Wrecked Honda Civic DX

Even your grown children can cause you worry. My got into a bad accident in this Honda. He ended up safe. But, fortunately the air bags deployed and saved him from more serious injury. We are pleased that they are safe and now sound.

We now own a dead horse, which we are trying to sell for salvage to anyone who will buy it for a reasonable price.

Aside from that I did some recording the other day. I finally did "Cats in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin and played a lead background for it different from the original. I tried to do "One after 909" by The Beatles but it was in the wrong key and try as I did I could not transpose it. Not having a more formal education in music does give one a disadvantage at times.

I did do "No Reply" by The Beatles and am practicing "Yes It Is" also by them. As far as writing any new pieces the "muse" hasn't been with me lately. So I will patiently wait until something comes out. I try to write as often as I can. It is advised that you write everyday, even if it is not anything great or even good, but I find that if it isn't decent enough for me I feel discouraged and so it makes little sense to write bad poetry or lyrics. So I write when I feel it, not everyday.

Guitar Music I

A short post to add this image to the blog. Entitled "Music" it is a heavily manipulated photograph of a six-string guitar. I also added a frame and a "mat" made up of a different F-hole guitar.

I used Photopaint for all the work done on this photo. Laying image over image to create a cubist like view.

It was sepia toned and I reworked the color hue to change it, using the Image Adjust Color Hue tool. I used the fill tool for the "mat" by taking a image of the F-hole six-string guitar and resampling it to a small image. Then I loaded it as a tile into the fill option and filled the added area. I rotated the image tile and sheared it for the slant. Then I added the black frame.

I enjoy this kind of piece, creating and posting it to share with others.

Broken Dock and Lily Pads

A photograph taken by my son, cropped and manipulated by myself.

I was thinking of warmer weather and came across this fine image. Taken last Autumn on Bald Eagle Lake, it was a warmer day than the frigid days of recent time.

Again using PhotoPaint I cropped and used KPT's Collection Pyramid Paint filter on it. I also upped the color saturation by 15 to boost the impact.

Obviously this dock is not in use anymore and it's peak along with the lily pads create movement of the eye around this image.

I have only done some writing of poetry recently, and with caregiving I haven't done any music lately. I did get an email from my brother and sister n law that I shared Redeye Blues with and they both like the CD. So I am happy about that. Not much fun to make music and not share it with someone.

I have found a couple of songs I would like to record. Cats in The Cradle by Harry Chapin, One After 909 by the Beatles. I need to practice them some more before I record them when I have some time. Also I am looking at some other Beatles songs.

I hope to write some new tunes as well but they sometimes come hard, whereas other times inspired. Those are the ones most fun - inspired - they seem to just come to you from that place that songs come from. Usually quick and pretty good, they come to you at various times but you don't know when. So they are a great experience, they just are there! And you are like a vehicle for the song flowing out.

I am going to share my other CD's with my brother and his wife, Beginnings and Fifth Time Around next. I hope for more positive feedback from them! I have shared them with my daughter and son and their mates, but haven't had any feedback just yet. We will see. They grew up with my playing the guitar sometimes as they were getting ready for bed, I would play and sing. I like to think that those are good memories for my children who are all grown now and married. Certainly good memories for me.

Blues Front Site Credit

I recently had contact from John Anderson of Blues Front <bluefrontbluesroom.org> identifying my previous Guitar Player Chording G as a photograph of Rick Payne from John's site as shown above. Thank you, John!

Here I am displaying Bluesman Dave Peabody, also from a photograph of John's. I used Corel's PhotoPaint and KPT's Collection filters to do this derivative piece.

Please visit John's site for an insider look at Blues and many performers. Let me know if the link doesn't work!

I have been busy with a family emergency so I haven't been doing much on the computer recently. So I don't have much to report. But that will change soon, I hope! I would like to write a tune about my experience with the hospital and the family emergency but I remain stunted for right now. A situation I hope to remedy soon.

Gutiar Study Montage

I think I have guitars on the brain! Well, I do enjoy going to the music/guitar stores like Motor City Guitars and the new Village Guitars here locally. But if you want a great store to go to I'd advise Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Michigan. I've known the owner since the early 1970's, Stan Werbin, and he has the best place around for buying anything string related!

That is where my family purchased my 12-string as an anniversary gift so many years back. It is a Seagull Canadian made guitar. It has stood me well for many years now.

Here is another of my Montages about guitars. I have for the background a dinner party tiled. I used Paint.Net's filter for ink drawings and got this interesting texture to the piece. I resized it in PhotoPaint for display here.

I also have started other songs for "One Tough Baby." I did an instrumental using the chord structure of Am C F G and a chorus of Em C D with a bridge of F#m Am7 Dm7. Then I added some lead guitar and a bass line. I am still using Audacity to record and it has a Bass Boost filter which worked great on that bass line. It made my 12 string sound really good as a bass guitar.

Weather here is cold and we had both rain and snow so we have a frozen driveway today. Ice and snow. Not pleasant for driving or shoveling. But the sun is out and we have some blue sky right now. That IS pleasant.

Digital Study of a Gypsy Woman

I've done a digital Study of a Gypsy Woman using Corel's PhotoPaint and KPT's Collection. Something different for a change to the type of artwork I've displayed here previously.

I used various fills for this image, as is evident. I tried to keep it simple yet attractive. It is not a vector graphic but a bitmapped based image.

I like the vulnerability of the pose, holding up the long hair. It speaks of a openness that she has.

As far as music goes I did a Blues tune called "Broadband Blues". It's about the cost of having broadband connections to the internet when all one can afford is dialup. You miss out on things like training videos, music streaming, fast file downloads, it precludes any large downloads at all. I used a simple E7 A7 Bm7 chord structure, a good blues riff. I played around with the lead riff quite a bit. It turned out pretty good, in my humble opinion.

With that song I started a new group of songs for another 15 songs or so for a Audio CD. I completed "Fifth Time Around" with 15 songs, about an hour of music playing time. Fits easily on a single CD.

I am going to call the next one "One Tough Baby" and dedicate it to my wife who is one tough lady. A Cancer survivor, who has avascular necrois in both hips and lives with pain each day. She has allergic responses to most pain medications so she just grins and bears it. She gives of herself to a fault, and is aways there for me. What a gal! We hope she can have hip replacement surgery some time in the future, but for now the doctors are saying to wait.

So, I have a song title and a subject all I need is the chords, lyrics and melody for it. A nice challenge.

Guitar Player Chording G

Here is a digital painting I did with Painter 8. I used the brushes Van Gogh and Acrylics with my choice of colors from the regular Painter palette.

It is based on a photograph. I want to attribute to the photographer but can't locate the information on Yahoo or Google searches. So If you recognize the image and know please email me so I can credit it properly. In the meantime Thank You for a good beginning image.

Winter is finally here, officially 4-6 inches of snowfall. I am looking our over the lake we live above and even it is building ice. I can still see patches of watery ice they are like little rivers on the white plane of the lake. Very beautiful.

I wrote a song about the white pure snow one day when it was snowing when the sun was shining. It was an extremely impressive day weather wise. That was very inspiring. So, a song!

We got snowed in as we live high on a steep hill and our driveway has to be shoveled and cleared before we can leave, because we can't get back up the hill if it has snow on it. Finally got it shoveled only to get more snow! Winter is great but we don't always like the shoveling. Or the treacherous driving. Like most people in that respect, I'm certain.