500 Years of Female Portraiture in Western Art

This is an amazing YouTube video of the history of female portraiture in Western Art. Each portrait morphs from one into the next, and the music is the Sarabande from the Bach Cello Suite in G, BWV 1007, played by Yo Yo Ma. Simply fabulous.



This one is by the same video artist, and does the same treatment with female movie stars. Here the music is the Prelude from the same Bach Cello suite, from the same CD by Yo Yo Ma. I just love this stuff.



I'm still in the midst of my annual metronome slow-play/forte play practice regemen, so posting will continue to be infrequent. I've managed to succeed with the program on two pieces I've previously failed with, so that's a good portent. I've discovered that pieces with a lot of rhythmic variety are much more difficult to do than the perpetual motion/motoric type works - a "duh moment" - and the one I knocked off yesterday was the famous Minuet in G from the Anna Magdalena Notebook of 1725 (Attributed to Bach, but actually written by Christian Petzold). That piece fits perfectly on the guitar with no transposition, which is quite rare. Anyway, I've been playing it for a couple of years, but it took me this long - five attempts - before I could get it down to half speed. The Bach Bourree in E Minor still eludes me, but I'm getting close. Since I have to go through the "problem pieces" at least three times, I may yet get it on one of the next two passes.

Jim Kozel is working on my Parker Nylon Fly as I write this, and I ought to have it back in a week or so. I'm just dying with anticipation. It will be so excellent to have an RMC pickup system in it. This guitar will have cost me over $4,000.00 before all is said and done, but it will be worth it. The next post will probably be when I get it back, probably within the next week or two.



Now, that is a redhead! My favorite variety, too: Even her eyebrows are red (And I'm sure her eyelashes would be too, if not for the makeup). The most awesome redhead I ever personally met looked a lot like her. Alas...

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Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day to me is simply the end of my least favorite part of the year, which starts with Halloween. The psychological beginning of spring, March first, is right around the corner, and warmer weather is on the way: I can't stand cold weather, which is why I live so far south.

The Parker Nylon Fly has been shipped to Jim, and he should get it tomorrow, so I ought to have it back by the end of the first week in March. I'm psyched.

I've finished my metronome slow-play/forte play practice routine with the pieces I have the routine down solidly with, so now I'm into the newer and more difficult "problem pieces" and that's going fantastically well. My manager and I plan to get me established in San Antonio this year - my home town - and I ought to have my set to a whole new level for that by the end of March (The "problem pieces" take a lot more time to go through than the old reliable pieces).

I have my workouts up to thirty to forty-five minutes once or twice a day now, and I'm in better shape than I have been for about four years, and that feels great. I'll be able to get back to my jogging in March also - I'm a fair weather runner - and so by April I ought to be a lean, mean, performing machine.

Looking forward to a productive 2008!



Marina would make a nice Valentine.

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She's Off to See the Wizard

I have finally finalized arrangements to send my custom cedar Parker Nylon Fly to musician and luthier Jim Kozel to have an RMC Pickups system installed.

After emailing back and forth with Jim and Richard McClish - the brainiac behind RMC - most of the winter to figure out the best approach for this guitar, we've decided to go with the ultra-compact Polydrive I preamp and the super-responsive and warm Tall Acoustic Gold saddles.

This is a very exciting project for me, because I'll now have an RMC system in the Parker just as I have in my two Godin Multiac Grand Concert SA guitars.

Not only will I now have the 13-pin output for synth access, but I'll have it in a super-light electric nylon string guitar with a 24 fret neck and the best playing feel of any electric nylon string I've ever encountered, and I've played almost every one available over the past twenty years. Of course, I'll also have the regular 1/4" output jack for my traditional rigs, and that unbeatable RMC sound.

Unfortunately, the stock pickup system in the Parker leaves much to be desired: So much so, that I was not able to get an acceptable sound out of it at all. Like all piezo-based pickup systems, it suffered from a lot of "quack" in the sound, and just an unacceptable amount of boomy handling noise. The RMC system is the only one in the world that totally eliminates both of these problems.



What I'm really looking forward to is the ability to stand up while I perform for the first time since my rock and roll and jazz days: I can stand and perform with the Godins for sets of thirty minutes or less, but they are just too heavy to play a two-hour gig with standing up.

