A little random Sunday morning improve that reminds me a little of the music to one of my favourite video games of all time, Beautiful Katamari, which had just the best soundtrack to boot.
This is partly inspired by #looptober, where people are making small tracker or loop based tunes each day in October. I’m not going to try that, but there’s been some lovely stuff start to trick into my social media feed, like this one by Alison Parrish who made it on her Gameboy, which is what inspired me to try this little loop over what feels like a video-game-esk loop.
This is also me trying to see if I can wing some music theory. The main vamp here here is B7 and A7, which I think means I play in the A Lydian mode. Normally when I try to wield music theory like this is that I then explain what I thought I did to my teacher at my next lesson and they explain to me what I actually did :)
Trying to pull together the two different moondance bass riffs (part one and part two) into one, and then switching between playing dorian over the first part and pentatonic over the second. It’s a bit rough, but the point was trying to just remember when to change between styles and fit everything in rather than thinking too much about what I was actually improvising.
I don’t normally do this sort of sections thing with my looper pedal even though it technically supports it as the UI just a bit cumbersome for that whilst also trying to play.
Today practicing both the second walking bass riff from Moondance, and trying to hit some pointers from my guitar teacher in the improvisation laid over. All very slow as I try to get my fingers to work for that bass line.
Some blues improv over the rhythm from Green Onions by Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Green Onions is a fun rhythm part to play, though the original that part is shared between organ and guitar rather than being a single instrument.
Playing on the opening bass riff from Moondance by Van Morrison. I’m not actually a fan of this song, but my guitar teacher got me to try this as a good gateway to learning walking bass style.
As I slowly bring online older archives, this piece by Led Zeppelin will become something I obviously gravitate towards. I was fairly late to discover Led Zeppelin, despute the fact my Dad was a fan, but I never really appreciated them until I understood more about the context, and now I’m a big fan of most of their work.
I think, just like with Bowie, it’s impossible for me to understand just what Led Zeppelin meant - their sound now is so ubiquitous, but back then it was something that hand’t been heard before and paved the way for heavy rock and heavy metal.
This particular piece was one that got me back into guitar after a long hiatus, seeing Jimmy Page perform it on the film It Might Get Loud:
If you don’t play guitar then then the direct link between what his narration over the top and what he’s playing might not be so obvious, but he’s going from gentle to loud, subtle rhythms to big in your face crunch, with some sitar like melody in the middle, all with just the guitar and the amp, no pedals, not other trickery. The guitar is often seen (and indeed used) as a simple instrument, but if you adjust how you attack the strings, how you play gentle and strong, you can unlock a rich range of sounds without having to use anything else. And just compare the nuance in Page’s playing with my own rendition, how effortlessly he makes it look as he moves his hands around the fretboard, and yet how much effort separates the two of us.
A classic riff from Led Zeppelin’s first album, How many more times?. At times I really wonder if I should have been a bass guitarist, as I love riffs like this.
I’ve been trying to learn the rhythm and melody playing technique a little. My brain really doesn’t like doing both :) This one is from the Improvising Blues Guitar book, in the style of Hubert Sumlin, the guitarist for Howlin’ Wolf - you can kinda hear the structural similarity in the riff to that of Smokestack Lightning.