Skip to main content

Day Sixty Five (Year Two)

Had a great day off today!  Cracked open a lot of CDs that had been sitting, cleaned up the studio a bit, and took a stab at learning one of my favorite Counting Crows songs.

What did I crack open?

1) Okemah & The Melody of Riot by Son Volt.  It's the DualDisc version of it.  I really miss those things.  They never really caught on with (seemingly) anyone but me, but they had the record on one side, and usually a documentary or band commentary or something excellent on the DVD side.  This one had a half hour documentary on the making of the record.  It was interviews with Jay Farrar inter-cut with live performance footage and video of the band recording the album.  Those things are always so very cool for me.

The Dishwalla DualDisc I have (for Opaline), has amazingly cool band commentary, mostly from J.R. Richards, on the writing of the songs.  That, too, is amazing.

2) The Clapton/Marsalis.  I opened it up, and didn't have a chance to get too far into it, but what I heard sounded amazing.  I'm really wanting to watch the DVD first, or at least before I've listened to most of the CD.  Can't really say why I feel that way, I just do.

Got an email late tonight from work... apparently my copy of The Whole Love, the new Wilco record, is in.  Can't wait!  Now I'm debating going in right at 9 to pick it up, just so I can listen to it before I've got to go back in at 2 and close.
 
Got out the tab book for Recovering The Satellites tonight, and took a quick look at "Goodnight Elizabeth."  I've always wanted to learn that intro riff.  In the book I've got, which claims to be the guitar recorded version, it's a bit tricky, at least for me.  I watched them do it live on YouTube, and it looked like it was played differently, capoed at 2, and done with more open strings than the book version.  I'll have to mess around with it and see if I can come up with anything.  It'll be a good challenge, and it'll finish off that song for me, as I've known the chord progression that runs underneath everything for years now.

Oh, and I dropped J. a line about what he wants next.  Never heard back.  Didn't get into the studio today for anything other than organizing, so hopefully that'll happen tomorrow.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

DayOne Hundred Sixty Nine (Year Eight)

Today was another good day.  I spent all of it with my brother, which I needed a lot, even though I just saw him over Christmas. Tonight we finally got around to some music discussion.  He took a look at my list of goals for the year, and sees it as a really good set of steps to get me where I'd like to be from where I am.  I picked his brain about a few of the nagging questions I still had as I get started, and he was able to put my mind at ease. Having a chance to sit and chat with him is always good for my musical soul, because he constantly drives me to be a better, more well rounded player, and I'm pretty sure that I can never thank him enough for all of the advice, support, and encouragement he offers every time we chat.

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...

Day Three Hundred Fifty Six (Year Two)

Well, on first listen I was underwhelmed by Motion City Soundtrack's My Dinosaur Life .  And yet, while it wasn't the giant explosion of musical awesomeness that it had been billed as, I did find one diamond in and amongst all of the other rough.  It came in the form of "Stand Too Close," the seventh track on the album.  That , my friends, is a song that I can see generating a lot of plays in my itunes.  Another thing that dawned on me today.  At some point, I'd really like to own a ukelele.  They've had these unbelievably cheap uke packs at work for the last couple of Christmases or so, but the instruments appear to be so poorly made that it wouldn't even be worth it.  That said, I found a cool website online today that gave a few hints on how to simulate a uke on an acoustic guitar.  Apparently, if you put a capo at the 5th fret, and then play ukelele chord shapes on the 4 highest strings, you can get close.  Especially if you've got a ny...