Swoon alert!

[annathepiper]

This is simultaneously a Crowe swoon and a musical swoon. And mostly for the amusement of flashfire, shaylith, and ssha, but what the hell, it's an equal opportunity amusement-at-Anna-swooning opportunity. ;)

"Painted Veil" is the first ballad on the new Crowe/TOFOG record, and it's very lovely. It has an acoustic guitar line as well as some meltingly lovely trumpet playing from Mr. Kirwan, as well as some fairly swoonable lyrics and harmony. Last night, this thing grabbed my hands, forcibly attached them to my guitar, and refused to leave me alone until I'd figured out a majority of the chords necessary to play it. I couldn't quite get them all, though, and had to leave off the rest of them until today.

And there's a surprisingly large number of chords in it, too. Nine by my count, if I'm hearing the weirder bits in the chord line properly: C, Am, Em, F, G, Cadd9, Am7, D, and Dm. I pegged the C, Am, Em, F, and Dm fairly easily, but the rest gave me something of a challenge.

Especially the D, since for some reason I'd had it in my head that a D chord couldn't possibly be played in the key of C--possibly because with all the other songs I know how to play, the "second" position is generally minor. E.g., in "Trois Navires de Ble" all the A chords are minor ones. But, I wound up tryiing to pick out single tones to follow the melody line, and found myself hitting an F#--so I had to figure out what chords want an F# in the key of C. The chord I wanted turned out to be D.

The strum pattern's really easy, though. And I must remark that having Mr. Crowe sing the words "gently caress my face" into my headphones is simultaneously an immense inspiration to properly play the requisite F chord that passage wants, and an immense distraction. ;)

Comments

Re:

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Actually, now that you bring up the quarter vs. eighth notes and the counting, a little of that comes back to me. I played the trombone for a few years in middle and high school, but I was never that good at actually reading the music and understanding it past knowing "This note means I need to have the thing at this position." But obviously, I understood counting and how long a note was supposed to be played.

And yes, that's an amusing review. ;-) I shared that Crowe/Elvis comparison with my friend (the one about Crowe as a great actor and good musician, and Elvis as a great musician and good actor) and she definitely agreed with it.

She also seemed to like Folsom Prison Blues.

Re:

[annathepiper]

I think the Crowe/Elvis comparison is the best I've heard of Mr. Crowe's musical ability. Me, I'm just happy he entertains me, and amused at the high levels of Elvis connection with the guy anyway--I still periodically giggle that he was shown on the Texas DVD holding up an Elvis record I do in fact OWN.

Not to mention that he's channeling Elvis hardcore in "Folsom Prison Blues"--there's a part in there at the end of the first verse, especially. The part where he lets out a little "uhhh". Now if he'd only stretched that out to "uh huh huh", he'da nailed it. :>

Re:

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

And then after that, he could've asked for a quarter pounder with cheese and large fries along with a HOOO-AHH! and he'd have completed the Elvis Transition.

*grins, ducks, and runs*

Re:

[annathepiper]

*hits Flashfire, hard* :P

Re:

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Owie.