I had a nice St. Patrick’s Day Gig at the Moon and Sixpence. Two friends needed a backup guitarist at the last minute and gave me a call, thanks guys! It was a fun time.
Preston, myself, and John
In my spare time i am trying to get in a regular amount of practice, and am mailing out alot of cds, mostly for review and promotional purposes. I am always looking for more places to send it, so if folks have any reccomendations on magazines or sites that review solo acoustic guitar or celtic oriented music let me know!
As far as practice i am refining some of the tunes in my repotiore and on my album. After I finished the recording i left alot of them alone for a while, and need to brush up on a few things for gigs. Technique practice has largly been coming the book “Pumping Nylon” Its a classical guitar based book, but in my opinion has a bunch of valuable left and right hand exercises for fingerstyle guitarists in general. Particularly useful to me have been Guillini’s 120 right hand studies. I have been starting each practice session by going through one group, so in ten days i hit them all.
I just ordered another bottle of whisky, this time its McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt by the Clear Creek Distillery. Its been compared to the Lagavulin, which is double the price, and is made right here in Portland. Unfortunately its impossible to find, but i found a mail order place that has it, and even with shipping its about the same as it would be in the store here. So i am excited about that, though this whisky tasting habit is kind of expensive.
I hope to get back to posting some of my arrangements and talking about different aspects of playing celtic music on guitar. If you have any specific topics you would like to see post them in the comments. Its just been so busy lately promoting and sending out this cd. I am making alot of trips to the post office.
Comments 2
Hey Anton,
Since you’re asking for suggestions for blog topics, perhaps you could describe (and give tips) how you learn a new piece, once you have an arrangement in hand. Where do you start, how do you work through it, when do you use a metronome, what helps you get it up to speed–all those sorts of things would be useful and interesting. –Dave
Hi Dave,
Sounds good, thanks for the suggestion. I think what I’ll do is use a tune called Tobins Jig to show how i come up with an arrangement, how i put it together, getting it up to speed, etc.
Anton