Musings @musicandmeaning.com

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"He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood." – E. M. Forster

Friday, 19 January 2001

Gray, Buckner, guitar strings & night skies

Not a whole lot of new developments since a few weeks ago. I’m still really into the music of David Gray and Richard Buckner, and my CD player still has the same discs in it as the last time I wrote.

I know that I’ve been mentioning Mr Gray quite a bit within the past couple of months, and a lot of my friends aren’t familiar with him. So in case you’re not either, you might try catching this week’s Austin City Limits on PBS. ACL is an hour-long show featuring live music, and usually is split up into two half-hour segments (each segment showcasing a certain artist’s performance). So if you’d like to hear/see David Gray and finally find out what I’ve been raving about, please try to tune in. If you’re in the Los Angeles basin, you can either tape/watch ACL with Mr Gray this Saturday night (20 January) at 12:45 a.m. (yeah, technically it’s Sunday, the morning of the 21st). His set includes six songs, including "Babylon," which is probably his most popular song in the U.S. right now. He performed a condensed version of the song on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn earlier this week (and yes, I saw him both times). Anyway if you’re not familiar with ACL and aren’t sure when it’s on in your area, you can find out the exact time/date on the Austin City Limits site.

Other news… Well, I was de-tuning my guitar from standard to DADGAD a couple of days ago and my first E string decided to break. I must say that the sound of a string breaking is never pleasant, and almost always unexpected. I think I’m going to try to devote my classical for alternate tunings and my steel-stringed for standard (but a half-step down) tuning to try and avoid more de-tuning string breakage, since it’s not the first time that happened. But nylon strings just don’t sound the same, and sometimes steel just sounds more appropriate, e.g. when I was practicing a Nick Drake tune, the steel just sounded better. Anyway. Sorry for rambling.

Earlier in the month, on kind of a whim, I signed up for one of those free Barnes & Noble information sessions. I prefer to say that than "courses" because they’re not exactly what I’d call courses, and I definitely think the whole "university" name is just wrong. In any case, I’m taking "The Night Sky: An Introduction to Astronomy." It’s a month long and we’re almost three weeks down. I only bought one of the (two) books recommended for the session, but just reading that plus the online lessons are actually pretty helpful for such a newbie like me. I’ve wanted to learn more about astronomy for a while now, and thought that the free BN.com session might be fun, or at least a good starting place. So far it’s been interesting, and the lessons are directed toward complete newbies like myself so I don’t feel overwhelmed. Plus, getting involved with the info session has also re-sparked my interest in photography (using an SLR camera), especially in photographing stars. We’ll see how that progresses.

See you later. Hope everyone’s 2001 is getting off to a good start!

Posted at 12:00 am | Filed under Guitars, etc., Music, Musings & everything else, Photography

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