The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Guitar

  • Notes and Chords on the Guitar

    Having learned a method of limbering up the fingers, and of finding notes on the guitar, we’ll now take a look at how to make chords.

    We saw that the C Major Scale of notes is useful because it has no sharps or flats. We’ll find that it’s particularly useful in other ways for the guitarist.

    Let’s review the C Major Scale of Notes. C to C gives us an octave. We can number the notes. We’ll use the numbers to build chords:

    Numeric Note12345678
    Letter NoteCDEFGABC

    A major chord is built stacking the 1st, 3rd, and 5th of a scale. We can build a chord that begins with each letter of the C Major Scale. When finished, we’ll have the C Major Harmonized Scale of chords:

    Chord #IiiiiiIVVvivii
    NameCMdmemFMGMamb-dim
    Notes
    5GABCDEF
    3EFGABCD
    1CDEFGAB

    The C Major chord (I, or CM in the table above) contains the notes C, E, and G, the 1st, 3rd, and 5th steps of the C Major scale of notes. The D minor chord (ii, or dm in the table above) contains the notes D, F, and A. Why is it a minor chord? A minor chord is built also using the 1st, 3rd, and 5th steps of a scale, but the 3rd is flatted, moved a half step down, which, on the guitar, is one fret down. I thought you said there were no flats or sharps. Here’s where things get a bit tricky.

    Let’s take a look at the C Chromatic scale of notes. This is a scale that shows all the notes, including the flats and sharps. A sharp is indicated with a # sign, and flats are indicated with a b. Note that a C# and a Db is the same note, called a flat when moving down and a sharp when moving up):

    11#2b22#3b344#5b55#6b66#7b78
    CC#DbDD#EbEFF#GbGG#AbAA#BbBC

    The C Major scale of notes uses just 7 of the notes of the Chromatic scale above. As we have seen, those notes include: C D E F G A and B. What happened to the sharps and flats? We skipped over them. How do we know where to skip? That’s a given. To build a major scale, we skip over the 1#2b and the 2#3b, but notice there is no 3# or 4b, and there is no 7# or 8b. So we have notes that skip like this:

    1 (skip) 2 (skip) 3 4 (skip) 5 (skip) 6 (skip) 7 8
    C (skip) D (skip) E F (skip) G (skip) A (skip) B C

    In other words, there is no 3# or 4b and there is no 7# or 8b. There is no E sharp or F flat and there is no B# or Cb in the C Major scale. If we want to flat the F, we get E. If we want to flat the C, we get B.

    It might be useful now to take a look at the whole guitar fretboard (depending on your device, you should be able to slide right to see all the columns):

    Open Strings1st Fret2nd Fret3rd Fret4th Fret5th Fret6th Fret7th Fret8th Fret9th Fret10th Fret11th Fret12th Fret13th Fret
    efgabcdef
    bcdefgabc
    gabcdefg
    defgabcd
    abcdefga
    efgabcdef

    And here are the same notes using corresponding numbers:

    Open Strings1st Fret2nd Fret3rd Fret4th Fret5th Fret6th Fret7th Fret8th Fret9th Fret10th Fret11th Fret12th Fret13th Fret
    345671234
    712345671
    56712345
    23456712
    67123456
    345671234

    Notice the 1 skips a fret to 2, but the 3 does not skip a fret to 4. Same for 7 to 1. The 1 corresponds to C, the 2 to D, etc.

    If we start a major scale on D and use the skipping method of counting through the Chromatic scale, we get:

    123456789
    12#3b344#5b55#6b66#7b
    DD#EbEFF#GbGG#AbAA#Bb

    If we build the D Major chord using the 1, 3, and 5 of the scale in the table above, we get a chord with the notes D (1), E (3), and F# (5). The D Major chord is built using the notes D, E, and F#. Taking the D Major chord of D, E, and F# but flatting the F#, we get D, E, F. The chord is now a 1, flat 3, 5 chord, or, a minor chord.

    Now, back to the C Major Harmonized scale, which is built with the chords C Major, D Minor, E Minor, F Major, G Major, A Minor, and B Diminished. The chords are shown in the table as

    IiiiiiIVVvivii
    CMdmemFGamb-dim

    It’s a bit tricky to say all of the chords contain no sharps or flats, since we saw that the D minor chord has a flatted third. But the flatted third of a D chord, as we’ve seen, gives us an F note, not an F#. You can work it out for the E minor and A minor, as well as the B diminished (which flats both the 3rd and the 5th notes of a scale). What you’ll find is that the chords as expressed in the C Major Harmonized scale appear to have no sharps or flats. They are built with “natural” notes, meaning not sharped or flatted notes.

