Rudi

I gather you dont have that then? baked fish topped with potato? When I was in the US in the late 70s, I was amazed at how much better the food generally was (apart from McDonalds). SInce then the UK food & cooking standard has improved a lot (apart from McDonalds). I was in New York last year. Its roughly even now I'd say. If you think fish pie sounds naff, you should try the following black pudding haggis

Nice response. Thanks to all. I have laid this out with examples to encourage people to try out the method for themselves (theres nothing to lose). I dont expect anyone to reveal their writing as I have. It wasnt easy for me to go public with my examples. But if anyone does give this a try, come back to let us know whether it was productive or not.

yes nicely met. its a change to find a guitar player looking to improve wordcraft. Its what i did (and do) too. see you around Rudi

Tom, ok i just played this through in regular tuning and used your description of fingering for the final chord. that chord is not E7sus4(omit 5). It is F#7sus4-5 you mention a capo and drop tuning. perhaps you didnt allow for the key change for that chord when calling it E7sus4(omit 5)? If I am understanding you right. Your open 1st string should be the identical note to the 2nd string at 5th fret. Is it? I would guess that you may be playing A7sus4-5 instead and need a resolution to it. That would be an A chord (Then maybe a D to end). or... You may be playing D7sus4-5 instead. The resolution would be to follow with D chord. Give it another try and confirm my question if needs be. Rudi

That is not the bass I'm looking for. Unless the flight case can make the jump to the hypermarket? On the subject of Star Wars. Yesterday I was shown a youtube vid which is quite old now, though I hadnt seen it. Its called 'Snatch Wars' and its footage of the film with additional dialogue cut in from 'Snatch'. Lots of rude words!

Hi there Megan, Hope to run into you around here before long. We have lots of lyricists. I even have a go myself now & then. Rudi

Hi LaLa. Nice handle. Welcome Rudi

This is from 2009: My visit to Devon. Jan was on her annual visit to her son in Philadelphia. I decided to try visit Steve and see a bit of Devon. I booked a 2 night stay at the Edgemoor Hotel http://www.edgemoor.co.uk/ near Bovey Tracey. Its called the Edgemoor because its on the Edge of a moor; Dartmoor to be exact. Steve turned up the next morning. He had a bigger hat than me but I didn’t care. He had a more colourful shirt too. That was slightly harder to ignore. Steve insisted on driving. After experiencing some of the lanes we used, I was glad he did. He drove us up to Dartmoor Tor. I think it was Hound Tor. So what is a tor? Well it’s not how Americans spell ‘tour’. A tor is a rocky outcrop, and there are hundreds of them all over the moors. Without another soul in view, we parked up & advanced on the tor. I paused at he base but Steve tore up the tor like a mountain goat. I followed as best I could. My balance is pretty good but Steve’s is excellent. Now and again I had to use my hands as well as my feet, but Steve kept his hands in his pockets. All the way up I was wondering how the hell I was going to get down again. The last little bit (the summit) meant leaping across a cleft. I may have done it ok, but wasn’t prepared to risk getting wedged down there if I didn’t. Steve of course did it without breaking stride. Once at the top, he stood there silhouetted against the horizon like some neolithic athlete scanning the landscape for his next meal. Dartmoor blows everyone away. I am not talking figuratively. The weather can be pretty fierce. It changes constantly, as does the sky and the light. It’s also quite appealing. Its as if the dramatic landscape needs dramatic weather to set it off properly (complement it). I was relieved to find that descending the tor was a lot easier than I imagined. A couple more people turned up as we were leaving. The bridge. We discovered (well, Steve discovered) a bridge that appears in a lot of pictures of Dartmoor. We decided to sketch it. Steve carefully drew one pillar whereas I attempted the entire thing using the whole page of A4. Steve’s sketch was classically figurative. It had enough detail to form the basis of a painting. By contrast; my sketch was altogether more radical, wild & aesthetically challenging. Steve glanced at it, then looked up and did a 360 degree scan of the watercourse. “What bridge are you drawing then Rude?” At this point I decided to get a picture of the pair of us to mark the occasion. We would stand atop of the larger bridge. I clamped my camera to a road sign with a gorilla-pod and set the self timer to 10 seconds. I eventually got the shot set up properly. Unfortunately the shutter release button is alongside the on/off switch. I switched the camera off. I then repeated the exercise only to switch the camera off again. OK, it was going to be third time lucky. This time the shot was properly set up, focused and composed. All I had to do was trip the shutter release & clamber up onto the bridge alongside Steve. I did. The camera was blinking as it performed the count down. There we were leaning on the wall striking a casual pose. With 2 seconds remaining on the self timer, Steve’s hat blew off. He chased it down the path & the pic I got captured the moment of panic nicely! The trouble I think is that Steve’s hat was too big for all practical purposes.

