Musical Influences

I play the guitar. Almost every week, I can be found at Elim Baptist Church with a friendly bunch of other musicians, smiling big and doing something I absolutely enjoy.

I also love to listen to all kinds of music. I listen to film scores, bluegrass, classic rock, folk, electronic, classical, pop, blues, zydeco, gospel, jazz, and on and on and on. It’s all so interesting and fascinating to listen to, and I love the variety.

Of course, my listening tends to flow naturally into my playing. And there are also other people and things that influence what I do on my guitar. This post is about as many of those influences as I can think of.

Musical Stuff That Makes Me Smile

Recently, I tweeted this:

I’m a total sucker for songs with “do-do-do-do” parts or whistling. True story.

That started me thinking about other musical things I’m “a total sucker” for. What makes me smile, will 99% of the time mean I will have a new favorite song?

Well, I’ll start with the two I mentioned in the tweet and move on from there.

The Obligatory Christmas Music Post

Hey, I did this last year, so why not?

I have been enjoying learning how to play the Irish reel Christmas Eve on the dulcimer. Even more so now that I tuned it. I’ve also fiddled around with all my previous favorites and discovered that I haven’t lost them entirely. My own arrangement of Go Tell It on the Mountain is particularly fun.

And of course, I’m still playing guitar every week in church.

Christmas Music

I’ve been playing the dulcimer a lot lately, which isn’t too surprising for this time of year. What surprises me is that I have already increased my repertoire from the two Christmas songs I knew last year to four this year. And I’m working on a few others as well.

Right now, I can play these Christmas songs tolerably well:

• Joy to the World
• Angels We Have Heard on High
• Deck the Halls
• Go Tell It on the Mountain

I’m working on these:

• I Saw Three Ships
• Good Christian Men Rejoice
• He Is Born

Who knows what else I’ll try before the season is over! Do you know of anything else that I absolutely must learn to play?

I’m Slowing Down!

I’m at 43 pages on Script Frenzy. That’s way ahead enough to be comfortable, but it also means I’m slowing down. The last two days I wrote about 4 pages, which is one more than I need. That’s nothing compared to the 5 to 8 pages I was writing earlier on.

Although, come to think of it, today and yesterday I was writing all difficult transition-y scenes, so that could account for the drop in page count. We’ll see what happens tomorrow morning when the story hits its stride again.

And in the dulcimer world, I’ve been playing and singing Creed a lot lately. I had it almost down when the dulcimer decided to get out of tune again. So yesterday I tuned it and now I’m playing some more!

I guess the long post is because I’m on a roll coming off of writing my script about fifteen minutes ago…

My Wrist Hurts

Today was eventful. I went to the dentist, which I guess is okay. Not the best way to spend the afternoon, though.

I’ve been playing Creed all day, trying to get the singing right. I was just about there, but I think I strained my wrist with all the hammering. *sigh* Maybe tomorrow if it’s feeling better.

Yes, I tagged this “ow” for all those reading who know me!

Four Chords

I have all four chords of Creed pretty much down! Now I must figure out the order they go in and see if I can sing it. I’m almost there!

Dulcimering

I’m still learning Creed. There are four chords, and I’ve learned two. Someday I’ll learn them. I wanted to do it the other day, so I tuned the dulcimer and everything… But no go.

One Chord Down

Learning Rich Mullins’ song Creed on the hammered dulcimer is going pretty well. I can s-l-o-w-l-y play one chord. But that’s pretty awesome, considering I started this morning and I’ve been messing with it on and off all day! We’ll see how long it takes before I learn the next chord.

Other than that, today was pretty uneventful.

Server Trouble and Other Stories

Sigh. I was all ready for my test on Friday, but today the center called and notified me that they are having some computer trouble. So I have been moved to March 4th instead. More time to study, I guess. Unfortunately, this is one test for which I don’t really need more study time.

I had an excited-yet-disappointing moment this afternoon. Last week, my brothers and I bought the Myst 5: End of Ages Special Limited Edition off of eBay. I saw the mail truck pull up and hang a Myst 5 shaped package on the mailbox, so I excitedly ran outside in the cold to grab it. Turns out it was just a similarly shaped box containing Greek books for school work. Oh well, maybe tomorrow!

It’s scary! I’ve been frequently heading to the dulcimer to play Liberty and Ash Grove, and lately I’ve been having problems hitting the right notes. Probably time to tune it again. Bother, seems like I just did that. I’m also messing with finding the right notes for Rich Mullins’ song Creed.

While I’m typing, I might as well say that I attempted to juggle five balls again. No good. I now start with five, toss one too far, and end up juggling four quite nicely.

So overall, an up and down sort of day, but not without its fun times.