I had a fascinating guitar lesson last night.  Tony Guitar began to uncover for me the remarkable depth of the diminished scale.

My mind was blown.

The diminished scale is a weird conglomerate of four major triads and their minors.  It’s pretty much like Super Smash Brothers for music.  You’ve got the musical equivalent of Link, Donkey Kong, Pikachu, and Mario all fighting on screen ALONGSIDE their respective enemies.  All eight characters fighting for dominance in this chaotic mess that smells diminished.  All the while hammers, banana peels, and poke balls fall from the sky with a pattern that continuously repeats itself every three half steps.

CRAZY

Tony told a story.  He was walking through the halls of Wesleyan where he teaches and he heard a girl totally owning a piano piece in one of the practice rooms.   I don’t recall the piece that Tony referenced, but apparently it has an aggressive progression of these major and minor characters.  As this girl pounded through the series, Tony popped his head into the practice room.

Tony: “That sounds great!  do you know what you’re playing?”
Girl:  ”Yes it’s [something or other] by [so and so]”
Tony: “Yes, but did you know that’s all from a single scale?”
Girl:  ”What?!”

So Tony showed her the diminished scale and pointed out that the last eight measures of music she’d played all come from a single diminished scale.  The girl was awestruck.

Later, her piano teacher stopped into Tony’s office:  ”Tony… did you musically molest my student?”

Ha!

Kurt: How is korea treating you
Mike D: I have learned that a black belt is useless against jetlag
Kurt: Oh? I recently got a black belt in procreating

Oooooooooooh man!

Congratulations Kurt and Shauna!

Last night I had my guitar lesson with Tony Guitar. My lessons have been particularly fun lately because he’s pushed me to start writing my own songs. Over the past few weeks, I wrote two songs – both jazzy in nature.

One of those two songs had a particularly colorful chord progression with the bass tumbling down beneath a thick B minor blues. When writing songs, it’s really easy to inadvertently steal sections of other songs and my B13, A13, G13, F#7#5, sequence sounded very Ray Charles to me. Specifically, it sounded like the turnaround in Charles’ cover of ‘Oh, what a beautiful morning.’ But this happens all the time, and while Tony Guitar is an excellent guitarist, I couldn’t imagine him noting the similarity in this particular chord pattern.

What I had forgotten, was that Tony Guitar toured with Ray Charles. Sure enough, as soon as I played him my tune he commented “this sounds a lot like the stuff I used to play with Ray Charles.”

But like the epic musician that he is, Tony Guitar didn’t frown upon this similarity; instead he started playing Ray Charles’s style licks over my chords and daaaaaaaang – it was remarkable.

I ache for the day when I can play with half as much skill as my guitar teacher.

Pete Wilk had a really great comment about the rock-less nature of the solo that I posted yesterday.

“Sounds cool and mellow to me, but WHERE’S THE ROCK!”

It’s true. That solo was decidedly not rock.

Why focus on jazz? The plan here is for me to develop a mastery of the finer nuances of music theory and then crank the distortion and melt the faces of the world population.

At a recent Jazz show my roommate Kevin said it best regarding percussion styles, though the same holds true for guitar (paraphrased):

“I think the differences between rock and jazz drumming are similar to the differences between algebra and calculus.”

Once I get my jazz integral on, you can bet your natural exponent that I will determinant the crap out of your rocktangular matrix.

I’ve uploaded my latest recording of a solo that I wrote over the standard Rhythm Changes chord progression. While it may not sound like much to non-guitarists, there are a couple really cool things going on in this solo that I’m quite proud of. Most specifically, there are a handful of spots in the solo where I play over altered dominant chords (sharping or flatting the 5th or 9th of a chord).

The complexity of these altered dominant chords carries over into the soloing, providing much more opportunity for freedom and depth. I’m still working on which notes are considered acceptable and which unacceptable, so it’s even more of a challenge to have it all come together into something graceful.

Feel free to listen and let me know what you think.

rhythm-changes.mp3

This year’s Christmas was full of fun surprises, not least of which was some cash to aid in the purchase of a loop pedal for my guitar. Last night, I purchased said loop pedal at Joe Riff’s, a small establishment in Middletown CT.

A loop pedal is an expensive tool considering its apparent limited complexity. The goal is simple: provide a pedal that will allow recording and overdubbing of tracks in an easy to navigate system. While conceptually elementary, this pedal will prove an invaluable tool for my practicing. Now, I will be able to lay down a chord track and then solo over myself without having to wire my guitar through my computer and switch back and forth between keyboard and instrument.

Recently, Tony Guitar has been giving me songs with reduced chord structures. For example, the song might call out a Db, but Tony wants me to embellish the chord with additional notes so that it has a more complex elaborate sound. That Db might sound more interesting if it were played as a Db6 or a Db6add9. When I customize a song with these embellished chords, without someone else to play the parts I have no means of hearing how well it all comes together.

PROBLEM NO MORE.

My new loop pedal allows me to record my exciting embellished chords and play over them! How perfectly convenient!

Look out 2010, I’m going to rock you like a hurricane.

There’s a fair correlation between musical success and mental eccentricity. Axl Rose, Nick Drake, and Fiona Apple are classic anguished musicians, but there are other examples of persons less tortured who simply seem to see things that the rest of us don’t. Tom Waits, Jack White, Leonard Cohen, the list goes on.

I think all of us would expect that a visit to any musical higher education establishment would reveal a wide assortment of genius and vibrant mental individuality.

This weekend, after extended guitar practice, I had an idea. Perhaps it isn’t necessarily a uniquely wired brain that triggers musical majesty, but instead the study of music that gives rise to mental peculiarities.

Music practice is an odd bird. The thousands upon thousands of hours of excessive repetition, competition, self-criticism, and solidarity associated with a day of practice might tip the scales away from psychological normalcy. Or, at a minimum, generate an odd atmosphere for child development.

I’m not saying this situation is unhealthy, just distinctive. I would love to hear comments from the professional musicians amongst us. Alicia? Sarah T? what do you think?

Do you feel that your music practice changed your personalities? Or perhaps your unique personalities made you successful within the arts?

On Sunday, the might of my Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier amplifier dropped a notch from face-melting to face-simmering.

Predictably, we inhabitants of the House of Rock gather in the living room on a somewhat regular basis to engage in musical rockery. With Kevin at the drums and Shaun and I working the guitars, we tend to generate totally rockin loud music.

Recently, we were playing around with Them Bones by Alice in Chains. I’ve been encouraging Kevin, a recent recruit to the drums, to try some off-time tunes and this one seemed like the ultimate choice. In Them Bones the verses consist of ear crushing distortion in 7/8 time over an involved, yet straightforward, drum rhythm.

I was in the middle of cranking out second inversions (the most brütal of the inversions), when my Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier suddenly cracked and buzzed with a drone that can only be likened to the desperate bleat of a dying mule. Deep within the depths of its holy sanctum, my Mesa Boogie suffered a blown vacuum tube.

The vacuum tube is the heart of the amplifier. Its life force. Its passion.

Without this particular vacuum tube it was all my little amplifier could do to sputter out folk songs at low volumes. Praise heaven I didn’t lose more tubes! I heard that Slash once lost two tubes mid-concert only to find his November Rain solo sounding alarming similar to the chorus of Honky Tonk Badonkadonk. The Horror! Worse, rumor has it that the Jonas Brothers purposefully play with three blown tubes. The Shame!

Replacement of this vacuum tube stands at the top of my to-do list.