    Chord #IiiiiiIVVvivii
    NameCMdmemFMGMamb-dim
    Notes
    5GABCDEF
    3EFGABCD
    1CDEFGAB

    Here are some suggestions for practical application:

    1. Play chord progressions using chords from the C Major Harmonized scale. For example, play ii (dm), V (GM), I (CM), or play I (CM), vi (am), ii (dm), V (GM). Play I, IV, V.
    2. Memorize all of the C notes on the guitar fretboard. Be able to jump from one to the other, in any order.
    3. Play the C Major scale of notes on the fretboard beginning (ascending and descending) with each of the C notes you found in 2 above.
    4. Play all of the chords in the C Major Harmonized scale in the first position of the fretboard (frets 1 thru 3). Play them in order, ascending and descending.
    5. Don’t forget to warm up and cool down using the Guitar finger coordination exercises of Manuel Lopez Ramos.

  • Finding Notes on the Guitar

    A good way to learn the notes on the guitar fretboard is to begin with the notes in the C Major scale, which has no sharps or flats1. The C Major scale, using letters to signify notes, goes like this:

    C D E F G A B C.

    To begin, play the scale, one note at a time, using the open strings and fingering the notes on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd frets, beginning and ending on the C note, forward (ascending) and backward (descending), memorizing each note in its open or fretted position.

    Use your 3rd (ring) finger on the 3rd fret, 2nd finger (middle) on the 2nd fret, and 1st finger (index) on the first fret. If you want to finger-pick, alternate index with middle fingers of your right hand, or use your thumb throughout. The table below shows the 6th (thickest) string at the bottom.

    Open String1st Fret2nd Fret3rd Fret
    BC
    GA
    DEF
    C

    Now play the C Major scale on the 2nd through the 8th frets. Here you’ll be playing through two octaves2. Again, play forward (ascending) and backward (descending) in alphabetical order, memorizing the notes. When you get to the C on the 3rd string (5th fret), move your hand up so that your index finger plays that note, ring finger the D, index the E, middle the F, pinkie the G, index the A, ring the B, and pinkie the final C (1st string, 8th fret):

    1st Fret2nd Fret3rd Fret4th Fret5th Fret6th Fret7th Fret8th Fret
    ABC
    EFG
    ABCD
    EFG
    CD

    As you play through the notes, you can sing: Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. Or, sing the notes: C D E F G A B C. Or sing numbers: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.

    SolfaDoReMiFaSoLaTiDo
    Numeric Note12345678
    Letter NoteCDEFGABC

    Next, we’ll look at the C Chromatic scale and the C Major Harmonized scale to see how chords are built.

    1. On the piano, to play the C Major scale, you press only the white keys, skipping over the black keys, but on the guitar, every fret is what is called a half step, and the sharps and flats can’t be seen. ↩︎
    2. An octave is 8 notes, beginning and ending on the same note. ↩︎

  • Guitar finger coordination exercises of Manuel Lopez Ramos

    I was given the exercises to practice by my first classical guitar instructor. After many years of carrying them around in my three-ring binder guitar workbook, I’ve taken photos of the two pages, from which I’ve copied below, adding just a few edits and a short glossary of terms. In addition to being useful developmental exercises, the lines can be used for warmup in any setting. While the exercises were written with classical guitar in mind, they work for any guitar genre. The basic idea is that you don’t want your fingers to simply remember riffs, because then they fall into forced habits, often limiting and hard to change, but the exercises encourage a flexible, ambidextrous capability, each finger able to move independent of the others. 

    EXERCISES (1 thru 24 - see Instructions below Line 24):

    1.1234 0234 0134 0124 0123

    2.4123 4023 4013 4012 3012

    3.3412 3402 3401 2401 2301

    4.2341 2340 1340 1240 1230

    5.1243 0243 0143 0142 0132

    6.4132 4032 4031 4021 3021

    7.3421 3420 3410 2410 2310

    8.2314 2304 1304 1204 1203

    9.1423 0423 0413 0412 0312

    10.4312 4302 4301 4201 3201

    11.3241 3240 3140 2140 2130

    12.2134 2034 1034 1024 1023

    13.1432 0432 0431 0421 0321

    14.4321 4320 4310 4210 3210

    15.3214 3204 3104 2104 2103

    16.2143 2043 1043 1042 1032

    17.1342 0342 0341 0241 0231

    18.4231 4230 4130 4120 3120

    19.3124 3024 3014 2014 2013

    20.2413 2403 1403 1402 1302

    21.1324 0324 0314 0214 0213

    22.4213 4203 4103 4102 3102

    23.3142 3042 3041 2041 2031

    24.2431 2430 1430 1420 1320

    Instructions

    Numbers refer to left hand fingers (index is 1, middle 2, ring 3, little 4). The exercises can be played on any string in any position (i. e. beginning at any fret). An “0” in lines above, e.g. 1320, means play string open (un-fretted).

