procrastinating

With it’s inclusion in Guitar Hero 3, Eric Johnson’s Cliffs of Dover reached me, too. According to Wikipedia, Eric Jonhson claims the song was a inspiration out of nowhere – being written in 5 minutes¹

It is an instrumental, upbeat and technically challenging – not that I would know other than by looking at his finger play over the strings. :)

The part covered in GH3 starts at about 2:15 in this live recording.

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffs_of_Dover_(song)

I’ve added some books to my list now:

• The Saturday Morning Murder – Gur, Batya
• The Pillars of the Earth – Follett, Ken
• A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines – Levin, Janna
• Four-Book Set (Wicked; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror, Mirror) – Maguire, Gregory
• A Walk to Remember – Sparks, Nicholas
• On the Road – Kerouac, Jack
• The Last Juror – Grisham, John

I’ll suggest “The Cat Who…” books by Lillian Braun and books by Georges Simenon to my S.O. – she’s a mystery fan :)

I’m currently reading Steve Erikson’s “The Malazan book of the Fallen” series, and thus I won’t commit to any series for now :)

Those books are really good, but also quite heavy to get through.

I think I first heard Ram Jam’s Black Betty¹ in one of the Need for Speed games, not sure which. In their hands it is powerful and rhythmical, contrasting to earlier a cappella or guitar accompanied versions.

This folk song is often accredited to Lead Belly², although he wasn’t even the first to record it.

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Betty

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddie_Ledbetter

When Windows 95 came out, it had some multimedia present on the CD. Among the videos were a performance by Edie Brickell, performing Good Times.

I’m still getting a fuzzy feeling inside listening to this. :)

“Get out of your lazy bed” must be the quintessential happiness boost song there is.

I’ll continue naming songs (and instrumentals) I really enjoy; I’ll try to keep a rate of once a day. Happy listening.

Though I don’t have the motivation to play over the ‘net for the time being. I need to find someone local to help me get into it.

The guitar comes first. :)

I’m still practicing, picking rather than strumming. I know I’m probably going the easy way in some ways, but I need that for my motivation.

Today I sat for a while trying to get my fingers moving to play (the introduction) to Tears in Heaven. Which is still not easy. At all. But it is fun noticing that I get to make some sounds that “makes sense” in addition to the time I spend switching chords and picking strings.

It helps having someone who know point out where to put which fingers when the symbols on the tablature.

But I couldn’t play any chords, because my fingers still were too sore. I wondered a bit about the stupidity of promising myself that I would practice every day…

Then I held down the first string at the third bar, and practiced picking with my right hand instead. That made it something like a G chord when I just picked the four first strings. I didn’t try and change chords, but trained speed and accuracy. Seems like a nice task when the left hand is too sore to hold the strings. :)

I read (quite a bit) at times, but I want to try books I haven’t chosen myself. Please suggest me some books you like, two or three fits nicely. When the list passes ten books I haven’t read, I’ll list them in a new “thing” and go looking for the books.

I started out yesterday, played for about an hour. Although this was not continuously, my fingers got a bit sore…

The guitar got tuned, and I made some sounds reminding me of a guitar being played… badly. My fingers doesn’t go where they should, and touch other strings than they should. I guess it will get better with training.