Some of you longer in the tooth will remember Steve. He was very active around here once and a right hand man to John for quite a while too. I had arranged to visit a music shop in Exeter. We decided to meet up there in the city. I drove down from Portsmouth (3 hour drive) and he took the Train up from Torquay. I phoned him when I parked. Where are you? Dunno. Where are you? Not sure. Lets meet by the Cathedral. I finally found the Cathedral in howling wind & driving rain. I walked all round the place and didn’t see him. I entered the building. Once in I couldn’t get out the same way! Steve didn’t seem to be there. Once I found an exit I called him again. Where are you? Under some scaffolding. Well you’re not under the same scaffolding I’m looking at. I looked around and saw him waving from across the green. He was wearing a bigger hat than mine (damn!) We exchanged hostilities and had a bit of lunch in a large Inn by the town centre. As we waited for the food, Steve actually handed me a card. I was touched. I had no idea he knew of my birthday last week. I opened it. Inside was a Christmas card. After this we moseyed down to the music shop. We set about trying lots of guitars. At the end of this text is a brief account of 3 of them. We kept this up most of the afternoon before deciding to head back home. Before leaving, we had our photos taken inside ProjectMusic. The next day, Steve sent me copies of the pics. My return message was: Got the pics. Pretty good but I’m pretty sure you have used Photoshop to make me look older, uglier and fatter. How I laughed! Now that I’ve settled down again can you please post the unmodified ones? Thanks awfully. His reply was: By the way! You'll notice how devastatingly handsome and debonair I look in those photos! And young and slim and handsome! You will have noticed that he didn’t deny it?! The quick account of some guitars we tried. Godin Kingpin: 2nd hand. Great condition. Matt black electric acoustic. Playability: Absolutely superb. A pleasure to play. Great action and smooth silky feel. Its light and comfy too. Steve gave it a definite thumbs up. Sound: Indifferent. Not particularly loud acoustically. When amplified we experimented with volume & EQ for several minutes. Incrementally increasing the bass, mid & treble in small increments and in different proportions. Not once were we rewarded with a good sound. It wasn’t a bad sound. It was just uninteresting. It most certainly had no jazz tone credentials at all. Signal processing would certainly improve things, but it’s not a gigging guitar IMO. Even at low volume it was feeding back. For me at least then, it was not something I could consider either as a working nor a fun instrument. It doesn’t matter how well it plays, if it has no tone to commend it, it may as well be made out of cardboard. Shame too. It looked nice. * Ltd EC-401VF (Les Paul copy). Chunky & not far off the weight of a Les Paul. Also similar is the all mahogany construction and 24.75 scale. Seymour Duncan PUs are a nice touch. Not at all bad. Coped with the scale better than I thought. Playability: pretty good Sounds: Pretty good also. It looks every inch a Les Paul right down to the sunburst finish & flamed maple top. In my hands it’s a foreigner, but as a multi-cultural guitarist and an EQ opportunities employer, I celebrate diversity. Steve took to it like a duck to water. He’s of the Gibson school of course. Fender Mexican Strat. HSS configuration. To my way of thinking, if it’s got a humbucker on, it aint a Strat. As a former long standing Fender user, I found myself far less tolerant of diversity here. It felt just as I remember though. The fingerboard may have been slightly nicer than my old maple neck, and the string tension was kinder too. Otherwise it was the same old girl I dumped in ’97. She sounded gorgeous though. They all sound lovely. Thats about it. The last time Steve and I met up was in 2009. I have found a copy of the account which I probably posted up before. I'll re-post it in the next message. I hope this picture works ok here...

ahhh... but it might be more calming than the same song in 4/4. Great project for a musical aural scientist

In the 90's when I was making computer music, I made a tune called '16 drop'. So called because it was organised as 16 beats to the bar, but I dropped the 16th to make it 15 beats only. I used the usual 'tricks' to make it sound as if it was still really 16 long. The effect was quite compelling, and energetic.

Thats given me a lot to do. It's too late now. I will look up your links tomorrow Mike. I went to Devon yesterday, met up with Steve Perrett. We had lunch, played guitars and caught up. I did a lot of driving (for me). About 6 hours.

