January 27, 2012

For some reason today I was in a mood to play a little slack key guitar. Meaning I played a few things, none of which were related to this week’s additions here at TG. I think it started a couple of weeks ago when I decided to do the lesson on Tears On The Moon, in C Wahine tuning. This week I have my guitar stuck in Taro Patch (not as dangerous as it seems!).

Back to the subject at hand…

We continued our paths of Badfinger and Damien Rice (somebody ask me to stop) with 9 Crimes and a couple of tunes from Magic Christian Music.

9 Crimes was basically the title song from Damien Rice’s second album, cryptically titled 9. Seems to make perfect sense as the follow-up to O. The song was originally done on the piano but it translates very well to a simple, Campfire strumming song, as well as an arpeggio fingerpicking song that follows the original fairly accurately.

The first Badfinger album included some of their pre-Badfinger songs, when they released Maybe Tomorrow under their original name, The Iveys, along with a few songs in the movie The Magic Christian. I’m sure everybody had heard Paul McCartney’s Come And Get It but Carry On Till Tomorrow was a lot more obscure, unless you had the patience to sit through the movie. I recently tried to watch it and it had lost a lot over the years. Who knows what changed??? In any case, it shows the incredible talent Pete Ham and Tom Evans had.

We had a couple Fly On The Wall videos, of course. One was a short trip into getting better sound with a pick. The other introduced you to a young student of mine, Jacob. He usually comes into his lesson with a band in mind, and wants to try some of their songs. This week it was Marcy Playground. We listened to a few of their songs and as he left I wondered why he needed me to help him. He has a very good ear and finds things relatively easily on the guitar. We looked briefly at St. Joe On The School Bus, Sherry Fraser, A Cloak Of Elvenkind, and Gone Crazy.

Heads up for the coming weeks- slack key songs. It might be time to revisit some of our alternate tuning songs.

Stay Tuned & In Touch,

Neil