North Texas Guitar Club

For those of you who don't know, I am a member of the North Texas Guitar Club, which is a member group of the Collin County Music Cooperative. NTGC is organized and maintained by Dave Lewis. To quote the website, Dave's vision for the group:

The club's members consist of a wide variety of players; ranging from
absolute beginners to seasoned professionals, acoustic to electric, and many
different musical styles from Jazz, Rock, Blues, Fingerstyle, Classical, Country
and beyond. The intention of the club is to provide the following:

Help guitarists meet other guitarists.

Make it possible for advanced guitarists to mentor beginners.

Allow guitarists to share resources, such as books, tabs, software, CDs, etc.

Share experience with various makes of guitars, amps, and effects.

Provide an opportunity to jam with other guitarists.

There are no dues to join the club, only a willingness to interact with
other guitarists.

NTGC currently meets 2-3 nights a week. There are plenty of opportunities to meet up and jam. It's a lot of strumming, with lead breaks thrown in for whoever wants to noodle a bit. Song choices vary and are selected in a 'round the circle' order. Be prepared to have extra copies or better yet, post your songs to the message board early. It's much appreciated. NTGC offers a chance for growth, education and am outlet for your guitar bug. It's a nurturing environment with a lot of friendly and helpful folks. Be careful, you might actually learn something.

midi

I had never been much of a midi fan until recently. As a musician with recording software, and just enough knowledge to get it running, I have found midi to be useful indeed. I like to use it as a quick mock up part to be looped and used as a practice tool. Of course, you can take it steps further and write entire pieces, assigning virtual instruments and synth parts to and if you know what you're doing, can come up with a pretty cool result. You can find just about any composition imaginable as a midi file someone has encoded. And to think, I always thought midi was that cheesy, honking generic sound that played when the dancing hamster came frolicking across your screen. And I was right! Well, it was that and a whole lot more...
Midi files go beyond simple pitch and duration and can store multiple parameters like volume, modulation, attack, decay and more. As a midi-newbie, I am still learning most of this, but the software makes it easy. And the industry has a fairly universal standard, so most of the sounds are the same or similar from one instrument to the next. Or at least they can emulate the same 'general midi' parameters and get close.
There's a lot of musicians using midi these days. Probably more than you might think. It has really taken it's place in technology as the common tongue of digital discourse between man, computer and other devices.

Here I am, head in hand

I dared to live a dream today. On my way to a gig last night, I stopped by Guitar Center to pick up a new microphone cable. While there, I stopped in to the acoustic guitar room and to what does my wondering eyes appear but a 1990 Martin J-40 for sale at an exceptional price. Well, I've never been a Martin guy, but let me tell you, this baby sings! After playing it for a few minutes and hearing it, I was in love with this thing. Now, there was a gig to go to and I had some thinking to do!

Today, I learned that what we perceive to be is not always what others perceive. I called Guitar Center and discussed a few options with them. Being cash poor and credit wise, I decided to offer for trade some fairly valuable, but not often used gear lying around my studio. To be specific, my 1980 Marshall 2204 JMP MKII 50 watt amp and a Marshall model 1960A 4x12 speaker cabinet. In my brain they were close to equivalent in value and perhaps I might even walk out of there with a couple of clams on account. (hehehe!) But alas, the so called appraisal was not so cooperative with my cunning plan!

After the Guitar Center appraiser and a few other staff ogled my gear and played it up at stadium level volumes (well within it's capacity), they decided that the amp was 'vintage' aged and they had to photograph and document the amp and send everything to a remote location in California where the economy is even worse and I had no power whatsoever to influence the decision makers with my winning charm and boy-ish smile. At the end of it all, they low-balled me by almost 50% claiming the economy, the market, the weather, somebody's cranky kids and undergarments that were two sizes too small.