    Do each individual exercise (four notes) eight times, except as noted below, and proceed to the next without interruption. Fingers “i”, “m”, and “a” use rest strokes1 throughout except when playing chords in 7, 8, 9 below. After first learning all exercises with right hand fingering i m a m, practice daily in the following manner:

    Begin on the first string changing every four notes to the second string, and in turn to the third, etc. as far as the sixth string and back again each exercise. Each exercise is then actually repeated 10 times. The “Lines” below refer to the rows or exercises in the section above.

    Line 1: i m a m
    Line 2: m a m i
    Line 3: a m i m

    Thumb (indicated with p) every eight notes. Each day use a different combination of strings, i. e. fingers on 1st string, thumb on 6th, next day fingers 2nd, thumb 6th, next fingers 2nd, thumb 5th, then 3rd and 5th.

    Line 4: i&p m a m i m a m
    Line 5: i m&p a m i m a m
    Line 6: i m a&p m i m a m

    Chord (a&m&i&p) every eight notes. Each day use a different combination of strings, e.g. chord on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 5th, other notes on 1st, or chord same, other notes on 2nd, etc.

    Line 7: a&m&i&p i m a m i m a
    Line 8: a&m&i&p m a m i m a m
    Line 9: a&m&i&p a m i m a m i

    Line 10: Shifting position one fret each exercise to the end of the finger-board and return.

    Line 11: The same, shifting two frets each exercise.

    Line 12: The same, three frets.

    Line 13: i m a m – With slurs2. Example: 1~2 3~4
    Line 14: i m a m – With slurs. Example: 1~3 2~4
    Line 15: i m a m – With slurs. Example: 1~4 2~3

    Lines 16, 17, 18: m i m i m a m a i a i a m i m a

    Lines 19, 20, 21: Eight notes as legato3 as possible, eight notes as staccato as possible.

    Lines 22, 23, 24: Eight notes dolce4, eight notes metalico.

    Lines 1, 2, 3: Crescendo5 – diminuendo.

    Lines 4, 5, 6: Accelerando, rallentando.

    Rotate exercises weekly. That is, the second week play lines 4, 5, & 6 changing strings, 7, 8, & 9 with thumb, etc.

    1. The finger of a rest stroke, or apoyando, after plucking a string, comes to rest on the string above it, thus allowing for a more controlled stroke that can produce more volume. While the instructions call for all rest strokes, the player may prefer also practicing with free strokes (where the finger does not come to rest but plays through). ↩︎
    2. There are two kinds of slurs, the hammer-on and the pull-off. In each, the note is sounded with the left hand finger by hitting a higher fret on the same string after a stroke (ascending slur) or pulling quickly off a string to an lower fret of the same string (descending slur). ↩︎
    3. Legato is playing smoothly and continuously from one note to another; staccato is playing each note with a stop between notes. ↩︎
    4. Dolce is soft or hollow; metalico is bright or electric. To play dolce, move the right hand forward of the sound hole; to play metalico, move the right hand back toward the bridge. ↩︎
    5. Crescendo gradually increases loudness; diminuendo decreases loudness. Accelerando speeds up, while rallentando slows down. ↩︎

  • Just to Pass the Time Away

    din din the din again awakens within opossum’s impossible
    sleep who who who off course assume he’s just fakin’ it

    come rumbling down Mariposa Hill on steel skates nailed
    to two-by-four a narrow but elephantine wobbling thing

    a train carrying loads of images (more than Instagram) of pics
    not taken (bench flowers, wood windows, alleyway signs)

    books browsed but not bought (Merton and Bukowski,
    perfect bookends) clickety clack clickety clack the slides fall

    into the track and story lights illuminate the cars one night
    after another a passenger train book full of water filled pages

    the dappled light brushed gravel path below the tall umbrella
    flowering rhododendron grove somewhere the sounds

    of rumbling water tousled over rough rocks submerged tales
    rail cars dome car windows at night simply reflect your own story

    when what you want is to read the stars their ingredients in a wok
    galaxy spinning with caramelized onions

    peppers spinning whiffle balls the train now crossing and switch
    backs aside the can’t-make-its-mind-up river down river tracks

    and the railroad tracks a fretboard of rail strings wound tight
    miles uptrack put your ear to the rail you can hear chords

    clickety clack clickety clack don’t look back don’t look back
    train train coming down the track arpeggios

    but you “forgot to remember to forget” and the train
    brings it all back home in the kitchen with old tooth

    making french press coffee in a 10 gallon drum
    walking in circles circle of fourths and slide shows

    just to pass the time walking down the line offshore
    in the distance the library of parisian bold coffee cafe

