Guitar Patterns - III In Series

Last night I stayed up late because I could not sleep, you know the feeling. Restless and awake, so I worked on a song about feelings. Being so RAW that everything is intensified and burns into ones psyche.

The need for a listening ear that is not afraid of irrational thought or emotion. A tall order to fill. But a good song idea. It is a simple song, not very clever using a chord progression of open chords, with a chorus progression of seventh chords ending in a G.

I added a lead to it while recording it in Audacity. I did the main part of the song with a preamp called Detroit RnB Vocal. I used the 12-string for the background chords and I played the 6-string for the lead. Switching the Woody pickup between the two acoustic guitars. I saved it as an mp3 to keep the size controllable, though losing a bit of quality, it is good enough for my uses.

Today's image is the same two guitars I used for the song. I opened the photograph in PhotoPaint and used the Tone Curve to deepen the colors and upped the saturation as is my common technique for many of my images. I added a pattern with Harry's Filters 3.0 plugin, selecting patterns and overlay to add it. I used the "jump" feature to get just the right pattern and colors. It jumps between patterns as one would guess from it's name.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - I'm RAW
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Dual Guitars with a Little Flare

Listening to the Country Rock of Kenny Chesney right now. Great songs and backbeat on this Live version of his hits.

It was suggested I do a series based upon the photography session I had the other day. How they knew I was thinking of the same thing I don't know. But today's image is another of the photographs of the Lyon and Seagull guitars.

I opened this photograph in PhotoPaint and used the Tone Curve on it to darken it a bit. Adding to the saturation made the colors of the two instruments deeper. I also added a Black shadowed frame and a Walnut colored thin frame to it.

I used KPT's Collection Lensflare to add the colored flare to the image with the largest portion on my pickguard. If you look closely you will see I etched a design on the pickguard to customize the 12-string Seagull, made it my own, so to speak.

I am enjoying this series of images and hope you like them as well. As a guitar player images done in an artful way are appealing to me. I have more to come and will share as I go.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Kenny Chesney - What I Need to Do
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Lyon by Washburn - Seagull - Guitars - Song Registration

Photography is a nice part of my hobbies. It is very nice to have a decent DSLR camera for small projects. I took my Canon Rebel XTi and got some photographs of two guitars.

A Lyon by Washburn 6-string and my Seagull 12-string. They were easy to pose and cooperated with me quite well. Neither of them fell or were hurt during the session. I shot about thirty-nine exposures. Using differing angles and backgrounds.

One of my favorites is the image I am posting today. I used PhotoPaint to apply the Mosaic Vignette to the close up of the dual guitars and upped the saturation a bit. Then I added the text using some grunge fonts. The details were made soft on purpose for the image.

I had been playing the Lyon recently and now have a blister on my finger from pushing and pulling strings playing lead on it. One of the small hazards of being a guitar player. It's action is a little stiff and not like my 12-string, which I had had adjusted to my taste quite a few years back. I would like to have the Lyon adjusted as well. But that remains to be seen.

I have been discussing song registration on the Acoustic Guitar forum I am on and it appears that quite a few persons are using Songregistration.com to register their songs instead of the Copyright.gov site. One reason is that it now costs more to register rights with the government. Songregistration.com has a lower fee for that: $30.00 for up to four songs. Whereas the government wants $45 to $65 for song registration.

There is also the ASCAP site for composers and publishers of songs to register for collection of roaylties if someone uses your song for recording or performance. This is another way to protect one's songs from being used without authorization.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Jeremy Fryc - (Part 2)... most people seem to like it.
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The Solitary Walker

The Solitary Walker is a photograph that was filtered in Paint.NET for an Ink Sketch look and feel. I was thinking it would make a good title for a song. I need to mull over that and see what I can come up with.

The bright colored tree seems to be the subject of the piece, but it is really the single person walking in the autumn color. The focus is not on him but the idea is. He is by himself in the brisk air of fall. Others were with families or friends, in groups of two or more. But he appeared to be by himself, alone.

When I was a younger man I would take long solitary walks. It was one way to deal with pressures of life, and on the other hand it was a real pleasure to do so. No one to talk with just the scenes I was in, walking and thinking. At that time I wasn't into photography as much as I am now. So I don't have any images from those days. But the memories are still fresh and clean.

The Solitary Man
©2009 Kirk Mathew Gatzka

Verse:
The memories are fresh and clean,
The solitary walks alone.
Air was pure and foliage green,
I was alone but also seen.

Verse:
Time stretched on before my sight,
I would walk on into the night.
A solitary young man alone,
Walking, Walking, Walking home.

Chorus:
Just a solitary man on his own,
Walking for pleasure, walking alone.
A solitary man on his own,
Always walking on his way home.

Verse:
Seasons come and seasons go,
Weather changes from hot to cold.
Scenes change slowly as I go by,
Routes may differ as I sigh.

Chorus:
Just a solitary man on his own,
Walking under pressure, walking alone.
A solitary man on his own,
Always walking on his way home.

Bridge:
Thinking thoughts so deep.
Watching the Sun creep,
Across the sky as it goes.
Walking, Walking with no purpose.

Chorus:
Just a solitary man on his own,
Walking for pleasure, walking alone.
A solitary man on his own,
Always walking on his way home.

Something to think about and possibly refine, needs chords and a melody line.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Staind - Tangled Up In You
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Black Horses - Painter 8 - Watercolor

I was in a sour mood yesterday afternoon. So when I am in a mood like that I turn to music to help me get snap out of it. I took the Lyon by Washburn 6-string guitar and hooked it up to my Toneport UX1 with the Seymour Duncan Woody pickup.

Using the Gearbox software I played around with the grungiest guitar and cabinet configurations I could. I played a couple of chord progressions for a background to play against and played some loud Blues Rock leads.

I used the chords EGAC GEm AmD and for a bluesy background I used E7 A7 B7. I recorded my efforts for fun with Audacity. They are not the best I've ever done, but it helped me out of the mood I was in as I played and improvised. I even used a bass guitar setting and played a bass back beat to the bluesy chords. I stuck with the E string and A string for the bass improvisation.

I usually play the 12-string so the 6-string was fun to work with for a change and the sound was harsh and loud. The best thing was it helped my mood.

Today's image was done from a photograph taken at Kensington Metro Park's Farm Park Hayride wagon. Both horses were black and new to people, young horses that are just getting used to crowds. I got a couple of good photographs of them and I think this was one of the best.

I opened the photograph in Paint.NET and applied the Artistic> Pencil Sketch> filter. This gave me a basis for a pen and ink watercolor. Saving that file I opened it in Painter and applied the woodcut filter which gave it the pen and ink look. I opened the original for the coloring and set it as the Clone Source.

I then used the watercolor brushes for the painting of the image. I saved that file and opened it in PhotoPaint, framed it in black. I upped the saturation a bit, and used the Tone Curve tool to slightly darken the colors too. I saved the file and then resized it for display here and saved that secondary file.

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Now playing on Windows Media Player: Kirk Mathew Gatzka - E7A7B7-Blues
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