Fret Filings - (Anne's Blog)

Sunday, April 13, 2008

PRISM
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

I've been a bit lazy on the blog entries this past week. Have to start thinking of some stuff to write about. I was jokingly asked in an e-mail awhile back 'will the tabs keep coming when those Montreal Canadiens are in the playoffs?'.

Well, so far, so good. I've managed to watch the Montreal games and get some tab work done.

So for today, a Canriff from the band Prism. It's from their second album, See Forever Eyes (1978). The song was written by Al Harlow. According to the liner notes of Prism's Over 60 Minutes With... compilation CD, he wrote the song in a Calgary hotel room in a five minute burst of inspiration. When the song was offered to Prism, they not only accepted it, but they recruited Harlow into the band on bass and rhythm guitar, as well (replacing the departed Ab Bryant, who went on to be in both Chilliwack and the Headpins).

PRISM - "Take Me Away" (A. Harlow)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

Hear it here:

http://tikasmusic.imeem.com/music/MMNFOUGb/prism_take_me_away/

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:21 AM EDT
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Saturday, April 5, 2008

ON HOLD
Topic: Website

The tab I referred to a couple of times in the last few posts was finally finished last night, printing off to a hefty eleven pages. All that was left to do was check it over with the record. I was going to check it earlier this evening, and post it tonight. So...something had to go wrong, right?

I realized pretty quickly once I started playing the disc that my stereo was doing its temperamental bit. This isn't new, it's done it on and off for a long time. But when it does it, there are entire parts of the song I can't hear. For example, vocals and drums will come through fine, but not guitar. I'll only be able to hear guitar faintly way in the background. Or I'll be able to hear one guitar part fine, but not another. So under those circumstances, I can't use it to check the tab. Usually, it corrects itself on its own, but there's no knowing when (or if) that'll happen. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Hopefully, sometime. The whole time I was actually doing the tab, the stereo worked fine. But not right now.

So instead I ended up working on a chord chart for a song I have on cassette (because I could use a different stereo to work on it). Hope I'm back in business soon.

Posted by planet/zerofret at 1:47 AM EDT
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008

MARCH 2008 REVIEW
Topic: Website

Most-viewed tabs for the month of March 2008 (w/ view numbers):

17 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
13 - Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns
11 - Mountain - Mississippi Queen
10 - Honeymoon Suite - Stay In the Light
9 - Headpins - Turn It Loud
8 - FM - Phasors On Stun
8 - Harlequin - Innocence
8 - Max Webster - Hangover
7 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On
6 - Guess Who - Bus Rider
6 - Max Webster - Battle Scar
6 - Max Webster - Diamonds Diamonds
6 - Max Webster - Gravity

Total tab views for March: 268

(By section: Canadian-190, Girlschool-39, Various-28, Chords-11)

Most-viewed tabs overall (stats date from Oct. 3/07 to March 31/08):

32 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
25 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
18 - Headpins - Turn It Loud
16 - FM - Phasors On Stun
16 - Harlequin - Innocence
16 - Kim Mitchell - All We Are
15 - Max Webster - Battle Scar
15 - Trooper - Two For the Show
14 - Honeymoon Suite - Stay In the Light
14 - Max Webster - Hangover

*Only tab views made by people (excluding my own views) are counted here. Webcrawler/bot views are excluded.

Posted by planet/zerofret at 1:23 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 1:30 AM EDT
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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

STEVE MILLER BAND
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

Today is April Fool's Day, but the joke's been on me for the past several days. In my last blog entry, I mentioned a tab I was doing that had started out as a hybrid tab (chords with some tab included), but which I had decided to make into a full tab instead. Little did I know how hard that was going to be. When I did realize just how hard it was going to be, I considered changing it back to hybrid tab status. I bounced back and forth between deciding to abandon the tab altogether and soldiering on with it.

However, I knew what would happen. Take a break from it, get a fresh outlook the next day. I knew I'd want to keep working on it, if for no other reason than that I'd already invested a lot of time and effort in it. But there are other reasons...for one, it's a great song. It won't be my most accurate tab ever, but I'll see what I can come up with. I made some decent progress on it tonight, and I think I might even be down to less than twenty bars to go. Uh, twenty tough bars. The whole song isn't hard, but the hard parts are...hard.

Anyhow, because of all that, I hadn't posted anything else in awhile. So I took a night to prepare a riff. Some good ol' Steve Miller rock'n'roll. The song is from the legendary Fly Like An Eagle album (1976).

STEVE MILLER BAND - "Rock'n Me" (S. Miller)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/varriffs.txt

Hear it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDpM6GVw9-k

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:44 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, April 1, 2008 2:48 AM EDT
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008

HYBRIDS & THE METAL QUEEN
Topic: Website

The tab posted earlier today is the first of its kind on this site. I think of them as "hybrid tabs". Basically, they're songs that are designed to go on the Chords page, but they have some tablature included in them. They're not complete tabs, so they can't be placed in one of the tab sections. Some part of the song will be tabbed, other parts will just have the chords, guitar solo parts won't be included. This is an example of what a hybrid will look like:

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/crd/aaronlee-texasoutlaw.txt

At this point, I don't know how often songs in the Chords section will include tab. There's only one so far, of course. There was already a second one I was going to do this for, but along the way I decided I'd make a full tab of it. It will be the next full tab posted, if all goes as planned. For this first hybrid, I made a note where it's posted on the Home Page that it includes tab. I won't be making that note every time a chord chart involves tab. I'm just doing it this first time to make people aware that some songs on the Chords page will also have tab.

