Hey Friends,

I was asked by the reverent Hive account@meno to talk with him on his Songwriter's Shop Talk today. I am honored and hyped. It prompted me to want to give a little update of some earlier riffage. Like usual, inspiration strikes, and once a concept is formed it is all play time. The exploration is like a puzzle. I like the way you can just radiate out through the world with music while in the state of flow.

So here is a video I posted the other day right after coming up with the initial concept In F minor (a bit raw):

I have refined it a little bit since then, but it still isn't finished. There are still a few parts that I can hear in my head I want to pull out and see what happens.

Here is a more produced version:

This is actually my first time posting anything on dsound. So I hope this works.

DSOUND LINK TO ARPEGGIO CONCEPT IN F # MINOR

I also want to share a cool little song concept that my friends and neighbors were working on with me down at the pier

Inspiration Can Strike At Any Time

My neighbor and friend Monte told me he bought an acoustic guitar because he was inspired after seeing me walking around playing mine.

The night before last he was on his way out for dinner and a drink when he ran into me playing guitar in the courtyard. He said his new guitar just came in, and he asked me to take a look at it with him.

Well that ended up turning into a jam session with 4 guitarists that moved from the courtyard to the pier. Monte pulled out this little riff that he wrote 25 years ago, but he was never sure how to continue it. He asked what I would do. My answer was pretty much dick off. I'm not joking when I say my process is just trial and error. I play and explore and try to keep the phrases that drive the song in the intended direction.

Once I realized it could be played out of E minor then I just sorta followed the sound and try add to the emotive qualities.

DSOUND LINK TO SPANISH BLUES

Sometimes a song just needs to gestate for 25 years.

Sometimes you wake up with a song already brewing.

That is what happened with the song that I did for open mic a few weeks ago, titled I Was a Good Man

I woke up and I couldn't stop thinking about a homeless veteran that I talked to a while back. I had the overwhelming urge to pick up my guitar and tell his story.

It went a little something like this:

I am familiar with a state of flow, but when I played this song it really took me somewhere else. I was in a state of deep trance and I really wish I would have been wearing my neuro-headset to see my brain activity while this was going on. When I would stop playing and open my eyes my whole body was tingling like it had completely fallen asleep.

When Your Guitar Knows You Better Than You Do

Sometimes a riff happens and it pulls something out of you and urges you to express something that you didn't even know you were feeling. Then the world gets built around it.

That is what happened with this little song concept. It isn't very worked out at the moment, but I feel like it has potential. The whole thing was built around the folky, or as Hive account@yidneth pointed out, piratey sounding section that starts at about 1:23

Sometimes I find the best way to make music is to hit the record button, and then forget about it. Relax and just play. See what happens and don't worry about any of it. Simply explore. After you are running a little low on creative steam then you can watch the recording and pick out the phrasings that are the most fitting.

Here is an example of something that just happened in a local guitar store in League City. My buddy Tyler is strumming the 12 string while I improvise on the 6 string that I wanted.

The odds are I wouldn't have written a these phrasings if I sat down and tried. These phrasings were simply my response to what was happening in real time, and if you can ride that wave you can find some stuff outside your normal playground.