Pretentious Or Just Cranky?

It's A Golden...

Correction: Yesterday’s “It’s Odds And Ends”, (Link), which featured singer/songwriter/actress Kate Voegele did not include a citation/link to the Wikipedia article I quoted.

Corrected here: Kate Voegele

(Ed. I also wanted to add a bit about the performance of the song, “Wish You Were” but got in a hurry and forgot. The song is written in Bb (Major I assume without knowing), but she has a capo on at the 3rd fret and so while staying in the key, she’s using the chord shapes of GMaj, hitting the -iii (Bm shape) barre chord nicely, but staying mostly in the cowboy chord shapes. Remember using a capo doesn’t transpose the key, it just changes the chord shapes (finger placement). Also note a couple of times she continues to strum while flexing her fretting hand open - probably to kinda “reset” her fretting hand - that’s good technique.)

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Last Week’s Bonus Round: The live performance of “Sultans Of Swing” by Dire Straits at the Wembley Stadium “Live Aid” Concert, July 13, 1985.

““Sultans of Swing" was composed by Mark Knopfler on a National Steel guitar in open tuning. He thought the song was "dull" until he bought his first Stratocaster in 1977: "It just came alive as soon as I played it on that '61 Strat ... the new chord changes just presented themselves and fell into place."^[7]

The lyrics were inspired by a performance of a jazz band playing in the corner of an almost empty pub in Deptford, South London. At the end of their performance, the lead singer announced their name, the Sultans of Swing; Knopfler found the contrast between the group's dowdy appearance and surroundings and their grandiose name amusing.^[8]

The song is set in common time, with a tempo of 149 beats per minute. It is in the key of D minor with Knopfler's vocal range spanning G₂ to D₄. It uses a chord progression of Dm–C–B♭–A for the verses, and F–C–B♭ for the choruses.^[9] The riff uses triads, particularly second inversions. The song employs the Andalusian cadence or diatonic phrygian tetrachord.^[10] All the chords are compatible with a D natural minor scale, except for the A major triad, which suggests a D harmonic minor scale. Knopfler used similar triads on "Lady Writer".^{[11]” “}

Credit: Wikipedia Link: Sultans Of Swing

“While playing a 13-night residency at Wembley Arena in London, the band moved down the road to Wembley Stadium on the afternoon of 13 July 1985, to appear in a Live Aid slot,^[61] in which their set included "Money For Nothing" with Sting as guest vocalist. John Illsley (Ed. Dire Straits’ bassist) states, “It was a very special feeling to be part of something so unique. Live Aid was a unique privilege for all of us. It’s become a fabulous memory.”^{[62] “} Credit: Wikipedia Link: Dire Straits

(Ed. Note in the closeups where Mr. Knopfler’s picking hand is clear, he’s using a “claw” picking technique where his thumb is picking the bass notes and his index and middle finger are picking on the higher register strings while his ring and little finger are securely anchored on the pick guard. Also note he never uses barre chords.)

(Ed. Note the UG chord chart header says Key of Dminor, which is the relative (or maybe as the Wikipedia article states, the “harmonic” minor - the differences are, well, minor, but you can read about them here: Minor Scales) of the Key of FMaj and matches the information in the Wikipedia article. The Chordify score has no sharps or flats in the key signature, indicating CMajor or perhaps the relative/harmonic minor, Aminor, as the key, but that may be because that Chordify score specifically analyzed the Wembly Live Aid performance and the band either did it in that key for some reason or Chordify just did the best it could with a live performance which probably had a lot of crowd noise/imperfect acoustics and such vsersus a studio recording.)

Yeah. Play it if you dare!

