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| Sean McGowan "River Coffee": Track-By-Track
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I love this tune and it really works well solo. The intro echoes the famous ostinato figure of Bill Evans with the left hand, while my right hand taps the bass notes, with harmonics as well - just improvising over the left hand pedal. Then the R.H. taps out the bass line on the 5th and 6th strings in time. A quick switch puts all those parts in the left hand. The melody gets played by the left hand pinky; one challenge of this style is to make the melody truly sing, as if played by a different instrument. This is often tricky, because it might force you to do the whole melody with only one finger, or finger chords in a way you never would ordinarily. (It's a good idea to practice being able to hold a note while "shifting the fingers" under it to keep the parts moving.) So, I play the head a couple of times and then the solo.
I do three choruses here - in this tune I usually have a skeleton of where I'll go on the neck. I might improvise a solo in my mind and then try to figure it out on the guitar. That's when some of these techniques come into play. They probably merit a brief explanation, if only for fellow guitarists.
For example, at the beginning of the 2nd chorus there's that line of F to D played twice. Well, the first time I wanted to hear the low G at the 3rd fret on the 6th string. Meanwhile, I had to fret the high F with my R.H. and pull off to the D with my L.H. - which meant figuring out a way to get the rest of my L.H. up there in real time. I decided to put in that little bass run on the 6th string with my first three fingers (L.H.) while the pinky held the high D. Then I go F to D again with my L.H. only, while the R.H. now plays (i.e. frets and plucks, as described above) the walking bass line (A to D) on the 6th string. I then go back to just the left hand doing the bass, comp, and line. So there's a lot of switching going on between hands. I'll get an idea in my head, then work it out on the neck.
The single-note blowing stuff is just that. Many times I'll work out a part or a technique, then use it as a platform to improvise from, knowing I have these little stations to go in and out of. The last part of the solo, the descending clusters of 13ths, is something I later realized I heard Jim Hall do on a due record with Ron Carter. But I also wanted to hear those high notes ringing on top, so I used the R.H. They almost sound like harmonics, but they're fretted. This way the R.H. can keep a note sustained while the L.H. moves down the neck. After the head I close the tune with high R.H. notes before resuming the tapped-sliding bass line again.
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This was written for a friend who was a great chef in a restaurant I once worked in. His mom couldn't decide whether to name him Jerome or Tyrone so she named him Tyrome. Anyway, in the crazy restaurant world full of dysfunctional chefs, he was great to work with, very soulful and always smiling. So I wanted to write something that would portray his fun, positive energy.
It's basically a simple C blues with little measures of 5/4 thrown in once in a while. I like it when there are little shifts in the meter without being obvious; I love when music flows in and out of time, and you wouldn't notice unless you sat down and counted. Thsi solo has more switching between the two hands with a little single note blowing in there too. I was also thinking of Bobby McFerrin when I wrote this melody; I wanted something nice and simple, like the guitar was singing, then came up with a contrapuntal type of bass line. I can picture two vocalists doing each part.
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I've always loved this Monk tune. I improvised this intor as sort of a release in the studio (plus I was drinking a lot of coffee while recording). It's basically a random 2-fingered tapping thing; I was picturing almost a cartoon or something with this tune, and I wanted it to be kind of quirky.
Then the beginning is like a 2-for-1 technique. (Being a Mainer I love bargains.) Just before the session I started experimenting with plucking a string both "before" and "after" the note. Meaning you fret it with , say, the L.H. pinky and you pluck it simultaneously as usual with the R.H., but also with the L.H. index finger. On an acoustic (or an electric unplugged) you'll get two different pitches, and the interval between them depends on where you're fretting. Sometimes the intervals are in tune and sometimes not. Essentially you can get a 7- or even 8-note chord out of a 6-note fretted voicing. Pretty great!
So, the very beginning is double-plucked notes on the 1st string followed by a 9th fret harmonic strum, then the tapping. And at the very end of the song I hit two voicings with the double-plucked thing. FIrst, a sort of Ab13 voicing with an open A and open E followed by the double-pluck, which resolves to a nice F6/9 voicing that I love when Monk plays. (The voicing is: F on the 6th, C on the 5th, open D on the 4th, A on the 3rd string, then fret the D and G on the 2nd and 3rd strings respectively. Double-pluck the high G: at the same time, pluck it with your R.H. and one of your leftover fingers of the L.H. It sounds two notes, but you're really only fretting one.
