Choosing what to play

It can be tricky choosing just a few songs to concentrate on. This is one of my weaknesses - I just like to pick along to whatever great song catches myattention. I can't guarantee not to do this anymore, but yesterday I looked through a few tunes and chose 3 to know backwards. So over the next few weeks I am going to arrange, and learn these tunes:-

The Dreadful wind and rain - there are a few versions of this around, including Jerry Garcia's and Crooked Still's

Four Strong Winds - Neil Young's version is my brother's favourite song of all time

Between the wars - Billy Bragg's song never seems right in sync with the times.

Anyway, I will try these tunes out to start with

Resonator guitar

Sometimes guitars can be tempermental. I have a Republic Resolian, a small resonator guitar which needs some setting up. This is a specialist job, not every luthier has got the experience to set up a resonator guitar well. Fortunately there are a few good resonator luthiers in the UK. I am going to use Dave King, based in Reading. He makes beautiful little parlour guitars, but also has a lot of experience with resonators. I have recorded some sound files of my guitar before treatment. I will post some afterwards too. The recordings were made using a cheap AKG D5 mic into an Apogee Duet and then straight into Garageband.

Although the Resolian guitar is a cheap(ish), Chinese built guitar, it is really comfortable to play & when it is properly set up I am sure it will sing.

Starting out:

I have played guitar for over 30 years, since I was 9 or 10. I first learnt some songs from a paperback guitar tutor book that my mum bought. She was a teacher and a piano player and she thought that she would learn the guitar to teach school children songs in class (a guitar being quite a bit more portable than a piano). However, having bought a guitar from a friend (a Framus f-hole), my mum never got over the sore finger stage of playing and gave up. I got the guitar & tutor book for free and started learning "On top of old smoky". That was me hooked. I saved up and bought a Beatles songbook and, quite a bit later on, a better guitar. After a while, I could figure out the chords for songs by listening to them repeatedly on my record player. The Beatles' Get Back was the first song that I managed to get all the guitar parts figured out by ear. I was about 11 or 12. Over the years, I have always had guitars at home & find playing a great way to relax.