While what these musicians play isn't at all a 'swing' beat, both swing in their own ways and it's remarkable that each uses a similar instrument in a hollow-body guitar but their sounds and styles are quite different.
James Corachea played the first show last night at Cat's Art MusikCircus.
James starts out very quietly, often without saying anything and then he goes into extraordinarily delicate and intricate playing. He is finger-picking all of it and he is using alternate tunings for the guitar much of the time. I asked him last night how many variations he uses and he said three or four in his shows. He probably uses more when he is on his own and experimenting!
For my own music, I once kept another guitar tuned to Open D for shows but I'm not willing to re-tune during a show as it is total death to your strings. James said as much last night that changing tuning frequently kills his strings and mostly I'm amazed it doesn't fry his brain! He plays beautiful melodies in one tuning after the other and what happens with an alternative tuning is that all the notes move! Say you want to play an A note. Well, with the last tuning it was right here but, hold it, now it's up here!
As James was doing this beautiful work, Lanne Wise was sitting on a perch and taking it all in.
Graine MacBain had found herself a comfortable cushion and took in the show from there.
Lefty arrived partway through the show and was highly-admiring of James' play and his show started with his announcement that he is just a hacker relative to what James does.
lefty Unplugged is rather more than a hacker and one of the songs early in his set was "Let It Roll" and that works as a general philosophy which applies to music as well. One of the biggest mistakes one can make in music is to compare oneself to anyone else as there is always only one person one has to please. If that one isn't smiling then you're pretty much wasting your time. This isn't an editorial for lefty as he knows this very well already.
Something that was unusual last night was lefty launched into some cover tunes 'for giggles' and they're cute but they're not at all what he does the best. He didn't stay with that for very long and went into his own original work which is vastly better. His closing bit was "The Rain Song," a piece he invented as he played it and the song was brilliant.
lefty's reaction to "The Rain Song" after playing it was that it was just crap, simple stuff that rooted in A minor. This I thought was sad as lefty isn't one to fish so he must really believe that whereas my position will always be that any fool can make something complicated but it takes genius to make complicated things simple. "The Rain Song" was not simple but rather it was highly-imaginative in conjuring all manner of images. We were feeling the warmth of summer rain, smelling the forest when it gets wet after a long time dry, and all the things that make rain beautiful rather than the grey drabness of it in the Winter. So, I say again that it was brilliant.
And of course Cat and I danced!
Well, no, we can't help being this cute (laughs).
Note: I apologise for the hook to "England Swings" as ever since I thought of it I have had that godforsaken melody and the lyrics bouncing around in my head. "Bobbies on bicycles, two by two..." Aiiyyeeee....kill me now!
James Corachea played the first show last night at Cat's Art MusikCircus.
James starts out very quietly, often without saying anything and then he goes into extraordinarily delicate and intricate playing. He is finger-picking all of it and he is using alternate tunings for the guitar much of the time. I asked him last night how many variations he uses and he said three or four in his shows. He probably uses more when he is on his own and experimenting!
For my own music, I once kept another guitar tuned to Open D for shows but I'm not willing to re-tune during a show as it is total death to your strings. James said as much last night that changing tuning frequently kills his strings and mostly I'm amazed it doesn't fry his brain! He plays beautiful melodies in one tuning after the other and what happens with an alternative tuning is that all the notes move! Say you want to play an A note. Well, with the last tuning it was right here but, hold it, now it's up here!
As James was doing this beautiful work, Lanne Wise was sitting on a perch and taking it all in.
Graine MacBain had found herself a comfortable cushion and took in the show from there.
Lefty arrived partway through the show and was highly-admiring of James' play and his show started with his announcement that he is just a hacker relative to what James does.
lefty Unplugged is rather more than a hacker and one of the songs early in his set was "Let It Roll" and that works as a general philosophy which applies to music as well. One of the biggest mistakes one can make in music is to compare oneself to anyone else as there is always only one person one has to please. If that one isn't smiling then you're pretty much wasting your time. This isn't an editorial for lefty as he knows this very well already.
Something that was unusual last night was lefty launched into some cover tunes 'for giggles' and they're cute but they're not at all what he does the best. He didn't stay with that for very long and went into his own original work which is vastly better. His closing bit was "The Rain Song," a piece he invented as he played it and the song was brilliant.
lefty's reaction to "The Rain Song" after playing it was that it was just crap, simple stuff that rooted in A minor. This I thought was sad as lefty isn't one to fish so he must really believe that whereas my position will always be that any fool can make something complicated but it takes genius to make complicated things simple. "The Rain Song" was not simple but rather it was highly-imaginative in conjuring all manner of images. We were feeling the warmth of summer rain, smelling the forest when it gets wet after a long time dry, and all the things that make rain beautiful rather than the grey drabness of it in the Winter. So, I say again that it was brilliant.
And of course Cat and I danced!
Well, no, we can't help being this cute (laughs).
Note: I apologise for the hook to "England Swings" as ever since I thought of it I have had that godforsaken melody and the lyrics bouncing around in my head. "Bobbies on bicycles, two by two..." Aiiyyeeee....kill me now!
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