A notice to inform people that tab requests have been discontinued.

Doing a full tab properly takes somewhere in the area of ten hours. It requires a few nights (3-5 depending on length and difficulty) to do the tab itself, then more time to enter it into the computer, do a thorough check on it, and get it posted. Over forty of the tabs on this site have been done by specific request from various site visitors, representing some 400+ hours of my time doing songs others have asked for.

But a post I made on the site blog awhile back revealed (over a period of time) that not one site visitor had two minutes (or less) of time to give back. A particular link wasn't clicked on even one single time. No time, no interest.

This discrepancy led to a reassessment of my own time management, and ultimately to the decision to end tab requests. 

Mood:  blue

As it turned out, they weren't meant to be apart from each other for very long. My wonderful, big cat Paddy passed away last Friday (Dec. 9) at the age of sixteen and three quarters, only six short weeks after the passing of his lifelong cat companion Tara. (They were born about two weeks apart.) Paddy had been feeling unwell at the same time as Tara, each of them affected by totally different ailments. He has a nice, peaceful final resting spot right beside Tara, in his woods that he spent so much time in.

Paddy was a gentle, good-natured cat, with a heart as big as his considerable size. He was born in early April of 1995.  His mother (from a nearby neighbourhood) was a beautiful, long-haired black cat named Keswick. Paddy had her good looks, even after suffering a badly slashed nose while still a young cat. I don't know if that wound came from another cat, or if he tangled with a woods animal. All we know is that Tara led him home that night.

Paddy 2010

Paddy and Tara

Paddy Tracks

Most-viewed tabs for the month of November 2011:

34 - Honeymoon Suite - Burning In Love
25 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
25 - Honeymoon Suite - New Girl Now
24 - Max Webster & Rush - Battle Scar
24 - The Poppy Family - Where Evil Grows
20 - Doucette - Mama Let Him Play
20 - Harlequin - Sweet Things In Life
17 - Harlequin - I Did It For Love
17 - Toronto - Your Daddy Don't Know
16 - Harlequin - Innocence
16 - Max Webster - Hangover (live)
16 - Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns

Total Tab Views for November: 917

By section:  Canadian-647  Girlschool-99  Various-54  Chords-117

Most-viewed tabs overall (up to Nov. 30/11):

1,061 - Honeymoon Suite - Burning In Love
1,009 - Doucette - Mama Let Him Play
820 - The Kings - This Beat Goes On
780 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
627 - Honeymoon Suite - Stay In the Light
609 - Honeymoon Suite - New Girl Now
604 - A Foot In Coldwater - (Make Me Do) Anything You Want
599 - The Kings - Switchin' To Glide
576 - Kim Mitchell - Patio Lanterns
569 - April Wine - Cum Hear the Band

Tabs reaching 100 overall views this month: The Weight, Yeah Right (bass)

Just over a week ago I wrote about Tara in a blog post. Today's post is about "Tara's Song". It didn't start out as her song, but it became hers. It would have been back in about 1996. Tara and her pal Paddy were still very young cats, about a year old. They were outdoor cats, but were always inside by midnight to spend the night indoors. One night Tara didn't come home. For a little while, we figured she was just being a typical little feline, doing things on her own schedule. We called for her, searched in the immediate area for her. No Tara. Then her absence stretched into hours, late into the night, something she had never done. Naturally, I was really worried about her. 

Around that same time, during the previous couple of weeks, I had been fiddling around with a musical idea on guitar. I had been trying to do some modal ideas (beyond Ionian or Aeolian, that is), and I was attempting to write something using the Phrygian mode. In the end, it didn't come out that way, it was just your basic minor key tune. That night, filling time playing guitar while I wondered where Tara was and worried about her, I decided to dedicate the song to her.

Someone once told me, after hearing the song, that they thought it sounded like horror movie music.  I got a kick out of that. I suspect that opinion was influenced by the dissonant intervals in the bridge part of the song. But that dissonance suggested the notion of peril, which seemed appropriate. On the night of the missing cat, I worried about any number of dangers and hazards possibly being the reason why she hadn't returned home.

The next morning...the cat came back. Just like the song says.  But cats don't tell you where they've been or why they didn't come home at the time they should have. However, our neighbour across the street a few doors down was able to tell us. He said that first thing in the morning when he opened his garage door, a little black and white streak zoomed past him. He recognized her, so was able to tell us where she had been. So she had been stuck in a neighbour's garage all night, and arrived safely home the next morning. I was extremely relieved, and very happy to see her.

In the meantime, she had gained a song. I didn't really add anything more to the song, just put the verse and bridge parts together to form a short instrumental. I recorded it on my little Tascam Porta 03 4-track recorder. Very low tech. A few guitar tracks (the melody part is double-tracked) and some programming on an old Roland rhythm machine.

After Tara passed away late last month, I decided I'd post the song as a small tribute to her. (Click on the song title to hear it.)

"Tara's Song" by Anne Drury (Written and recorded in 1996)

Tab for "Tara's Song":
https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/annedrury-tarassong.txt