Strumming

I found a new book. Or rather, I was digging through the bijillions of guitar books I have and found one that I hadn't worked through before. It's written by a Russ Shipton and it's very nice.

There are several aspects of the book that seem to be working well for me. First thing is that it has whole sections on strumming. This is such a remedial topic, yet it's a big gap in my training. There are some weekend players who really only strum and it's something I have only a "theoretical" understanding of. The Shipton book has a number of examples of pieces to be played with all sorts of strums that I don't know. I feel like I've really made some progress on this.

Another aspect of the book that I've found really pleasant is that I know a lot of the music. Most of the pieces that are included are old rock songs from the 60s and 70s. This is really nice. I've found books before with "popular" music, but usually it's music that I either don't know or don't like. This book has lots of pretty stuff, lots of familiar stuff.

I think I mentioned this in an earlier post, but it really helps for me to know the music I'm playing to have a picture(?) in my mind of how the piece sounds.

I do have to admit that there is one shortcoming with the book. It includes a CD, which is very nice, but the version of the music on the CD is i) electric, not acoustic, and ii) includes lead parts that make it hard to hear the rhythm part for pieces where you're supposed to learn the rhythm part.

Classical Gas

I found tab for an oldie, Classical Gas, and have been working on it. It's probably way beyond my abilities, but it's such a pretty piece.

By the way, most of the tab versions I found on the web attribute the thing to Eric Clapton, but a check of iTunes shows that he never recorded a version of it. I finally found that the famous acoustic guitar version is by Mason Williams and there are a number of references on the web to how it's been misattributed to Clapton.

Musicality

I feel like I can get pretty good at hitting the notes for various pieces I practice, but that doesn't seem to entail that they sound like music.

I believe this is called musicality, but I'm not sure. What seems to help most is songs that I actually sing. Singing is not something I enjoy or am good at, but I find that if I at least hum along with a piece it sounds much more like music.

I suppose that could just be to my ear, that singing makes a piece sound more musical to me, but to no one else.