Yikes! I was considering using myhermes as it seemed to work by using a network of close by local shops. I'd better look into it a bit deeper. Thanks for the heads-up Mike.

It helped you. That's great. But that cracking the code thing would annoy me I'm afraid. I dare say its the presentation, but it looks like the very same misguided fixation that I was talking about in my last post.

Great. I dont know if it can work for everyone, but I would encourage anyone with writers block to try it. There have been some complimentary responses on the Lyric Writing Creatively thread. But I posted it up as a workable method of tapping into creativity, so I hope it can be of practical use to someone. It was difficult to post it because the thought processes involved are so personal, but if I hadn't used examples, it might not have been taken as seriously.

Its not insurance for delivery so much as insurance against damage. I also meant that if there is a problem with the item and have to return it, I incur a lot of extra shipping costs. I'm not aware of horror stories about uk couriers. The only problem I get is when they knock & run, meaning dont wait for you to answer the door before dropping a card through the letter box and returning the parcel to the depot. What have you heard Mike?

they are separate questions.

I tried it back in the studio again today. It was a little better with the plastic off the pickups. Still that one niggle though. Everything works fine but with both pickups selected, the vol & tone controls do not work independently. So this restricts fine adjustment. On Tuesday, I am handing this together with the Hofner Archtop over to Simon the luthier for set ups.

I concur with that. I suppose that means you can cross the border & pick it up cheaper. And not pay any extra when crossing back across the border. I had looked at buying from the US on ebay as there are some respected traders regularly offering interesting stuff. But... Then after the shipping costs (and insurance), when it gets to the uk there is 3% import duty to pay and also 20% vat (value added tax). Oftimes this will still work out cheaper than buying at home, but the rub is that any problems (returns) will wipe out that advantage. Thats why I was happy to have got the Deuce from Germany. As a fellow EC state, the cost included uk tax and there is no import duty. Anything over a certain amount is free shipping too. They have bought in more TSB Deuces now so they are not running down stock. So I cant work out why these guitars are so much cheaper there. Thomann prices are constantly fluctuating so I imagine they are exchange rate index linked.

If only those websites that try to identify songs that you sing worked. They dont for me. I dont get anything remotely like what Im looking for. Good idea though. A lot of good ideas dont work. That includes most of mine too.

BTW James, The 'process' I spoke of in post #4 is explained with examples in a separate thread called Lyric Writing Creatively http://forums.songstuff.com/topic/40695-lyric-writing-creatively/ on this forum

This is one from July 2013 and it produced/informed a lyric on the 18-Feb-2015. START: Potatoes are brown until they get washed. Wash the potatoes and turn the clinging earth to mud. Let it trickle away to wherever mud goes. Where does the mud go? Into a system of pipes until it reaches the sea. Does seaweed use mud? Who would win in a fight? King Edward of Jim Kelp? I love the way the wave sway on the seashore when I pass the shore at noon. I would pass that way more often if the opportunity would present itself. What is the attraction of the sea? As children we throw stones into it. Ancient stones and pebbles. Rounded by the washing. Washing the corners off and clean until the stones are round and comfy to hold before throwing them into the massive stretch of brine again. Skip a stone across the water. Let it fly for once. If you are a kid, yould throw the potatoes in the sea too. It would confuse the potato. It would confound potato logic. Any and all vegetable carbs became confounded by the ocean. I used to eat potato soup on Fridays. My wife would make it every week. Its Friday now and I aint eating potato soup. I’m not happy. Bring me potato soup again darling and I promise to notice whateverthehell it is I didn’t notice before. I now notice the curtains. I now notice the floor, most of all though I think I notice the door. :END AFTERTHOUGHTS: (12 minutes) Potatoes. A rhyming challenge? How about leeks? I am not eating leeks today and I don’t like it. Because I aint too happy when I aint eating leeks Pie / by buy cry dry die fly fry guy high lie my nigh sigh try tie why 1st draft (30 minutes) NOT reproduced here 18-02-2015 A LYRIC: (about 75 minutes). it will stay in this form until I’m ready to use it. 18-02-2015 Friday Fish Pie 2ND REVISION I used to eat fish pie on Friday. My wife she made it just for me Its Friday now and I aint eating fish pie. And I’m not happy. I’m not happy like I should be I got a bad feeling that won’t go away, and I used to be so carefree I used to eat fish pie ‘til the 4th of July, and now the fish pie is eating me. I used to love to see the way the breakers, rise & break upon the shore, Due to circumstance, give me the chance to pass along that way some more but my feet got wet and I ruined my shoes, they used to be number 9s and now they’re a number 2 now I got sand in between my toes, and everywhere I go the sand goes too and all really I needed was my Friday fish pie. Yes all I needed was my Friday fish pie. Will you come back home again darlin’, every day I miss you more. I promise to notice WHATEVER-THE-HELL-IT-WAS, I never noticed before. Cause now I notice the closed curtains, and now I notice the mess on the floor, But most of all, most of all, I think I notice the door. Well I know I didn’t always listen, when the TV set was on So why blame me and not the TV, when it was you that turned the TV on And I know you tried tell me something, and I started to listen to you But you said that was it, and packed up & quit, before the football was halfway through But did you once think about my Friday fish pie? No you didn’t think about my Friday fish pie. 18-feb-2015 RZS This last version will change again when it’s cobbled together with some music. So far there is none planned. Friday Fish Pie: thoughts. The redneck (is how I think of the narrator) drove his wife away and never understood anything except for his loss. The fish pie ended on the day his wife’s independence (the 4th of July). Ok, that was the inside of my head for a short while. Well done if you lasted this long. Rudi

