late night music..

[jumpy]

First a little background:
I've been into playing music for about 15 years on and off now. I started with the electric bass guitar- I still have my first; a squire jazz bass, and also my favourite fretless westone thunder with flatwound steel strings. Not to forget my beautiful Seagull acoustic guitar. I played in a couple of bands here and there, and enjoyed the likes of thin lizzy and pink floyd. For myself I really like iron maiden for steve harris' bass melody's/rhythms - they just kick ass - and any anything funky jazzy - jaco pastorius, herbie hancock, average white band, Santana (you know all that stuff ) - playing with any of that was always a real workout and very satisfying when done right.

However, those were the days when I had loads of time to spend playing. Sometimes as much as 8 or 9 hours a day. Now with the annoyance of working for a living (again) it has been almost 5 years since I played anything seriously. I still listen a lot and have discovered that the internet holds so much more than forums, shops and porn

More recent discoveries have encouraged me to take up my acoustic guitar again and work out some tunes. Many years ago I hear a bloke called Eric Roche play a song on BBc radio4, called 'Roundabout'



I never believed it was just one guy playing, hehe.

Some more of Eric's music:







Sadly, Eric died of cancer a few years ago. Such a shame for one so talented.

In light of this and as a sort of homage to all of the musicians keeping his music alive, here's a couple of covers:

Matt Marriott (more on him in a bit): In a way, I think Matt plays this even better than Eric, though maybe it's just his style and phrasing.

This lad has done well: good on you fella, it's a great cover; I bet he spent practically for ever getting it just right (he has, I know the album it's from too well).

I always wanted to be able to play like this, ever since I discovered this particular style of guitar playing. Some of you may remember me posting some links from a guy called Andy Mckee and Antoine Dufour, Eric Turnbull; fine exponents of the art. I've made some small progress on one of Andy's tunes, but dammit they're so hard to get right!

Cut a longer story short, I'm an impatient guy when it comes to learning music, I just can't help myself. So I've laid aside a few things whilst I tackle few slightly easier tunes, technically speaking.

Matt Marriots version of 'Roundabout' and one of his pieces called 'Nowt so funny as'

For some reason this makes me think of the old Battlestar Galactica tv series - can you hear it too?

I've also bookmarked a few others:



http://www.myspace.com/mattmarriottacoustic check out the list of tunes in the top right panel.



I'm doing pretty well with 'Roundabout', but have yet to get all of the parts to work together with clear intonation. I've also begun with 'Nowt so funny as' too, though my fingers are really sore now.

It's really quite dispiriting when you see some of these guys play and realise how much better they are than you'll ever have the chance to be:

But you gotta keep at it when you have time, 'cause maybe one day everything about that tricky number will fall into place and you can live up your success
Remember to keep your sense of humour though, like these guys:



(language)

[Sailor Steve]

Awesome stuff! I too have been playing since 1965, and bass since 1967. Love all kinds of music.

This kind of puts me in mind of the great Stanley Jordan.