10.44
Bredonborough.
The clocks went forward. We rose to blue sky & sunshine, then a heroic grey, now a mainly drab grey. Rain is welcome: buds are out following showers of the past two days. Yellow tits are flying, gathering materials for a nest. Four male ducks follow a single female up to the back of the house, as they have been for several weeks. Pigeons are mating. So, today feels like the first day of Spring, whether it is or isn’t.
Bollo Smoke Syndrome has grasped my throat & nose in its Devil Embrace. Pooey pooey! I retort while blowing & suffering.
11.42 Just in: more Crafty e-letters commemorating the 21st. Anniversary & Bill Rieflin, posting from an exceptionally small basement/dressing room in Arlington, Virginia…
May 2006 Slow Music on the West Coast
5th: portland - aladdin theater
6th: seattle - showbox
9th: san francisco - great american music hall.
12th: san juan capistrano - the coach house
13th: los angeles - el ray theatre.
There may be another gig added along the way.
19.54 A Willcox family lunch to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Everyone behaved themselves & I returned early to dribble pitifully in my sick bed; rising, heroically, to deal with stuff.
Sid has posted this on the news page…
Mr. Garone’s work on this is honourable, and has my respect. I would disagree on several small points…
The key to playing the music above is to start slow with a metronome and a good pick. I've found that the Dunlop Tortex Medium picks (the yellow, standard picks) are the best for me. They have good texture and don't move around a whole lot when your fingers get sweaty from so much pickin'.
The recommended pick is a triangular Guitar Craft pick, of which there is a small production line, handmade in Japan by Mr. Hiroshi Iketani. If a Dunlop Tortex is the only choice, I would use the Tortex Sharp & consider that life was hard, cruel & unfair.
In order to play this song properly, you're going to need to hold your pick correctly. Make sure it's parallel to the string (a slight angle in the clockwise direction to accommodate your wrist is fine).
This is good basic advice, but the slight angle would require fine-tuning & re-calibration in person. That written, anyone who makes the leap on this one is excused almost any small errors, and most large ones.
As for the picking itself, you're going to use alternate picking starting with an upward pick on the first note.
I would recommend beginning with a down stroke, and adopting this as default picking. In time, when the alternate picking is established, to begin with an up stroke is another exercise, with another aim.
The words down & up strokes are misleading. The actual quality of motion is of release & return. I have worked at close quarters on this with perhaps 2,000 hands & very few of those hands have a sense of what the words mean.
Trust me... if you lose this pattern, the song will fall apart.
Complete & unqualified agreement; particularly if John Wetton & Bill Bruford are the rhythm section behind you, and the audience in front is drunk, drugged, shouting & inattentive. This scenario is, however, a supreme challenge in the practise of attention.
The Slinky Minx returned from the Willcox family to investigate two other of the 101 Uses For A Deceased Wife.
No.69 Standard Lamp…
No.33 Rug…
"The foundation of learning is play."
