Virtual Travelogue Day 10, a time to reflect

I now have in my possession the USB containing the first basic "bounce" of the 11 tracks of unlimited genius..............honest, it's ok. The Maestro has initiated early work on guitars, bass and production, adding to my mediocre vocal warblings. I'm now going to take some time to peruse over the songs and lay out a plan of what to do, and add for enhancement, next.

I have both a mixture of excitement, and dread, because the songs will either sound like I envisaged, or they won't sound at all like my intended product.

This is a delicate stage of the process, a time to iron out glitches, mistakes, bad ideas, and to add ideas for additional guitars, voices and some production trickery. You may think "He said that last week" and you'd be correct, but it's taken some time to do the original "bounce".

I sincerely hope we can put something worthwhile together, with better production, and clarity than the last album, although if the songs are to be regarded as better, that would be for others to decide.

As a small aside, just as a matter of interest, I'd like to offer some insight into the Chords that I tend to use and recycle as a matter of routine, mixed up for different songs of course. I always play in Standard Tuning, EADGBE. Some guitar people like to se C,F and G as a foundation to their songs, with A minor thrown in for some variation. I like to use a more obvious pattern of D, A and G, and throw in the E minor option. I'm not limited to those Chords though, I like to use 7's that is, A minor 7, E minor 7, A Major 7, D Major 7 etc. I like to use Suspended Chords as well, most primarily A Sus 4, or A Sus 2. A real guitarist would look at this and say, "Pah, that's easy", and "Why doesn't he like the C or F chords?"

Well the reason for that is that due to worsening pain in my hands brought on by Arthritis, I tend to avoid Barre Chords, and also Chords that require some stretching like C. I cheat with the C Chord and more often than not, I play C Add 9, and do you know what?

I like playing it that way.

When playing F I tend to cheat and play F Major 7 instead, I also have my own version of B minor which is a cheat. It's not that I can't play Barres, it's that my hands have never been supple enough to change from a normal Chord to a Barre quickly enough, I used to put this down to Tendonitis, but now I know it's due to Arthritis.

It also means that I'm unlikely to improve significantly in years to come.

What a fucking pisser.

Anyway, enough of me feeling sorry for myself, onwards and hopefully upwards to better tunes.

Here's pictures of my beautiful guitar collection that I try to use to the best of my ability, for a melodic, melancholic sound that is important to me, every time I hear a real guitarist make them sing, I could cry.

Keep on Folking Up

Tomas de Talavera de la Reina x