Quiet Time

I’ve been a little quiet on the blog recently. It’s been a mix of being busy as well as messing with things a little out of my reach musically. On the first point, life is back in a fairly normal swing here, and I’m not so exhausted coming home as I was for a few

Accompaniment

Recently, I’ve been looking at what the Russian guitar can do as an accompaniment instrument rather than a solo instrument. It is a very capable instrument in this regard. It fits thinner textures being a guitar, but the tuning gives you more control of the bass notes than I feel you have with Spanish guitar.

Hymns

Life has been a little hectic for everyone in the past few weeks, so I hope everyone is doing well and taking care of yourself. If you’re stuck inside, it’s the perfect time to play some music. One of the things my old teacher taught me that has stuck with me is that not only

Experiments

This past weekend was my first chance to get out to my brother in law’s workshop. I was really looking forward because it was a chance to play around with some ideas. My main issue is while I can visit a nice workshop (hopefully on a regular basis), it is a cabinetry workshop. That means

Back Into It

The Lunar New Year ended and I was back to work. This ate into my motivation more than I would have liked, but I also had some adulting to take care of as the saying goes. Don’t worry though, I haven’t disappeared. I am in fact keeping plenty busy with my creative work and am

Riverside Sketches no.1

I wrote my first piece exploring pentatonic based melodies as well as my first real piece for Russian guitar. First things first, I’m quite happy with the piece and how it turned out. I’m not as happy with my playing of it, but I think I did well enough all things considered. I still need

Adjustments

I’ve been practicing on my classical guitar in an open G tuning for a while, and while it works to get acquainted with Russian guitar, I have of course, wanted a seven string. This weekend I finally had the time to sit down and do something about that.  I’m not really in a position where

Composition

My other hobby that competes for creative time and energy is writing. I keep them both fairly intertwined because I write about musicians and of course, imagine the music they are playing. Since I’ve enjoyed practicing guitar and making videos, I figured why not start small and put a little composition practice here since I

Technique

Some people have been curious about my technique since if you know anything about guitar technique, you can see mine is a bit different. I ended up with different technique for a couple different reasons. First, I don’t really have a life fit for fingernails. Every time I’ve had proper guitar nails, they gave me

Travel Video

Since I missed making a recording for my last post, I did my best to sneak off and make one when I had the chance. It was actually a lot of fun to make a quick recording while I was out and about. It was also fun to play with all the birds chirping, though