Tell the tale

Dream:

I was in a car wreck and had whiplash for 5 years. I had stopped playing guitar. I had lost the function of my left arm and I was in chronic spasm pain and depression. My soul left me for a few years. Somewhere in year 3 I started coming back to life. My hand on the left was weak and the arm had pain coming from the neck. I had come to the place where I understood that I would never play again. All the while I became a hoarder of music equipment and instruments. There were a number of medical people involved one of which was a Dr that teaches people with this to live with pain. Some of what we did was mental states of relaxation and concentration. Some was the opposite.
During this time I moved into the knowledge that pain was not limiting me in terms of function. The lack of use of the arm and really the left side in general caused atrophy but other than that the reason I didn't lift my arm over my head was because it hurt not because I could not do it. I had allowed the pain to stop me short. Its funny now. I'm noticing it now and I had blocked it until this moment. We started using audio to relax me but these sessions were distracting because there was a voice on there too and I didn't like the guy saying "take a deeeeeeep breathhhhhh.. nowwww let it outttttttt slowwwwwww.. Over and over. The sounds were cool though some music and some just sound scapes. I thought that I could do a better job at creating a relaxing audio track. I had a Washburn solid body acoustic. I still could not even hold the guitar at that point. I had not played for several years. I plugged it up into a Quadraverb GT reverb rack mount and went stereo direct to a cassette tape player. I did not have a volume peddle. I turned the volume on the guitar completely down. Set the reverb on a very long delay. I laid the guitar flat on my lap sitting in a chair. One hand on the volume holding a pick. The other touching the places I could get harmonics and pressing chords upside down and backwards playing only notes that would sound appropriate for the prior note played. The sounds you hear are the delay only signal and the actual notes played a second or two prior to what you hear. Each stroke and pluck of the string was only done while the volume was off. As soon as I hit a note I faded in by bringing the volume up on the guitar. The original recording as 30 minutes. Both sides of the tape. It helped me sleep. It healed me. It was the first recording I had done in years. All else followed. Every thing on the web site was done after that time frame. The song The Chase is midi. I used a drum SR16 and went midi out into a Roland sound Canvas. I just pressed selection buttons. The result was completely random. I love that track. The other midi piano/organ track the same thing. I played with one hand. Weak from my own mind. But these tracks made me want to keep making sound.

Hunard Dollar Bill:

So I have this recording that I knew was unique and I had listened to it 100's of times. Several times a day and twice at night just before bed. I went into the sounds and they into me and in my head I was awake and asleep all at the same time. My good friend Bill Harris had been trying to get me out of the dumps for a very long time and was patient with me. He was the source for my hoarding habit. He had bought a new recorder and it had a VHS tape to train and explain. A couple of old guys were in the film and they reminded me and Bill of each other. In that tape the guy brings out the box and hooks up the buddy and explains the functions of the recorder as the guitar is recorded. I look at the guy play and he is doing really cool blues licks all smoking. The thing is he is only using 1 or two fingers at a time and most of the ones he did he only used one finger. It freaked me out. Here I was all depressed because my hand hurt and was weak and I cant play no more and here this guy is blowing me away sliding up and down the fret board using one finger. I took the tape home and learned those licks. The key for me was using what I had. If my last two fingers were not in play then I'll just use what I have and keep plugging away. Pain and all. It turned out that the more I played the less I even thought about it. I played the licks every day. Bill gave me a Boss JAMSTATION a midi device that has sections of different stiles of music. There were a couple that were good to jam with. Hunard dollar Bill is blues in A. The same song in C minor is the Smoky Blues. I have a rock a billy and and British rock one that was cool and also a country rock one. I did 5 or six songs that I played over in a one day session at Bills house. It was a flurry recording just listening once and pressing record. After I did the recording I had to listen to it over and over to figure out what I played. I played the same 5 or 6 songs over and over many times a day every day for two years. I nailed these songs. But they were jamtracks played on a midi device. Bill and I started to record together and smooth groove is an example of those recordings. Even then I was simply listening to his music and jamming over it. Who really plays or listens to 5 minutes of someone playing lead guitar. Its just rude. I was tired of it. My Family was tired of it too. I wanted to create my own music. My best shot was the modal tuning DADGAD. My very oldest recording done just after Tina and I got married (30 years ago) have some drop D and DADGAD songs in there. Bill had heard this and encouraged me to listen to Michael Hedges. I did. Alot.

Lack of electricity: almost Sweet T.

My brother was getting married. I had been playing a new guitar ( traded the Washburn for an electric acoustic/horrible mistake) He asked me to play at the wedding. I could play one song. Sweet T. It was not even completed yet. I had no idea how it would turn out. I did play it at the wedding and in the studio (couch band baby ) I went back and forth piddling with the acoustic and cheating on my squeeze box with the midi jam tracks because it was easy to do and it made my blood quicken to stand and play.

I made the decision to stop playing the blues so I could get something written. That is all the single track recorded songs out on the web site. I really went to a soft side on these. Some of the more rhythmic songs were my attempt to play the song the same way and have some structure. I aint the most disciplined player. I ended up playing these songs one or two at a time until I could get a recording done. They came so fast that I would move on to the next song and most were recorded and never played again.

On to the metal.

Right in the middle of making this soft music I had the dream about the new guitar tuning
(Drop C string gages 54 42 36 20 42 54 ( there's more than one way to string a cat and a vintage 1981 Dean flying v). The music in my dream was loud, dark, powerful and just a plain out attack. I woke up and called it an air assault. I had overcome the one finger blues and crossed the light heartened to discover I have to crank it dark. A friend gave me over 100 CD's all Black metal. Actually pre Black. Its what all the new bands use to listen to. Again my tuning haunted me. It was a tough decision to butcher the guitar for something I didn't even know would work. I am several weeks into it and I do think I can come up with several songs with my set up.

The journey will not be easy. I am on unfamiliar ground. I am not a young angry man. i do however know how to grit my teeth. I earned it.