iJobby

Whilst in the gents today a guy with the nigh-on ubiquitous white ear phones of an iPod in his lugholes walked past me and headed into a cubicle. Now I’m all for personal soundscapes to enliven hum-drum daily activities, but a soundtrack for your dump? What’s on that playlist?

1. Eruption, by Van Halen.  (Double marks for “Brown sound” reference; maybe he’d had a vindaloo the previous night?)
2. Release the Pressure, by Leftfield
3. Push It, by Salt ‘n’ Pepper.  (Not enough fibre in his diet?)
4. Anything by Scouting for Girls (no scatological references, they just irritate the shit out of me)
5. …  ?

There must be others, but it’s time for me to log off.  Arf.

The desirability of age

I’m trying to work out if I like “reliced” guitars.  (For those that don’t know, that’s a guitar that has been artificially aged to look like it’s got 60s mojo.)  This ranges from slightly discoloured pickguards and hardware with a patina of rust, through to looking like a previous owner had acid sweat and sandpaper skin.

Why?  Oh, no reason.

Swing To Bop

Adrian recently linked to Swing to Bop, a weblog about developing jazz guitar technique.  I’ll be following this with some interest, because I still just do not sound jazzy enough for my tastes.  I think what Derek once described as “wallpaper be-bop” is something that I’d like to be able to do, then hopefully move past it into something more interesting.  Anyway, I quite liked this video dealing with improvising over major chords; flat 9s and sharp 5s are two notes that I rarely throw in (unless I switch with H-bomb subtlety to a half-whole diminished scale or the harmonic minor; my knowledge of scales is well beyond what I can do tastefully with them), so it has been fun trying to use them a bit more.  I also like the little legato 4th-minor 3rd-major 3rd move, and it’s yet another example of someone avoiding the fourth.  I think I’ve been using the minor pentatonic for so long now that fourths just don’t sound off to me; my new playing mantra is “stay the fuck off the fourth”.  It’s so tempting a note, though… right there, nestled between the third and the fifth… what harm can it do?