Fuzz Guitar

Day 150

I know that with the title it sounded rather like I had finally made the guitar out of dryer lint, but no – that one is still to come. I just thought that for the 150th episode I might want something a little more – well, substantial. So here it is. I have used guitars for a long time now (well beyond 150) to try out techniques with which I am unfamiliar. Recently, I watched a video where an artist (Phil Hansen) whose work was very precise and pointillist developed a tremor that was affecting his work. After tests and meds and what have you, he finally had a neurologist tell him that he should “embrace the shake.” (http://youtu.be/YrZTho_o_is) It is a great TED talk and I recommend it. But it led me to consider a slightly different approach to painting a guitar. I’m not sure I’ll ever do it again – even a sort of pointillist approach to art rapidly makes me develop a thoroughly un-embraceable lack of interest…leading to all manners of washing and smudging attempts that actually made it turn out to be more interesting than I had anticipated. Although it is an interesting addition to the Blue Guitar series, it is probably a one-of…

Guitars In The Wild

Day 148

I went to visit a friend. I got there early. It is the story of my life. We are done here. OK, no we aren’t. But I did get to my friend’s house early enough to wander down the hill to her dock, having received a text that she was on her way…and a couple of guitar opportunities presented themselves. I love a moss covered hillside, half exposed stones and dappled sunlight. It was lovely – a splendid small break in a hectic day.

Recital Season

Day 147

Getting a late start this morning – last night was the “Showcase of Music” where I take guitar lessons. Which means, pretty much that right there along with the primary school kids and the middle school kids, a small class of adults had their recital. It was a hoot. Ukelele club members, keyboard players, drummers, bassists, guitarists, vocalists – oh my, and yes, Tropical Storm Angela adding the dangerous edge of the possibility that we would have a power outage that would blow all of the electronic equipment. Just like a real gig…

The program was organized by age groups, and the younger kids were dressed to the nines to play sweet pieces on the piano, flute, and guitar. That part of the program was orderly and just adorable. Except for the near wall of smart phones in the audience held to capture it all on video, it was pretty much as recitals have been forever. Very comforting, that.

The Patsy Cline Pink Guitar – the one I wanted back in February…

As the program edged up in age, more noise was introduced – in a good way. Drums, horns, bass, more guitars. (I am simply crazy about the little girl who came with not only the Patsy Cline pink guitar, but a pink ukelele as well.) The music became more complicated, as it should, and the obvious goodwill of the audience helped alleviate the panic evident on the faces of the musicians. I am now contemplating the fact that that little girl has probably never even heard of Patsy Cline…

Anyway, if I’m able to get my hands on photos of the event, I will put them up. In the meantime, you get to live with my commentary.

As the sound of the horns and guitars faded out, four members of the quite healthy local ukelele club came forward dressed in some near approximation of Hawaiian wear and sang song standards that ranged across more decades than I could easily count. There were fully fledged adults in the crowd who had never heard Tiny Bubbles…but who immediately responded to the obvious fun everyone was having. I’m willing to bet that the ukelele club gets some new members today.

Then it was our turn. It was loud, it was fun, the crowd sang along, so if we made a mistake, well, yes, it was pretty much drowned out. Unlike many a real gig.

As for the creation of a guitar today – yes, I have one. But the posting of that little painting somehow is overshadowed by the very real reason a guitar is in my life at all – the connection between music and art and music and people is nonpareil.

Another photo from Best of the Blues…love it…

The Path of Least Resistance

Day 139

It is as though summer decided that yesterday was the day – and though for Maryland it is a few days late, it has come with a vengeance, and the whole humidity thing. Totally enervating. It happened so quickly that I just can’t wrap my head around closing the house and surrendering to air conditioning for the season – not yet. Maybe tonight. But the only reason any of it applies to the guitar project is that in this heat it is virtually impossible (for me) to even consider moving to a big project. So I built a guitar out of what took the least amount of movement from my desk – and fortunately, for me, there is always something there. I’ve been working a lot with the music lately, so instruments and bits of them are nearby…and all things related.

Now, because I’m absolutely certain that you want to know, here are links to some of the things I’ve been working on… https://soundcloud.com/userbp4063578/crazy-love https://soundcloud.com/userbp4063578/to-love-somebody

Come Along

Day 108

You already know this by now, but I’m from the Seattle area. So when Justin Valente posted on SoundCloud something called “Hendrix Jam” (https://soundcloud.com/justin-valente/hendrix-jam) I was inclined to listen, adding to the fact that anytime Justin posts, I hit “Play” and “Download” at almost exactly the same time. He is a wonderful guitarist who makes the blues cry and sing…love it. But this purely rock session is Hendrix stripped down to the essence of what made his music so astounding and enduring. It was a great listen that got me out of the house and into the studio…totally inspired to ‘touch the sky.’ In fact, the resulting painting is part of a new series called “Elements” and is called, simply, ‘Sky’. I was happy enough with it that it is already hanging in a gallery show – barely dry, but dry enough 🙂

Strange, in a way, that the evolving guitar is a result of searching through the old barn for creative materials. I came across tow chains that hang out there for months without use, but every once in a great while are just the thing needed to handle and emergency. I can’t say that needing a guitar is much of an emergency, but there are days when it feels like it might be.

