I'm going to try to embed some videos of my playing guitar here. I'm just sticking in the video file as a link, and assuming you have the plugins available to play them (see more below). This stuff is of interest only to family, friends and those who love me for myself.
I've been involved with music all my life. My father was a trumpet and cornet player who had been a soloist with Souza's band, and had played for the Boston Symphony Orchestra during WWII. I started learning trumpet and piano at a very young age, and played trumpet (actually cornet) until I was about 11 or 12, when my father died and I stopped. I'm afraid I was never the most diligent student. Started guitar at around 13 or 14, I think. My first teacher was surprised that I didn't know songs about little green apples. I learned a lot, in my mid-teens from a Berklee teacher named Mark French, who gave private lessons at his Gloucester home. Played the blues in "basement sessions" with my cousin, Michael & a couple of other kids. I was one of three guitarists trying out for spots in the two MIT Jazz bands c. '75. I was the one who didn't make the cut. It got to the point where I might not pick up the guitar for months at a time. I started playing semi-seriously again a few years back. Very introverted playing - I never played with others (and I don't perform). In summer of 2014, couple of months after I nearly died, I decided "What the fuck", and started taking lessons again, from a really good jazz guitar teacher named Mike Mele, who is one of the teachers at The Music Emporium, in Lexington MA. All of the following videos (so far) predate starting those lessons, though. Maybe I'll add some, eventually.
These files are kinda big, and may take a while to download...
| Not Even | Not getting around much, or even get started, really. Crappy audio quality, dark video, inconsistent time, headless guitar. c. 2013 | Chaser... Oh No! | This one is particularly lame, 'cause my reach greatly exceeds my grasp (don't even keep time on the verse!), but I included it because I was actually surprised that I came as close (once or twice) as I actually did. Also posted this on Facebook, because I was annoyed at all those adds to learn to play blues with only 4 notes. This is a blues, and I do believe it has more than four notes... my pathetic attempt at "Straight, No Chaser." c. 2010 |
| Mona Lisa | Couple a short melodic instrumentals with more than a few muffs... "Mona Lisa" and "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White". c. 2010 |
| Cherries and Apples | If I could clean up my act, and use more than two-note harmonies, maybe some of these would actually sound good. c. 2010 |
| Mood I | Now we've got bad singing with a few muffed chords. No wonder my mood is indigo. c. 2010 |
| Satin | Chords, singing and a solo... what were those lyrics again? Well, I gave it a whirl... c. 2010 |
| Some kinda blues... | Couple of weird turnarounds, lots of muffs, but hey, I tried. c. 2010 |
Most of the above videos are "WMV" files, but one is an "AVI". Don't know if your browser has plugins for them. They all open for me in VideoLAN, which is the open source media program I mostly use, due to my overall detestation of both Windows Media Player and iTunes.