In 2001, I stumbled upon a CD that changed my musical life. The CD was called “Drum, Hat, Buddha” by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. My first experience was a 30 second clip, “Disappearing Man,” where the pure, piercing voice of Tracy Grammer captured my attention. I was instantly a fan and got the CD. Upon further listening, I began to take notice of the songwriting of Dave Carter and it truly moved me. His lyrics and honest voice will conjure images in your mind that are so vivid, it feels as if you are experiencing the story personally. I was excited with my new discovery and hoped for a day to experience their music live. To my dismay, Dave Carter left this world six years ago today and only months after I was lucky enough to discover this treasure. I was disappointed and saddened that I would never see him live or hear any new music. Thankfully, Tracy and a strong community of Dave Carter fans have faithfully kept his music alive for all to hear. So today, like many Dave Carter fans, it is with a heavy heart that I will listen to all my Dave Carter and …
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In past posts, you have read my recommendations on Pandora Radio offerings. I love listening to the diverse music online and the musicology podcast is the one of the best out there. There was something missing, however. I couldn’t listen to Pandora on the iPhone, until now. I recently updated my iPhone to the new version 2.0 software and with that we got the new “App Store.” Pandora has written a sweet app that will let you listen to you’re selections on your phone. I know, I know! I have an iPhone with a ton of music on it, why would I need to stream music now? I like it because I hear new music that would otherwise be unknown. Pandora gets me to listen outside the box. Anyway, if you have the new 3G iPhone or upgraded the older one, give it a shot. You would be disappointed. Note: I did this on the original iPhone so I didn’t need the high speeds of the 3G network to stream the music effectively. Links: www.pandora.com
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I broke my nail and was relegated to work on my flatpicking skills until my nail grows back. I thumbed through my Acoustic Guitar Magazine’s and found some great exercises for learning scale patterns and mixing them up to better my soloing. The only problem is that I wanted more than what the magazine was giving me. A couple of nights ago, I came across a site called GuitarCardio.com and I’m loving it. It’s a scale exercise program where you choose a key (or all keys), select a difficulty level and a starting place for the scale. A series of scales will then be given for you to work on. It’s like a workout plan for you fingers, hence the name “cardio” I’m thinking. The dynamic nature of this system sings to me because I’m not getting bored with the same scales over and over again. This program is still in it’s infancy so there are some drawbacks like the scales don’t cover the entire fingerboard, lack of customizability and no metronome, to name a few. Brad Heintz, the creator of GuitarCardio.com addresses bugs and feature requests in his …
I have decided to start a new “series” of sorts, here at Guitar Musings. Along with giving you my thoughts and recommendations on new CD’s that I have purchased, I will also grab some music from my collection and let you know what I think. Why should all recommendations come from new releases when there is so much music to explore that has been around for years? My first selection is Bruce Cockburn’s “Speechless.” I chose Bruce because it was his playing that inspired me to study fingerstyle guitar with his signature alternating bass lines with that unwavering thumb and his melodies continue to make my draw drop. Speechless came out in 2005 and is a collection of his instrumentals throughout his almost 40 year career. I think every song on this release is wonderful but here are some of my favorites. Rouler Sa Bosse: He has been performing this live quite a bit now. Took me over a year to get that sucker down. Sunrise on the Mississippi: Great blues tune. A great example of how his thumb is independent from his entire body. Make you feel like you’re on the front porch down south with some of the …
So I’m up in the Mountains again but this time it’s for work, believe it or not. I’m here at the beautiful Copper Mountain resort for the TIE (Technology in Education) conference this week and after 5 years of coming to this conference, I have decided to present as well. My presentation will be on open source Content Management Systems. Sounds gripping doesn’t it? The guy who checked me in, asked about it and soon regretted it. He said that I “lost him at ‘open’.” I just told him it’s how to make a web page with certain types of software. He acted like he was interested and moved on to sending me on my way. I’ll give him credit though for trying. What is nice is that it will be just me and my wife for the whole week because the kids are staying with Grandma and Grandpa. No kids, unless you count my guitars which you could probably make a good argument for. Especially, considering how much I packed for them. Here’s the lowdown. I brought two guitars (Martin, Takamine nylon), music stand, a ton of sheet music, two guitar stands, and other misc things like extra strings, …
