Guitar Musings

If you have read Guitar Musings for the past couple of months, you might have noticed that I’ve been on a huge Tommy Emmanuel kick.   When I listen to the “Live One” CD’s, I get inspired/motivated to keep plugging away and keep working hard at guitar and wanted to learn all about him and his playing.  However, you can get too much of a good thing.  What do I mean by this?  I was so focused on T.E. songs, that my playing narrowed to a point where it has been a bit stagnant.  I neglected my theory and exercises that helped me take my playing just a level higher.  This isn’t the first time this has happened.  I have had Bruce Cockburn, Eddie VH and Eric Johnson obsessions as well.    What happened in the past, is that I would stop playing for anywhere from week to many months but not anymore.

So I’m taking step back and pulling out my chord progression book and scales book and remember to work on those more.  I recall reading an interview with studio musicians where they talked about how they didn’t work on learning songs but theory and progressions when practicing.  This was so they were always prepared for any piece of music that was brought to them to play for recording.  This has helped me quite a bit and maybe, just maybe, this will get me a step closer to that elusive YouTube post.

Been working on Tommy Emmanuel’s Dixie MacGuire for some time and thought I finally had it performance ready.  So much so, I’m attempting to record it and post on YouTube, thinking I would give this Internet performance thing a try.  Anyway, two tries and and an hour and a half later, I find out that I don’t know the song as well as I thought.  If you read my last post on learning a song, you will see that I’m stuck on step 3.  This setback is a bit frustrating but I think these past two recording sessions have also been very productive.  With the camera on me, I have to focus a bit more and those little mistakes I ignored earlier can’t escape the camera and I must bite the bullet and work it out.  It’s making me a better player but I’m impatient and want to get something worth posting.  Hopefully soon so keep an eye out for me YouTube debut!

Sidenote:  If you are Posting to YouTube, what are you using to record? I’m using  the Flip Video portable video recorder.  It’s a solid unit for a starter but will want to upgrade sometime because I would like plug in a microphone.

Have you seen the YouTube Guitar Hero clips where some kid is playing Dragon Force on expert mode, with no errors and wonder how good they would be if they actually practiced a real guitar instead of playing some wannabe video game.  According to Gizmodo.com, we might have an answer to that question.  The program is called Guitar Rising and apparently you can plug in any electric guitar and play.  I looks as if it works similar to guitar hero except your actually playing the guitar.  It starts out with learning the basics of the guitar and progresses to much harder levels.  Does this mean, there will be a guitarist in the future that says his/her influences were Vai, Satriani, Emmanuel, and Guitar Rising?

Now that I have found tab that will point me in the right direction in learning Tommy Emmanuel’s Borsalino, it’s time to get practicing.  What I usually is listen the hell out of a song and watch any videos I have to observe technique.  I had a great version of Tommy performing Borsalino from the Sierra Nevada Center Stage show that aired on PBS.  It was on my DVR for quite a while and knew it would always be there.  At least I thought it would be.  Turns out my Tommy show got recorded over because I failed to protect it so needless to say, I was crushed and pissed.

Technology taketh away and technology giveth back!  Did a quick search on YouTube and found the performance that I once had.  Not to big of a find since YouTube has tons of videos available at anytime but I didn’t want to visit YouTube everytime I need to look at the video.  I want to be able to watch it on my iTouch any time I felt like it.  Thankfully, many have addressed this need  with programs and services that assist me in getting YouTube videos on my iTouch.  It’s called “YouTube to iPod Converter” from dvdvideosoft.com.  It’s a simple little program where you enter the URL of the video, specify where you want the .mp4 video to save and click on the “convert” button and you are set.  I now have my Tommy video back and can reference it any time I like. 

This is yet another great resource for musicians who need to reference music on they fly when they are practicing.  This video conversion method isn’t relagated to just iPods.  You can do conversions for your PSP, Zune, Windows Media or any other kind of media player. 

If only this software could transcribe the song for me and then I would be set.  : )

Links of Interest:

YouTube to iPod Converter

Another YouTube Converter (Online)

Tommy’s YouTube Video

If You have read some of my previous Tommy posts, you will know I’m on a quest for an accurate Borsalino transcription.  I think I found one that when combined with the other transcription that I found, I get a pretty good idea on how to play it.  The thing that makes this so hard is that Tommy plays the song differently depending on when he played it.  So there cold possibly be many versions of tab out there.  Anyway, this site has many different transcriptions for you to try out.  (I lost count after 20)  They are in PDF format so you don’t have to worry about having Guitar Pro or Power Tab.

I have sampled two two transcriptions; Borsalino and Bye Bye Blackbird(Up Close DVD).  Borsalino is fairly accurate but it’s hard to say because in the performance notes for the transcription, it says, “As seen in concert…”   What concert would that be?  Who knows but it fills some holes the other left.  Bye Bye Blackbird is OK as far as the notes and fingering but the rhythm was not as accurate as I had hoped.  In the “Up Close” DVD, Tommy did a lot of syncopation which wasn’t represented in the music. 

Of course, a sample of two tabs doesn’t represent the whole of the transcriptions available.  Please check it out and leave a comment with your findings/recommendatons.  I am excited to see what others think.

Keep Playing!

http://tommyemmanuel.wordpress.com/gitar-tabok/