    Train Cartoon
    Depot w Susan
    Train Snow
    Train Depot
    Tracks above Refugio
    Refugio Trestle
    Train Depot
    Tracks in Woods
    Train Adventures Harmonica


  • Susanna Oh Susanna

    “Susanna Oh Susanna”
    (Original song with lyrics, chords, and video below)

    C Mornings when we wake up
    on the deep blue sea
    G7 Afternoons sleeping
    under a green palm tree

    E7 Evenings when you call me
    A7 Come out wherever you are
    D7 On the radio playing
    G Patty and Ray

    C Susanna oh Susanna
    I can’t even say your name
    G7 And all I have for you is
    more of the same

    E7 Hiding in the evening
    A7 When you call my name
    D7 On the radio playing
    G Patty and Ray

    C Days falling down
    like waves on the beach
    G7 Every night you drift
    farther out of reach

    E7 Evenings when I call you
    A7 Come over here my love
    D7 On the radio playing
    G Patty and Ray

    “Susanna Oh Susanna,” recorded on cell phone and played on a Gretsch G2420. D’Addario XL Chromes Flatwound Electric Guitar Strings (.011-.050). Fender Champion 20 amplifier. Simple one take setup. Watch video here or on YouTube.

  • Two Riders Were Approaching

    Bob Dylan’s “John Wesley Harding” album (Dec 1967) came after the years (61 to 65) covered in the new film “A Complete Unknown.” Dylan’s “going electric,” handled portentously at the time and since and in the film, split genre on the “Bringing it All Back Home” album (Mar 65), including both acoustic and electric backing, and flung wide open in “Highway 61 Revisited” (Aug 65), was not all that new to Dylan, who has always followed John Cage’s sage advice to get out of whatever cage you might find yourself in. As a kid, Dylan listened to radio, and what did he hear there? The Golden Age of Radio.

    Off the “John Wesley Harding” album Jimi Hendrix created a cover hit with Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” At the end of that song, we find “two riders were approaching,” but where do they go, and what do they do when they get there? I tried to answer that question in my song “Two Riders Were Approaching.” Here’s a new recording by an old player below:

    “Two Riders Were Approaching”

    Chords and Lyrics

    G Two riders were approaching
    C7 On hogs and wearing leathers
    G Stopped into a tavern
    D7 For a cool glass of beer

    Break G C7 D7 C7 G D7

    G Two pints for us my friend
    C7 The day is warm and grim
    G The dust has found its corner
    D7 The dogs want shade and water

    Break G C7 D7 C7 G D7

    G We are the two riders who were approaching
    C7 Said one fellow to the other
    G Let’s stop here for a cool drinking beer
    D7 Night time is drawing near

    Break G C7 D7 C7 G D7

    G Yippie-yi-yo
    C7 Yippie-ki-yay
    G We’re gonna go
    D7 Our own way

    G Yippie-yi-yo
    C7 Yippie-ki-yay
    G We’re gonna go
    D7 Our own way [G]

    “Two Riders Were Approaching,” lyrics and music by Joe Linker. Find an alt-version with the title first explained on The Coming of the Toads blog here.

  • Heavy Metal

    Sounds industrial, like the noises in a factory made repetitive by machines, the floor covered with curling steel shavings. And a kind of marching music, an industrial march, urban with trams and busses, honks and trucking heaves. Heavy Metal is the four piece rock band’s alternative to the symphonic orchestra. The full brass and woodwinds, operatic vocals, orchestral percussion – all accomplished with guitars and drumkit, pedals, and amplifiers. Heavy Metal music can sound like lead stretched thin as wire, or walking on the Earth’s crust with steel spiked boots, the band poised like the Levitated Mass over an arena crowd.

    Our latest guitar quest (Live at 5 now already seems as old as the Ed Sullivan Show) has moved to YouTube where in partnership with metal expert CB we record short videos of original pieces or answers to various musical challenges, about one to three minutes, CB taking Metal Monday while I have Telecaster Tuesday (Washboard Wednesday still open). I posted a couple of Telecaster Tuesday short videos here at the Toads – as I continue to find myself drifting further and farther from words, but I’m not sure the blog is the best place for music activity. For one thing, videos are space hogs, while links to anything outside the blog can wind up for the reader like getting on a wrong bus to the zoo.

