Honest truth – I’m still not right.

Trouble breathing. Trouble concentrating. Brain fog that makes playing feel like wading through something thick. Last week I told you about getting sick on the flight home from New York, and here we are a week later still fighting through it.

But the guitar doesn’t really care about any of that.

And neither do the campers coming to International Guitar Camp in a couple of weeks. So I’ve been quietly getting things back in shape – resurrecting some Drop D pieces, shaking the rust off compositions I haven’t touched in years, and generally reminding my fingers what they’re supposed to do.

We do still have one spot open at camp, by the way. Someone had to cancel this week – life got complicated for them. If you’ve been thinking about it, that spot is yours.

Learn more about the International Guitar Camp Here.

Dylan On The Brain

Before I got into my own pieces this week, I had Bob Dylan on the mind. We have a substantial Dylan pack available right now – 21 songs including my solo fingerpicking arrangement of My Back Pages – and it’s been inspiring me to revisit his progressions.

I took a stab at Don’t Think Twice – picking out the melody over that distinctive chord progression. Fair warning: Dylan’s melodies are sometimes implied rather than explicit. If my version didn’t sound like what you’d expect, we can agree to disagree.

Bob Dylan Guitar Lessons Pack

Jetstream – A Piece I Almost Forgot

Earlier in the day I’d been trying to think of original compositions I haven’t played in a long time, and Jetstream crossed my radar. It’s a piece built around a recurring bass line – what I call a “foundation” – with different episodes or verses layered on top, each one carrying a melody over that same bass movement.

The original idea was to improvise over that bass line in each episode. It got too hectic. Too much to manage. So I ended up writing out each episode instead, and the structure became something I’m actually proud of – a piece that unfolds gradually, each section returning to that same bass foundation before moving somewhere new.

Getting it back under my fingers was genuinely fun. That’s the thing about compositions you’ve set aside – they surprise you when you come back to them.

One Step Beyond – The Theory Behind The Piece

The other piece I worked through this week is called One Step Beyond – written not long after I finished the El Dorado album in the early 2000s. That whole creative period was sparked by a concert I did with John Renbourn back in 1999, which lit a fire under me that produced three albums of original instrumental work faster than I’d expected.

One Step Beyond was one of the first pieces I wrote after El Dorado. It was also one of the first times I deliberately used percussion as a structural element.

The name comes from the theory behind it. The piece works its way through intervals in a very specific order:

The main melody starts on the second note of the key – immediate dissonance right from the opening.

The second melody starts on the sixth note.

Then it moves through thirds.

Then fourths.

Then fifths.

Eventually sevenths – the most dissonant interval, a minor 7th, which is an octave minus a whole step. Think of the distance between A and the B below it, or A and the B above it.

And then – after all that tension – the resolution. A major 7th chord. A minor 7th chord. Another minor 7th. Back home to E minor.

The piece ends with a simple, pleasant melody and a gentle ascent that ties everything together.

I didn’t plan to go that deep into the analysis. But that’s what happens when you start playing something you wrote twenty years ago and suddenly remember why you wrote it the way you did.

Check out Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons Here

Coming Next Week

I had one more piece lined up – Along the Way – a Bossanova piece with a genuinely unusual opening. Two chords that have no business being near each other: G minor and D major 7. But it works. Somehow it works.

That one will have to wait until next week. I was running on fumes by the time One Step Beyond wrapped up.

September is here. Camp is close. And the guitar is slowly coming back to life.

Pick yours up today.

— Neil