Guitar-like Cuatro & Bougainvillia

Cuatro & Bougain-
villia is from a photo-
graph by Tony Jazz of WetCanvas. Once again I got the photograph from the Reference Image Library searching on "guitar".

The Cuatro is not a guitar but is related to them. Wikipedia states:

"The cuatro is the national instrument of Puerto Rico. It belongs to the lute family of string instruments. Very little is known about the exact origin of the Cuatro. However, most experts believe that the Cuatro has existed on the island in one form or another for about 400 years. The Spanish instrument that it is most closely related to is the vihuela poblana (also known as the Medieval/Renaissance guitar), which had 4 courses, 2 strings each for 8 strings in total as well as the Spanish Medieval/Renaissance 4 course citola and the Spanish Laúd, particularly in the Canary Islands. The cuatro of Puerto Rico has ten strings in five courses, tuned from low to high B, E, A, D and G, with B and E in octaves and A, D and G in unisons."

I have never played one but find them fascinating and would like to.

Bougainvillia is an interesting plant, the white flowers actually being bracketed by colorful paper thin leaf-like material. Wikipedia has more information as well on this flowering vine.

I opened the photograph in Paint.NET and used the Effects> Artistic> Pencil Sketch> filter and saved that image. I then brought the photograph into PhotoPaint and used KPT's Collection Pyramid Paint filter on it giving it a painted feel. I added the Pencil Sketch as an object over the image and used the object property Multiply on it to make it tranparent and give lines to the piece. I did this a couple of times to get a full contrast of light and dark. I upped the saturation by about 15 in PhotoPaint as well.

I applied OptikVerves Photography filter to it using Film #2 1600 ISO/ASA to get the grain for the final image. I also used the warm filter there too.

Last night I finished the song "Got Your Clouds In My Sky" a little bit Country, a little bit Folk. I used a nice chord progression: C G C D7 G for the chorus. For the verses I used: C Em three times finishing with C D7 G. A bridge was added as well: Em C four times. I added a bit of lead using Gearbox's Nashville guitar model. Of course, I recorded it using the Toneport.

My favorite critic, my wife, says I should try and sell my songs. Bless her heart!

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - Got Your Clouds In My Sky
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