Lyric Writing Creatively (post #2 will show a complete lyric) Now, in my opinion, the point of all this is to allow your subliminal thoughts to emerge. Some of the best advice I ever came across concerned writing fiction. It works beautifully for lyrics too. It is simple and this is how it works: 1/ The first thing you have to do is to write. Response: Huh? Write what? I cant write before I have thought. Yes you can. Don’t just stare at an empty page and shrug your shoulders, just start to write. It doesn’t matter if it’s all nonsense. Start writing and keep going. I am going to do that now. 19-02-2015 START 14.28pm (its windy outside and tarpaulins are flapping about) Brief but feeble. Covers are lashed down. The wind tries to lift them but they are secure. Wind is persistant. Wind is a power not to be underestimated. Wind is patient. Patience is virtuous and virtue is a limited commodity in santa Barbara. The car was open top. The wind doubled to sensation of speed along the desert road. Desolation looked pretty that day. Who’ld have thought? Quite soon the wind changed and we outran it giggling and shouting. It would be all the same if it were dark or cold. The honeymoon was all that mattered for a few hours. Me and Kate. Kate and me. Us. 14.32pm STOP (I was interrupted before I had finished) Subliminal thoughts: Bert Jansch’s Santa Barbara Honeymoon album. Wind taking on the eastern attributes of water. Kate. Resumed 14.46pm (someone here had to face riding home in the rain without full weather gear) Futuristic sumo guy on a bike. Hi vis jacket. Hi vis nappy. Riding on salted roads braving the wind driven rain again and again. He’ll never beat the wind. Windcheaters should be prosecuted or should they? Who’s being cheated anyway? Any and all and nearly every mothers son and daughter’s choice will out a villain in the end. Happy ever after, after the rain. And the rain only relents when the wind concurs this afternoon. For ever disqualifies never. Ever & never are false words because they are relative and relatives. Outlaws if you please. Please phone before I have to move away from the phone. The phone is here. The phone is now. In an hour it may be too late anyhow. You know you should, but theres many a slip twixt thought and phone. Phone n thought my polly. I did all of this parrot fashion. I never tire of parrots and they are always in fashion. When time fashioned a parrot, the parrot became a prisoner. A prize in flesh and flesh in a cage. Not even time off for good behaviour. Is that what they mean when they say ‘doing bird’? Charlie Parker was at least dead before his sound was imprisoned in vinyl. No he wasn’t. He consented and never relented unless he repented upon his undone bed. Parrot Lives! Bird Lives! You’ll never imprison a quail in a cage even though they are easier to catch than parrots. Maybe the quali has it easier? A shot gun blast from the overprivelidged puffers in weekend tweed and guffaws. A round of bored shouts to rouse the beaters and never a parrot in sight. 15.05pm END Subliminal thoughts: Hunting. Breeding. Class. Involuntary movement and providence. Bebop. John Coltrane. Polly. The penguin report (something else I had written). OK so this is the process