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Disclaimer: This Substack is free, always will be, and I receive no compensation or other benefit (except the unsolicited, occasional, and much appreciated shoutout from readers and other Substackers!) from any of the people or companies or products I link to or write about. Note some images and other material may be copyrighted by the original author or composer and appear here under the “Fair Use” doctrine. Link: Fair Use

Michael Acoustic

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Thanks new subscribers! It’s been a “win some, lose some” week, but for our new subscribers, as promised here’s a picture of my cat welcoming you all here:

“Mika: Can’t Work Today, There’s A Cat On My Lap!”…

(Ed. I took this picture early in the morning and I think the bright streak under her nose and cheek is early morning sunlight through a nearby window. Looks odd though…)

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For this week, the copyright topic has probably been beaten into submission, at least temporarily, so let’s talk about something else.

It’s been a week of craziness in the popular news, and I for one could use an interlude from the world’s nuttiness. If I need that refuge, and I just need to get out of my studio (and my own head) for awhile, I have this little practice area set up in my living room:

I get not everyone is going to have space, budget and freedom to have a small practice area like this, but it doesn’t have to be elaborate or costly. The (second hand) Yamaha guitar I use for practice and stress relief and the Fishman Mini Loudbox Charge in the background are by far the most expensive things in the shot.

(Ed.- I bought the Fishman amp at my locally owned guitar shop where I have work done on all my guitars. Nate, the owner, asked me a week or so later how I liked it - I told him it made me sound so good I was going to buy another and sound twice as good - probably not, but it was a great purchase and it does sound really good! FWIW)

The music/mic stands and cables are reasonable (on Amazon or Sweetwater or Reverb - it pays to shop around) and I’ve acquired these over several years. I have some very expensive Mogami cables, but a few years ago on the advice of a friend who is an audio engineer/DJ and works in the pro audio portion of a music store, I switched to the Pig Hog brand. Not an endorsement and the disclaimer above applies, but I’ve found them very serviceable and much less expensive. Just sayin’… The used Shure SM58 (Reverb) was around $75, and it works just great. The room might even work for recording, I haven’t tried that yet - it’s not set up to be acoustically dampened (it’s a living room, after all), but I might get an “authentic” sound out of it that could be kinda cool. I’ll let you know if I do!

Still - anywhere you can set up easily (and tear down easily if the rest of the fam needs the space), and just get away from everything worldly for a half hour or hour can be tremendously refreshing for mind, spirit, and your “ear”. Yes, I can practice technique, learn a new song or lick, correct mistakes and such - but there are times I’ll just play chords - not worrying about what key, whether I’m playing diatonically or not, or whether I can stretch to nail that barre chord (sometimes…). Can I go faster? Can going slow make the sound “sweeter”? Can I hit those chord changes and dawdles, hammer-ons, and pulloffs just right? Sometimes, sometimes not. Doesn’t matter. I’m “performing” just for me, and if I keep at it too long or too seriously I’ll start fretting (Get it? Guitarist joke…) over little mistakes and then it’s less fun and misses the point of getting out of recording perfection mode (as if…) and enjoying the sound and the physical enjoyment of just playing.

Which is pretty much why I started playing guitar in the first place, but sometimes that gets lost and I have to remind myself that for me, at this point in my life, it’s not work - I’m not going to and I don’t have to make a living doing it. I know that sounds a bit pretentious, but a number of decades of careers have left me in reasonable comfort. It’s the ego driven, “Well, I could do that!” part that’s actually pretentious, but part of the advantage of being older is: “I don’t care”. I don’t care if I’m supposedly ”too old” to play, write, sing, practice, enjoy myself. I don’t care if anyone likes or doesn’t like what I write, sing, play, record or practice. I think that’s more “cranky old dude” than pretentious, but whatever - I don’t care!

So off my soapbox for this week, and if you enjoyed reading the cranky old guy paragraph above half as much I laughed at myself while writing it, we’ll both have a good week, no matter what the rest of the phone and TV and the news of the world brings…

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So here’s what I’m listening to (Ed. Some of these may be on other playlists I’ve posted here. That’s cuz I like ‘em!)

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Bonus Round: …surprise…

Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic