Today I attended a workshop held by former Wings guitarist and all around fingerpicking diety Laurence Juber.
A really fine experience. He plays the guitar as easily as most of us breathe and as creatively as anyone alive. His fingers just fly and he plays and jumps between chord forms that mere mortals find unimaginable. His original compositions are beautiful and complex and his arrangements of standards like Over the Rainbow, Strawberry Fields, and Little Wing bring new life to them and make it seem like one is hearing them for the first time.
The workshop was inspiring - as if that’ll get me anywhere - and the concert just blew us all away. The venue was a small studio so the whole thing was very intimate and gave us all the chance to watch Juber work close up. A really wonderful experience.
Honestly I knew little about him and wouldn’t even have attended if my wife hadn’t seen it written up in our local paper. She encouraged me to go despite my reservations about being even remotely good enough to benefit.
If you want to hear some solo acoustic guitar and hear something amazing, do check him out.
I havent heard him yet, but is his playing like Don Ross, or Justin King?
Those are two really great fingerstyle guitarist, I have Justin King on my myspace page that you can listen too, its not one of his better songs, but it is still good, and Don Ross can be found to download.
He’s got some samples under Music on his website. They’re the beginnings of the songs before he gets into the really complex stuff, though. As for other than paying for the songs, I’m 45. I leave it to those younger than me to get their music for free.
I’m not familiar with either. I’ll have to check them out and get back to you.
I’m sure you’re better than you give yourself credit for…do you have any clips?
I just listened to some of his stuff, and…wow.
One of my favorites was Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring…I played that on violin at church once, and it’s always been one of my favorite church-y songs.
Not sure if you use tabs or not, but I just found some tabs for some of his songs…it requires a certain software to use though, so not sure if you’d wanna download it
No, no clips. I have invested in recording equipment or software yet. During the workshop he said exactly what you’ve said, we’re probably better than we give ourselves credit for. But he also said the reverse is true, i.e. we’re probably not as good as we think, adding, that’s what playing in front of people will teach.
Have you posted your own playing?
I’ve downloaded various tab programs. I’ll check it out someday, but right now I don’t even want to tackle his material. Way above my head.
He gave some pointers on composition, and I’ve actually been inspired to try to work out my own - incredibly basic and simple - arrangement of a fingerpicking City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman. I’ve gotten through four measures this evening.
Here it is
Just keep in mind that they’re all first recordings*, and old…therefore not too good
I recommend Crystal Planet…that’s one of the better recordings in there…and Canon Rock
*I had to give the camera back
Don’t suppose you could share it, could you? (When you get farther, I guess)
I can’t write music at all…I find it kind of sad, actually, that I’ve been involved in music for 7 out of my 16 years, and I can’t even hope to write music…ah well.
I will be glad to share what I have with you after I’ve gotten a bit further. Mind you, it’s a well known song, I’m writing in tab and my process at this point is merely finding the melody and adding a simple bass line going to fill it out. Which is not to say this isn’t challenging and fun for me, just not a whole lot going on for an advanced player to sink his or her teeth into.