I never wanna retune my guitar again. Ever. I don’t know what got into me, but last night after i got done chatting with Re i was listening to a solo recording of Peter Mulvey‘s “Grace,” and i suddenly decided that it would be fun to figure out how to play it. Of course, “Grace” occurs in the tuning CFCFAC, while a guitar starts off in EADGBE. So… that took about a half hour in and of itself, and after that i still had to figure out how to play the song. It was here that my semester of aural skills kicked in, and i easily found some basic notes that had been eluding me on all other occasions of toying with the song. However, the problem with Peter Mulvey is often not finding what notes he’s playing, but where he’s playing them. I’m quite sure i nailed down his pattern on the main riff, but past that i have all the right notes in all the wrong places. Compare: me vs. Peter.
Achieving that first relative victory, i decided to move on the the more impossible, “A Better Way to Go,” which i have seen Peter perform live sitting as close as i am to my computer without being able to play it afterwards. Happily, last night was one of my so-called “magic ear” nights, and the song was hardly even a challenge … i got much closer to the actual sound of it than i did on “Grace,” though i can’t hardly play the scales that he uses inbetween chords. Compare: me vs. Peter.
As a result of all of this fooling around, i think my legendary page of obscure guitar chords (Tori, Ani, Mulvey) is going to finally make its appearance on Uprush any day now, with some fun new additions. WheE!
[…] None other than Peter Mulvey, my personal favorite folk-rock hero and my mainstay musical influence — not to mention being one of the few people on earth who owns both of my demo cds as well as occasionally talking to me from on-stage about his bottom-end. So to speak. […]