Writing processes can be liberating. There is one I always wanted to try & have not done yet. Oddly its little like what I used to try as a young new writer. Quite simply, leave the words ‘til last, and make the melody as fully complete as possible before attempting lyrics. This was the example given between the collaboration of Robert Hunter & Phil Lesh when writing ‘Box Of Rain’. Both were interviewed about the way they worked on the song during the Classic Albums series TV show. This episode concerned ‘Anthem to Beauty’ – Grateful Dead. (a film by Jeremy Marre) Phil LESH (music): Bob HUNTER (words): From Classic Albums: American Beauty: LESH: (On "Box of Rain"): The lyrics came about in an unusual way. This was the first time I had written a song in a long time, and I had worked out the melody and the chords, and in fact the whole song, from beginning to end—introduction, coda, and everything—and I put it on a tape and gave it to Hunter. HUNTER: He'd just written these lovely changes and put 'em on a tape on a tape for me, and he sang along (scat singing of melody)—so the phrasing was all there, I think I went through it two or three times, writing as fast as I could, and that song was written. I guess it was written for a young man whose father was dying. LESH: And at that time, my dad was dying of cancer, and I would drive out to visit with him, in the hospital, and also at the nursing home he spent his final days in, and after Bob gave me the lyrics, on the way out there I would practice singing the song. I sort of identified that song with my dad and his approaching death. The lyrics that he produced were so apt, so perfect. It was very moving, very moving for me to experience that during the period of my dad's passing. I felt like singing it in other situations similar to that since then. Extract (Box Of Rain) “Maybe you're tired and broken Your tongue is twisted with words half spoken and thoughts unclear What do you want me to do to do for you to see you through A box of rain will ease the pain and love will see you through Just a box of rain - wind and water - Believe it if you need it, if you don't just pass it on Sun and shower - Wind and rain - in and out the window like a moth before a flame”

I was seduced by the low action and thin necks also, and Its taken me some years to put it into perspective. I’m not at all fast with mainstream Jazz because it gives me too much to think about. Just thinking of the changes & passing tones makes my mind race. It’s a criticism I used to lay on certain players of the past when I would say ‘they are playing faster than they can think’. If playing something modal, I can play fast enough to satisfy me. I have seen some of the really fast players that are quite amazing, but I don’t feel compelled to try to compete with them. Here’s why: It’s possible to go too fast. At which point you are adding nothing to the music. The aforementioned Steve Perrett once introduced me to a version he found of ‘Country Boy’, the Heads,Hand&Feet song by Albert Lee (I searched for it online but found zilch). He seemed very excited about this cover version and wanted me to hear it. It was being played too fast. It sounded ridiculous. You couldn’t hear most of the notes. Mark, the Alto Sax player in Blown Out, plays a fill in one song that is completely out of tune. One note he should play is outside the range of his sax, so he plays one a semitone down from it (which should sound terrible) but you cant hear it. Not once in 15 years have I noticed this bum note. I only know about it because he told me. When I used to teach fingerpicking, I would make the same point to a student who wanted to blitz through everything he learned. I would play a passage at the correct speed and then increase the tempo until it became laughably incomprehensible. This is not as difficult as it may sound. It’s much easier to fingerpick fast than it is to solo fast. But the same principle applies to all music. Sometimes Simon, our drummer will have a ‘fast’ night. He raises the tempo of virtually all the songs in our set. It ruins the groove completely. Sometimes he needs reminding of this. That is why, so far as regular soloing is concerned, I deem myself to be ‘fast enough’. I’m not as fast as some of these youngsters, but they are competing with each other on a technical level. They have already left the aesthetics of the music behind them. It’s what separates gymnastics from ballet, diagrams from fine art and nutritionists from epicures. If you have reservations about what I say, then try this: Find a piece of computer music or a keyboard demo. Increase the tempo gradually and spot the point at which the music becomes spoilt. It won’t take very long. Having made my point, I have to admit to getting swept along by the speed pixie on too many occasions. It’s usually when I am running short of inspiration, I then fall back on technique. I regard such instances as personal failures and use them to impel my practice time to be more productive. This is why I am less concerned these days with super fast low action sets up, thin necks and low string tension. I enjoy the sound of the Camps Spanish guitar. It has a high action but once the strings are brought to fret level with a finger bar, it’s easy to play (until moving to another neck position). The Hofner Archtop still has those larger gauge strings on which makes string tension too high. I have to use more hand pressure, and it can be tiring, but I can still play it fast enough. So what am I missing really? Any guitar that has playability issues like this will take time to adjust to. But you can adjust to them and it wont take all that long either. A few hours at most. Two or three practice sessions tops. Rudi