Like almost all former rock and jazz guys, I guess, I really enjoy standing up to perform: Standing allows me to move around and get into it!



"Cute": I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. I think this girl would have the market on cute cornered in whatever room she happened to be in.

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YouTube Discovery: David Underwood and Jackie King

YouTube is amazing. There's no telling what's going to turn up there. Here are two of my former teachers from my late teens and early twenties: David Underwood on the left, and Jackie King on the right. David still teaches classical guitar at Trinity University in San Antonio, I believe, and - last I heard - Jackie was living and performing in the San Francisco Bay area. Jackie was also in The Willie Nelson Family for several years, and those jazzy Willie Nelson albums are a direct result of Jackie's influence. Jackie is the best straight-ahead jazz improviser on the guitar I've ever heard or heard of.

David is playing a Bach piece, and Jackie is improvising to it (No, your eves aren't playing tricks on you: Jackie plays left-handed). I remember them doing stuff like this as a joke years ago, but I had no idea anyone ever videotaped it. Last time I saw either of these guys was back in the late 80's, and I'm guessing that this video dates from then.



*****



The title of this photo shoot is Alpine Goddess. I live in Alpine, and I can tell you that girl is not from around here. I'd know if she was!

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Metronome Slow-Play Combined with Forte Practice

Blogging will continue to be infrequent, as I am going through my annual metronome slow-play routine, only this time I've combined it with forte practicing. And seriously, I can't think of any more boring thing to blog about than my practice regimen. Adding the forte playing is a cool development, however, so I thought I'd share that.

To review, the metronome slow-play routine is playing a piece along with a metronome down to half the speed you started at in order to solidify and work out the nitty gritty details of the finger choreography. Let's say I have a piece in 2/4 time, and I usually perform it at 120 beats-per-minute. The steps go like this:

01] Play the piece with the metronome at 120 BPM.

02] Play it at 110 BPM

03] Play it at 100 BPM

As you slow down, ten BPM becomes a larger percentage of the total left, so at 100 BPM I begin to decrease in increments of five BPM.

04] Play it at 95 BPM

05] Play it at 90 BPM

06] Play it at 85 BPM

07] Play it at 80 BPM

08] Play it at 75 BPM

09] Play it at 70 BPM

10] Play it at 65 BPM

At this point, the piece is slow enough that, 1) all of the fingering moves have been brought out of the subconscious memory (Wrongly so-called muscle memory: Muscle memory relates to strength training, not guitar practicing) into the conscious memory - this almost totally eliminates "blanking out" of a piece during high-pressure performance situations - and, 2) the finger choreography can now be concentrated upon in a very detailed manner. So, the last two increments go thusly:

11] Play it at 63 BPM

12] Play it at 60 BPM

So, we've played the piece down from 120 BPM to 60 BPM, we've brought the entire piece out of the subconscious memory into the conscious memory, we've worked out in a concentrated manner the details of the finger choreography, and we've been through it twelve times so far. Se why I consider this the very best practice regimen there is? Scales are a total waste of time by comparison.

Now, here's the new part. I've known for a long time that forte playing - or double forte: Just as powerfully as you can possibly attack a piece - is a great way to, 1) increase physical playing strength and, 2) expose weak points in your technical execution: Mistakes stand out like a sore thumb if you play them loud. The problem has been working forte practice into my routine efficiently.

The "light bulb moment" came a couple of weeks ago when I was bogged down in a particularly fiendish piece of a very technical nature, and I got so frustrated I started just hammering the damned thing as hard as I could. It worked! And, by combining the metronome slow-play with metronome-limited forte work, I made it even more effective. Quite a nice breakthrough. So, we got our piece down to 60 BPM:

13] Play the piece forte at 65 BPM

14] Play the piece forte at 80 BPM

15] Play the piece forte at 100 BPM

16] Play the piece forte at 120 BPM

This is really doing wonderful things for my playing. I have gone through about 60% of my repertoire since I started on this after Christmas, and I ought to be done by the end of March, at which time I'll be ready to record v2.0 of the three demos of Heavy Nylon. I'm psyched.

