Guitar Work VI

a.k.a. “What’s LE now playing?”

The guitar I currently play is a no-frills Fender acoustic six-string, made in Korea. My stepfather got it for me, quite out of the blue, one Christmas – a very touching gesture, as I had been guitar-less for a handful of years due to theft.

Anyway, I keep the acoustic in a strategic location: first floor dining room northwest corner. Why is this strategic? Simple. It’s lies in the exact center of my house. Below is the laundry room and the writing office, above are the bedrooms. Connecting are the living room and the kitchen; the living room has a door that leads out to the front yard; the kitchen leads to the deck out in the backyard.

So, I pass the guitar spot about 3,417 times a week.

When I do, it inadvertently calls out to me, siren-style,

LE, LE, pick me up and play me …

And I succumb to the temptation.

* * * * *

What have I been playing lately?

1. “Get It Hot” (AC/DC)

I can play most of Highway to Hell, which was quite an eye-opening album (actually, a cassette tape) for Young LE to experience oh so many of those years ago. But that bluesy fill that you hear sixteen times over the two verses and choruses in this two-minute ditty always eluded me. Now that I know it’s basically just H-Os and P-Os on the DGB strings (chords: D, B-E-B-E-B) I can’t stop playing the damn thing. But I like it. A good example of beauty in simplicity.

2. “The Hook” (Blues Traveler)

Four was a CD I listened to constantly the summer of 97, I think, and for some reason I have no memory of ever plugging in my Les Paul and playing to it. Thirteen years past its due date, here’s me, fiddling around with some chords up the neck of my acoustic, and – hey! That sounds like “The Hook”! I drop everything down a whole step due to the shortness of the acoustic’s neck, and it’s a pleasing thing to my ear.

3. “The Wind Cries Mary” (Jimi Hendrix)

Absolutely love playing this. Once you know the chords it’s fun to just throw every type of fill in differing positions all up and down the neck. C – Bb – F three times, then G to Bb, then that ascending Eb-E-F thing alternating with the bluesy Db-Eb-F thing. Good times!

4. “Gimme Shelter” (The Rolling Stones)

I like plucking those intro notes based on the C# – B – A progression. I also drop the low E string down to C#. Other than those two minor points of happiness, it’s a kinda dull song; not sure how it’s gotten so symbolic and representational, especially since I wasn’t around for Viet Nam. Hearing it lately in those Call of Duty video game commercials, though, gives me some inkling what the song meant four decades ago.

5. Peter and the Wolf, “Peter’s theme” (Serge Prokofiev)

My daughter’s class is working on this piece in Music – they even have words to each of the character’s themes. Inspired me to pull out a long-lost children’s CD and playing Prokofiev’s work for the girls. So naturally I had to pluck along on the guitar, and now I play this through the house like some overweight Pied Piper. That’s how fun this twenty-note-or-so melody is.