On the Chords page itself, though, I'm making these tabs easy to identify. All hybrid tabs will be marked with an asterisk, with a note at the top of the page explaining that this indicator means the song has tab included.

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/page8.html

As for the song "Texas Outlaw" itself, it's an interesting case. It's a duet with Aaron and Buzz Shearman, vocalist for Moxy in the 1970's. Her debut album The Lee Aaron Project (on which this song appeared) was released in 1982 on an indie label. The album was re-released by Attic Records in 1984 under the title Lee Aaron, in the same year that Attic released Aaron's breakout album Metal Queen. By the time of the album's '84 re-release, Shearman -- who does an excellent vocal on this song -- had died in a motorcycle accident (June of 1983).

Aaron had lots of help on that original project. Triumph's Rik Emmett was involved. Her "back-up" band for the album was Santers (a pretty good back-up band to have!). Other members of Moxy were also involved. Earl Johnson (Moxy) and Rick Santers play guitar on the track "Texas Outlaw".

Posted by planet/zerofret at 4:00 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, March 26, 2008 4:10 PM EDT
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Saturday, March 22, 2008

THE TRAGICALLY HIP
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

Today, some Hip to start your holiday weekend. This is one of my favourite songs of theirs. From the band's 1991 album Road Apples.

THE TRAGICALLY HIP - "Little Bones" (The Tragically Hip)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

Hear the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7rnk8TA5Eo

Posted by planet/zerofret at 1:55 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, March 22, 2008 1:56 AM EDT
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Monday, March 17, 2008

ST. PADDY'S DAY
Topic: General

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Posted by planet/zerofret at 1:43 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, March 17, 2008 1:45 AM EDT
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Saturday, March 15, 2008

CLARIFICATION
Topic: Website

I think most people can figure this out for themselves, but I'll mention it, just for the record. It's about the link added to the site Home Page a while back that goes to the Riffs/Intros that have been posted on the blog page. If you click on that link it will take you to only the riff section of the blog, not the general blog. You'll get only Riff-In-A-Jiff posts by clicking on that link, same as if you clicked on the "RIAJ" link to your right on this blog page. (So if you clicked on the riffs link from the home page of the site, you wouldn't see this post.)

I arranged for that link to go only to the riff section for convenience, so people can access the tab in the blog -- and the posts that go with it -- quickly, without having to sift through other posts to find them. Yes, I know you can do that by coming to the blog and just clicking on the Riff link, but this is just a little added convenience of being able to do that straight from the Home Page. And being able to see right on the Home Page what the most recent riff is.

In order to access the main blog page that includes posts for all topics in the blog, you'd use the blog link that appears higher up on the Home Page. If you're reading this, I think you know that.

New tab added today. "First Time For Everything" by Coney Hatch. The video has been added, as well.

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:45 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, March 15, 2008 2:58 AM EDT
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Sunday, March 9, 2008

TOTO
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

...and your little dog, too!

Okay okay, I know the name of this band of top sessioneers isn't a reference to Dorothy's dog in The Wizard Of Oz. It's a reference to the Latin "in toto", meaning 'in entirety' or 'completely'. And maybe it's a bit ironic that they're being posted in this section for riffs, intros, and parts of songs...tabs that haven't been done "in toto". So here's some Steve Lukather guitar riffing, from the band's 1978 debut album Toto.

TOTO - "Hold the Line" (D. Paich)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/varriffs.txt

Live version video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj2SZbQtPGA

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:10 AM EST
Updated: Sunday, March 9, 2008 2:12 AM EST
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Friday, March 7, 2008

TIME FOR A CHANGE
Topic: Guitar

Not anything big. Just a guitar string change, actually. My Super Slinkies are all slinked out. They're slinkless. They've come unslunk (they didn't know what they were headed for, and when they found what they were headed for, it was too late, they've come unsluuuuunk). Well, you can tell it's a Friday, can't you? A snowed-in one, at that.

Really, though, my guitar has been crying out for a string changing for probably about two months now. And I always say 'as soon as I finish this tab, I'll do a change'. Then I finish the tab, and almost immediately get tinkering around with the next one. And having gotten into it and not wanting to slow the momentum, I say to myself 'as soon as I finish this tab, I'll do a change'. Etc.

But no more putting it off. Before the next tab, it has to get done. So probably tomorrow night, while I watch the hockey game, or something. Time to put the "zing" back in the string.

I remember once reading in a guitar magazine that you could get some extra life out of worn out strings by boiling them in water. So I tried it (this was a looong time ago) just to see what the effect would be. I took a worn out set off my guitar, gave them a boiling, and put them back on the guitar. And the result was...thud! I don't know, maybe it makes them cleaner, or something. Or maybe if you add salt while you boil, it'll make them tastier...for those of you who do the 'watch me play with my teeth' bit.

But they still sound just as dull as they did before. The article did say that this won't work miracles, but as far as I could see, it didn't do anything at all. So it was a one time experiment.

Nothing beats a fresh set of strings with that zing and brightness in them. They sound better, they feel better to play. And I "slink" a change will do me good.

Posted by planet/zerofret at 4:46 PM EST
Updated: Friday, March 7, 2008 4:56 PM EST
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