Skip to main content

Day Two Hundred Eighty Five

Let's see, where to begin... I watched the Springsteen documentary, but I did it this morning after I woke up, as opposed to last night before falling asleep. Fantastic doc! It's always fascinating to me to see the machinations behind the creation of music, and this one did a great job of outlining the process and the struggle involved with making Darkness on the Edge of Town. The documentary that went along with the 30th Anniversary edition of Born To Run was just as good. What was really cool about seeing the Darkness one and having already seen the Born one is that the records followed each other chronologically, so there was a bit of overlap at the start of this latest one.

The other cool thing that came out of watching that this morning was that, in answering some of the questions posed during the documentary, Springsteen had an acoustic in his lap, and would strum through the chords and explain some of the meanings behind things. This, of course, got me involved in learning Darkness on acoustic.

Doing that led me to listening to The Promise. It was interesting to hear some of the other songs that could have made that record. I will need more time to absorb it all, but I'm definitely enjoying it so far.

As for the Brandi Carlile... well, it's amazing! Her voice is more to the forefront on the live record, and while all of the arrangements sound mostly like the recorded versions, there are just enough changes to make it an incredibly compelling listen. Plus, they do the 3 part harmony thing during "Turpentine" that they tried at the show I went to last fall, and it worked to perfection. By that, I mean it gives me chills every time I hear it.

I sat for a little bit with the hard rock stuff too, but not as long as I had hoped to. In theory I'll be able to talk more about that tomorrow, seeing as I've got another day off.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Six (Year Four)

Today was the first official day of the second half of my "album-in-a-month" challenge. As for today's goals, I wanted to see what I could get done in regards to track order, and get at least a little bit of a start on the lyric writing process. I spent more time working on the track order question than I did on the lyrics today, but as a result of that, I ended up with something that I think will work in terms of order. I did sit with the notebook for a few minutes at the very end of the day, and got a solid starting line of lyric and some other ideas that I hope will be jumping off points for lyrics. What I'm thinking I might do, however, is switch my focus from the lyric writing part of the process directly to the recording part of the process.  That way, if I can get the music recorded and burned onto a CD, I can take the music with me in the car, and listen and try to see what images and thoughts the music brings up.  It's a tactic that has worked for...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Ninety Two (Year Five)

Today was the last seminary village cookout of the year. While we were all sitting around the picnic tables eating dinner, I got a chance to talk with a few of the Mrs.'s classmates about guitar related stuff. As it turns out, more than one of them wants to be more proficient on guitar. I'm not saying that this will lead to more teaching opportunities, but I told one of them that I would throw a folder together for them. Essentially, anytime I get a chance to talk shop is a great chance for me to reinforce some of the things I have been focusing on. If nothing else, it gets me thinking ahead to tomorrow's day off and a chance to get into the studio for a decent amount of time.
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Three Hundred Forty Two (Year Four)

Tonight was a slightly unfocused night in the studio. It was a night of acoustic stuff, but most of what I got accomplished involved tinkering with different songs by Jackie Greene and Johnny Cash.  If nothing else, I set up the next list of songs I want to figure out. Tomorrow night I need to start getting back to the Acoustic Goldmine book, as well.  Every time I sit down with the acoustic for an extended period of time, I reconnect with the emotional side of that instrument.  There's so much to learn still in that book, so much information designed to improve my playing.  I need to take better advantage of it. I know it's crazy, but I'm already looking forward to Friday.  I really need to spend a lot of the day in the studio.  Getting a weekday off of work is such a rare commodity.  I need to do a good job of using my time wisely. 
Post a Comment
Read more