Well, here I go again - just playing my guitar and trying to pass it off as art - a music video. This time it's my twelve-string and I end up out near the duck pond behind my house. That's about it. (2 min. 23 sec.) Insert description here

G-string Strut is a jazzy vamp featured on the album "The Nowhere Men Play the Music of Gary Peterson." http://soundclick.com/share?songid=2698870 The video below, on the other hand, is just me messin'round in my toolroom, a nuts & bolts rendition of that same tune but I'll call it Pipe Wrench Blues for your amusement.

Listen to a trippy raga I made up on the spot as I show you around my living room and then a jazzy guitar riff that I'll just call Prelude for now (an original chord progression that ends where a Stevie Wonder tune begins).

Here's a link to my latest (ha! - second) video. This is the chord progression of a song I'm writing - so far just an acoustic guitar with a kick drum and The Blox. I decided to use a drum stick on the strings since I was sitting behind the traps.

I read an account of a man, blind at birth that became an accomplished guitarist. In his adult years a surgical procedure gave him sight for the first time and (after meeting the wife and kids, etc.) someone showed him his guitar for the first time. He had no idea what it was - not a clue. This thing with which he was so intimately familiar through touch and tone was totally unrecognizable to him upon sight. He had only ever "seen" it with his hands which shrink the "visible" world to an arm's length. Beyond that, I suspect he could detect interior spaces by the echoes and acoustic resonances of sound in a room (the abstract properties of musical composition are something else altogether). Wondering how a blind person might express himself on canvas, I drew the above picture representating the sensations of touch and tones while playing the guitar as "seen" inside of my head without any reference to the instrument's outward appearance. Only the area where the two hands touch the guitar fills the picture frame. Beyond that is nothingness without eyesight. Color is a property of light (vision) but also of sound, both being functions of wave frequency. The amorphous shape at left is where the palm of the hand or thumb touches the back of the (guitar) neck. The white spots are the fingertips playing an Am6 (A minor sixth) chord - my favorite. The four flat ovals at top left are where the left-hand fingers wrap around the fret board. The white dot at top right is where the little finger rests on the soundboard for a finger-picking style. The crescents are fingernails (but feel free to perceive them as some kind of lunar calendar or whatnot if you prefer). The strings and frets are obvious; they can be "seen" (anticipated) by touch. The prong at the bottom, just left of center, is the occasional zinger, the twanging sound of the fingers scraping across the bronze wound bass strings. As fascinating as the parallels are between light and sound, the differences are also profound. I used color as a convenient analogy in this rendering but I would emphasize that a blind person has no concept of color as we know it. Then again, Ray and Stevie (Jose, Doc, Blind Lemon, et al) demonstrate the expanded resources and enhanced musical connections possible in brains that are free from the demands of visual processing. Those acquired sensibilities are beyond our experience except as enrapt listeners, but I hope that I've provided a reasonable visual model with "Touch and Tones." On a related note, you hear me play guitar with The Nowhere Men. Here's a link: