I got my first guitar when I was 7, and to this day I still play it. Okay 20+ years you might expect somebody to be a guru, well, let's just say that I can hold my own ;)
A chap by the name of Troy Parsons inspired me to create this archive, and I'm thinking it's good for two reasons: (i) it is a place that I can keep my original tabbed up music safe and sound, (ii) anyone who wants to share it has access to it.
As I tab new stuff up I'll add it, with any luck one day I'll dig up the 'ole stuff I wrote when I was a teenager and add that too - if I can survive the embarrassment...
Barely Cookin'
Tab Listen Sitting around one evening thought I'd try out ModPlug Tracker that I had downloaded to replace my Impulse Tracker which no longer worked (sniff) because all my PCs have SBlive cards.
I plonked in some of my favourite drums and created a pattern. You think of something in your mind and plonk the notes in then play it back. More often than not I get the rythym wrong - I'm just not a drummer. However the incorrect rythym sounded pretty cool so I added to it and so was born the drum beat to Barely Cookin'.
The "bass guitar" was corny and obvious, but with some flanging and panning it sits with the drum beat so well.
The song was obviously asking for a lead guitar over it. I started on some basic lead riffs that used some bending. cool. used some effects on the guitar to make it sound like I was playing in a tin can on an AM radio. Sort of has some retro-Elvis feel? ;)
So I was cooking. well barely. tee hee, Barely Cookin'.
Clover Leaf for John Buzz
Tab While in Port Hedland installing a control system I put pen to paper and wrote this piece. I was doing night shift for three weeks, and had decided to take my guitar with me. I'd learned a few new pieces, and played heaps, and then I decided I'd try my hand at writing something again.
It had been at least 7 years since I'd written anything, and the results are not too flash, in fact I don't like this song. But it was good to get that thought process happening again. Hopefully I'll keep it going, and the next pieces will be more to my liking.
It was written over 2 days, about an hour and a bit each sitting. I got the first 2 parts down on paper pretty quick, but then complete nonsense started appearing on my guitar. I figured I was tired, and luckily the next day the rest of it came to me and I finished it off - it wasn't going to get much better than it was.
Where did the name come from? I was thinking of inventing a word that summed up what it was like - meloncholic, unhappy, nothingness (which I considered it to be) and the word 'clover' came up. I thought that was very appropriate seeing as I was living in South Hedland (the crazy town based on the clover leaf design). Just as I was going to sleep, the mobile phone I was borrowing during comissioning rang, someone asking for John Buzz. I found this incredibly amusing, and hence it ended up in the title.
Joes Blues
Tab Listen As the name suggests, I didn't actually write this one. But it has been kicking around in my head since about '89 so I thought I'd better tab it up just in case my memory starts to fade.
While in uni I played with a couple of people, and one of the guys (Joe) had written this piece earlier. It's a real swingy bluesy piece, I love the drunken way which it churns along with clever but predictable chord progressions.
'Nuff said, I've tried to indicate timing in the tab, see what you think.
Ment
Tab Listen Okay so I've been messing around with a tracker/sampler called Impulse Tracker and haven't told you. Now I have.
In conjunction with some wav editing/effects/mixing I put together this pretty basic 12 bar blues piece. It's nothing special, this is the 'more radical' version which suffered at the hands of after-effects and was just me getting it together with this whole new game. I use it from time to time to practise a bit of soloing over when I'm feeling the need for some real basic stuff.
What does "Ment" mean? heh, it's not what I "ment" to play ;)
Microphone
Some of my more recent songs have had singing in them. The average PC microphone just doesn't cut the mustard. What I have here is a pretty good alternative, a $100 dynamic 500Ohm job.
Now 500Ohm is perfect for a soundcard input impedance, but the voltage output is very very low compared to a PC electret(piezo) type. However the SB Live! soundcards have a +20dB boost option which is perfect for the level.
With this setup I record multitrack straight to disk, okay, it won't win any sound quality awards but it is exceptional quality for the price.
Sub Two Minute Club
Listen When I decided to make a motorbike video I needed a song that would be the theme. Now a traditional motorbike video needs a heavy thumping guitar track and that is exactly what I did.
The good thing about having a reason to write a song is that you get on with it, polish it and finish it for production. The actual video has a fair bit of repetition and some breaks to different chords but the final "radio edit" here features what I was trying to achieve with the song. Prodominately a thumping train-locomotion tune with a continous distorted guitar leading you through and a bit of singing on top of it. Just like riding a trail bike around a time trial course ;)
...and that is precicesly where the name comes from; in our motorbike events you have to be fair hooning around our time trial course to get a sub two minute time and thus be in the "Sub Two Minute Club".
The Untitled Piece
Tab we've gone waaay back in time here as promised. Stuck in Port Hedland again early March 99 - but I always bring up my guitar now. No creative genius, but I did tab out a piece that I wrote when I was (about) 15, yeah, back in '86, amazingly it is still in my brain after all this time.
More of a finger exercise than a song, this piece hammers through some almost hypnotic chord progressions using the same finger picking pattern all the way through. I say hypnotic because when I play it my fingers go so fast I'm not sure how they do it, so I sit back and listen to the sounds coming out of the guitar as if I was in a trance. There must be some part of the brain which controls this, but it sure ain't in the conscious...
If you have a go, put down that pick, you'll never get the speed to which this is intended. use p-m-i picking, the pick pattern almost looks like triples except for the double that rounds each chord progression off to a nice 4/4 bar.
I love the key change in the middle, I halve the speed or more at that stage to accentuate the F to D variation in the picking pattern. The ending has a change to the picking pattern which to this day doesn't quite feel right and yet does feel right. I usually drop the last bass note just before the repeat and rest for half a beat to make to bar before hammering back to the start of the bar.
I've got a bit more space on this server, and for some of the shorter pieces I'll play 'em and record 'em so as you can have a listen. When I'm back in Perth anyway ;)
