guitar pedantry

So, I don't know if I told you or not, but I've suddenly found myself playing guitar in a jazz quartet. It's my first real ensemble experience with guitar.

After struggling with those insane chords for a while, I finally hit on a filthy dirty solution: if I just play the power chord, it sounds just fine and no one notices the difference. They even seem to work fine for flat fifth chords (why anyone would ever want to use a flat fifth chord in the first place is beyond me), though it's not hard to play a flat fifth power chord, either...

Chord substitution is a common trick employed by jazz guitarists, but real jazz guitarists have memorized lists of what chords are acceptable substitutions for what other chords. But I'm just not at that level, so I use power chords. I feel a bit guilty, though. I think a real jazz guitarist would be horrified that I was subbing power chords while accompanying jazz classics.

I think jazz guitar is probably one of the most thankless jobs in all of music, actually. Jazz guitarists, in general, know the instrument more intimately than any other kind of guitarist and are masters of both improvisation and sight reading. The chords are just insane. And yet, no one pays attention to the guitar. Half the time you can't even hear the guitar even if you wanted to. The bass is considered indispensible in jazz, but a guitar is just fluff.

Oh well. I guess I should buy some Wes Montgomery CDs, or something.

wasting time

I've tried to avoid video games the last year or so. I've got this feeling like I have to prioritize, like I've got too many things that I want to be doing and something's gotta go. In fact, I was specifically thinking to sacrifice the time I spent playing video games and use it to write fiction. But today I'm feeling the old pull... A good video game, especially a good, immersive RPG, just gives me a certain kind of psychological release that I don't get from anything else. I feel like staying up all night playing some hoary old adventure game. Taking a cue from Margie, I'm very tempted to give this a spin...

Another equally tantalizing prospect, though, would be to start into Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I bought some time ago but haven't yet cracked. Mr. Aspiring Writer (who hasn't written a word since August) would complain less about that.