Music
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Quote of the moment
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears”.
Bob Dylan -
Victory was mine (somehow)
I did the open mic last night at Limerick. I played a rather weak set of Walkin’ Cane, my Tom Waits’ song, the new one (Left Alone) and Raining this Morning. Somehow I won.
I’m going to be practicing the songs instead of the flatpicking all week now.
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The power and glory of YouTube
In case anyone has wondered what I’m trying to do on the guitar, this video of Doc and Merle Watson says it all.
Also, check out these videos of the Velvet Underground (with Nico) doing acoustic versions of Heroin and Femme Fatale in 1972.
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Last night’s open mic
Not so good. I couldn’t hear my guitar in the monitors, and my playing was a bit off because of it. It was a noisy, but nice crowd. The previous act was having problems too. Evidently the problems were only noticeable to me. I did the usual material.
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Friday rapid fire
- Reno 911 is popular in Iraq of all places. It seems they think it’s real.
- A nice collection of flatpicking tablature, all in Tabledit format.
- Hounddog Radio seems cool.
- View System Uptime.
- A nice article on using curves and levels in Photoshop.
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Recording attempts
Last night I attempted to record four flatpick tunes, and eventually to create a Steve French, Musician site on MySpace. I was unable to get the recording levels right on three of them (I blame the Samson digital pre-amp) and I can’t seem to get the musician page set up right on MySpace.
In any case, one of them did turn out okay; the volume level is very low (just like me!) but it’s not terrible.
I played Cooley’s Reel, which is an old Irish fiddle tune in E-Minor. I do it a bit faster than it’s normally done, but I think it turned out okay. I originally heard this song done by Steve Kaufman, but the actual music I got from BluegrassGuitar.com. I do both lead and rhythm on the song.
You can download it here (right click and choose “Save As” (Command-Click on the Mac)).
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Eric remixed it for me, which helped the volume levels a lot. The file is updated.
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Another open mic night done
Due to the small number of entrants, I wound up doing six songs. They were “Walkin’ Cane”, It’s Raining Here This Morning”, “Red Clay Halo”, “Ruby Ridge”, “Blackjack County Chain” and “Tin Foil and Stone”. Tin Foil and Stone was the new song for the week. I think I’m going to work in a Guy Clark song for next week.
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Last night’s open mic
It went well. I did Red Clay Halo, Walkin’ Cane, Ruby Ridge, Blackjack County Chain, and a new (to me) Tom Waits song.
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Quick zinger roundup
- “George W. — We will be forever in his debt.” (Bumper sticker quoted on Andrew Sullivan’s site)
- “If he was shot in the head by the front, that is good marksmanship, if he was shot in the head by the back, that is good judgement.” (from the WikiPedia entry on the outlaw and gunfighter John Wesley Hardin)
- “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car”
and
“like how you’d sound if you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes and swallowed a pack of razor blades… Late at night. After not sleeping for three days”
(people describing the singing voice of Tom Waits)
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The open mic night went well
I was quite pleased with my performance and the response. It’s reassuring to hear yourself through the monitors. I did “Raining Here This Morning”, “Red Clay Halo”, “Walkin’ Cane”, and “Blackjack County Chain”. I could have slowed them all down a tad, but on the whole, I’m pretty happy. A good first real open mic night.