    I’m not sure it has anything to do with hearing impairment, though it might, but I’ve often had trouble hearing lyrics clearly, the vocals sounding like another instrument, which of course they are, but without sharp definition – in my ears. Maybe that’s why I’ve steered away from loud rock, but any type of music can be played loud, or too loud. But you don’t have to play music loud to feel it. At a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert some years back, I could literally feel the sound in my chest – that’s a bit too much, though I get that it might be necessary if one wants the full effect. But often one wants to hear the breeze over the “The Eolian harp” sitting on an open window sill. Still, as evidenced in some of CB’s videos, the loudness has passed, and now rings like a train rounding a corner in the distance, its ringing still vibrating on the track:

  • Telecaster Tuesday

    “Good to Go,” a Bb Blues played not too fast, some thick chord shapes, and notes meant to be a bit Bebopish, for this week’s “Telecaster Tuesday.” You can watch and listen here on WordPress or go to the YouTube channel. Short video, about a minute and a half.

  • A Few Notes on the Guitar

    Studying a new guitar genre is almost like learning a new language, or at least a new dialect. By guitar genre I mean a type of music: Blues or Jazz, Folk, Rock, Gypsy Jazz, or Classical. Those genres all make use of the same notes and chords and even often use the same music and songs – what changes from one genre to another is technique, how you play the instrument, including how the player sits or stands, holds the instrument, plucks the strings with fingernails or plectrum. The difference in genre is not limited to the music played, but the type of guitar used and how you play it, which is known as technique. Over time, the changing build of guitars has enhanced an emphasis on genre specialization, so it’s hard if not impossible, for example, to transfer a screaming metal solo played on a Flying V over a huge amplifier to a nylon string Classical instrument played without amplification. I’ve little to say about which genre is “better.” They are simply different and call for different approaches, for both playing and listening, and at the same time share similarities.

    A studied focus on the Classical guitar will reveal the history of the guitar and guitar music in a way the other genres might miss. As an example, I’ll share an online resource for learning and enjoying the Classical guitar. You don’t have to be a guitarist to enjoy this: The resource is This is Classical Guitar, by Bradford Werner, guitarist, guitar instructor, and music publisher. There are free lessons available, linked to the This is Classical Guitar YouTube channel, including performance and discussion notes and sheet music. But the site is full of resources and information and designed for all levels and interests. One feature I’ve enjoyed via Bradford’s newsletter is the featured artist selection, which amounts to a curated listening experience – in other words, rather than randomly searching around for vital links, the listener benefits from Bradford’s expertise in selecting and presenting what’s usually of special interest.

    My first Classical guitar instructor was a mild mannered player named James. You had to take your shoes off to enter his house. To this day I prefer playing with my shoes on. But James taught me some good stuff. At the first lesson he asked why I wanted to study Classical guitar, and I said I wanted to learn to read music and understand theory and to play beautifully. He said you won’t learn much about theory; theory is what the composer is responsible for. As for playing beautifully, you can do that now. He also advised I get a better guitar. One day, out of character, he chided me for playing too quietly. We used the Aaron Shearer Book One and the Frederick Noad books and also the Leo Brouwer etudes (1972, Estudios Sencillos Nos. 1–10), which were my favorite pieces to study and play. I learned the positioning and fingering of the Diatonic Major and Minor Scales by Andres Segovia (1953, Columbia Music). And we also practiced the fingering exercises of Manuel Lopez Ramos, the idea there to avoid having the fingers default to any kind of set pattern, each finger independent of the others. One day, I told James I enjoyed playing the exercises more than working on the music, to which he voiced disapproval. James moved away and passed me on to another instructor, Marshall, who used to say when I played a new piece, “Well, you found all the notes.” I was on my third instructor, Brian, when I got a new job and could no longer afford the time for lessons and practice. I still have the “better” guitar James encouraged, found for me by Marshall, which I purchased used, a Takemine C132S, built in 1977.

    Of course the best guitar is the one that gets played. You need to leave it out where you can pick it up anytime you walk by, and not worry about nicks and dings and such. Not leave it cased up in the closet or under a bed.

