lots of guitar practice

I was up at 6:00 AM on Saturday for guitar calisthenics, sitting, and then a House Circle session with CG following breakfast at Vera's (I had the Greek omelette, while BR told tales from his life on the road as a professional drummer with a Big Famous Rock Band). Near the end of the session CG led us into an arrangement of a song from Donnie Darko and broadcast our playing over his iPhone to TM, who is a huge Donnie Darko fan.

The Tuning the Air team was scheduled to check out a possible performance space in Seattle Center, but I didn't feel well and decided to go home.

I felt better after a short nap and did a batch of laundry.

Later, I found myself picking up the guitar and playing over various ideas I've been collecting, including more variations from the G7/B Lydian Augmented +V (Super Locrian) mode I've been playing around with. I found an intriguing variation that layers a diminished triad over an augmented triad, both built off the same root. The same motif also made a pretty cool bass line/riff.

This eventually morphed into work on quieting sympathetic tension in my left hand fingers, as well as work counting "Eye of the Needle" in 13/4.


Then I headed out to the Good Shephard Chapel performance space for the Seattle Improvised Music benefit, featuring about 25 different musicians performing one-minute improvised solos. A lot of these were quite avante-garde, and my favorite was a clarinet player who played a wide range of percussive breath sounds I didn't know were available from the instrument. The program mentioned there are workshops on Saturdays. Maybe I'll take my Ovation to one of these soon and check it out. I would like to get to know more musicians.

On Sunday, I felt inspired to play more guitar. Except for a journey to the Ave for a cappuccino, I played guitar pretty much all day, with breaks now and then to listen to an album of Celtic guitar duets I picked up at the Dusty Strings guitar store in Fremont. Such gorgeous melodies.

This reminds me that I need to resume work on the Dinny McLaughlin fiddle reels transcribed in his autobiography, From Barefoot Days.


I met Dinny about two years ago on my trip to the Inishowen Peninsula in the north of Ireland. Seamus, a friend of the family in Ireland, took us out to hear Dinny perform at a local pub. Later, Seamus called Dinny up, and I wound up over at Dinny's cottage playing NST bits for him, including one of his reels in D Major that I had quickly sat down and learned from the sheet music (1st position at the nut seemed to give the best, most fiddle-like tone).


Dinny was very gracious, and he seemed touched that I had gone to the trouble to learn some of his music.

Back here in Seattle on Sunday night, I took a break from playing guitar to visit the B&N Cafe down the hill and read a book on composing for jazz. I was tempted to buy it, because it had a good collection of melody writing techniques, things I had seen before, but explained in a slightly different way that was insightful and interesting.

I also read a new book on the Beatles. I've been reading a lot of books on the Beatles lately, but I mainly find myself searching around for all of the references to Bob Dylan and their various meetings. The relationship between Dylan and the Beatles fascinates me for some reason. I feel like I'm searching for some kind of insight about what they meant to each other and how they co-existed in the zeitgeist of the time, but I have no idea what that might be.

After the cafe closed, I dropped by QFC for groceries, and headed home to play more guitar.

Next thing I knew it was 2:00 AM. Then to bed.