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I fell in love with this piece from Ellington's "The Queen's Suite" as soon as I heard it. It's goegeous, as if Duke just channeled it, and I thought the guitar would really suit it. I wanted to do it justice so I needed to come up with a tuning that would capture those rich bass notes, because Duke is all over the piano. After some experimenting, I came up with CGDGBE, which seems to work. Again, a lot of right hand fret-and-pluck activity to sustain those notes. The hardest thing about this piece is playing it in tune because it's all over the neck. My friend Brad's acoustic guitar really shines on this one; very few guitars play perfectly in tune anywhere on the neck and also sound beautiful anywhere on the neck. Brad is a true master luthier, witness the very beginning voicings, which combine artificial harmonics with very high fretted notes. And they're all in tune! The last voicing is a held chord with the right hand chiming harmonics. You can chime harmonics at the octave, or an octave plus a 5th. The very last harmonic was hard; I had to move one L.H. finger without interrupting the voicing, the R.H. harmonic was up over the soundhole somewhere, and I got lucky.
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I wrote this in the middle of a freezing cold winter thinking of the process of spring. I noticed that despite getting clumped by big patches of snow, there were many beautiful winter birds outside still enduring and singing despite the harsh weather. Believe me, this is inspiring when it's 10 below and you haven't seen the sun in over a week! I originally wrote this for a ska band I was playing in, and later arranged the different parts (in Ab major) for solo guitar. This counterpoint type of groove is very difficult to play and make sound happy and easygoing. (I also thought a lot about going to Mexico during that winter, so maybe that's where the title came from).
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Written for my friend Nate George, a totally swinging drummer who's almost always smiling. He's so soulful! I wanted to capture his groove on solo acoustic, and most of all try to make the time feel good. In this one sometimes the bass goes low while the melody remains high, so I compensate by playing the bass line over the neck with my L.H. thumb like Hendrix or Tal Farlow.
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A result of my desire to write a more traditional type of flowing fingerstyle tune that reflects Maine. This one really reminds me of the Pemaquid region. There are three different parts, despite how it sounds, it's in a standard tuning. (I just can't remember any altered tunings, so I just stay in standard.)
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The introduction really showcases the R.H. fret-and-pluck technique. (I wanted a voicing to sustain like a piano with the pedal held down.) The middle section has a lot of passing the melody note back and forth between hands - which for me means paying as much attention to finishing a note as starting a note. I wrote this about the different stages of reflection, longing, completion.
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Another fingerstyle piece, based in A, and written for one of my favorite coastal towns in Maine.
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I wanted to play something kind of raw and funky, sort of like East 7th Street in NYC. It's almost all improvised; I had the basic groove and just went for it. There are all kinds of mistakes but I wanted to leave everything in there and groove on it. The very end illustrates the R.H. technique of holding a unison note with a note in the L.H. voicing. Then I chromatically move the L.H., while holding the R.H., and it creates a nice tense cluster.
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Another imterpretation of the Thelonious Monk piece. The first one, to me, resembles the original plus a Carmen McRae version that I really like. However, I've always thought this tune is so bluesy, and I wanted to do something slow and soulful on it, with a back porch kind of feel. So I came up with this arrangement. I build up the head and do a couple of choruses on blues. When playing it alone I really like soloing on blues instead of the changes of this tune. The intro has a L.H. pattern played quickly in tritones.
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Another ballad. Autumn is really a time of reflection up here in Maine; it's just in the air. I wanted to explore different harmonic regions because there are so many different aspects of fall. It's a very complex season; poignant, sad, happy, and beautiful all at the same time. Thus I also wanted to write something exploring those different emotions, and I didn't want too much of one thing. This is probably why I avoided thirds in the voicings. There are more seconds and fourths, which leave an ambiguity and plenty of space for the listener to interpret differently.
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This past year I lived right on the Kennebec River in Maine. Just outside my place live herons and eagles as well as many other birds and animals. Rivers are sacred to me; they are the link between the ocean and inland, they have seasons and tidal shifts, they branch out to many different streams, yet are always connected by the same water. To me rivers suggest the constant connection among humans and all living things, whether we choose to recognize it or not. They are a source of life for nature, including us, and they've sure been the source of commerce for early America as well as a mode of travel. In my own neck of the woods they've been crucial to the early logging industry in Maine and its people. The river is also symbolic to me about the profound journey of life. It was interesting all winter when the river was totally frozen over - knowing it was still there without being able to see it at all. Trusting that spring would come and the river would be there, flowing, shining, full of life again, even though the life had never really not been there.
Technically, this piece is in DADGAD, a tuning I know nothing about. This tune just presented itself a couple of weeks before the recording session. I literally improvised the middle part in the studio. I figured out notes that wouldn't work and just played around with tapping on the ones that did. I just wanted to feel this tune without thinking about it; I was more interested in the environment of the music.
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