The third public picture of Robert Johnson and open source music?

Well, its hard to be interested in the blues without a little enthusiasm about Robert Johnson and its hard to have worked with Java, PHP, MySql etc without a little enthusiasm for Open Source.

This Vanity Fair article (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/11/johnson200811) by Frank Digiacomo is a comprehensive look at the process of discovering and authenticating the newest candidate for a Robert Johnson photo, but more than this it shows some of the nastier end of the exploitative and cutthroat nature of the music business.

Perhaps open source and Creative Commons are the way forward? Here is one such approach to open sourcing music taken by Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081022-ubuntu-community-manager-releases-cc-licensed-metal-album.html.

I am, however, a little sceptical about the ‘Underpants Gnome‘ attitude to turning a profit, this needs fleshing out. Musicians must eat.

October 27, 2008 | Filed Under blues, business, country blues, delta blues, music, open source | Leave a Comment 

New Demo track, Good Times

Good Times is one of the ’straightest’ songs I’ve attempted so far. It has a strong hook, obvious verses and an alt country slide ending. Its here because it was the song that gave birth to ‘Still Water‘ from the last post.

This song relies on what is played to power it whereas Still Water relies more on space and pauses. It plays on a common blues theme of having an upbeat guitar hook with darker lyrics. The dull, bass heavy production does not do this idea any damage. Read more

August 29, 2008 | Filed Under blues, country blues, music | Leave a Comment 

Still Water, another experiment for the ‘I am your’ album

Still Water breaks from the usual instrumentals with a smattering of lyrics and vocals for a bit of colo(u)r.

The following is, hopefully, information about how this got written rather than pretentious.

Inspiration for this track has mainly come from Skip James (wikipedia) and Robert Johnson (wikipedia). I had in mind pauses drawn from the Japanese ‘ma’ concept

Ma
A Japanese term that can mean “interval” or “space” (i.e., ‘a’ tto iu ma; the space it takes to say ‘a’; compare to the English saying “in the blink of an eye”). It is used in music to describe a period of silence. In taiko music, ma is the period between hits on the drum. It is important to appreciate this silence when playing taiko, just as you would appreciate the sound of a hit on the drum. Since ensemble taiko is focused on rhythm, the ma of a piece is critical to adding drama, excitement, and tension. Ma can be a rhythmic rest, or an extended silence, to be broken at the player’s discretion. If the player concentrates on hearing the ma between each hit, in addition to the hits themselves, he or she will create a much more effective and satisfying sound. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko

I first came across this concept reading about Keiji Hino.

If you want to play it either use the payer to the right of this article or go to the album on last.fm (http://www.last.fm/music/mental+neighbo(u)r/I+Am+Your)

August 28, 2008 | Filed Under blues, experimental, music | 2 Comments 

Relationship between Open D and Open G Guitar tunings

I don’t have very much music theory in me so it took a while for me to notice this. One day while tuning from open D to open G and back again I noticed something about their relationship from where my fingers fell on the fret boad. This discovery gave me a great leap forward on the guitar and significantly less retuning.

What I had noticed was that the fingering for tunes in open G was only different when using Open D by virtue of playing them one sting lower. So, if you play a tune in G on the 1st (highest) to the 5th strings you can use the same fingering in D on the 2nd to the 6th strings. Also notice that in each case the ‘different’ string is tuned to a D i.e. The lowest string on the G and the higest string on the D.

There are some adjustment you need to make, especially with a slide or bottleneck since you can end up playing on heavier guage and unwound strings if you use your G knowledge on the D tuning but it is well worth having a go.

Remember as well that Open A is just Open G AND Open E is just Open D tuned up two semi-tones or with a capo on the second fret.

With this knowledge you will find, for example, that many Robert Jonson tunes vary from open G to A and that Mississippi Fred McDowell plays with an Open E (in most of the recordings that I have).

One more revelation was to come, which was to tune the guitar where my voice is naturally pitched and not struggle to sing with a standardised open tuning. In my case I like Open D tuned a semi-tone down to C#/Db.

A bit of digging around in Goggle turned up this excellent video on the subject.

This post was revised and updated on 7th September.

July 14, 2008 | Filed Under blues, experimental, music, theory | Leave a Comment