Chris’s 6 & 12 String Guitar Music Videos
I have started to write and record my original 6 & 12 string guitar music again, and in a nod to the prevailing technology, have been using a DSLR camera’s video output in combination with my existing audio recording equipment to make videos using the OBS open source software. This is kind of fun, the cats and dog can participate if nothing else.
Old Wine in a New Wineskin
For my first try at videos I recorded some “easy” songs – I am still building my chops on the guitar back – and created an entry for NPR’s 2022 TinyDesk Concert competition. The fruits of these efforts are below.
Note 5/28/22: The Wayback Machine video below is the first video using a new analog to digital converter and computer with a decent video sound card. I need to dial in both the video and the sound, but this is a start…
Note 10/9/22: I have most of the kinks out of the sound, I can get a modicum of fidelity to what I hear in the room when I play the guitars. So now I will be focusing over the next couple months more on video quality and lighting. Please stay tuned.
Note 3/15/23: Roughly 150 videos later, since I started at this time last year, I posted a new video as my entry to the 2023 NPR TinyDesk Contest. I also wrote a new song this past weekend after a 20+ year hiatus. Ever upward and onward.
Note 3/12/24 entered 24 Tinydesk contest, using Davinci resolve and multi camera editing…
3/19/24 This Voobah’s For You
3/10/24 Young Crows & Barbers’ Cats
2/17/24 The Mighty Bosco – Tinydesk 24 Entry
11/3/23 Max
10/29/23 Evangeline
9/25/23 Pete’s Wedding Song
7/25/23 Green Eyes
7/23/23 A Peaceable Kingdom
7/23/23 Leaves of Grass
7/23/23 Herald of the Morning
6/5/23 Saved By The Bell #2
6/3/23 The Mighty Bosco Rides Again
4/2/23 The Mighty Bosco
3/19/23 Little Martha by Duane Allman, arr. Chris Justice
3/12/23 Happy Islands – TinyDesk 2023 Contest
2/4/23 the 3 of us
12/31/22 Northern Lights
12/26/22 Winter Song
10/29/22 Black Kettle
10/16/22 Sea Song
10/8/22 Now We Are Sixty
10/6/22 Are We There Yet
9/5/22 Grey Morning
Grey Morning – Blog entry
9/4/22 Fade to Black
Fade to Black, Blog entry
8/27/22 Sleeping Dogs
Dog Heaven Blog entry including Sleeping Dogs video
8/27/22 Little Tramp
Dog Heaven blog entry, including Little Tramp video
8/27/22 Dog Heaven
Dog Heaven Blog entry
8/15/22 Blue Skies & Cherry Pies
8/15/22 Herald of the Morning
8/15/22 Lemons From Lemonade
8/14/22 Max
8/14/22 Frances
8/7/22 Saved By the Bell #2
8/7/22 Every Day Is Christmas Around Here
7/31/22 Gospel According to Sam
7/31/22 Boogers McGee
7/24/22 The Undercover Agent
7/10/22 Big Black Bird
This piece features contrasting sections that share certain phrases. I tried to bear down as much as I could to produce a wide dynamic range within and between the segments. I am sporting a rarely seen tie dye Piggly Wiggly “I’m Big on the Pig” shirt.
6/12/22 Leaves of Grass
The guitar part is sparse, and I more or less get the phrasing the way I want it, which is the point of the exercise. Thankfully we are vexed with only have a modest amount of the maladroit, my playing is asymptotically getting to where it was 20 years ago right before I hung up my spikes so to speak. George the cat provides the intro & coda. Feels like I am making progress, even if its still part time while I contend with my day job.
6/11/22 Numinous
I wrote this song all in one fell swoop one evening in the back room in the house on Beech Street in Dearborn. Its one of the few I have put together in a standard tuning. I dusted this one off yesterday and played through a couple times, and picked up the thread this am (6/11/22). I had a struggle to get a passably clean take, I am still having to knock 20 years of rust off of each song I am re exploring…
6/6/22 SMILE ^2
This was another hack at 6/4/22 version of SMILE. 6/4 was 1/2-ass, this version is 2/3 – ass, I am asymptotically converging to something that is probably not PC so I will leave that to your imaginations. I have a pristine performance in the archive that I should release at some point…
6/5/22 Short as Any Dream
Swift as shadow, short as any dream… This was a second take, I wanted to feel like I made forward progress today, so this is what I was able to accomplish with what was in the battery at 6 pm. The bit with the harmonics was kind of ragged the first couple times through but got a little cleaner as I warmed up a bit. The cover thumbnail is of an American Chestnut in my yard that I grew from a seedling and is now 20 years old and 40′ tall.
6/4/22 SMILE
it was kind of a crapless week at work, I made a hash of everything I touched – out of the box, or with expenditure of great and fruitless effort. Ingrid tells me it was still retrograde mercury whatever that entails. So this morning I went out to the office and fed the critters and had some more coffee. I made a hash of about a dozen takes before I ground through this flawed but passable version of SMILE. Think of this as salvage work. Take care, smile…