    Classical style guitar might require the most exacting technique. The music written for Classical guitar is often technically difficult. In other words, it’s hard to play. But when James said I could play beautifully now, he meant the music doesn’t have to be complex to be beautiful, it can be simple, and if I paid attention to what I was doing, I could express the music with beautiful tone and grace. A few notes is all you need. An example of a simple piece is found in the Noad book “Solo Guitar Playing I” (my copy is 1976, Schirmer Books). The piece is titled “Lagrima,” and is by Francisco Tarrega. Everyone plays it these days. It’s sort of the “Stairway to Heaven” for beginning Classical players. But it’s the first piece that I could play that I could also hear an expert play. It was on a Julian Bream vinyl record I had at the time. Julian Bream did as much as Andres Segovia to popularize the Classical guitar and its music. When Julian went to music school, guitar was not taught, indeed was frowned upon. One of the problems with Classical guitar is it’s quiet compared to other instruments and difficult to hear in an ensemble.

    I picked up a used copy of Studi Per Chitarra by Dionisio Aguado (1972, Suvini Zerboni, Intro. by Ruggero Chiesa) and showed it to James. He picked out just five of the 51 pieces and said to work on those. I memorized Number 1 and still play it almost daily, straight or improvising freely. It’s a very simple piece and easy to play. James recommended a book on the history of the guitar. I checked it out from the library. Alas, I forget now its title. But I remember reading in it a passage on a typical day for Andres Segovia. He was said to begin his day reading manuscripts and notating works. Then he played and attended to business. Taught and went about his day. But what I remember most is that he was said to end every day in the evening just before bed playing a piece just for himself. At one, I imagined, with his guitar, an at-one-ness most of us never quiet attain with our guitars, wrestling as we do with our chairs and footstools and strings and cracked fingernails and music too difficult for our technical abilities. And it’s then we might remind ourselves the guitar is a folk instrument.

  • Notes on Sound, Noise, Music, and Hearing

    What is sound? Tinnitus, from the Latin for ring or tinkle, we hear in our ears, but its source is not external sound. My own tinnitus is louder in my left ear, and if I try to pay attention to it, there are at least two sounds audible, as if an electronic musical duo is playing in my head. The ringing is enveloped under an umbrella of an engine or fan, or the electric rush of a motor, an incessant susurrus, which is balanced between the ears. The quieter my environment, the louder the tinnitus. Tinnitus is noise that is not sound, and it is a common ailment for those with hearing loss.

    My hearing loss, in both ears, worse in the left, probably originating from operating the motor pool compressor truck with jackhammers and other pneumatic tools and from firing weapons without adequate ear protection during my Army days and probably made worse playing music too loud over the years, is now augmented through hearing aids. The current pair are state of the art and include Bluetooth capability, which means I can stream an electronic sound source (radio, TV, computer, phone) directly into the hearing aids. But the sound is not quite natural. I hear it in my head, not in the ears, and not precisely where the tinnitus sounds, but when streaming, the tinnitus seems to turn off. It’s a bit like wearing headphones. It can be somewhat disconcerting.

    Often, when I think of sound sans sense, I think of John Cage. Cage was a musician and writer. Piano was his instrument, but he became involved in electronic sound and electronic music – experimental music. Cage’s music might sound like tinnitus to some listeners. But any instrument can grate or creak or be made to scream or moan or laugh or guffaw. Some of the early film cartoons used modern music innovations and techniques. “Modern” music is often characterized as atonal or dissonant, and as technology developed as electronically enhanced. An evocation of emotional turmoil. Turbulence and tohubohu is often the sound it conveys, or that I hear, which of course are two different things. In any case, what I’m still calling modern here is actually now quiet old.

    What are the differences between noise and music? What is the relationship between sound and hearing? We might spend a few big bucks on music sound reproducing equipment (stereo, speakers, etc.) for home or car. The louder, it seems, the better. But when heard live at a concert, the sound may seem radically altered. And the listener in a front row seat hears a different concert than the listener in the back row, upper level, even if they’re in the same hall at the same time for the same music. In music and in conversation clarity is probably the most important attribute to one hard on hearing. It’s not that I can’t hear, but often that I don’t hear clearly. Increasing volume doesn’t necessarily add clarity. It just adds noise. Cage might say, what difference does it make? Listen to what you hear and disregard the rest. And music is not words.

    “Music as discourse (jazz) doesn’t work,” Cage said. “If you’re going to have a discussion, have it and use words. (Dialogue is another matter.)”

    John Cage, A Year From Monday, Wesleyan, 1969, page 12, from Cage’s ongoing “Diary: How to Improve the World (You will only Make Matters Worse)” 1965, which was taken from the magazine Joglars (Vol. 1, No. 3, 1966), where it was presented as: “a mosaic of ideas, statements, words, and stories. It is also a diary.”