Well, I took my toys and went home. Did I mention that the thing is heavy? I was distraught. So, there I was, mulling it all over and it occurred to me that the solution was a different piece of gear I have that was definitely worth more than enough even by their own evaluation standards. So, excited by the new prospect, I rang the store and talked to one of the guys I had been dealing with. Before I could finish describing this wonderful PRS Custom 22 electric guitar with Artist Package and gold hardware and leather case, the guy cut me off.

"Which guitar were you interested in?"

"The Martin J40. It's setting behind the counter. I was just at your shop an hour ago, remember?"

"Oh, yeah. Look man, I'm sorry. We just sold that guitar 10 minutes ago!"
"You're kidding?!?"

"Nope. This guy was drooling over it and I told him that someone else was asking about it, so if he wanted it.........."

.........It didn't matter what else he said at that point. It was all a drone. My heart was now broken and here I am, head in hand.

Acoustic guitar song Don Alder Indie artist

Thanks, Harmon, for the link. This guy's awesome, too!

Chord Changes

Well, I've decided that I want to spend some time working on my jazz chops and learning a bit more about improvisation in general. I've started to review some different material and am going over standard II-V-I changes and appropriate scale changes. We're keeping it simple right now, just using modes based from the major scale for the I chord of whatever key you're in. I think you can apply the same mentality to the pentatonic major scale (more later on that). For example, my understanding is that the II chord is always a minor 7th chord, the V is always a dominant 7th and the I is always a major 7th. The Dm7 chord uses a D dorian scale (from the key of C) and gives us a minor 3rd interval (F) and a minor 7th interval (C). The G7 chord using a G mixolyidan scale (from the key of C) and gives us a major 3rd interval (B) and a minor 7th interval (F). And finally, the Cmaj7 chord using a C ionian scale (a.k.a. major scale, from the key of C) and gives us a major 3rd interval (E) and a major 7th interval (B).
I think the thing to remember about chord changes is not so much what key the song is written in, but what are the chord changes. Where are you coming from and changing to. I'm sure there's more to it than that and I will be learning that bit later. But for now, my V7 chord will be using mixolydian, etc... It should be good practice.

• Minor 7th chords are II chords


• Dominant 7th chords are V chords


• Major 7th chords are I chords

Paco Plays lead on a Rumba Improvisation

Paco!

Paco de Lucia-The god of Guitar!

Please, let's not forget Paco!

All hail, DeLucia!

Al DiMeola John McLaughlin Tales of the Black Forest live

An old favorite of mine. Enjoy!

Al DiMeola John McLaughlin Tales of the Black Forest live

An old favorite of mine. Enjoy.

Adam Rafferty - Superstition by Stevie Wonder - Solo Guitar

One of my favorite Stevie Wonder pieces done well on guitar.

Andy McKee - Guitar - Drifting

I've seen this kind of technique before and it always amazes me. This guy has great touch!

Changes

My, how things have changed in the last 12 months! I've been away from this blog for longer and thought I'd revisit. The economy has tanked and is struggling to regain it's footing while a huge portion of the population gets to pay for the misdeeds of a far smaller group of 'privlaged few'. Loss of jobs, investments, savings, retirement plans, homes, etc wrack our nation. Some people think we got what we deserved...I think get what we are able to get while others got away with a lot more. At least the markets are coming back at a healthy clip. But, there are alway bears and bulls, so keep your fingers crossed.
Unfortunately for me, multifamily residential development was one of the harder hit markets and it just happened to be my bread and butter (well, architecture at least). All the funds dried up and then the jobs. I was 'laid off' in March of 2009. Trying to find a relevant job is extremely difficult. Trying to get an interview for any open position even more difficult. 'They say' it's time to brand yourself and reinvent yourself. It's hard to give up on where you've been and what you've achieved.
On the other hand, I've had a lot of spare time for refocusing on music and guitar. I've joined a local guitar club that meets up weekly to socialize and play music for a few hours. I've met some nice folks there. Who knows? 'They say' that networking is the key. It's not what you know, but who you know. And who or what they know...
Anyway, I plod on.