Acoustic Blues Lab

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Recording Info Sheet:

PERSONAL BLUES Album Cover

Title: Parallel Blues

Listen on Bandcamp

Style/Series: Acoustic Blues

Format: EP

Recording Date: 2015

Release Date: Various

Track Notes (Bandcamp):

LATE NIGHTS IN THE LAB:
These were experimental recordings. For generating ideas. Not for release. After rent increases abruptly ended the Lab, I decided some of the exploratory tracks were interesting enough to share. For full effect, TURN IT UP. Don't forget to turn it back down.

EP NOTES:
Parallel Blues EP was a transitional period in my acoustic guitar studies. The song sequence is historically backwards. The first song was inspired by the earliest blues. But it was the last recording for this series. And this is entirely appropriate. At the time, I was musically going backwards in time. On purpose.

Or, more accurately, guided by the Muse. I'll never know if this was a good thing, or a bad mistake. Or both.

In this creative process, I evolved out of the inspirations of quasi Fahey and Kottke solo acoustic guitar (and other solo acoustic guitarists), and ever further into early Delta blues. Not that I knew what I was doing. Except, I knew I didn't want to make academic studies. Instead, my goal was to be inspired by the inventors of the first recorded Delta blues music. Whatever that meant.

This process of musical devolution was one of the main reasons why these explorations never stabilized into a consistent aesthetic.

I just kept going.

Note. The appropriate historical hiss was provided by messing too much with my early Pro Tools LE 7 system.

Instrument Tech:
Guitar: 1969/70 Martin D-18 that looks like it survived a bar fight.
Mods: Carbon fiber saddle, fat frets, ebony bridge pins
Tuning: C#G#C#F#G#C# (DADGAD a half-step down)

Player Tech:
Style: Bare-handed, no picks
Style: Thumb and finger picks

The Hardcore Studies:
This project was intended to push further into hardcore blues than
common sense would advise.

Note: Text and visual content are copyrighted.

Lab Test Tracks

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