Chain Gang

Now, one more thing. My friend Bill sent me the math guitar which is something that just gives me so much joy, so much hope, so much true appreciation for the left brained people of the world – I’d never heard of the Mandelbrot Set – which, considering that it is fractal geometry, is not surprising. Wikipedia defines the Mandelbrot Set as:

The Mandelbrot set $M$ is defined by a family of complex quadratic polynomials

$P_c:\mathbb C\to\mathbb C$

given by

$P_c: z\mapsto z^2 + c,$

where $c$ is a complex parameter. For each $c$ , one considers the behavior of the sequence

$(0, P_c(0), P_c(P_c(0)), P_c(P_c(P_c(0))), \ldots)$

obtained by iterating $P_c(z)$ starting at critical point $z = 0$ , which either escapes to infinity or stays within a disk of some finite radius. The Mandelbrot set is defined as the set of all points $c$ such that the above sequence does not escape to infinity.

A mathematician’s depiction of the Mandelbrot set M. A point c is coloured black if it belongs to the set, and white if not. Re[c] and Im[c] denote the real and imaginary parts of c, respectively.

More formally, if $P_c^n(z)$ denotes the nth iterate of $P_c(z)$ (i.e. $P_c(z)$ composed with itself n times), the Mandelbrot set is the subset of the complex planegiven by

$M = \left\{c\in \mathbb C : \exists s\in \mathbb R, \forall n\in \mathbb N, |P_c^n(0)| \le s \right\}.$

As explained below, it is in fact possible to simplify this definition by taking $s=2$ .

Mathematically, the Mandelbrot set is just a set of complex numbers. A given complex number c either belongs to M or it does not. A picture of the Mandelbrot set can be made by colouring all the points $c$ which belong to M black, and all other points white. The more colourful pictures usually seen are generated by colouring points not in the set according to how quickly or slowly the sequence $|P_c^n(0)|$ diverges to infinity. See the section on computer drawings below for more details.

The Mandelbrot set can also be defined as the connectedness locus of the family of polynomials $P_c(z)$ . That is, it is the subset of the complex plane consisting of those parameters $c$ for which the Julia set of $P_c$ is connected.

sciencephoto.com

OK, so you have that, right? More importantly to me, as Bill pointed out, may be the fact that regardless of the number of pixels in a Mandelbrot image, you can very, very often find a guitar. Or, as I discovered – the left brain in color… There are a mess of these, each weirder and more beautiful than the last. Oddly perfect for the whole Hendrix vibe…

Another Blue Guitar

Day 103

Branagh – a most trustworthy and loyal assistant

I have had to accept that childhood was much harder than I remember. It seems like every time I take on another “kid” medium that I find it much more involved than I anticipate. However, it does give me a chance to laugh at myself, so it is not a bad thing. But really. My hat is off to children everywhere. They would not have broken a sweat with a giant chalk yard guitar. Which leads my idle mind to wondering if there isn’t a chalk guitar somewhere on a hillside in Britain…quick Alfred! To the internet! Nope. All those horses, and the Cerne Giant with no music. I’m sure there is one somewhere – they haven’t found it yet…

It is a beautiful, clear day today. A great day for an update from Google maps…at least it feels like you can see this from space.

Black Magic

Day 90

After an entire morning of being locked out of the internet by inclement weather, I am up and anxious to post a guitar. It is strange how it has become so much a part of my routine that it throws me out of kilter until I get the job done. Of course, to my knowledge, I have never actually been “in kilter” so that may be a moot point.

Anyway, after complaining loudly and roundly about the white plaster guitar form, I discovered, as is often the case when I get to complaining about things, that it was not the actual form, but my perspective that was being so annoying. I found black gesso and gave the entire piece a coating, and in so doing, discovered that the creative block I was experiencing vis-a-vis (which I only throw in because I can) this thing was that I had focused on the preformed expectations. I was instantly transported when I turned it over to a whole new world of possibility. Now I want to make more of them…I have plans. Life is good again.

Wrapped Tight

Day 84

I can still, however vaguely, remember a time when I could be innocently knocking about in my storage area for something I am sure is there, and not come across something entirely unrelated that I immediately thought of a potential guitar. I think I can remember that time. OK, maybe not. But really, three boxes of plastic packing wrap from my I DID NOT MOVE TO MONTANA 10 years ago? Why do I still have that stuff? And where is the box of yellow wrap that was a part of the collection? Seriously, who looks at 4″ stretch wrap and thinks this way? And wouldn’t that person start with some kind of armature? Apparently not. So what you see here is four rolls of wrap formed into what is becoming a guitar. What I have to say, though, is that it now weighs almost as much as my Maine Coon cat, and is getting as hard to handle as that same cat at bath time. So I’m guessing, after I rest up a couple of days, and deal with any scratches, I will come back to this. I have a notion that I can form it into a perfect guitar – though right now I could sort of pass it off as a Picasso Blue Guitar…I think… By the way, it may not cry and sing, but so far, it makes a really interesting percussion instrument and probably a weapon…