Mark's Log of Learning

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143

And still I persist with I’m On Fire. As an exercise to focus on clean shifts between the E string and the A string, I’ve been rapidly cycling through a three-bar sequence:

E C#m A

This also has the effect of practicing the hurried change from E to C#m in what can only be called ‘the middle seven’.

Every day I play the whole song through repeatedly. It’s working. At times I feel like I am actually creating music rather than just playing the guitar. There’s a groove to it. I find myself nodding along as if I were listening to someone who can actually play.

Another thing that has been improving is my finger pressure, which is much lighter now.

I’m also still working on Shake Some Action. I haven’t quite got the introduction yet, and usually mess up the switch to the chiming sequence that follows it, by not finding the A string.

I’ve been having fun with the introductory riff to Rebel Rebel.

Nothing much else to report.

Last month, Angine de Poitrine; this month, Fender lawsuit. Has the online music scene become monomaniacal recently? (answer: yes). Everyone feels duty-bound to say ‘I wasn’t going to do a video on this’, but then they do.

I wasn’t going to include my latest ear training results, but then…

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144

Last night I started to think about 13th chords again, and in particular, why things seems to get vague at that level of chord extension. Rather than trying to figure it out from first principles, which is my preferred method, this time I started looking at what others had to say about these esoteric harmonic entities. J himself has a lesson that touches on this:
https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/blues-chord-extensions-bl-206
I think I get it now, but it’s not what I expected.

I was correct in thinking that a 13th chord is the notes of degree
1 . 3 . 5 . 7 . 9 . 11 . 13
in a scale. Once we go up to the 9th and beyond, however, we’re in a higher octave. If we lower these notes so everything is in one octave, 9 becomes 2, 11 becomes 4, and 13 becomes 6. What we end up with is notes of degree
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Yes, a 13th chord is every note of the scale played at once! This is where things morph from harmonics to culture, from science to art, from law to taste, from theory to practice. Very few 13th chords are actually played straight - all seven notes in ascending order. Obviously a guitar can only play six notes anyway, but that is not why 13th chords are usually modified. It’s more a case of choosing what notes actually sound right in a given context. And when notes are dropped, raised or lowered, the names of the resultant chords get rather long and complicated, and often transcribers instead just write C13, or something that alludes a bit more closely to the actual chord. That accounts for the ambiguity that derailed me last time I looked at this.

So although a 13th chord technically has seven notes, some fingerings (including those demonstrated by J) have only four or five notes. Some even exclude the root which, in my opinion, would suggest they need a new name, but who am I to doubt the maestri?

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145

I had a cold over the last few days and, as usual, my voice dropped a few tones. To alleviate the tedium of being sick, one of the things I did was test my temporarily deepened vocal range. It turned out to be A1 to A4: three octaves. A4 sounds like a horrible squeak, or even a screech, in my present state of health. A1 sounds rough, and I could probably never use it, but three or four semitones above this was useful.

I tackled another old favourite, White Man in Hammersmith Palais by The Clash. When this song was released, I thought it was brilliant, and I bought the single. It helped cement this band as my favourite. It was punk, it was reggae, it was funny, it was plaintive, it was social and musical commentary, and seemed to come from nowhere. With the exception of Complete Control (which shares the despair and indignation), this was my favourite Clash song. Yes, I have used the word ‘favourite’ three times in one paragraph; that shows just how carried away I am.

Intro

A / E / G / A / G / A /

Verse

A E C#m D    x 2
A E F#m D
A E A   /

Chorus

A / E / G / A /
G / A / G / / /
A E A E      x 2

Middle (harmonica solo over modified verse)

A E A   D    x 2
A E F#m D 
A E A   /

Outro

A E A E      x 6

Order of Song (US album version, perhaps?)

I V V C V V M V V V V O

Just as when I was learning Complete Control, I am surprised at the complexity of the guitar work. The other thing I never noticed before is the effectiveness of Mick Jones’s backing vocals. So while it’s a relatively easy song to learn, you need to be ready to switch styles quite rapidly if you want to do a decent job of recreating the song’s unique identity. And, my god, there are plenty of bad examples on YouTube!

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146

I plod on. I have come to realise that one has good and bad days with guitar, as with most things. Like a footballer who has a string of good games, and is thought of as being ‘in form’, a guitarist with a string of good practice sessions starts to feel like everything is beginning to come together. Some time later, the poles reverse, and a string of bad days can make one question the value of the whole enterprise. I’ve had both, repeatedly. Underneath all the random noise I sense an upward trend, however, and that’s good enough. It’s odd that it has taken me so long to wake up to this.

Today YouTube fed me this link:

So it seems that, four decades after my synth, the Ensoniq ESQ-1, was created, Cherry Audio has produced a software emulation of it. Why, after all this time? On the one hand, it is a great synth, but a superb emulation was created just a few years ago by Arturia:

Admittedly, Arturia’s emulation was of the Ensoniq SQ-80, which was the upgraded version of the ESQ-1, but that begs a further question: why recreate the ESQ-1 and not the SQ-80?

What I like about the Cherry Audio emulation is that it can output sysex files that my original hardware synth can read. The Arturia emulation doesn’t do that because it takes everything to a level of complexity well beyond the scope of the hardware. For this reason, I am tempted to grab a copy. My immediate concern is that it will absorb all my attention at a time when I am trying very hard to concentrate on guitar.

The Cherry Audio software is $69, I’ve bookmarked it. Arturia’s is currently €149; I’ve had a copy for a few years now.

Please forgive that digression into non-guitar territory. I don’t know what came over me.

My current project, aside from trying to play guitar better, is to try to build a preset in my Pocket Master that maximises sustain. This goal came to me after seeing this Danny Sapko video about Mmemosa Daniels. In particular, the note at 1:29:

This guitarist’s video turns out to contain AI-generated, or enhanced, audio. So, trying to make a (very simple) effects box produce a sound which is completely untethered from reality may be a form of madness, but this is how ingenious breakthroughs are made! I’ll report on my results anon. NB: I’m using Luca Pisanu’s approach as a starting point:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FukqC6EUlNg