    What did Cage mean by distinguishing dialogue from discourse? Dialogue is conversation, conversational. Discourse is debate, to run away from. Dialogue is theater. Discourse is lecture. Discussion is an investigation. We are using words; no help, no matter how loud.

    Some sounds are empty. What does that sound like? Jazz guitarists speak of getting a hollow sound or tone. One of the John Cage books is titled “Empty Words” (Wesleyan, 1981). “Most of the material in this volume has previously appeared elsewhere,” the listener is told. Where? Sound is ubiquitous, everywhere:

    “Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments.”

    “The Future of Music: Credo,” from Silence, John Cage, p. 3, Wesleyan 1961, 1973.

    Capture this, from the opening section to Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (Viking, 1973):

    “A screaming comes across the sky…He won’t hear the thing come in. It travels faster than the speed of sound. The first news you get of it is the blast. Then, if you’re still around, you hear the sound of it coming in.”

    page 3, then 7

    The reader is in London where the German V2 rockets, travelling faster than the speed of sound, hit the ground and explode before anyone hears them coming. Before Pynchon’s novel begins, then, an explosion has occurred. Or not, maybe one lands a dud.

    In Coleridge’s poem “The Eolian Harp” (1795), the instrument sits on an open window ledge, where an incoming breeze stirs over the strings, making music. How improvised is that! One would need super sensitive ears to pick up such wispy sounds.

    …the world so hush’d!
    The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
    Tells us of silence.

    …Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
    Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

    The wind as guitar pick.

    I’ve been playing Gypsy-Jazz guitar lately, by which is usually understood playing in the style created or formalized by Django Reinhardt and his peers and followers. The style is characterized by the use of a different kind of guitar from the classical guitar popularized by guitarists like Andrea Segovia and Julian Bream. They played on a 12 fret neck fitted with catgut and then nylon strings in the treble and silk then nylon wound with metal in the bass. Other differences might include a shorter but wider neck, a smaller box, different woods and internal bracing techniques. Different from what? Basically from the all metal, louder string guitars developed later – what has come to be known as the western or folk guitar, and is used in blues, bluegrass, folk, country. But the Gypsy-Jazz guitar is a different instrument still.

    The Gypsy-Jazz (also “jazz manouche”) guitar is louder, played with a guitar pick rather than the fingers with fingernails, has a longer neck, so a longer scale length, and all metal strings. Most importantly, it’s not a solo instrument. It’s designed to be played in a small combo, usually consisting of at minimum two guitars, and often with stand up acoustic bass, violin, clarinet, accordion, and vocalist. Django played in noisy dance clubs before the advent of amplifiers and electric guitars. He needed an acoustic guitar that would project over the racket and clatter and sound in sync with the other instruments. Readers interested in learning more about Django and his music might read Django Reinhardt, by Charles Delaunay, 1961, Da Capo Press, and Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, by Michael Dregni, Oxford, 2004. Briefly, it’s told that Django, born in poverty and coming of age without any kind of formal education, learned to play violin, banjo, banjo-guitar, and guitar. By the time he was 18, he was playing in bands in Paris and making money. Then he burnt his left hand badly in a fire in the caravan. Recovering, he taught himself to play the guitar anew, using mainly just two fingers from his left hand to fret the notes and chords, developing an entirely new technique. Thus began a new style of playing guitar that has influenced just about every guitarist of all genres since and still begs to be mastered even by those with all their fingers playable.

    When asked if he admired Django Reinhardt, Julian Bream said:

    “Oh sure. And I played plectrum guitar up to the age of 21, I played frequently in a dance band in the Army. And, yes, I loved playing jazz guitar, but not as a profession, just for fun. You can’t mix the two. I can remember playing steel-string guitar for dances, and it just ruined the sensitivity of your left hand. And I was playing rhythm guitar with big six-string chords all night long. It was a knucklebender!”

    “50 Years on the Planks: Julian Bream Talks About His Life and Work,” Classical Guitar October 1996. Retrieved 4 Mar 24.

    I’ve been working to play Gypsy-Jazz style without a plectrum (guitar pick), so fingerstyle, with fingers and fingernails, which some say is not only unorthodox but impossible – to play in the Gypsy-Jazz style of Django. I use a thick gauge string on a Saga Gitane DG-250M model, which I purchased used not long before the pandemic broke out and then had to quit the group workshops I’d been attending. The thicker strings compensate for the lack of pick. I’ve just always played with my fingers, hardly ever flatpicking. And I’m not playing dance halls these days, more like a lute in an open window.

    Gitane DG-250M
    Concert Ready
    American Gothic
    Django’s Chords
    Guitar Land
    Books referenced in this post.

