple of good Dylan links. - Bob Dylan Musical Roots: These pages have a lot of interesting stuff about Odetta and other blues and folk singers that Dylan listened to.
- Bob Dylan Chords: Pretty comprehensive, with information about alternate tunings and picking patterns. This site was originally called "My Back Pages".
- BobDylan.com: Discography, etc. And lotsa links.
posted afternoon of March 5th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, March third, 2004
Ooh! I just discovered, you can also tune the bottom string down when you play in drop-D tuning. I discovered this when I was looking for lyrics to The Ballad of Hollis Brown, while formulating my own list of top 5 Dylan songs. I can't wait to try it out! Update, later on: One thing you have to be careful about with this tuning, is that you don't tune the bottom string back up to E too rapidly; otherwise it may break. I have no replacement strings! Hopefully I will be able to buy some on Saturday.
posted afternoon of March third, 2004: Respond
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Saturday, February 21st, 2004
I've been meaning for a while to post a note about drop-D guitar tuning. If you aspire to play finger-style blues guitar, I think this tuning is one of the first things you should find out about. (The other first thing you should find out about, is to get some recordings of Mississippi John Hurt, a master of the genre and IMO the most accessible of the Delta blues guitarists.) By finger-style blues I mean basically, picking alternating bass notes with your thumb or a thumb pick and a melody line with your first, first and second, or first through third fingers. Drop-D is the simplest of the alternate tunings, all you do is tune the top string down a whole step. All the other strings have their standard pitch. You don't need to learn much in the way of new fingerings, but you suddenly have a lot more freedom. Here are the first-position chords (I play in first position just about all the time): C No difference. D No difference, except that the top string is your root. In standard tuning I am usually fingering an F# on the top string with my thumb, now I can just leave it open and pick an alternating bass between the top string and the third string. E Hold down G# on the fourth string with your first finger and E on the third string with your second finger. Leave the second string open (and never play it) and hold down E on the top string with your thumb. Now you can pick an alternating bass between the top string and third string, and two fingers are available for melody stuff. F Barre the bottom two strings on the first fret with your first finger. Hold down A on the fourth string with your second finger and F on the third string with your third finger. Leave the second string open (and never play it) and hold down F on the top string with your thumb. Now you can pick an alternating bass between the top string and third string, and one finger is available for melody stuff. (Note that you can move this barre chord up and down the fingerboard as you desire.) G G is where things get wild -- All you need to do for G is hold down the fifth fret of the top string with your thumb, all four fingers are available for melody stuff. You're pretty free to roam between the third and sixth frets of the treble strings, and throw in open strings (except for the bottom string) as desired. A No difference. B No difference. (Actually I usually finger B7 in first position, you can do either one.) I discovered this tuning while working on "Stagger Lee", since then I have used it on a lot of other songs in the key of D -- lately I noticed it would work well for songs in G too, and yesterday I worked out "Lay me a Pallet on your Floor", which is in C and sounds very nice indeed in this tuning. And the other day I tried playing "Prodigal Son" (in E) in drop-D and though it took a little while to get the hang of it (partly because I've been playing that song for such a long time in standard tuning), it ended up sounding really nice too.
posted afternoon of February 21st, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, December 17th, 2003
I played the open mike at the Dancing Goat tonight, the first time I have performed in a few years (not counting the time I played in West Orange, which I am trying to forget) -- and the first time in several years I have performed on stage, with mikes. It went all right; I felt a little like I could not get into my groove and my timing was a little rough; but people in the audience said it sounded fine, Janis said it sounded just like when I am playing at her house, which is about what I was aiming for. I played "Stagger Lee" and "C. C. Rider" in a medley, and "Prodigal Son". The band 13 Scotland Road played before the open mike, and were terrific.
posted evening of December 17th, 2003: Respond
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Monday, December 15th, 2003
A song was running through my head all day; tonight I figured out (roughly) how to play it. The song is "Tell old Bill", which I know in a performance by the Chad Mitchell Trio. Here are the chords: G
Tell old Bill, when he gets home, this morning,
D
Tell old Bill, when he gets home, this evening,
G
Tell old Bill, when he gets home,
C G D
To leave them downtown women alone
G D G
This morning, this evening, so soon. The fingerpicking is kind of difficult to describe but basically you just play the melody. A lot of time is spent on open B, G string second fret, and open G; and in the alternate melody, a lot of time on E string third fret, open E, and B string third fret. A nice song. Update: I'm playing it in D now, which is a lot easier on my voice, but I have yet to come up with as nice a picking pattern with the different shaped chords.
posted evening of December 15th, 2003: 2 responses
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Sunday, December 7th, 2003
The Crooked Timber thread on annoying Christmas songs inspired me to think of "Father Christmas" by the Kinks, one of very few non-annoying popular Christmas songs. (Thanks to Apostropher for telling me which song I was thinking about. Google supplied me with lyrics and I came up with some chords that seem about right. The rhythm is still giving me a little trouble. Here is Tim Harris' transcription, which seems a little better than mine, he plays it in G while I prefer C.
posted morning of December 7th, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2003
I've been listening to a CD over and over again for the past few days; it is "Dark was the Night" by Blind Willie Johnson. Every time I listen to it I like it a little better -- and I did not dislike it to begin with! If anything could persuade me to believe, it would be good gospel music like this. Last week I bought a portable CD player, which I had been meaning to do for a while now. My thinking is that I will listen to music on the train to and from work and that, with repetition, I will come to a deeper understanding of the songs. This is certainly happening with Johnson -- I had thought his songs were quite simple, with few lyrics and not much happening on guitar, and that his main attribute was his awesome voice; but in reality there is quite a bit of musical complexity under the surface, and the lyrics have some pretty insightful bits that you don't catch until the third or fourth repetition. Jim came over last night and we played blues for a couple of hours. He is really into Leo Kottke and is showing me some neat stuff. We played a really long set of songs in D (I was using dropped-D tuning and he was using open-D), jamming from one into the next; I discovered that it is hugely confusing to jam from "C.C. Rider" into "Stagger Lee" (and probably vice versa) because the songs are quite similar in certain ways -- in mid-verse I will forget which one I am playing and slip into the other one.
posted morning of October 15th, 2003: Respond
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