The Fillmore Five World Tour

...or how to circumnavigate the globe from the comfort of your own living room.

Now that we have our home back to ourselves I took some time yesterday evening to reacquaint myself with my acoustic, Blackie. I have to say that she was sounding good. Vibrato was flowing freely, and, possibly due to the inevitable reduction in callus thickness from not playing recently, I felt like I could feel the guitar better. Often when I'm jamming I'll start off plucking notes from an Arabian sounding sextonic scale, which I've blogged about before, and last night was no exception. At some point I decided to head west, segueing into a North American minor blues pattern. Pretty soon I found myself adding in British Blues tonality of the major pentatonic colour notes, as favoured by Mr Eric Clapton. A hop, skip and an arpeggio later and I found myself back on the magic carpet ride of the sextonic. How many Air Guitar Miles did I earn for that trip, eh?

It's come time in the project to s**t or get off the pot, as Tim's Mom says. I've made a couple of potential contacts through the Partysounds website so I'm gonna drop them an email. After all, Summer's here and it's time for dancing in the street.

In other news, I've finally found time to listen to a couple of the albums I've bought recently. A couple of weeks ago, in preparation for his upcoming London show (July 7), I purchased Jason Mraz's "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things". On first listen most of the songs kind of washed over me, leaving no real clue as to the longevity of the album. Stylistically, it's a departure from his early work, following on from his previous offering, "Mr A-Z". The mixes are fuller, the vibe is more laid back. The funky white boy has brought in a horn section! There's a smidgen of Jack Johnson stylee island rhythm here and there. The overall vibe, though, is lounge jazz without the Mraz trademark street corner rappin'. For me, Jason was at his best when it was just him, his guitar and Toca Rivera on congas. It's always difficult to adjust to his more produced releases, but I'm still looking forward to seeing him live as that's really where the boy's character shines through.

I was extremely pleased to have Magic Ship debut album "LoveTel Motel" drop through my letterbox and to find that it's good. Really good, in fact. It's consistently rocks with an upbeat feel good groove. Right from track 1, Magic Ship kicks the door down with "Fly!", a definite crowd pleasing stomper. From there on in the tunes just keep getting stronger and stronger. The album peaks at song number 7 with the title track. The band keep the pedal to the metal for "Love & Glory", bringing it home with "Tumbling & Falling" and "Lifeboats For The Dead". It's a credit to the Magic Ship boys that as Colin Gillman's gruff vocals fade out on track 10 you're ready to hit 'play' and listen to the album over again. If you're looking to hear something new and fresh, go on, buy British! Buy the Magic Ship CD.

I still haven't touched a Tom Petty greatest hits album I bought along with the Jason Mraz CD. I've never really listened to Mr Petty's stuff before, but I have high expectations that I'll like it. We shall see!

Full Of Eastern Promise

What do you need if you can't make it through an Arabian night? Try a sextonic!

I was thinking back to some of the more interesting stuff I learned on my last adult education course and remembered one of the cooler scales that we were taught. In the same way that a pentatonic scale contains 5 notes, the sextonic is made up of 6.

The particular sextonic scale shown below is really great to jam on as almost any combination of notes will give you a fantastic exotic sounding tune.



I've shown the scale in E, with a typical 2 octave run highlighted. Why is E a good choice? Well, if you play the scale starting on the root on the A string then the low E is left free to 'drone' on, instantly adding a bassline and doubling the complexity of the sound. You can even hit the open A, drop down a string and repeat the lower note pattern to add more colour.

If you're looking to break out of the usual scales and modes then a sextonic may be just the ticket.