  • Out of Time

    What will we do with Live at 5 in the new year? The shows began at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and at their peak featured a different host player going live most nights of the week, sharing guitar, songs, stories, and readings (live via the Instagram video venue) to an audience of similarly homebound family and friends of family. The shows ran evenings for about an hour starting at 5. The hosts included, on a rotating schedule, myself, my brothers, a nephew, and over time a few guest hosts and visitors – more family and friends. Shows were home-staged from Portland, Salem, Healdsburg, Ione, Drytown, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. The format was loose and forgiving. Audience clicked on, paused, maybe stayed for the whole show, as people do passing buskers on a sidewalk, and through the Instagram feed anyone tuned in could place comments for the performer and the rest of the audience to read, and many an audience-controlled conversation took off. (Unfortunately, Instagram does not save those conversations – the comments disappear even if the host saves the video to their Instagram feed.) The Live at 5 shows diminished through 2022, timing out as the voluntary pandemic isolations began to lift.

    I played guitar in a neighborhood jazz band for the last couple of years. It was fun, I met some new folks, and learned more about music and the guitar – particularly about playing “in the pocket,” a term that means playing in time, in sync with the other musicians, a skill I’ve never satisfactorily mastered. You might think jazz would be more forgiving, but no. I left the band to concentrate on gypsy jazz guitar, renewing my subscription to Robin Nolan’s “Gypsy Jazz Club,” which includes players from all around the world. One of the features of the club is a “Sunday Club Zoom Hangout” – 8 in the morning my time, but I manage to wake up in time most Sundays, for a Gypsy djass reveille. For the most part, the Hangout hour is devoted to live, short performances by club members.

    “Step in time, step in time
    Step in time, step in time
    Never need a reason, never need a rhyme
    Step in time, we step in time”

    from the song “Step in Time,” lyrics by The Sherman Brothers, in “Mary Poppins,” 1964.

    Time waits for nothing, to begin, “to boldy go where no man [which is to say, everyone] has gone before,” pen in hand, splitting infinitives out of time, rubato, robber of time:

    “For three years, out of key with his time,
    He strove to resuscitate the dead art
    Of poetry; to maintain ‘the sublime’
    In the old sense. Wrong from the start—”

    from “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley” [Part I], Ezra Pound, 1920.

    Anyway, the question I’m entertaining now is whether or not to try to resuscitate an ongoing Live at 5 show. The need for homebound, not to mention amateur, entertainment may have passed for the time being. Still, there developed a core group of loyal listeners, not enough to fill Shea Stadium, or the Ash Grove, for that matter, of course, but would even those few return for a new season? It’s dinner hour, kids are back in school, the work-at-home movement is weakening, and pizza parlors, pubs, and wine bars have reopened, many featuring live entertainment. And the movies are back up and running. But some of us have emerged from the pandemic isolation years eschewing the old forms. We don’t go out anymore. We are aging. We are stepping out of time. We could fill a living room.

    Most of the Live at 5 shows were improvisational, maybe the host wrote down a few notes before going live with some intro comments, checking in with the audience, a few songs, some outro comments. Audience requests were popular. The videos remain on their host’s Instagram, where saved, complete with mistakes and random rambles, unedited. I don’t want to overstate, but I think the shows in the various locales were looked forward to and enjoyed. Where they were not joined live, Instagram followers caught up later.

    My brother Charles, at the height of the show’s exceptional ratings, had some shirts made:

    By the way, none of this post is to espouse Instagram as a preferred tool. But that’s a topic for another post altogether.

    I’m now picturing a Live at 5 Never Ending Tour, maybe with a reading list for the audience to keep in tune:

    John Cage’s “Silence”
    Bob Dylan: “The Philosophy of Modern Song”
    Dunstan Prial: “The Producer – John Hammond and the Soul of American Music”
    Michael Dregni: “Django – The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend”
    Greil Marcus: “Mystery Train”
    “The Real Frank Zappa Book”: Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso
    Alex Ross: “The Rest is Noise”
    Robin D. G. Kelley: “Thelonious Monk – The Life and Times of An American Original”

    But you see how easy it is to get carried away.

    Closing this post with a quote from John Cage, “written in response to a request for a manifesto on music, 1952”:

    instantaneous       and unpredictable

    nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of music
       "  "    "    " hearing "  "  "  "
       "  "    "    " playing "  "  "  "

    our ears are now in excellent condition
    xii/Silence, John Cage, Wesleyan University Press, 1961 (paperback 1973), reformatted somewhat here to fit block.

    Note: This is a Happy Birthday! post for Matt Mullenweg.