One More Week To Go

Well, I had my last but one session at WAES (Westminster Adult Education Services) on Saturday. Pretty neat. Went through more chord inversion stuff. I can see them being useful when composing. Had a "D'Oh" moment in class where I suddenly realised that if you have 2 bars of 4 beats then if you're picking out 3 triad notes then 3 into 8 (2 times 4 beats) does not go! Solution: cycle twice through the triad then only play 2 notes (making 8 beats) and start again.

That makes no sense, so here's an example:



While I've got the ol' microphone hooked up, here's the main riff from Cream's "Outside Woman Blues" that I was talking about in previous posts:



It was the last class for one of the guys, J, as he can't make it next week. He got to perform his song a week early! J chose to do a version of Neil Young's "The Needle & The Damage Done". I'm not a huge Neil fan, though I probably should be as I love his stuff with Crazy Horse, so I didn't know the song well.

I was actually surprised by J's performance... in a good way! It wasn't a perfect rendition by any means and J's not the most confident of players, but at times when he lost his place he managed to pick up the beat and keep going. Moreover, he sang whilst playing which always impresses me. That skill is beyond me at this time.

At the end of class we did the email exchange thing... which probably means that the more computer savvy of my classmates will find this blog if they do a search! If you do then hey! Say hi! Hopefully I've not said anything too controvertial about you guys in that past. I'm not going to go back and check as whatever I've said is what I felt at the time. If there's something you can say about me is that I tell it how I see it.

Now, this weekend I was going to do the 'hey, look at my stuff' thing and photograph my equipment (be nice) so that people know what my setup is. However, Tim took the camera with him to his residential weekend, so that ain't happening.

I did, however, run across two photos I snapped a while back... one a loooong while back. I used to want to be a photographer and even had my own darkroom. I could never find anyone to sit for me, though, so I'd do the occasional self-portrait. Judging by the guitar I'm holding, a 40th Anniversary '54 Strat reissue, I'm guessing that I took the photo below somewhere between 1994 and 1996. Do the maths. The Strat was actually a really nice guitar. I sold it. Moron.

Here's the photo, reproduced using my cameraphone...



For comparison I snapped another photo just before Christmas this year of me with my new pride and joy. May I introduce my beeaauutiful Les Paul Standard, 'Red Dog'.



I swear I will NEVER sell this guitar! Only one more week to go and I can play it again! Can't wait!