*****

BTW: I've actually gained some weight, but it's all muscle: My waist has gone down two inches to a 35, but my chest and legs are much larger now. I've never combined the high protein diet with the Bowflex training before, but giving your body protein sure does help it pack on the musculature. I've worked up to 30 minutes on the Bowflex in the morning, thirty minutes in the evening, the ice-water deal twice a day, and just tons of my favorite, red meat! BWAHHHaahaahahahahahaaaa!

*****



Last time we saw Marina, she was posing with a falcon. This time, she's selling melons (I'd buy one! LOL!). I enjoy the fantasy-land girls, but this is the kind of chick I usually end up falling for. She kind of reminds me of a cute little hippy girl I loved years ago. Just a nice, natural babe.

*****

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Lineal Study in G Major

This is the first in a series of studies that are an entirely new class of pieces for me. As you can see from the date, I wrote this back in '05, but I have just now gotten around to memorizing it: That's how far behind I am in learning my own pieces! The idea is to have a series of very angular lines that will, 1) help me to work on single line technique and, 2) allow me to execute harmonic voice leading on the guitar that is not possible in any other way. So, this piece is actually four and five voice harmony turned into a compound line.



I'm not sure how many of these I'm going to write - there is the potential for twenty-four in all of the major and minor keys, of course - but I have as of this point completed only three (Well, there was a fourth, but it didn't make the cut and ended up in the trash).

One of the things I'm doing here is avoiding the use any open strings at all. This way, the piece can be transposed up or down within any range that will fit on the guitar to fill spaces in my set that are in unusual keys, and I won't have to relearn it using another fingering. For the notation, I'm putting them in the key that is easiest to read (i.e. that has the fewest accidentals). Right now this is going into the G Major Suite in my set, but that could well change at some point.

Though it's still a ways from being performable for me, I can already see that this is going to benefit my technique in many ways, as it has me doing totally new things that no other pieces I've ever written or learned have done. Best of all, it's fun to play and sounds really cool.

The other two introduce some strategic rhythmic elements and are even more unusual (and cool), but they are also a lot more difficult to play, so I'm going to wait until I have this one in my set comfortably before I tackle them. Next on my to-learn list is the Satie Gymnopedie No. 1, which is a lovely little trifle, and quite easy to play.

*****



What an unusual creature. So unusual, that all it would take would be a nose prosthetic to turn her into a Trek Universe Exotic Alien Babe. LOL!

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Rolling Your Own... Vacuum Tubes?!

This is a positively amazing video. In fact, it's the most mesmerizing video I've ever seen since the beginning of the YouTube era, and it's not even on YouTube. It's not directly related to music or guitar, but tangentially so: The guy, Claude Paillard, is a French amateur radio operator who actually makes his own triode vacuum tubes!

Since I use tube amplifiers in my two high-end rigs, I found this absolutely fascinating. Of course, guitar amps use more complex pentode tubes, so any guitarist who wanted to take being a tone freak to the ultimate destination and make his own tubes would be looking at much more complex designs, not to mention the learning curve - and equipment - involved. Then, the demands of a guitar amp for sound quality are far higher than with radio gear, so his tubes might not even cut the mustard for guitar amp use, but the process and his craftsmanship are genuinely astonishing. The video is seventeen minutes long (!) but the time goes by very quickly when you watch this guy work. It's very much like watching a magician.

Fabrication d'une lampe triode
Uploaded by F2FO

Does anybody know what the music is? It's solo piano and sounds like George Gershwin to me - or at least Gershwinesque and from that era - but I really don't know much of the music of that age and am at a loss. It is quite fitting, though.

*****

In the previous post I noted the amazing bi-fold symmetry of "the girl with the goddess face," so this time I thought I'd take a look at some (very) appealing asymmetry. When I got this idea, I knew exactly the model I was looking for, but finding the right photo took a lot of surfing babe sites (This blogging is hard work I tell you!).



From the eyes up, she's symmetrical, but from the cheek bones down very asymmetrical. I really dig the crooked smile - I can't explain why - and she's actually, um, more "body-beautiful" than the girl with the goddess face (She has a bod to beat the band, and there's almost no asymmetry detectable there). So, if I had to chose between the two - hey, I can dream - it would probably come down to personality. Since they are both eastern European girls and don't speak English, I'm not sure how I'd work that out... but I'd be willing to give it a try. LOL!

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